Marketing Ideas

19 Feb

Creating Low Cost Product Photos for Business

Need for creating high quality product images is increasing!

But the cost to Small Business in time and money can be prohibitive.

Images are needed for:

Web sites
Digital marketing Catalogues
Even for HTML email campaigns
As well as traditional media advertising

Not having images or having low quality images can seriously detract from a Small Businesses Marketing effort. Detraction that in a competitive market can directly impact on sales.

A key cost driver is often the high volume of product images needed

Many small businesses, particularly rental and hire can have hundred’s if not thousands of products. Hence paying to have each product photographed is literally cost prohibitive.

Taking adhoc images or using supplier product photographs can create an inconsistent image appearance.

Images with different sizes, backgrounds, borders, orientations etc when placed on a web site or catalogue can look terrible.

Creating a negative perception in the client’s/ prospects mind.

The issue becomes how to create consistent looking photographs/ images that enhance your brand’s advertising appeal and impact regardless of the advertising medium.

Creating Low Cost Quality Product Photo’s

However there are some very effective ways of creating your own consistent high quality images.

Creating you own in-house photography studio is actually far easier than your think.

In a series of step by step video’s you can see how to create these product photographs.

We have collated these from YouTube and all are accessible on our YouTube channel – how to photograph your own products

About Us

HireEzy is the complete business management solution for hire and rental companies. Not only does it include digital marketing, web integration it also includes social media marketing tool integration. For more information email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

18 Feb

Creating a hire rental video that works

For some hire and rental companies, video can be a useful tool in promoting the business.

The incredibly easy to use – integration of HireEzy desktop software, with your on-line store and youtube has enabled clients to become creative in video marketing.

Here are some examples of how video, can be used to promote your hire or rental business.

For example:

Specific Solution Video’s: If you offer a solution to clients, such as complete wedding solutions, event solutions, even construction hire or rental solutions – then video’s can be an extremely effective tool in your marketing armoury.

General Promotional Videos: These are generic video’s demonstrating your full range of services.

Safety or Installation Videos: As discussed in previous posts, this can be a great tool in reducing business risk and product damages.

So how to make a Video, well the link below shows some ideas, further ideas are available on our youtube site.

HOW TO: Create Online Video That Works

Posted using ShareThis

Remember HireEzy helps make marketing, even your digital marketing a standard and natural part of your business processe – HireEzy puts you in control!!!

About Us

18 Feb

Is Social Media Marketing Worth the Effort?

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Growth of Social Media is staggering but are the returns worth the effort?

We trailed just using Social Media Marketing for three months. We dropped Adwords all together and found that our sales leads increased by over 80% and our Alexa Web Site ranking went up 1000% in the same period.

But It Does Takes Effort

Effective Social Media marketing does take effort. Why because it involves engaging people, its not about SELL SELL SELL. Its about engagement with interesting content, discussions and even etiquette.

Social Media is just that its social!

Content

People find interesting and informative content appealing. Rarely do they find 100% sales literature appealing. Rather they would rather read or view material that informs, explains or entertains.

Generally blogs provide the interesting content and web sites the more specific sales information. However producing interesting and engaging content articles for your blog does take time and effort. Allowing 3- 4 hours a week to write articles for the blog is reasonable planning guide.

The type of blog articles you write you should be informative, engaging or entertaining not in your face sales. For example, if you are a Party Rental/ Hire Company, write articles about how to plan an event , eg a backyard wedding etc. Or in this case we are writing about social media marketing, not selling our hire and rental business management software that has integrated social media marketing.

One of key point to remember to seed in your key words in to the article. Blogs are also good for using less frequently used words associated with your business as well.

Let People Know About Your Blog Article

This is the social part of social media marketing.

Having written an engaging article you need to let people know about it. This is where Twitter and Facebook really come in to play. However you need to invest time and effort in building up your Twitter and Facebook following. More relevant followers means more people likely to read your post.

However communities take time to build, you need to invest time in listening and responding to what they are saying. That is being a good community member. This can take more than a couple of hours per week probably longer realistically if you are serious.

Effort Versus Return

So let us say you spend four to five hours per week on writing blog content and building your social media following then you need to have a return.

Interestingly Nielson cited that around 17% of time on the internet is now spent on social media.

Cost. The cost of your time is not just the salary on-cost it is also the opportunity cost. That is what else could you have been doing. Also a consideration is your Ad-words spend. Social media may enable you to save this money or at least reduce your spend per month.

