I had the pleasure of meeting Karim Temsamami, Google’s Australia/New Zealand GM yesterday, and among other things we spoke about Google’s new stimulus package for small businesses.

From the press release, “Google today announced a business stimulus offer to help New Zealand’s estimated 350,000 small and medium enterprises speed up in the economic slowdown. Google is offering a free $75 search marketing campaign to help SMEs reach new customers and drive sales in tough times.”

I think it’s a fantastic idea for Google and for New Zealand businesses. Over the years I’ve covered online advertising and marketing in the media, I’ve heard a familiar refrain when it comes to online advertising: there are just a core group really embracing it, and a lot who haven’t yet tried it.

Why? That’s a really good question, considering search advertising is perhaps the most measurable form of advertising ever. The answer is the same answer as to why businesses aren’t using social media so much: it’s different.

It’s not that business people are necessarily afraid of change, it’s just that they’re busy and have a lot invested in the current way of doing things. Sometimes the perceived costs of taking on a new activity, or dropping the old, seems too high.

That’s why I hope a lot of SME’s will try the offer out. In fact, iJump might even give it a try! (Not to boast, but we haven’t used any form of paid advertising in our 18 months of existence, and we have a Google pagerank of 5. How did we do it? Maybe that’s a good blog post for another time…)

You can take up Google’s stimulus offer until August 31 here.

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