VA Business – Business Strategy & Marketing Advice

10 Effective Strategies To Guarantee The Success Of Your Email Marketing

Within digital marketing, some techniques and strategies come and go, often cast aside due to an update Google makes to its algorithm. One such tactic was article marketing which utilised sites like Ezine Articles. Despite many excellent articles being published, Google decided that links from the articles there should effectively be ignored.

However, many digital marketing strategies have been successful for many years, and if you ask digital marketing experts from a reputable digital agency, most will tell you that they will continue to be successful. Some examples include great web design, SEO, content marketing, and the one we are going to focus on here, email marketing.

We are not exaggerating when we say businesses worth tens of millions of dollars have been built almost solely as a result of email marketing. One of the appeals of email marketing is it is something anyone can do in the sense that everyone is capable of writing and sending an email.

However, it is also true that not everyone knows how to write and send an email that can market a product or service, build trust with subscribers, and ensure that their subscriber list looks forward to the next email.

How to Start Estate Planning When You’re Sick

Some of the most current research in Australia suggests that at least half of Australians don’t have a valid will. That means when they die without consulting financial planners and legal experts, their loved ones likely don’t know what their wishes are or how they would have wanted their assets to be divided.

Sometimes, it’s not until you become ill that you realise how important having an estate plan can be. By then, you may find yourself struggling to put a plan in place to help your loved ones. If you need a helping hand, some of the information below may be useful.

Make a Medical Treatment Plan

Making a medical treatment plan is one of the most important things to do when you find out you’re sick and begin estate planning. Discuss with your family what your wishes are, including the treatment you would want to have as you reach the end of your life.

Many people include explicit instructions in their medical treatment plans, such as a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order, not being tube-fed to be kept alive, and not being kept alive artificially on machines.

You may have mentioned this information in passing to a family member or two, but having it written down in a valid will and estate plan that you’ve put together with legal experts like financial planners can mean your wishes may be more likely to be followed.

Make Plans For Your Organs

Around 1,600 people are waiting for a life-saving organ in Australia, yet only around two per cent of people who die in Australian hospitals are eligible for organ donation. If there’s a chance that you might be, consider adding this information to your estate plan.

Why You Should Not Panic If Your Commercial Lift Gets Stuck

As humans, we all have specific fears and phobias. One person might be terrified of spiders, and the person standing next to them might have a tarantula as a pet. Conversely, the spider lover might be terrified of heights, whilst the person with arachnophobia is an avid rock climber who thinks nothing of scaling a 1,000-foot cliff. The point we are making is that to each of us the dangers we face are equal, and it is only in the mind that our fear levels of any one of them are set.

That can also be applied to our fears of having an accident whilst in a commercial lift, and for many, the two greatest fears whilst in a lift are either being trapped in it or the lift plummeting to the ground.

If we take the latter of these, we have to point out that the chances of commercial lift falling down its lift shaft is minuscule. The modern commercial lift has sophisticated braking systems, multiple cables and often lift servicing which mean even if there were to be a serious fault, everything concerning the safety of the lift is to designed to prevent it from falling.

5 Digital Marketing Methods For Real Estate Companies

Deciding that you wish to use the internet to try to gain increasing numbers of prospects and clients for your real estate company is a positive step, but many business owners come to a grinding halt at this point as they are unsure what options they have and how they would benefit them. An experienced digital marketing agency could outline dozens of online marketing avenues, but they actually advise that it is more effective if you focus on just a few.

With that advice taken on board, we are going to outline five of the most popular and successful digital marketing methods, most of which we are sure you have heard of. We will also point out how you can use these to boost your real estate company’s online success, both in terms of generating new prospects and turning those prospects into clients for your real estate company.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Having your real estate company’s website rank at the top of Google can not only bring you plenty of kudos and brand recognition, but when it comes to the bread and butter issue of your business making profits, it can also generate lots of new prospective clients that can help achieve them.

SEO must be looked upon as a longer-term strategy, as there are very few shortcuts to ranking on Google, and given its complexity, it is usually advisable to employ a professional SEO agency to plan and facilitate your SEO.

5 Tips For Alleviating Your Financial Stress

When we used the term financial stress in the title, we were not just referring to having financial issues but also the type of stress that can diminish your health. Many financial problems can be resolved by seeking help from an experienced career counsellor or financial planner to help you to manage your finances. An additional benefit of what they do is to also reduce the stress and anxiety you may be experiencing as a result of the aforementioned money worries.