Return. The return is dependent on what you objective. For most small to medium sized businesses the primary objective will most often be sales leads. For us it worked, but for your business it may differ.

Our Returns. We found that through this process our Blog (content focused) Unique Visitor rate increased from not much to a few hundred per day. Our web site (product sales focused) increased proportionally leading to an 80% increase in sales leads through the web site.

Key Lessons Learnt

We learnt some critical lessons through our trial, which were:

Have a Plan;
Be Disciplined and above and beyond all else; and
Be Sincere.

We were lucky in that we approached the trial with genuine sincerity in our engagements with our social media community. We went in with the view of genuinely learning from others in our social media community and we have – it has been brilliant.

For us, yes there is a real effort needed but the returns are greater than just an excellent growth in sales leads – we have gained far more from what we have learnt from others.

If you have any similar experiences or even different views please take the time to add your comments – they are most welcome!

About Us

10 Most Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing and How to Avoid Them (slideshare.net)
Is Anyone Really Listening? Social Media Marketing (freelanceswitch.com)
Poll Result: Most Popular Social Networking Tools for Online … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
Learning How to Start Out in Social Media Marketing (nichetitans.com)

18 Feb

Political Cartoonists and Advertising – what is the link?

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The question is what have Political Cartoonists got to do with the Business Advertising, specifically advertising?

On face value the question would seem quite silly, but it is not.

Print Media advertising has a been a key part of the hire industry and rental industry advertising mix for decades!

But is print media advertising it still effective?

Traditional newspapers and serious print media are under serious threat. Not convinced, then consider this – In 2009 alone nearly 90 USA newspapers or magazines have closed or migrated to just web delivery. Taking nearly 9000 jobs with them! Erica Smith a journalist herself has been mapping the decline of the traditional media for years, her blog is universally regarded.

Update an article just published today, 1 Sep 09 on social mashable that Newspaper revenues have declined by 29% compared to the same quarter last year. This is a dramatic drop. To read the full article click here

Why the decline?

The traditional business model of Newspapers is advertising revenues fund quality journalism which attracts a readership demographic. The attracted readership demographic appeals to particular advertisers who in turn then pay for the newspaper advertising. However things are changing:

Increasingly people would rather go on line and read what they want from where they want when they want.
Secondly, user generated news content is replacing serious journalistic analysis and commentary.
Finally, as readership has declined companies etc have moved their advertising from print to digital.

So back to the Political Cartoonists

Political Cartoonists have become a barometer of the health and relevance of the Traditional Media. As one USA political cartoonist during a NPR radio interview stated, a decade ago their were over 300 print media employed political cartoonists in the USA now their are less than 50. The reason is that the advertising revenues of newspapers has declined, forcing newspapers to cut back on staff, including the visual editorial staff such as cartoonists.

Cartoonists like journalists are critical in attracting or maintaining a readership. Each incremental loss of such staff, eg cartoonists, reduces the newspapers readership appeal or reach into a market demographic. It is this market demographic reach that appeals to the advertisers.

So if newspapers are cutting back on quality journalism, including political cartoonists then the effect could be a reduction in their readership. Therefore if readership declines (market demographic reach), then the effectiveness of advertising through such newspapers begins to become a consideration.

Print Advertising

The question then arising for all businesses (or our focus specifically Hire and Rental companies) becomes is newspaper advertising still an effective marketing channel?

Judging from anecdotal evidence many businesses, hire and rental companies included, have voted with their keyboards and have begun to spread their marketing budgets into on-line marketing and even social media. Evidence also exists in other industry sectors, eg in a recent article in Tire Business one owner cited that in 5 years his print advertising budget had been reduced from over 50% to 11%, (click on quote to access the full article – well worth reading)

..., who operates 15 stores across Michigan, said half his ad budget goes to direct mail and TV, but only 11 percent goes to newspaper advertising. Five years ago, more than half of Northwest Tire’s ad budget went towards newspaper ads.

The Answer

So the question was what have political cartoonists got to do with advertising trends? Well the answer is – as the number of employed political cartoonists in the traditional print media declines so does the business spend on traditional print media advertising.

About Us

Hire and rental management systems like HireEzy make the use of such on-line marketing easy to use and part of the natural hire and rental business process. For more information contact us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

18 Feb

Hire Rental Marketing Options for the Economic Recovery

Over the last 12 months many hire and rental companies have been facing tough times.

However even with the first green shoots of recovery appearing many companies are still forced to ensure that costs are contained.

