Category: Small Business Productivity

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Small Business is about Doing

It's time to roll your sleeves up: our Small Business Management Course gets you working on a real life business idea.
It’s time to roll your sleeves up: our Small Business Management Course gets you working on a real life business idea.

As Australia’s leading provider of online training courses, we deliver all kinds of different training courses – and we’ve recently branched into providing online induction training courses to business. But where EzyLearn’s flagship course, the MYOB training course, teaches practical skills in using one of the most popular accounting software packages, it is a completely different kind of course to our Small Business Management Course – and for good reason.

Thinking as if You Own A Business

Our Small Business Management Course is designed to make you think like a business owner. Where our other software-based courses are designed to systematically guide you through a particular software package, our Small Business Management Course needs to be different.

As a business owner, you’ll be thrown curve balls from many directions – especially when you first start out – and the key to surviving them is being able to think objectively and without bias.

You’ll need to be able to problem-solve and sometimes develop new approaches to existing business practices or activities. Running your own business means having a plan, but not always operating to it.

To complete the course, you need to be able to demonstrate that you possess the required skills to successful operate your own business – by researching, thinking and writing.

A Real Business Idea with Tutor Feedback

The Small Business Management Course is deliberately structured so that as you work your way through the course content, you’re applying the exercises and skills you’re learning to a real-life business idea. Then, once you’ve complete the course, you’ll go live with this business idea.

The course gives students an unusual and unique advantage over other soon-to-be business owners because our students get feedback from a tutor that they can then apply to their business strategies.

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This is what makes our Small Business Management Course so popular – because you’re learning with your real business idea, where other business courses merely have student complete exercises or answer questions in relation to hypothetical business scenarios.

If you would like to learn more about our small business management course, visit our website or enrol here.

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Discussion Post: How Do You File Your Invoices and Receipts?

How do you file invoices and receipts? Tell us, we want to hear!
How do you file invoices and receipts? We’d very much like to hear!

Whether you’re a bookkeeper or business owner, if there’s one thing we probably all have a shared hatred of — it’s filing. Filing is the little task we always put off, until eventually we can’t find anything through the sea of paper and receipts cluttering our offices.

This wouldn’t be so bad if filing wasn’t such an important part of a business.

People File Differently Now

But as cloud computing, internet banking and email have changed the way businesses operate, the way people file their expenses and important business documents has changed as well. Continue reading Discussion Post: How Do You File Your Invoices and Receipts?

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‘Commenting’ in Databases

We suggest only writing the glad, not the bad, when it comes to comments in databases - and indeed, perhaps in life.
We suggest only writing the glad, not the bad, when it comes to comments in databases – and indeed, perhaps in life.

Nearly every company has one – usually as part of their CRM software, but other times it’s just a good ol’ faithful Excel document. Either way, databases are commonplace in a great deal of companies and they’re often used to keep track of communication between staff and their customers.

But what’s the rule on commenting in databases, or specifically, leaving negative comments in databases?

Comments – Integral to a Database

Making general comments in a database following a conversation with a client is pretty much standard practice – in many cases, it’s often the reason you have a database. In customer service call centres, for example, leaving a detailed comment about the discussion you’ve had with a customer is expected – and serves as an invaluable resource for the next person who speaks to that customer.

In this instance, it’s sometimes appropriate to leave comments about the customer’s temperament – angry, rude, upset, and so forth. This just helps the next staff member manage this customer in a manner that suits the circumstances.

But many companies quite commonly also use databases for the express purpose of selling something to a new or potentially new client; negative comments speculating on the temperament or nature of a contact in a database, may not be altogether helpful in this instance.

Reading that the person you’re about to call or have a meeting with is a ‘disgruntled curmudgeon’ is almost certainly going to affect the way you interact with that person. If you go into something expecting hostility, you’ll naturally position yourself on the defense, which in turn is only going to illicit hostility back.