Does it follow that the only way to reduce stress caused by your finances is to use financial planners? Well, the answer is no, but with caveats. First, from a purely medical perspective, if you are suffering from stress and anxiety and these are so severe to cause you additional health issues, then you must seek advice from your doctor. Financial planning may eliminate one of the contributors to your stress, but you may have others that contribute also.

The other caveat is that financial planners can do a lot to help you manage your finances, but before and after you have consulted with them, there are actions that you can take to help your finances and thus reduce the worry and anxiety you have, which are associated with them. Below we have highlighted five tips that should give you a positive start in reducing your financial stress.

7 Reasons Better Branding Can Boost Your Family Lawyers Business

Whilst branding might be an aspect of business that many people associate with large global companies, it is also something that all local businesses should be focussing on too, and that includes law firms. The scale of your branding activities might not be on the same level as the likes of Nike and Coca Cola, however, the benefits to your family lawyers business can be every bit as important to its success.

If you are still unsure as to what benefits might accrue from a marketing campaign that seeks to enhance your family lawyers business’s branding, continue reading and you will soon discover seven of them, all of which can boost it in both the short and long term.

Promotes Your Business As A Premium Option: When faced with the need to find a family lawyer, potential clients will want the reassurance that they are being represented by the best possible legal team. With effective branding, your family lawyers business can be projected as one of the elite legal teams in your area, which means those looking for a top family lawyer will seek to retain your services.

What information do you need to value a business for sale?

There are many different methods of valuing a business. Some investors use discounted cash flow, others use a multiple of earnings, some look at appraised assets. If you are in the same business as the business for sale that you are looking to acquire, what synergies exist between the two companies?

The amount of savings that can be generated needs to be factored into the purchase price. If you are looking to acquire a competitor who keeps low balling the prices, if you were to acquire them, that gets rid of a competitor which will result in higher prices, you need to factor that into the amount that you will offer for the business for sale.

Here is a list of items which you should have when doing your valuation

three years financial statements prepared by an external accountant. If the accountant has a designation, ie. CA, CGA, CPA, the accountant may have issued an opinion, a Notice to Reader, Review Engagement or Audit. Please read the opinion to determine how much reliance on the financial statements, if any, that you should make.
internal financial statements from the last year end up to current normalize income for the last three years. Normalized income starts with the net income reported for tax purposes and removes all personal and non reoccuring expenses which would not exist under the new owner.

Fire Safety Tips for Businesses

As a business owner, you’ve likely got enough to worry about in your daily operations without needing to give any spare time to fire protection. However, as inconvenient as it might be to dedicate time to something that probably won’t happen, it’s essential to be prepared.

Not only can it be a legal requirement, but it could also save lives. Here are some fire safety tips from fire services that could be important while you’re putting your workplace fire safety plan into action.

Have An Evacuation Plan

Most people know that they should leave the building immediately if they see, hear, or smell fire. However, how they leave the building and what they should do next isn’t always clear. It can be if you put an evacuation plan into place and train your staff on what’s involved in it.

How Facebook Can Help You Grow Your Commercial Legal Practice

When it comes to promoting your commercial legal practice online, you have no shortage of options to choose from in terms of how you do so. This is why many law firms and lawyers have turned to digital marketing specialists for help and advice with regards to choosing which digital marketing channels they should be focussing their efforts on.

One of those channels is social media, but even here there are so many social media websites, your head is likely to start spinning as you try to fathom them all out and pick which ones you are going to try. One social media channel which you should certainly consider is Facebook, and although it occasionally gets bad press from some quarters, there is no denying that it can be a huge source of new prospects for any business, including those in the legal sector.

Now you might be thinking that Facebook is simply there for people to post humorous photographs and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they live in the next street or on the other side of the world. Well, you would correct in the sense that they are functions that Facebook fulfills, but when it comes to promoting a business, it also has much to offer within the realm of marketing that business online.

Five reasons you shouldn’t design your own website

In the modern world, there are countless website builders and other platforms that target beginners who want to create their own new website. The main draw of these tools is that they require little to no technical experience to use, they don’t require any coding knowledge, and they are affordable and enable rapid site creation.

However, it’s not always a good idea to create your own site. Just because a platform advertises that you can “get online in minutes” doesn’t mean you really will be able to. And even if you can get online fast, there’s every chance that you will make mistakes and run into problems down the track.

Need more convincing? Here are five reasons why you should engage an experienced Perth website designer and never try to design your own website.

