It will never go out of fashion that people like to deal with someone local. From a business owner's perspective, getting local customers can be the most profitable especially for the likes of tradies.How does one attract these local customers? Through something called, Google My Business. It's that piece of real estate on the right side of your screen when you Google a business on your desktop. There's the opportunity to populate your GMB profile with great content about your business and gain you customers. I write the content in a search friendly way and keep the profile current with weekly posts. So many business owners are still not aware of this so the opportunity is ripe to be a market leader in your locale.

Marketing Director at Swamp Productions Pty Ltd. My husband, Gary Clark is the creator of the cartoon strip, Swamp. I sold the cartoon strip to over 50 newspapers and publications throughout Australia and New Zealand making it one of Australia’s most successful cartoon strips. In 1985, I sold the strip to Semic Press in Sweden which bought the rights to Europe and the cartoon was subsequently syndicated in Europe.I negotiated the contract with Akashi a Japanese clothing manufacturer that used the cartoon characters on upscale casual/sportswear in Japan. Our company was a finalist for an export award in the field of Arts and Entertainment in the Premier of Queensland Awards in 1999 as at the time, the first company in Queensland to break into the Japanese market without government assistance.

1986 – 2012 I began a small specialty gift shop in the trendy area of Paddington. I downsized the business in 1997 to work from home and just do gift baskets as all this business came in by phone. I went online in 2000 and within 2 years needed a big warehouse and office premise to cope with the scale of the business. Also needed plenty of staff as at Christmas where the numbers swelled to up to 30. Some of the corporate orders ranged in volume of 5,000 hampers to $85K in dollar value.An online business required new skillsets: search engine optimisation, website maintenance and upgrades, enewsletters, blogs and then social media. With learning these new skills and keeping up to date with the constant changes in this dynamic environment I achieved the number one rank in Google in Australia for picnic baskets and became so well known for them that David Jones would direct any customer inquiries for picnic baskets to me. I ranked number 2 in Google for premium wine gifts and subsequently some of my wine sales rivaled that of liquor chains.I had developed good business relationships with suppliers.I took the business from a micro to medium business because I embraced change and maintained a customer focus throughout the growth of the business. Loyalty in internet land is very hard to achieve and maintain and I was able to do that by setting the tone of friendliness and professionalism, good communication at all contact points whether that be by phone, email, on the website or newsletter and delivering the service that was stated on my website.