Ditching the Negativity

But what if that person was only responding with hostility because you pre-empted their alleged hostility by being defensive in the first place? That’s a question you may never know the answer to, unless you ditch the negative comments in your database.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write useful comments such as “spoke to John, but he said he wasn’t interested in our product’, but you should definitely avoid comments like ‘spoke to John who was extremely rude and said he wasn’t interested in our product.’ The added detail in the latter is not particularly useful and if that person does ever become a customer it could underscore your interactions with them.

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It can be a good philosophy to only write the glad, not the bad. Perhaps have a think about that when you leave comments in a database, or make a policy about your own database usage.

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WHS Online Training Continued: Enrolment Forms and Exams

EzyLearn can help your business train WHS staff or provide credentialing and inductions.
EzyLearn can help your business train WHS staff or provide credentialing and inductions.

In a previous post we provided you with some tips on how to create a video for your work health and safety (WHS) induction training, which can be delivered online using EzyLearn’s learning management system. In this post, we look at handling enrolments and the most important element of all: testing your staff on their WHS knowledge!

Now that you’ve created your training content and it’s ready to be uploaded onto our learning management system, you need to create a way for people to enrol in your training course, which is accessible from a website.

How to Enrol People in Your Training Course

The easiest way to enrol your staff is to create an online enrolment form that either links to our learning management system where the person is automatically enrolled, or a more basic enrolment form that requires someone to manually enter the person’s details into our learning management system. The option you choose is largely dependent on the size of your organisation.

There are plenty of web-based form builders available that you can use to create your enrolment form, each varying in features and flexibility. If you’re looking for something that’s free, the Google Apps marketplace offers some fairly basic form-building software; there’s also Wufoo, which counts micro-blogging site, Twitter as one of its clients (along with us at EzyLearn!); if you’re looking for optimum flexibility, however, try Formsite.

Once you’ve created an enrolment form, you can use that same form-building software to create the exam your staff will need to complete in order to pass their induction training. It’s best to use a multiple-choice format for your exam, and try to keep the questions as simple as possible — in a real-world scenario, a person will need to respond to a potential safety risk quickly, so you want them to be as prepared as possible.

Have People Had the Requisite Training? Why You Need a Credentialing System

If your organisation has a lot of contractors coming and going on a daily basis, it may be necessary to have a credentialing system on your site. A credentialing system requires visitors to sign in upon arrival at your site to verify whether they’ve had the necessary WHS training.

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EzyLearn has recently partnered with EzyAccess to provide a suite of options in the area of WHS training. This means that we can provide businesses with the means to induct and train their own staff and also verify and credential visitors to their site.

For more information on how EzyLearn can help your business with your WHS needs, contact us.

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How to Engage Your People in WHS Training

An online video effectively engages your audience for training purposes.
An online video effectively engages your audience for training purposes.

We recently wrote about why it’s important for all small businesses to have their work health and safety (WHS) procedures up-to-date, particularly their induction training. Being that EzyLearn is in the learning business, and in particular, the online learning business, we’re able to facilitate your induction training via our learning management system.

If you employ staff, whether they are contractors or consultants, WHS training should be a major priority for your business. Providing your staff with online induction training is the easiest way to ensure your training materials are correct and up-to-date.

Create Training Videos

Because everyone’s learning style is different, we’ve found that the best way to guarantee engagement is to create a training video, which is then complemented with some form of written materials. Here are some of our tips for creating training videos:

Watch the clock: The key to a good training video is length. Try to keep your training videos short and sweet — ideally less than two minutes long — as people are sometimes turned off by the prospect of watching a 15-minute video. Shorter videos also load quicker, which is helpful for people with slow internet connections. For topics that are long, split them up into a combination of videos and written content.

Be engaging: Don’t just set up a camera tripod and film yourself writing on a white board — there is a reason so many people fall asleep during university lectures! It’s boring! Instead, put together a PowerPoint presentation and record audio over the top or try out some other presentation software, like Prezi.