The question is should the marketing budget be one of the areas in which costs are cut?

Reduce Marketing Spend Yes or No?

For some the question became should you cut your marketing promotion?

The simple answer was no!

According to Malcolm McDonald, emeritus professor at Cranfield University School of Management in the UK, recessions can “focus the mind” and lead {sic companies} agencies to “cut out the waste”. He advises brands to focus on core customers in needs-based segments, adding: “Whatever you do, don’t cut promotional expenditure in the core business. [There is] massive evidence that cutting promotional spend in a recession is disastrous

Green Shoots of Growth

Now the green shoots of recovery are upon us, and many are now beginning to plan for the long term. The most recent McKinsey report shows that this longer term planning focus is now starting to creep back in to business thinking. But it also makes the point that many companys’ are still focusing on containing costs. click here to read the article.

The recession has created opportunities for hire and rental companies that have survived. Such opportunities include picking up new clients from competitors that are less well placed or who have closed their businesses.

Low Cost Marketing Options

There are a range of alternative low marketing options that can now be considered, the most effective of these is digital marketing.

Why digital marketing, well because as previous research posts in this blog have shown, web leads now account for over 55% of new business for progressive hire and rental companies. If you are uncertain about digital or social media marketing then read this article, 13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is worth your time

Achieving such increases though does depend on doing some basics:

Web Site: Enabling customers/ prospects to browse your service/ product offering and place in a booking request.
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation this is a range of things you need to do to help Search Engines, hence your customers find you.
Blog: Grossly under-rated but shown in the latest UK research to increase web traffic for small business by over 50%. This is where you post about your solutions, eg how to plan a party, or examples of Marquee Weddings, etc. Content people are looking for to read and find information, before making a decision to purchase.
Twitter: Singularly the most effective business tool for letting people know about your latest blog posts or catalogue item changes.

There are a range of other tools that you can use. But as a basic plan

Making it Easy

If this sounds hard it is not, but it does take commitment. This is where we can help. HireEzy provides you with a hire and rental business management solution that has:

WebSite: A fully integrated web site in which customers can browse and place orders requests directly in to your HireEzy system. HireEZy’s unique web integration tools, any changes you make in your catalogue can be immediately published to your website, if you so choose. What this does, is to increase your search engine rankings, if you make changes often, that in turn improves you lead generation.

Integrated Digital Marketing Tools: Furthermore it includes a full range of digital marketing tools including Twitter and blog integration. A very effective way of maintaining your marketing effort whilst containing costs in times like these is to use HireEzy. HireEzy comes with an inbuilt range of marketing tools, to assist you producing low cost but highly effective brochures, newsletters etc. All tools are inbuilt in your Hire Software and are linked to your product catalogue, so that with simple one click steps and you can email, tweet, post on line or print a range of high graphic image marketing collateral.

What more information or an on line demo, then go to our website www.makinglifeezy.com.au or email us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

18 Feb

Understanding Social Media Marketing

The array of terms and sites, even the barrage of icon farms at the bottom or articles you now read can be a confusing introduction to Social Media Marketing.

To assist Hire and Rental companies understand how it all works, we recommend going to the Social Marketing Journal – link below.

Social Marketing Journal – Social Media Marketing Optimization Blog

About Us

18 Feb

Why Communicating With Customers Is Now Harder Yet Easier

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Communicating with customers/ prospects is now both easier and yet more difficult!

Easier because there are more channels available to communicate with customers / prospects such as Social Media.

Yet more difficult because customers or prospects have more choices from which to receive communications and more selective in who they invite to send information.

Note: In this article the term customer is used to cover both existing customers and prospects.

Why Is It More Difficult!

Communicating with customers even five years ago was fairly straight forward. You could communicate directly through email, mail or even the telephone. Or you could advertise in the newspaper, yellow pages or if you could afford it Television or Radio.

But all of these are now less effective than five years ago

You may well have your customers address, email or phone number

but are you actually reaching them?

Traditional Mail

This is not new we have all known this for years. Companies are increasingly using electronic means to communicate and invoice and pay bills. For example according to the Washington Post, the US Postal Service has ..

That downward trend is only accelerating. The Postal Service projects a decline of about 10 billion pieces of mail in each of the next two years, going from a high of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to 170 billion projected for 2010.

And nearly half of this is junk mail!

the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivered 153.8 billion pieces of mail, of which 43 percent, or 66.4 billion pieces, were junk mail.

Decline of Email

Email is beginning to decline in popularity, as more communication options become available.