It Takes Time

Despite the platforms advertising rapid website creation, the reality is that you can expect to spend at least a few days creating anything more than the most basic site. This is because web design isn’t as easy as it may appear, and there’s a lot more to it than you might realise. Employing an experienced web designer will save you time, enabling you to focus on the things you’re actually good at.

4 Ways Landscape Designers Can Increase Your Home’s Value

There are many reasons why you might employ a landscape architect to redesign and create a completely new garden for you at your property. It could be you have moved into a new house, and you want to change it to your personal preferences. Maybe your current garden is sadly lacking and needs a new lease of life. You may also have discovered landscaping recently and until now were not aware of its potential to transform your garden.

There is one other reason that might be applicable, and it is one that many homeowners often do not think of when focussing on changing their garden’s layout, albeit for some others this is the primary incentive to transform their garden. That reason is increasing the value of their property. The former group we mentioned see this as a bonus but are more focussed on other reasons. The latter is fully aware of it, and see the work of their landscape architect as an investment.

4 Landscape Design Features That Offer A Huge Return On Investment

Landscape architects and designers create awesome gardens and outdoor living areas for their clients, but the reason they were employed in the first place can differ from client to client. Some will have moved into a new home and need their garden totally revamped. Others will have grown tired of their current garden or its layout and want to give it a completely new look. And finally, there will be some clients who want a landscape design as means of investing.

Some of you might be thinking is stocks, shares and bonds are for investing in, and that is true. However, do not underestimate the ability of a garden that has been planned and created by professional landscape designers, such as Landscaping Sydney, to provide the client who has paid for it, a hefty profit. Money might not grow on trees, but it can certainly be created by them, and other garden plants and features if they are of sufficient beauty and quality.

If you are still unsure as to how a landscape architect can join the ranks of investment bankers and brokers by giving you a possibility of gaining a return on what you invest in your garden, then here are some specific examples of landscape design features that prove it.

5 Highly Effective Digital Marketing Strategies For Small And Local Businesses

One of the mistakes that many small and local business owners make when they set out to create a digital marketing campaign, is that they spread themselves too thin. What we mean by that is that, instead of focussing on one or two digital marketing tactics, they try just about everything. Apart from it being a nightmare to manage 10 or more different marketing channels, it also means your resources can be stretched to the limit, including your time and your budget.

For a digital marketing campaign to be successful, it requires careful planning, including setting its goals, research, such as spying on your competitors’ campaigns, implementation, and most importantly tracking and analysis to see what is working and what is not. If you attempt to do all of these but multiply them by 10 or more different marketing methods, you are almost certain to fail.

Instead of taking a scattergun approach, you need to focus your marketing efforts on one or two methods to start with, optimise them, and then think about moving on to others. For a start, your stress levels will be much lower, and just as important, the chances of your campaigns being successful are increased enormously. As for what online marketing avenues you should go down first, here are 5 which we highly recommend for small and local businesses.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Often cited as the holy grail in digital advertising, SEO is one of the most effective ways for a business to get traffic to its website from Google and other search engines. However, it is not something that can be done in days or even weeks, so a degree of patience is required. It is also complex and has a steep learning curve, so unless you are already an SEO expert, it is highly advisable that if you want to use SEO, that you employ a professional SEO agency.

Reforms To Unfair Contract Terms Laws

Consumer law in Australia is constantly evolving, sometimes for the worse, but mostly for the better. One area of consumer law which affects both businesses and consumers is contract law, and in this area, the government has made some significant proposals recently, and particularly concerning unfair contracts. We preface this, with recommending that if you seek legal advice, you should contact a commercial lawyer.

Definition Of Unfair Contracts

As it stands a contract relating to a consumer or a small business will be deemed unfair if any terms or conditions within that contract cause any of the three scenarios below to be created.

What Should Be Included In A Commercial Lease Agreement

Whilst individuals might have a life goal of owning a property, the same cannot be said for businesses. There are many reasons why a business, rather than owning a property, will prefer to lease one. The first, is simply that many businesses do not have the financial resources to afford both the deposit and the payments on a commercial property mortgage.

A second reason is that leasing gives a business greater flexibility should they expand quickly and require a move to larger premises. A third reason will be a case of logistics, where a company operates entirely within two floors of offices and it would not be feasible for them to purchase an entire 10-floor office block, for example. No doubt many business owners will be able to cite additional reasons why, for them, leasing premises is preferable to buying them.