Pace yourself: The average person can speak 150-160 words per minute (WPM), but for instructional videos you should try to reduce this to about 110 WPM to ensure people are able to grasp all of the information you’re providing. Don’t fall into the trap of speaking too slow, however. Slow-talkers — around the 90-100 WPM mark — project lethargy and can frustrate listeners. Given the choice, most people prefer a fast-talker — like President John F Kennedy, who was notorious for topping 200 WPM — than a slow-talker.

Don’t be afraid to go off script: Having a script is important, but scripts are rigid and boring. Run through your script a few times before you record your audio to iron out any clunky parts. It’s good to remember that people don’t speak the way they read, so you should avoid sentences that are too verbose, which stops the narration from flowing fluidly. As for those awkward pauses while you’re trying to find your place in your script: they’re annoying! Don’t be afraid to ad lib!

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If you’re interested in finding out how EzyLearn can help you provide your WHS training material online, contact us.

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Should Your Final Price Include GST?

The price you charge for goods or services should always include GST.
The price you charge for goods or services should always include GST.

We are regualarly refreshing the content of our MYOB training course so that you can benefit from all the new information that is always coming in about being a bookkeeper, running your own bookkeeping business or doing the books for someone else’s business.

Pricing Your Services for GST Continue reading Should Your Final Price Include GST?

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Eliminating the Guesswork: Knowing Just How to Change Your Website to Get More Business

Believe your copy isn't working? Don't stab in the dark with your changes - try Optimizely, covered as part of our new Digital Business Course.
Believe your copy isn’t working? Don’t stab in the dark with your changes – try Optimizely, covered as part of our new Digital Business Course.

In a recent post we talked about using web analytics to generate more business and we’ve also talked about the value of web analytics to any small business’ website, because it isolates information you can use to increase your conversions rates, among other things.

Because web analytics is something we cover in our Digital Business Course, we’re not going to spend much more time on that here, but we do want to talk about a great new tool that you can use in-conjunction with web analytics: the web optimization software, Optimizely.

Testing Out Different People’s Responses

Web optimization, or A/B split testing, acts almost like a focus group where, without being told, a small number of customers will be diverted to a slightly different version of a web page and their behaviour compared with that of the users on the standard site. If the updated version of the web page results in more clicks, longer visits or more purchases, the updated version will displace the original; if the new version is inferior it will be phased out with very few people ever seeing it.

Web optimization has long been the open secret of high-stakes web development companies, like Google, but Optimizely’s foray into the marketplace makes it possible for small businesses to have the same data and insights available to them as a big businesses — and cheaply.

While Optimizely — which was founded in 2010 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen, who were both product managers at Google — may be used by a number of big players like MTV, Disney and Sales Force, it’s most useful for time-strapped small business owners, where making changes to web content has always been a time-consuming process.

If you have been using web analytics and made adjustments to your web content in response to data you’ve received from your analytics software, then you know how tedious the process can be — but importantly you know how much guesswork is involved in making changes to some elements of your web pages, like copy, for instance.

Are Folks Subscribing to Your Newsletter?

If you’re not using web analytics (and you should be!) it goes something like this: you notice users are landing on a particular web page in response to searching at particular keyword, but they don’t choose to sign-up to your newsletter. Why?

You guess that maybe there’s too much copy and it’s overwhelming the user so you decide to reduce it. You check your analytics — still no joy. Now what? Do you undo those changes and try something else? Or keep those changes and try something else? What if that still doesn’t work? Then what? Also, how long is a piece of string?

Eliminating the Guesswork

Optimizely eliminates all of that guesswork and for as little as $17 a month, it’s a lot cheaper than retaining the services of a web developer to provide this information just once, never mind for an entire year.

Optimizely is another tool small businesses can use to increase their productivity and increase their sales. If creating web content that’s efficient and highly targeted to your customers is a priority for your business, we recommend you give Optimizely a try.