In 2003, people spent 46% of their time online using sites which fall into the “communications” category – that is, sites whose core capabilities are email and instant messaging. By 2009, that usage dropped to 27% or a 41% decline in overall use.

May be spam has contributed to the decline in people’s focus on email as a primary source of communication.

In Microsoft’s latest biannual report on the state of computer security, the company says that in the second half of 2008, a full 97.3 percent of email traffic was unwanted spam (or malicious email like phishing attacks and outright viruses).

Tele-Sales Now Seen As Least Effective

Business to Business tele-marketing or sales is also in decline for a number of reasons, not the least of which are changes in the legislation’s around the world governing tele-marketing practises. Many now view out bound tele-marketing as the least effective option.

90% view Telemarketing as at least as effective as their other marketing mediums.

Decline of Yellow Pages/ NewsPapers/ Television

Even these – the stalwarts of advertising for decades are in decline, see previous post Advertising media types

So Where Are Customers Going

Well it appears they are becoming more interested in Social Media. However social media whilst opening up new channels also poses some interesting problems.

It is Discretionary

Yes you can communicate with customers now by using Twitter or Facebook etc. However it is at the customers discretion as to whether they allow you to communicate with them. Either by adding as a Friend on Facebook or Following You on Twitter.

Facebook and Twitter are arguably direct communication social media type but there are more indirect channels.

Common Interest

Many years ago I read the Dale Carnegie Classic – “How to Win Friends and Influence People” . In that book, I remember reading the story of how he (or someone) had tried to make an appointment with a prospect for years – but failed. He then found that they both had a common interest in something. From this he was able to develop a friendship which led to sales.

This can be the same with Social Media!

For example through say Social Book marking sites (eg Digg, Stumble on) you may find that you have common interests in similar articles. Developing relationships this way can lead to either direct sales or them even referring you on to their community or contacts. It also provides a means to commence a discussion leading potentially to being invited to join their discretionary social media sites.

Social Media provides opportunities to engage prospects and customers indirectly, by finding things of common interest.

It Works!

For example, our software is developed for hire and rental companies. One of our major points of difference is integration with the Web and Social Media. We therefore are genuinely interested in both subjects. We write about it (blog posts), we read about it and we comment about it. Through this process we have found similar like minded companies and individuals and built really good communities on Facebook (>350 friends), Twitter (>3000 followers) and also on Digg and Stumble On. It does deliver results for us:

We trailed just using Social Media Marketing for three months. We dropped Adwords all together and found that our sales leads increased by over 80% and our Alex Web Site ranking went up 1000% in the same period. See full post – “Is Social Media Marketing Worth The Effort”

Summary

So yes on one hand their are more ways to communicate with your customers yet at the same time it is more difficult. We are entering a period where increasingly customers are gaining control over who, what, when and how they are communicated with. This will pose a both challenges and opportunities to marketing people for in the future.

Interested in more articles on Social Media and Marketing?

Then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Networked Blogs or Stumble On

About Us

Google Already Indexing Twitter? (techie-buzz.com)
Facebook Guide For Professionals: How To Succeed In A Networked Economy (allfacebook.com)
What Is Next For Social Media? (regulargeek.com)

12 Feb

Thumbs Down – Techo Twitter Posts week ending 18 Oct

Welcome to the Thumbs Down Edition of my review of the week in tech.

Each week I’m picking out the things that I thought were a stupid idea, a bad thing to happen or just payed out on a tech company deservedly that I submitted via Twitter for you all to read. If you haven’t already seen my Twitter feed of tech tips add me @aholesgrove or have a look at http://twitter.com/aholesgrove and subscribe to the RSS feed of my tweets.

I missed out on doing this weekly review on time as it was all hands on deck in Making Life Ezy putting the final touches on HireEzy 2.1 before release that week. We’re all done now and everything is back to normal.

This week in Thumbs Down I found myself highlighting Google‘s lamo attempt to control the internet and picking out a HUGE problem with Apple‘s new operating system which deletes all user data. Yeah, you read that right – and people whinge about Windows. Gosh.

