Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks during the company's Chrome event in San Francisco December 7, 2010. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet (formerly Google), today advised British startups to market their products on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter if they want to grow their businesses.

"If you’ve got a great product, get it out there and the rest is obvious," Schmidt told UK entrepreneur Rohan Silva during an interview on BBC Radio 4 today.

Silva, who knows Schmidt from his days as a policy advisor to David Cameron, asked Schmidt what startups can do to market a product on a limited budget.

"Go out on Twitter, use Facebook. Instagram now is having a huge renaissance in terms of marketing and promotions."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Schmidt also encouraged startups to use Google's advertising system to market their products.

"The big marketing and sales budgets that traditional companies have are being replaced by these much more lean and efficient distribution models that companies have pioneered on the web," said the former Google CEO. "This is obviously not an ad for Google AdWords but that’s our business.

"The only thing that matters now in a company, a small company, is the product quality. Does it work, does it really solve a problem? Everything else whether it’s distribution, or marketing or selling can now be done over the web or funded through crowdfunding and so forth and so on."