Google Australia business stimulus offer

Owner of Australian mobile coffee cart business Cafe in a Box, Michael Wilcocks, has said: "For every $1 I spend on Google AdWords I've received at least $50 in sales. It's been the best investment I've made. My customer base has grown 85% due to online advertising."

Sound good? We think so.

At Google, we want to help propel the Australian digital economy. Encouraging more Australian businesses to connect with customers online is a major part of that vision.

In the current economic climate, more Australians than ever before are heading online to research products and services, with search engines central to online navigation, research and comparison shopping.

We're today announcing a business stimulus offer, to help Australia's 1.88m small and medium-sized enterprises speed up in the economic slowdown. We're offering a free $75 search marketing campaign, to help Australian businesses reach new customers and drive sales.

Thousands of businesses are already embracing the benefits of measurable, cost-effective and targeted advertising programs such as Google AdWords. Those who have not yet dipped their toes in the AdWords water can take advantage of our $75 stimulus offer at google.com.au/stimulus.

Even if you're a small business that doesn't have an e-commerce platform on your site, you can benefit from this offer. Research shows that many Australians are doing their research online and then heading in-store to buy - for example, Monash's Australian Centre for Retail Studies has found that 50 per cent of Australian shoppers research their retail purchases online before they get to the store to buy.

For existing AdWords advertisers, we're offering two special master classes to help you improve the performance of your search marketing campaigns. A select number of existing advertisers that attend the seminars will receive a free, tailored campaign "optimisation" from a Google expert to drive better results and increased sales.

We hope lots of Australian small businesses will take up today's offer and learn how easy it is to use the web to grow their businesses.

Posted by Julian Persaud, Head of Online, Google Australia

22 APRIL - BANK OF CANADA CUTS KEY RATE TO .25% RESULTING IN LOWER MORTGAGE RATES.

Variable mortgage rates dropped by .25% in response to the drop of the overnight key lending rate by the Bank of Canada. This is a great development for the housing market and especially for first time home Buyers.
Home owners with existing variable mortgages with rates discounted from the prime lending rate, now have extremely low cost mortgages boosting their spending power.

The rate cut does not encourage saving because interest rates on savings accounts were also reduced.

The Central bank set its overnight lending rate to .25% - the minimum and the lowest rate since its creation in 1934.
The reason given for this is the intensification of the global recession and the delayed stabilization of the global financial system after the introduction of the previous measures which is expected to result in a deeper recession in Canada than anticipated.
The bank also announced that it intends to maintain the .25% rate until at least June 2010 conditional on the outlook for inflation. Since December 2007 the overnight target rate has been cut by 4.25%.