In all cases, for a business to be able to lease business premises there will need to be a commercial lease agreement signed by them and the property owner, or property management company. This is a legal document that must comply with commercial law. To do so it is likely to contain several sections, some of which are deemed essential by commercial law, so let us look at what they are.

Top 7 Marketing Analytics Software

The phrase “knowledge is power” can be applied in a multitude of situations, and one of the most applicable is the world of business. A business owner that knows more information and data creating to their industry, their marketing, their sales, their competition, and their customers, has a huge advantage over the other business owners they are competing against.

To garner all this information there is no need to employ a network of spies. Instead what you need is marketing analytics software. These can provide a business with several insights into their business and provide several advantages including:

Spotting customer and market trends
Ability to adapt and personalise marketing messages
Improve social media strategies
Identifying influencers
Improved customer engagement
Improved collaboration across departments
Insight into competitor activity

To avail yourself of any of these benefits you need to have marketing analytics software working for your business so here are 7 of the best that are currently available.

How Commercial Law Defines Misleading Or Deceptive Conduct By A Business

It is a sad fact of the commercial world that some businesses cross to the wrong side of the line relating to honesty and proper conduct when it comes to how they communicate and act. For some businesses, their conduct might have been a result of errors and misunderstandings, but even then, it may still result in an unacceptable outcome. A point here is that even unintentional actions can result in repercussions under consumer law.

Most at fault are those businesses whose actions are deliberate attempts to give themselves a financial gain, whilst at the same time misleading and in some cases, cheating those customers who purchase their goods and services. Thankfully, commercial law has remedies for unacceptable conduct by businesses, and one area, in particular, is where a business acts misleadingly or deceptively.

The applicable legislation can be found in Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). The ACL applies across the entire country and thus means businesses in every state must comply with it and should not attempt any contravention of its consumer protections.

Definitions Of Misleading Or Deceptive Conduct By Businesses

There are three main ways in which misleading or deceptive conduct by businesses can be defined. They are:

#1: Future Predictions

This is classified as a business making forecasts or projections about the future which it simply cannot back up or prove with any credible evidence. Worse, it applies where a business deliberately makes false or misleading predictions. Countless examples might apply such as:

Why You Should Include Case Studies Within Your Website To Boost Your Business

When deciding what to include in any web design, one of the objectives must be to generate trust from any visitors who land on the website. There are several ways this can be attempted which include ensuring all the security protocols are in place, displaying consistent branding, and publishing reviews and testimonials on your website – check out acclaimed lawyers, www.culshawmiller.com.au to find examples of this.

These are all excellent ways to build trust and credibility for a business via its website, but here is another method, and it is one that, sadly, many websites do not have. We are referring to case studies, which might require somewhat more effort to create than a simple review, but they are certainly more than worth it.

Benefits Of Case Studies

There are several benefits of creating one or more case studies and including them within your web design.

Social Proof: Probably the most obvious one, and hugely important given that the modern consumers online look for as much social proof as they can find whenever they are thinking of buying something.

Sales/Marketing Copy: Whilst you should never turn a case study into a blatant sales pitch, they do provide you with an opportunity to use segments of them and include them in any marketing or sales copy which you use to promote your business.

5 Core Metrics For Home Building Company’s Digital Marketing

Any digital marketing campaign which is set up to promote your new home building company needs to be measured in several ways to establish its viability and your return on investment. Many business owners believe that all they have to do to assess their marketing is check how much revenue is being created but the digital marketing experts will tell you that does not paint the full picture with regards to a campaign’s success.

There are multiple metrics and measures which can give you an indication of how much your digital marketing efforts are succeeding and building a complete picture from each of these metrics, is how you will be can arrive at a definitive answer. Here, we are going to cover 5 of these metrics, and they are the ones which every business owner, including those who own new home building companies should regard as the most indicative of their digital marketing’s performance.

Metric #1: Cost Per Prospect/Lead

Cost per prospect or cost per lead is how to calculate the cost of bringing each individual into your sales funnel. Each business may have a different definition of what they would classify as a lead, but for most, it will be someone who has effectively raised their hand and asked for more information about a product or service. Take the total marketing spend and divide by the number of individual prospects. $5,000 spent to acquire 200 prospects is a cost per lead of $25.

5 Ways Online Marketing Will Help You Grow Your Removalists Business

If you own and run a removalists business, you will know better than us what level of success it has achieved. You might be at the top of your game and genuinely thinking about expanding further thanks to a full order book. On the other hand, you could be struggling, and wondering where your next client is coming from.