Haha – Google Wave – Early Impressions: Too Much Effort & Unintuitive http://tinyurl.com/yzhn4st

I’ve blogged before about how I think Google Wave is/will be stupid, worthless and pointless. But don’t just take my word for it, other people are saying it too – as evidenced by this article. Don’t know what Google Wave is? Well, who cares. If you do, it’s supposed to be an email/twitter/instant messaging alternative – replacement, whatever. C’mon Google, you employ 20,000 of the smartest people on earth and not one of you can figure out that most people won’t want to ditch email because they can barely breathe without having access to it. #FAIL

Interesting read, if you’re a geek – YouTube‘s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net http://tinyurl.com/yfhcuuv

Well, I know most of you aren’t geeks and won’t read the article, so I’ll paraphrase here to outline why I thought this article was interesting – basically, Google has a direct optical fibre connection to the core movers and shakers that make the internet connect to everybody (in fact, I read recently that Google accounts for 6% of all internet traffic in the word at the moment, an astounding statistic for a company that didn’t exist 10 years ago), which means that Google don’t need to pay for internet traffic. So, all of those YouTube videos are just beaming out of the place with the computer infrastructure built into the rest of Google’s fortress of computer power, essentially making what most people would think to be an extremely expensive operation in pushing out online video actually cost them basically nothing to run – all those ad impressions are pure profit. This is an amazing contrast to an organisation like Facebook, which spends $1 million a month of infrastructure to make their service super snappy and fast for users. What the article goes on to detail is how Google hold so much power already, that instead of internet providers charging places like Google to have direct access to each other so that company’s internet users their their site quicker, Google are so powerful that they can charge internet companies to have better direct access to them to provide their services faster to their users. In the next 3 years this will be a huge debate in the US as their government is trying to regulate this stuff and don’t really know how to approach it properly. Public outcry ensures. It’ll be an interesting development.

LAME – Google enters the e-book arena http://bit.ly/wFDAM

I’m sure if I stood in a newsagent taking pictures of each page of a magazine so I could read it later without having to buy the magazine in the first place I’d be chased down the street by the shop owner and probably have the cops called on me. Google send people to libraries to scan books digially, build a whole online book store full of inventory and they call it a “business“. This is criminal. That’s all I have to say.

WOW Mac Users should read this – Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data http://bit.ly/10PdGD

So, being the good samaritan that I am, I’ll give you Mac users this tip – don’t allow anonymous logins on your computer. You’ll have your login that you use and just keep using that – don’t switch to another user and use the anonymous feature, as what happens is that you’ll go to log back into your computer as you and everything will be gone. Yeah, it’s pretty awful and embarassing problem. I tweeted this last week and I’m not sure if Apple have patched this problem yet but keep your eyes peeled on the Apple Software Update feature – last I read Apple were looking to put out a 10.6.1 update that addresses this and other problems.

About Us

Confessions of a Google Wave Fanboy (elasticvapor.com)
Weekly Wrapup: Google Wave, Real-Time Web Trends, And More… (readwriteweb.com)
Facebook Wave: Why Facebook Should Clone Google Wave (mashable.com)
VIDEO: Google Wave Gets Explained (mashable.com)

04 Feb

26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog

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Creating a blog for your rental or hire business is an essential element in your digital marketing strategy.

Yes we make it easy with HireEzy 2.1 to manage your blog from your hire and rental management system, but you still need good images and content.

Free Image Sources

Often finding images and other multi-media can be difficult and expensive.

This list below is excellent and a great resource for you.

26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog

Posted using ShareThis

Yes make it easy with HireEzy 2.1 to manage your blog from your hire and rental management system, but you still need good images and content.

04 Feb

Business Need will Drive Creativity in 2010 – Hire Rental Industry

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: Image by Saurabh Goswami via Flickr

Necessity is the mother of all invention!

A mantra my father drove in to my head when I was a growing up, not once but repeatedly.

Recently I was reminded of this little childhood memory when reading a recent article by Michael Roth (writes great articles) on Rental Industry Makes Positive Efforts in Midst of Recession .

Michael made the point that companies will be forced to innovate, given the slow recovery. Innovate because they have to.

Great Point But Where To Start To Look For Innovation?

Keeping things basic, there are only three simple things you can ever do in a business:

Increase revenue
Cut Costs or
Reduce Risks

So What Are Some Ideas for Innovation?

Well look towards Social Media and Digital Marketing as a prospective source. There is massive opportunity to be had for creative hire and rental companies in adopting Social Media and related digital marketing.

Why, because overall the industry has been incredibly slow to adopt it.

That’s great for innovators as it means there is massive untapped opportunities out there!

First - Increase Revenue

Social media marketing has been shown to be a great way of increasing sales leads if done properly. A well planned and executed social media strategy ( it’s not hard at all) can really be effective in driving more traffic to your web site, hence your offer.

