Opportune Business Network Blog

We have received many requests for information about WorkChoices because businesses are unsure of the detail of the present Government’s IR legislation - let alone the Labour Party proposals! With an election now looming we have set out some key points so businesses can make a comparison as to how things presently stand!

The introduction of the current legislation
On 19th March 2006 the Howard Government released the Workplace Relations Regulations 2006 which guide employers and employees on their rights and responsibilities under the new system. The remainder of the regulations came into effect on the 27th March 2006 (by amendment). Further details about WorkChoices can also be obtained at www.workchoices.gov.au

Click the image below to download the two-page special report in pdf format

A lot of marketers think that to build their brand, their advertising needs to use big name celebrities and big-budget special effects. But when you use radio advertising, this isn’t really the case.

Instead of trying to dazzle them, engage them in a brand conversation. Find out what’s really important to them so your brand reflects the reality of their lives. And most importantly, connect with them emotionally and speak to them in a more natural tone of voice.

And there’s no better medium to do this with than radio, which is the conversational medium. To understand what makes radio tick, let’s look at how people listen to it.

Unlike watching TV, listening to the radio is still seen as a positive thing. It plays a kind of support role in our lives - keeps us company throughout the day when we’re at home, driving or at work, gives us news and information and making us feel like part of a community. We feel that our radio station understands us, because we can relate to the music and conversation.

And we’re loyal to our radio station and trust it as we would a friend. We respond to it through phone-ins, dedications, competitions, promotions and help-lines. We might even talk to it when we’re alone and no-one else is listening.

But although the consumer invites your brand into their home via the radio, it’s easy to become an unwelcome guest.

You see, whether you like it or not, every ad on radio has a ‘tone of voice’, so it must have an element of branding. Brand character comes over loud and clear on radio as an expression of the brand’s attitude toward the listener. That’s the scary bit. Get it wrong and you’ll damage the brand.

If your shout at people or are repetitive you might get their attention, but you might leave the wrong impression, or if you’re lucky - get ignored.

Ralph Van Dijk is Co-Founder and Creative Director or Eardrum, one of the world’s most awarded radio specialists and producers of the CRA branding campaign for the radio industry itself. For more info, visit eardrum.com.au or call 02 8572 5400.

However, if we ask them using a tool such as a survey, they’ll only tell us what they intend to do (or what they think you want to hear!) Ask any psychologist – what we intend to do & what we end up doing are often two very different things.

There is a way though that we can find out exactly what visitors to your site want. It’s called Google AdWords & while you probably know it as an advertising tool that can send more people to your site, here are a number of benefits and insights we can gain using AdWords see (rather than ask) what our customers want:

how they describe our products & services in their own words
which advertising messages most persuade them to buy
which words lead to sales & which don’t
which pages cause people to abandon our site & which draw them in

Keywords:
By ‘bidding’ on a large number of keywords (or phrases) that people might use to search for us, AdWords shows us which ones our customers actually use. Some are obvious ‘graphic designer’, ‘brisbane vet’, ’small business network’. But for every obvious word, you’ll be amazed at the ten that you might never have thought of.
It gets better - we can measure which of these keywords attract the most prospects, even which ones lead to actual sales.
We can then concentrate our SEO efforts (optimizing our site to make use of the free traffic) on these high-performing keywords to ensure that we get high ratings for the right words.
We can even use this information to target our offline advertising to use these words (product names & descriptions) more often – on radio, local press & others.

Headlines:
By writing two ads for each keyword we use & constantly testing and measuring the results, we quickly learn which headlines cause our prospects to take the actions we define as important.
Again, we can use these high-performing headlines in a number of places: on our site, in-store posters, yellow pages ads, direct marketing, even more traditional offline marketing media.

Investment:
With AdWords, you only pay when a prospect clicks your Ad, you are in effect getting free branding until this point.
So even if only 5 in 100 Google searchers click an Ad, you get to display that Ad to those other 95 people absolutely free of charge. Being constantly seen as a top advertiser enhances your position as a leader in the market.

Content:
By combining AdWords & Analytics, we can easily see which pages in the site cause people to leave & which result in longer page views.
This highlights which content is helping us (we create more of this) and which is hindering us (we fix or delete this)

Technical details:
We can use Analytics to show us detailed information about our visitors, such as screen size, connection speed, suburb, even operating system. This is vital if and when we redesign the site & might also be used to target special offers or direct mail.

AdWords is a hugely powerful tool. In the coming weeks we’ll look more closely at some of these side benefits and what to do with all those new visitors to your site

Mike Rhodes is an Opportune Consultant specialising in online marketing & website optimization. Got a question? Just email him directly on mike [at] OpportuneNetwork.com

As small business owners we’ve all got plenty to fill our days.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to farm out some of those jobs around the office that we just haven’t gotten around to yet? Let’s take a look at a couple of websites that might help us ease the burden & let us outsource some of that work.

If you haven’t already tried www.elance.com or www.rentacoder.com you need to go there now & take a look.

Maybe you need some copy written for your website, a new in-store poster or point of sale material designed, or a press release written. Maybe it’s a logo redesign, or even an e-book written for you to better promote your business.

For as little as $5/hr you can get some really amazing people to do many of those writing, programming, design jobs & more. There are guys and girls from all over the world waiting to help. Some are students, some work full time – almost all will provide you with great service.

The way these sites work is a little like ebay – only with the price going down, not up!

First sign up for an account (it’s free), then ‘post’ your project.
So, for example, if you wanted a new page created for your site, you’d write out the specifications you want to copywriter to adhere to & probably show them examples of the type of thing you’d like.

You might include a list of other websites, your existing copy, maybe even a list of questions that you’ve collected from your customers (so they know what appeals to your customers emotionally).

Then you choose the category you’d like your project shown in & pick a deadline for both the completion of the bidding process & for how long you want the job to take.

Submit the project for approval (by a human editor to make sure the rules aren’t abused), then sit back & wait – usually not for very long! Many different specialists will all make bids to complete the project for you. If it’s a popular area (like web design) you’ll start getting quotes within minutes of your project being approved.

Each provider or coder has a rating given to them by past project owners like you. If they do a great job, they might get 9 or 10 out of 10. If not, they’ll get a lower score. What’s great is that you can read the rating & comments of all the previous projects they’ve worked on & get a really good idea how reliable that provider is likely to be.

Then when you’ve chosen a provider, place the amount of the bid into an escrow account using your credit card. This ensures that they can’t access your money until both sides are satisfied that the project is complete. Your money is totally safe.

It’s a great system, and one that will save you hours of frustration & potentially hundreds, even thousands of dollars.