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If your business is about to make the transition online, you can find more information on our digital business course here, or by subscribing to our blog.

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Web Analytics Made ‘Ezy’

If your business isn't using web analytics then you're still not using your website to REALLY understand what makes your customers tick.
If your business isn’t using web analytics then you’re still not using your website to REALLY understand what makes your customers tick.

Ok, so you’ve got a website and on it you have all this information about your company — who your people are, what you do, how customers can contact/connect with you — and best of all: you get heaps of page views every month! Talk about winning the Internet! You’ve got this website marketing business down, am I right?

Except that maybe you don’t. And for this reason, we’re currently developing a new Digital Business Course to help businesses transition into the online world. A big part of that transition involves understanding how web analytics work, which is the bread and butter of any successful website — and indeed, successful business.

How to Use Web Analytics

To get the most out of web analytics, you kind of need to change the way you view your website. You need to see it as a form of marketing, just like an advertisement in a newspaper or a piece of direct mail. Once you start treating your website the same as you would any other marketing activity, it’s likely you’ll have some questions you’ll want answered.

Your Conversion Rate – Do YOU Know It?

Somewhere on this list — though we imagine that it would be on the top — should be “What’s my conversion rate?” To answer this question, you need web analytics. We recommend Google Analytics, namely because it’s free and extremely easy to use.

Your conversion rate is the number of people who have visited your website and carried out some form of action — signed up to a newsletter, made a request for more information, downloaded an e-book, and so on. In short, it’s any action that involves the exchange of information that you can later use to develop into a sale.

Constant Improvement

But the real genius of analytics lies in how it allows you to isolate problems with your website’s content and refine them. For instance, if you have a rather average conversion rate, but a high bounce rate (the number of people who leave your website within 30 seconds of landing on it), there’s a good chance that’s there’s something wrong with the keywords you’ve selected for your SEO. Or you’ve selected keywords that your website’s content doesn’t address properly. Either way, you need to fix this.

Finding Out How Your Customers Think

Once you do, you should see you bounce rate drop off and your conversion rate increase, which means more opportunity for more sales. And just think: if you didn’t have analytics, you’d have never known. This is what makes web analytics invaluable for small business owners, because it gives you rare insight into what makes your customers tick — what are they really looking for, and how can you adapt your business to meet their needs? — and provides you with the opportunity to meet those needs.

In essence, small business owners now have the same resources at their disposal as large multi-nationals, who typically spend bucket-loads on research and development, focus groups, and the like, trying to ascertain what exactly their customers are looking for — and even then, often don’t get it right.

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At EzyLearn, we use web analytics extensively to ensure we’re constantly meeting the needs of our students and potential students. Through web analytics data, we ascertained that a number of small business owners were looking for a cheaper alternative to MYOB, so we developed two new cloud-accounting courses: the Reach Accounting Training Course and a Xero Training Course to satisfy that need.

For more information or to receive alerts about our forthcoming Digital Business Course, subscribe to our blog by clicking here.

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CASE STUDY: Is Reach Reaching the Mark? Hear the Honest Opinion of a Business Owner…

We test drive Reach to see if it reaches the mark for one small business owner.
We test drive Reach to see if it reaches the mark for one small business owner.

We’ve recently added a Reach Accounting course to our suite of online training courses. In a previous post, we gave you the low down on how the Reach Accounting package stacks up against MYOB, but we thought we’d find out what a real, present-day business owner had to say about Reach. So, we asked Angela, a freelance journalist, to test drive Reach for 30 days and then provide us with her honest feedback. Here’s what she had to say:

“As a freelancer, my business is pretty straightforward: I write words for a living and charge people to use them. As a creativity merchant, I’m not paid by the hour; I’m paid for each word that survives the ‘delete’ button, which is fortunate since the left side of my brain is a bit lazy.

Getting new commissions (or business) is a process that involves a bit of back-and-forth with editors over email — outlining story ideas, deadlines and finally agreeing on a price. As such, I never have the need to create estimates and I don’t need to log the time I spend working on my stories.

