It’s been almost one year since we launched AdWords Express in Australia and New Zealand and we’ve seen businesses from organic butchers to surf shops and even acupuncturists use our new online marketing tool to get their businesses discovered online.

Sydney-based Personal Trainer Shona Stephenson used AdWords Express to move beyond mail drops and sandwich board advertisements she’d been using to attract customers to her personal training classes and fitness “boot camps.” The results have proven dramatic: thanks to the business drummed up by AdWords Express, Shona’s personal training classes are now completely booked out--and her camps are attracting more and more fitness enthusiasts.

Shona runs her personal training Great Outdoor Training, mums ‘n’ bubs and boot camp business full time – amongst personally competing in trail ultra-marathons, of which she holds a number of national titles. This gets her a lot of notoriety in the running community, but she also relies on AdWords Express to get customer enquiries outside of this community.

She says: “AdWords Express allows me to be where people are. I started out with mail drops but not only are they time-consuming and environmentally un-friendly, I think people start to like your business less,” Shona says. "Mail drops are not an efficient way to advertise your business. Whenever I want to find a service I just search for it online. It's just the way I think a potential client’s brain works too. If it works for me then it will work for my potential clients".

Shona saw a massive jump in enquiries as soon as she started using AdWords Express. “Being found via search is an unobtrusive way to advertise your business. With things like sandwich boards, you need people to be walking past that sign at that specific time. With text ads next to search results, I’m where people are looking, and targeted to their needs - and I only spend $150 a month.”

If you’re a business owner who wants to get started with AdWords Express for 2013, now is the time: we’re offering a bonus advertising credit in January worth double what you spend between now and the end of this year*. Just submit your details here before December 16 and one of Google’s advertising experts will contact you to activate the offer and get you started. The sooner you sign up, the more advertising credit you'll earn.

Posted by Verne Smith, SMB Marketing Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand

What do a bicycle shop in Newcastle, a coffee roaster near Melbourne and an eyelash extension salon in Brisbane have in common?

For one, they’re all Aussie-owned small businesses. And second, you can find all of them online--something that wasn’t true one year ago.

Business owners Brian Birrell, Dean Scholes, and Amy Asperios are part of a growing tide of small businesses making the move online. We just learned how large this tide is: in a recent survey of small business owners, we found that 52% had a website. That represents growth of 50% year over year; a study conducted in 2011 by MYOB put that number at 35%.

The research is timely, given it’s been 1 year since Google and MYOB launched the “Getting Aussie Business Online” program to help SMBs make the move online. Our goal is to help businesses throughout the nation realize all the benefits that an online presence brings: the chance to reach new customers, make more sales, and save money and time. Over the past year, more than 30,000 businesses have created free websites through the program.

So who are these businesses and where are they? We took a look at the numbers and here’s what we found:

• Tempting tourists: Queensland may be top of mind when it comes to holidays, but Tasmania claimed the highest proportion of tourism sites created. 9% of all Getting Aussie Business Online sites in Tassie are tourism-related, which is nearly 3 times the national average. It also took top prize in retail--nearly 1 in 4 websites created in Tasmania came from retailers, a rate roughly 25% higher than the national average.
• Swinging the hammer: Western Australia leads the rest of the country in websites created in the construction and trades category, which represented nearly 1 in 4 websites created there.
• Country mouse, city mouse: Two-thirds of businesses who’ve taken advantage of Getting Aussie Business Online hail from areas outside of major cities. Queensland had the highest percentage of websites created outside the capital city (84%). South Australia had the lowest at 49%.

Coffee roaster Dean can attest to the difference a website can make to a small business. Before he got his site up and running with Getting Aussie Business Online, his business was strictly local; there was no way for him to reach people outside of Melbourne. “The response has been phenomenal; starting my own website has allowed me to get my name out to potential customers all over Australia,” he says. Amy Asperios, owner of Glamm Lash eyelash extension salon, uses her web presence as a free marketing tool, adding “There has been an increase in clients coming through since I started my website; the ‘contact us’ option has proved to be a great tool and I get a steady flow of enquiries from it.”

Posted by Claire Hatton, Head of Local Business, Google Australia