The fact is regardless of what end of the success scale your removalists business is at, or if you are somewhere in between the two extremes, the health of your business and its future prospects will be enhanced further if you are able to secure more clients. That sounds a lot easier than the actual actions required to gain those clients, but you should be aware that there are plenty of avenues you can take to try to find them.

One of those is online marketing, for their very simple reason that not only is that where most people do there research when looking for local companies, those numbers have increased greatly over the recent past due to COVID lockdowns. These have meant people who would not previously have used the internet are using it. The key point is now that they have, they will continue to do so.

What that mean is if you are not utilising many of the advantages that marketing online can provide your removalists business, you are losing clients. Worst of all, you are almost certainly going to lose those clients to your local competitors who have had the foresight to instigate an online marketing campaign. If that has not persuaded you of the need for to start marketing your removalists business online, here are some other benefits online marketing can provide.

Regulation D

For most entrepreneurs, the best vehicle to accomplish initial equity financing under an exemption is through the use of a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM) under Regulation D (Reg D), which is a limited offer and sale of their company’s stock, or securities, without registration under the Federal Securities Act of 1933.

Some risks continue under Reg D, but compliance is significantly easier than before Reg D. A major, major point is that complying with Reg D, it provides the company, its officers, and its directors with an insurance policy of sorts regarding disclosure.

There Are Six Basic Rules
Regulation D consists of six basic rules. The first three are concerned with definitions, conditions, and notification. Rule 501 covers the definitions of the various terms used in the rules. Rule 502 sets forth the conditions, limitations, and information requirements for the exemptions in Rules 504, 505, and 506. Rule 503 contains the SEC notification requirements.

The last three rules (504, 505, and 506) deal with the specifics of raising money under Reg D. Rule 504 generally pertains to securities sales up to $1 million. Rule 505 applies to offerings from $1 million to $5 million. Rule 506 is for securities offerings exceeding $5 million. (A complete review of all aspects of Reg D is contained in our book Going Public” – Everything You Need to Know to Take Your Company Public.)

5 Ways That Actuaries Impact Your Insurance Coverage And Premiums

There is a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklyn that states, “The only certainties in life are death and taxes”, but many would argue that, given its influence in all areas of our lives, insurance should be added too, and if so, then it brings into the limelight the role of actuarial services within the insurance industry.

Rule 506: Offerings with no dollar limit

Under SEC Rule 506; an issuer may issue an unlimited amount of securities, with no dollar limit, to 35 unsophisticated investors plus any number of “accredited investors.” There are required disclosures, if a sale of securities includes purchasers who are not accredited investors. All non-accredited investors must be sophisticated and must sign an Investor Questionnaire acknowledging same. Advertising and a general solicitation are prohibited.

The securities are “restricted securities” which may not be readily resold. There is a major advantage to 506, in that it supersedes and preempts the securities laws of all the states. This saves a lot of time, effort, and expense if the issuer is obtaining money from investors in multiple states. Form D must be filed with the SEC within 15 days after the first sale of securities and also with the Secretary of State of each state in which a purchaser is a resident.

Under Rule 506(c)
Just like 506(b). there is no limit on the dollar size and a company can broadly solicit and generally advertise the offering if:

The investors in the offering are all accredited investors; and
The company has taken reasonable steps to verify that its investors are accredited investors, which could include reviewing documentation, such as W-2s, tax returns, bank and brokerage statements, credit reports and the like.

Visit our FAQ page on Private Offerings for additional information

Rule 505: Offerings of $5 million or less

Rule 505 is used for offerings of $5 million or less in any 12-month period and is restricted to 35 purchasers other than “accredited investors.”

There are a number of required disclosures if the sale of securities includes investors who are not accredited investors: advertising and a general solicitation are prohibited, one must inform purchasers that they receive “restricted” securities (meaning that the securities cannot be sold for a time period without registering them), your must not violate the anti fraud prohibitions of the Federal Security Laws, financial statements need to be certified by an independent public accountant or at a minimum, the balance sheet needs to be audited.

Companies must give non-accredited investors disclosure documents that are the same as those used in registered offerings. If a company provides information to accredited investors, it must make this information available to non-accredited investors as well. The company must also be available to answer questions by prospective purchasers. The Issuer must comply with the securities laws of each state in which a person who buys the security is a resident, and must usually file a notice with that state’s commissioner of corporations or similar official.