I’ve been using Zoho Invoice ever since I started freelancing, mainly because I didn’t have a spare five hours to create an invoice template in Excel when I first set up shop. To me, Zoho looked like the easy way out — and to date, it has been.

But how does it compare to the latest bit of accounting software, Reach Accounting? I’ve spent a bit of time using Reach, and for its price point and target market, it’s a pretty handy piece of software for sole traders and small businesses — I can see that it would be particularly valuable for virtual assistants and teleworkers.

As soon as you sign up for your Reach account, you’re asked to enter in your basic, yet important, business information — like your ABN and bank account details — so, without doing anything else, you can send an invoice to one of your customers right away. With Zoho, there was some setting up of invoice templates, adding customers and setting up email gateways, which was a bit tedious.

Then there’s the matter of cost. While Zoho allows you to invoice your customers in Australian dollars, it’s still an American company so your $15 monthly fee is subject to change with the exchange rate; you’re also charged a currency conversion fee from your bank, which is something to be wary of.

Reach, on the other hand, is an Australian company so you don’t need to worry about exchange rates and conversion fees; something I find quite appealing. Plus, included in Reach’s $14.95 monthly fee is the actual accounting software, whereas a full suite of accounting software with Zoho costs a little more.

With Reach, you’re effectively getting more bang for buck and even if I don’t use the accounting side of Reach’s offering, it’s good to know it’s there. I feel the same way about the bread maker I have at home, even though I don’t actually eat bread. Which raises the question: how many businesses would end up using the full accounting side of Reach?

As an accounting novice, I still have an accountant who weaves their magic, presumably in MYOB. I just export and email my earnings for that year, along with my business expenses — which is basically my entire life since I’m a freelancer, so the lack of an ‘export’ function in Reach is a major drawback for me.

I imagine most sole traders and small businesses would do something similar with their accountants and I don’t know how many accountants would be eager to use Reach.

But Reach excels precisely because it isn’t MYOB — or even Xero, for that matter. And it doesn’t need to be. Reach caters to a section of the market that was previously alienated by the likes of MYOB; and now those business owners have a low-cost, easy-to-use solution to their Excel spreadsheet and shoebox-full of receipts. It’s also Australian; and supporting Australian businesses, as an Australian business, myself, just makes sense.

So, at the end of the day, for my money, it’s worth it.”

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If you’re a sole trader or small business owner looking for a low-cost way to manage the accounting side of your business, Reach could be the solution. EzyLearn has partnered with Reach Accounting so that you can access a free student account when you enrol in our Reach training course.

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Reach Accounting vs MYOB: What’s the Right Accounting Software for You?

which-one
We help you figure out whether Reach is better than MYOB for your small business.

We’re thrilled to announce the addition of our new online training course for cloud-based accounting software — Reach Accounting. It’s a great, low-cost option for small business owners. But there are some businesses that will still be suited to MYOB, so let’s take a closer look at how Reach compares to MYOB to help you select the best accounting software for your business.

Bank Feeds and Payment Gateways

The first thing you’ll probably use in Reach is the invoicing software, which is not entirely different to MYOB — or Zoho or Xero, either. (On that note, we’ve also introduced a new Xero course to our suite of online courses.) In Reach you can enter all of your company details, set up customers, enter your bank account details, create an invoice (or use the pre-defined template), and so on.

Where Reach differs from MYOB, however, is that it doesn’t offer a bank feeds service, which means that you still need to manually record each payment your customer makes. This can be a time-consuming process, particularly if you don’t stay on top of it — which can be embarrassing if you set up the automatic late-payment reminder service, and then forget to record your customers’ payments.

The other points of difference between Reach and MYOB is that Reach does not allow you to set-up payment gateways to connect your PayPal account, nor can you connect your Reach account directly to an online web store; functions that are handy for online businesses.