Articles
Why Social Media is a Natural Channel for Hire and Rental Companies

Aligning Social Media to the Buying Process

Second - Cutting Costs

Social media can be used to cut hire and rental operating costs. For example cutting website development fees by having self web content management embedded in your rental software or hire software. Not only does this cut operating costs it also can improve search engine rankings, through more frequent changes.

Articles
Options for Reducing Costs

Benefits of Supplier Relationship Management for Rental and Hire Companies

Reducing Risk

Reducing business risks can be in part by considering the use of Social Media, for example using YouTube to show clients how to maintain, set up or dis-assemble equipment.

Articles:
How Hire and Rental Companies Can Use YouTube

Safety Instructions Using Social Media

Still Unsure?

We are offering Hire and Rental Companies a free advisory service to discuss how to use Social Media in their business. No obligation etc. Why? Because we dont sell Social Media services – we simple offer our globally recognised skills in Social Media back to the industry. See our press release for more details, click here.

What do we get out of it?

Well we believe that if you begin to use social media and digital marketing effectively, then you will appreciate the value of the integrated social media and digital marketing tools in our hire software and rental software.

For more information Email Us

Use Social Media To Expand Your Business (lazerpromotions.com)
Social Media Infecting Every Aspect of Business (ducttapemarketing.com)

30 Jan

Audio Visual Rental Hire – Marketing Options (updated)

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The Audio Visual hire and rental industry appears to have weathered the recession.

The Audio Visual rental and hire industry had been experiencing solid rates of growth leading in to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

According to various reports many had been planning to increase staff and inventory prior to the GFC .

However when the GFC hit, there was some discussion and predictions of doom and gloom.

But the suddenness of the crisis was thought to have left many exposed!

Firstly there was concern that the predicted collapse of the USA $175 Bn Corporate offsite meeting market would impact the AV rental and hire companies. This figure includes all goods and services supplied to the market, of which AV rental is but one.

Discussions with our clients has indicated that whilst Corporate Off site meetings may have decreased. Demand appeared to shift to providing AV equipment for on- client site meetings.

Cash flow Impacts

Whilst many indicated that there had been a fall in demand, the biggest issue was cash-flow. In particular clients extending the payment term period.

Cash flow is the life blood for many AV hire and rental businesses given that many have large inventory debt costs to be serviced.

Many did not comment on the role of the banks in providing increased credit lines. However based on evidence from other sectors it is likely that the banks were not that forth-coming.

A common theme amongst clients was the focus on cost management. Those were able to identify, analyze and remove non value adding costs appeared to do well.

Cost management analysis must cover the entire natural business process from lead generation through bookings, service delivery, inventory to managing the accounts. This total analysis ability is critical, as without it companies can cut costs in one area, only to find that costs rise in another.

This may sound trite, but in an industry that has grew rapidly through the boom years, cost management was not in many cases of core management focus.

Downturn Passing

Now that the downturn is passing and the green shoots of recovery are appearing, those AV companies who survived will be well placed.

Whilst it is expected the cash flow may remain an issue for the foreseeable future, revenue is expected to increase.

Positioning for Growth

The focus now moves to positioning for growth, picking up new markets and clients.

Given the lagging issue of cash flow, many may not have the marketing financial resources to take advantage of the emerging opportunities.

Look to Social Media Marketing

AV companies that find themselves in that position should seriously consider using Social Media Marketing. Social Media marketing is growing rapidly, in particular by businesses of all sizes from Corporate to the Smallest.

Combining attraction tools like Twitter with content sources such as a blog can be incredibly effective. Evidence from the USA shows that web site traffic can be increased as much as 55% using such tools.

About Us

25 Jan

SEO for hire and rental companies

Research has shown that over 50% of new hire and rental leads are now coming through web leads.

That is why we now offer our clients a full integration between either our online store or even a plug in catalogue to your own web site.

Complimenting this functionality is the need for good SEO ( search engine optimization) to increase the probability of appearing on the first page of search results against your key words.

As part of our service to clients we provide information how to improve their business including things like SEO. Our You Tube site includes a wealth of great educational short videos.

When we find good video’s such as this one below produced by a company specializing in this area we like to share them.

Top 20 SEO Tools

so here is a great video from you tube on how to improve your Search Engine Rankings.

If you want access to other great videos go to our YouTube site:

18 Jan

Predicting the Downturn Winners in the Hire and Rental industry

For a more frequent readers you will know that we take the view that yes things are tough but lets focus on positive ideas to improve business.