While those functions aren’t currently available, Reach does have plans to make them available in the future. But if you’re not going to miss those functions, or aren’t likely to use them, anyway, then the Reach Accounting software will work for your business.

What Reach Will Enable You to Do

Reach allows you to create invoices and estimates, manage your payroll, expenses and complete your BAS return, among many of the other traditional accounting functions you find in MYOB.

Students who enrol in our online Reach training course will be able to access a trial version of Reach for 30 days while you complete the course — so enrol today! You can also find out what a small business owner thought of Reach as a solution for them after test-driving it for 30 days.

 

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Introducing Our Reach Accounting Course – The Low Cost Alternative to MYOB

Reach Accounting is giving small business owners a cheap accounting software solution.
Reach Accounting is giving small business owners a cheap accounting software solution.

Ever since we started offering online MYOB courses, we have been encouraging our students to start their own home-based bookkeeping businesses. We’ve also introduced new courses along the way, like our small business management course to encourage our students to become virtual assistants. Now we’re pleased to introduce our latest Reach Accounting Course to provide small businesses with a low-cost alternative to MYOB.

Finally! A Cheap Small Business Accounting Solution

For many small business owners operating fairly simple businesses (say, virtual assistants or teleworkers)  the need to invest in rather expensive accounting software like MYOB has probably never existed.

It’s not uncommon to find a sole trader who still uses Excel to create their invoices, and still keeps a shoebox-full of receipts that they then enter into another Excel spreadsheet, or else endure the wrath of their accountant if they don’t.

This is generally because there’s never been any low-cost accounting software available to them — that was until Reach Accounting, a division of Net Registry, entered the fray a little while back.

Because we’re constantly looking to help small business owners, we’ve partnered with Reach Accounting to offer small business owners a low-cost Reach training course, which includes a free trial of Reach to use while you’re taking the course.

In our new Reach Accounting course, we cover the following subjects:

  • DIY Accounting
  • Set up
  • Daily Transactions
  • Bank Reconciliation
  • Payroll

So if you’re a small business owner and you’re looking for some low-cost accounting software, Reach Accounting could be the solution. 

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You can take a closer look at how Reach compares to MYOB. Want to know the honest opinion of a small business owner? We asked a freelancer to test-drive Reach for 30 days; see how it works for them.

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Is Zoho the Small Business Solution?

Check out the numerous Zoho apps for small business.
Check out the numerous Zoho apps for small business.

It’s fair to say the MYOB is the undisputed market leader in accounting software. Even despite the number of new cloud-based software packages that have sprung up in recent years, MYOB is still the software of choice for most accounts and it’s why we offer MYOB training courses. But for someone starting a new business, MYOB might not actually be the must-have accounting software; there’s a new player in town, offering turnkey solutions for small businesses: Zoho Office Suite.

Cloud-Based Zoho for Small Business

Gone are the days of needing several different, rather expensive, software packages installed on your PC; with Zoho Office Suite you don’t even need one. Entirely cloud-based, the Zoho offering is broken down into three app packages: Zoho Business Apps, Zoho Collaboration Apps and Zoho Productivity Apps.

The Many Zoho Apps

Zoho Business Apps includes CRM, books, invoicing software and a website builder, along with other more ingenious tools such as, the support app for managing your customer service, a custom app-builder tool and a recruitment app that allows you to collect resumes and schedule interviews with candidates.

Zoho Collaboration Apps includes a project management app, a social network app called, Pulse, along with chat, mail and docs apps.

Zoho Productivity Apps features a number of word processing apps, including Writer, Sheet (like Excel), Show (like PowerPoint), Notebook, and a Calendar app.

Select a package and a plan that suits your business needs, pay a small monthly fee, and your business has access to each of the apps within that package whenever and wherever they’re needed. The downside: there’s no pricing plan for all three packages, bundled together.

Zoho Books

But say you don’t want all that anyway; you just want some decent invoicing or bookkeeping software. No worries — each Zoho app is available separately. Zoho Books, which is the closest thing to MYOB and offers unlimited invoicing, expense tracking, reconciliation, time tracking, multi currency support, and the newly added automatic bank feeds and credit card feeds feature, costs only $USD24 per month and includes access for two users.

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For new businesses, Zoho is certainly an affordable option, whether you only sign up for Zoho books, or whether you take on an entire business, collaboration or productivity apps package. For bookkeepers, however, MYOB is still the preferred accounting package. That means training in MYOB is still as necessary and vital a skill as ever.

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Starting A New Business? What Tools Do You Need to Succeed?

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It’s often said that the majority of new businesses fail in the first year. Some people even go as far as to say that 90 percent of new businesses fail within their first twelve months of operation, but is this statement really true?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics it’s not. The number of new businesses that fail in the first twelve months is closer to 30 percent, or 3 out of every 10.

However, just because a business survives its first year or even the second or third, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a successful one.

If a business isn’t able to pay the owner a wage that equaled or exceeded what they could have earned elsewhere as an employee, it’s not successful.

Further, if that business hasn’t generated a profit or positive cash flow, it’s still not successful.

Nor is a business a successful one if it hasn’t had enough working capital to service their debt, pay taxes and suppliers, and so forth.

New businesses are incredibly risky; and even if you have a great idea for a start-up or years of experience in your particular field of expertise, that doesn’t guarantee success.

Ensuring a new business is fail-safe requires a solid business plan. A business plan is like a road map—it shows you exactly what route to take in order to arrive at your destination—and without one you’re literally driving blind.

If the idea of writing a business plan seems a little daunting, you’re not alone. It’s one of the key components to running a successful business, but it’s also the most often overlooked, which is why we are now offering a Small Business Management course.

Among the subjects included in the course such as, researching the market and creating a marketing action plan, you will also learn how to write your very own roadmap to success—a business plan.

So if your New Year’s Resolution was to start a new business in 2013, then join us online with the new Small Business Management Course, which was especially created by Maggie Richardson from the Australian Small Business Centre for Australian Small Businesses.

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The Marketing Lessons All Small Businesses Can Learn From Big Businesses

ID-10069551We regularly receive tips from the academic board of our small business management course and they’ve recently shared something about marketing.

[quote]One of the biggest mistakes a small-business owner can make is to think that advertising budgets and marketing strategies are the playthings of big business.[/quote]

By borrowing some of the strategies some of the biggest businesses do well, there are many marketing opportunities small business owners can utilise to generate some organic business leads—and many of them are low-cost!

  1. Web Presence – Face it, whenever you speak to a potential new client, the first thing they do is Google you. If you don’t turn up in Google, or worse, what does is out-of-date or uninformative, you’ve already lost some of your credibility and you haven’t even done business with them yet!
    Your website should clearly outline what services you offer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it! Design a website that shows off your personality and sets you apart from your competitors. Our WordPress course can give you the skills you need.
  2. Email Marketing – Is a great low-cost marketing option providing you do it right! Many companies—big and small—make the mistake of bombarding their mailing lists with too many advertising emails, most of which are irrelevant and often result in the click of an “unsubscribe” button.
    The trick, here, is to divide your mailing list into categories based on your client’s interest and business needs, and then tailor EDMs or newsletters to each category. The messages with the best cut-through are quirky and informative and act simply as a touch point with your customer that isn’t blatantly spruiking your business or rehashing your sales pitch.
  3. Social Media – If you’re going to use social media for your business, great! But if you think that by just starting a facebook page and then arbitrarily updating it with photos or your latest special offers when you feel like it will work, well you’re wrong!
    If you’re going to use social media for your business, make sure you deliver value to your social media friends and followers. Special offers are great, but after a while people tire of them. Keep your content fresh and interesting, and above all, regular!
  4. Google training coursesOnline Advertising – The thing about the internet, particularly search engines like Google, is that they’re terrific if you know what you’re looking for. If you don’t, however, it’s like running into a crowded Allianz Stadium on grand final night and calling out, “where can I find my car keys?”
    This is where online advertising comes in. Search engine advertising (also called Search Engine Marketing or SEM), like Google Adwords, is a cheap way to get started so that anytime someone searches on google using your keywords, your ad will appear with a link straight to your website.