Recently we came accross this article from the UK. It is well worth reading!

It promotes 10 things you can do to improve your marketing in tough times!

How to thrive during a recession by Mick Spain (click on bold text to go to the article)

One point he made really struck home! The attitude of the company and its people.

Coming from a sports obsessed nation, the analogy is powerful. When watching two teams battling it out on the field, picking the winner sometimes is easy – body language will tell you who is going to win. Often well in advance.

The team that will ultimately lose, will let their heads hang, they won’t do those extra things for the team, they will watch the scoreboard and they become obsessed by decisions or circumstances that go against them.

Constrast that to the team that is winning or going to win. They ignore the things that are against them like dodgy decisions, a bad bounce or even the weather. Ie they ignore the factors beyond their control.

Instead they focus on doing the right things, the extra team things and they remain positive.

We market extensively and speak to many hire and rental companies. It is surprising the response differences you get. Some managers you speak to sound defeated it is in their attitude all they want to talk about is how bad the economy is. A factor beyond their control.

Alternatively you speak to others, who are focussed on doing things to make their businesses better. Yes they accept their is a downturn, we all do, but like us they accept that it is beyond control. Instead these companies want to talk about business value and ideas to make their businesses better. Often they are the most pro-active readers of this blog site.

So like watching a sports game, it is easy to pick the winners, by watching or “listening” to the bodylanguage (attitude).

Downturns are a natural cycle in business life, it will ultimately pass. Whether you as a hire or rental company survive to see the upswing, depends on your attitude more than anything else.

The author, Mick Spain made the comment – if you think you can or you think you can’t – you are right!

It is the same adage my father has recited to me for over 45 years.

So if you are committed to success and would like to discuss business improvement ideas for your hire or rental business, then please contact us via our web site www.makinglifeezy.com.au

09 Jan

Making Promotional Video for Hire or Rental

: Image via Wikipedia

In our last post we discussed how You Tube can be used to reduce business risks and potentially increase sales.

YouTube is fully integrated with HireEzy, both the desktop software and through the web on-line store option.

However for many the question becomes how to make a promotional video at an affordable rate.

There are so many great tools now available, that making an affordable promotional or safety video yourself is quite simple.

Most of these tools are low cost or even free yet powerful.

For example Windows Movie Maker comes with XP, Vista and Windows 7. This gives you the ability to edit camcorder clips to produce a great video for you. Go to our YouTube site to see some excellent video tutorials on how to do this.

Other tools from the web include Camtasia (has a 30 day evaluation copy). Again our You Tube site shows some superb tutorial videos on how to use this tools.

If you would like to look at other tools, a bit cheaper than Camtasia, then another site, video editing software review 2009, provides an of evaluation of different video editing software.

Another way and extremely cost effective is to use animoto. This is a great service, simply upload your photo’s, select your music and they will convert it to a promo video. The cost is incredibly cheap for this service, for most info go to animoto

The effort you make can be well worth it, not only promoting your business but also in reducing hire or rental damages or safety. If you want to read more about the business benefits click here.

29 Dec

Using Twitter to promote your Hire or Rental blog

Increasingly many hire and rental companies are using blogs as part of their digital marketing plan. The key issue though is how to generate traffic to your blog?

Twitter can be a very effective tool in doing this. The following video offers a great explanation of how you can use Twitter promote your hire blog or rental blog for your business.

Remember HireEzy 2.1 is the worlds leading hire software and rental software – that not only manages your business needs but also has incredibly powerful inbuilt digital marketing tools, such blog and twitter management.

27 Dec

SEO is the Yellow Pages Equivalent of Aardvark

| 1 comment

: Image via Wikipedia

SEO or search engine optimization is a term most people are familiar with. However for those that are still struggling with the term, an analogy is helpful.

Last century the one of the critical business marketing tools was to have your company listed in the Yellow Pages.

Now from a sales and marketing perspective, the key to Yellow Pages success was to have your Company Name either:

Listed First or
Have a big Advertisement

First Listing Importance

If you still use or can remember using Yellow Pages then you would remember seeing companies with names like Aardvark or AAAAcleaning etc.

Why, because the Yellow Pages listed in alphabetical order. So if you were in an industry with lots of competitors then being listed in the first few results was really important. The reason is simple consumers tended to start at the top of a list to find the name and number of a company to contact.

This same tendency still applies with consumers. However now consumers use the Internet search engines, primarily Google, Yahoo and Bing to find the same information.

And like their Yellow Pages habit, consumers still more likely to select from the first few listings than to keep flicking through the pages of results.