Don’t forget—Apple Inc, once a little start-up in Steve Jobs’ garage—never launches a new product quietly, so why should you launch your business quietly?

If you create a good marketing plan and stick to it, you’re guaranteed to see results. If you’re unsure what goes into creating a marketing plan, we cover marketing strategies in our Small Business Management course.

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Why Is a Code of Ethics, Conduct or Practice Important for your Business?

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As a journalist, I choose to act in accordance with the Code of Ethics set out by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), of which honesty, fairness, independence, and respect for the rights of others underpins the code.

This means I strive to ensure that every story I research and write about is honest, fair, independent, and respectful to the rights of others—even this blog post! And over the years, most of the organisations I have worked for, have too, upheld the ethos of the MEAA Code of Ethics.

Of course, just because a particular industry or trade union prescribes a set of guidelines, doesn’t necessarily mean each organisation or practitioner within that industry will uphold them—case in point: News International’s involvement in the phone hacking scandal in the UK.

And usually, until there is a breach of ethics like that of News International’s, it’s rather easy to forget why a code of ethics is necessary, particularly since compliance to the code is often voluntary, or at least, highly malleable.

But by submitting to a code of ethics, conduct or practice, you’re establishing yourself as an authority in your field; you’re telling your customers, clients and employees that you have integrity.

If you’re a bookkeeper or operate your own bookkeeping business, your clients are entrusting you with one of their most prized possessions—their livelihoods, and a code of ethics illustrates to them how you and your business operate.

But there are other reasons to adopt a code of ethics, aside from professional status. Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, for instance, instituted a “values-led business” code by donating 7.5 percent of profits to charity, while other organisations value a work culture grounded in a strong ethical framework that promotes high staff retention, greater customer loyalty, and increased productivity.

For all the different reasons an organisation or business would have to adopt a code of ethics, the outcome never deviates—a code of ethics ensures accountability.

If you choose to submit to the Australian Association of Professional Bookkeepers’ Code of Professional Conduct, you’re communicating to your clients what they can expect from you, and, in turn, what you can expect from them—conduct that is ethical and lawful, confidential, objective and independent, and competent.

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Is TAFE the place to do a Cert IV Small Business Management

Cert IV in Small Business ManagementI was speaking with an entrepreneur who built a very successful plumbing business and he told me you don’t need to do a course to start a business, you need to have a passion for what you are doing and just get out there and do it. We realise however that some people are bolder than others and some people prefer to plan to reduce the risk of failure. At the “end of the day” it’s really just about getting started and turning ideas in reality and activity.

We spend a lot of time designing courses to help provide students with step-by-step instructions so we understand that many people want to learn how to start a business the right way.  There is also a lot to consider when starting a business including your pricing, competitors, legal business structure, marketing, daily operations, financials and reporting to contend with so it’s important to have a business plan in place to help you get a clear picture if what you’re doing. Starting a business is about knowing what you need to know and creating a plan for your future.

I’ve also come to understand that you go to a doctor for medical advice, a dentist for your teeth and an electrician for any electrical work so wouldn’t you rather learn how to start and build a business from a company that is living and breathing this stuff every day!?

For this reason, not only are we working with a very experienced training company that delivers the Cert IV Small Business Management but we will be working with a team of experienced business owners who will contribute their real world knowledge into the courses over the coming year via webinars and interviews so you get to see practical implications of the subjects in the course.

If you’re interested in starting a business in 2013 or working in small business management subscribe to this blog for our launch announcement and receive our fantastic launch pricing.