This is what SEO is all about

SEO is about getting your company listed in the few search results.

But this is where the problem starts. Search Engine results differ from Yellow Pages in a two very different ways.

Alphabetical Listing is not relevant to Search Engines. Hence having a name like AAAcleaners or Aardvark automotive has no benefit on search results.

Secondly, Yellow pages has/had a strict categorization. Categories were defined such as Cleaning Services etc. Consumers checked the index to find the category that best correlated to the service they were looking for. Then they went to that page with the listing of all companies.

However such categories have no real relevance on search engines. Instead consumers effectively define the category by selecting the words they think best describes what they are looking for. The more popular or common words they use to find you business service or type we now refer to as key words.

Ad-words and Yellow Pages Advertisements

If you could afford it, you took could also improve you Yellow Pages effectiveness by taking out an on page Advertisement. Such advertisements were and still are effective. They attract the consumer eye over a plain text listing.

Search engines have the equivalent of this through the sponsored and AdWords that appear on each of your search results. The difference is though, that research has shown that people are more likely though to click on a result that the search engine has returned than an adjoining paid add. My thoughts are that the reason for this is that people tend to “own” the returned results (organic results) because it was their key words that brought them up.

Social Media Effect could be the New Aardvark

Naming your company by giving it multiple Aa’s etc in front helped to get you listed first in the Yellow Pages. It was a budget way of overcoming the marketing power of the big companies who could afford to take out the big Advertisements.

Social Media in some ways could be argued as being the new low cost way of neutralising the big budgets of major competitors in SEO. Corporations and major franchises can afford to spend big to make sure that their companies come up first through SEO and through paid on-line advertising. Social Media though does appear to have the ability to help neutralize this, through the range of free or low cost tools.

SEO for Beginners

SEO is not a simple science! The rules change frequently and there are numerous companies that specialize in it.

However here are a couple of starters.

Evaluate your own site using the free tool from WebSEO Analytics, it is excellent;

Secondly, if you are serious about at least understanding it, read through the following slide presentation by Alex Conway:

SEO Basics – The What and Why of SEO

View more presentations from Alex Conway.

Please send back your comments or thoughts.

www.makinglifeezy.com.au

the worlds most innovative hire and rental software

How Social Media Is Influencing*Search Engine Optimization (slideshare.net)
Should You Flaunt Your Search Engine Rankings? (seroundtable.com)

25 Dec

Your Web Presence Should be a fully integrated part of your rental software or hire software

Download PDF Brochure: hireezy Online

Research shows that most rental and hire companies nowgenerate the majority of their new business from the web, estimated at over 50% of new leads.

But the problem is most companies maintain a seperate database or system for their on-line store and physical store.

This separation not only unnecessary costs, which can be substantive, but it also can inhibit your search engine page ranking. The lower your page ranking, the lower your sales inquiries – it is a direct correlation.

Furthermore with the growth of social media marketing, a by product of web integration is the ability to integrate social media marketing into your workflow.

HireEzy, the hire software and rental software solution for growing companies, has solved this problem!

HireEzy can provide you with a fully integrated on-line and in-store solution! And integration into Social Media Marketing!

This solution is incredible because it not only eliminates unnecessary costs, it can also improve your page ranking, leading to improved sales!

For more information download the attached brochure!

HireEzy the Global Innovation leaders in the hire and rental industry!!

Available in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK

Online sales set to double within two years (telegraph.co.uk)

19 Dec

Hire and Rental Industry Social Media Wallflowers

A recent survey of the consumer packaged goods market identified that over half of all such companies are social media wall flowers.

About half (53%) of consumer packaged goods companies are still social media “wall flowers,” meaning that they still have both low presence and low engagement within these media, according to an informal survey conducted among members by the Grocery Manufacturers Association. (read full article – its another brilliant article by Sarah Mahoney)

The same can be said of much of the equipment hire and equipment rental industry – where wall flowers dominate

Not an issue you think – well given the best Equipment Rental and Hire companies now generate most of their leads from the web.

AND in order to generate leads you need high levels of on-line awareness (search engine rankings)

AND with out doubt the best tool to help create that is Social Media

THEN being a wall flower is costing you money

Social Media marketing should be essential for every party hire, party rental, event hire, event rental, wedding hire, wedding rental type company -

WHY because the market you target is to supply people who are being social!!!!

Social media helps you to engage with such people – it works!

If you are in the industry and want to know more about Social Media marketing for you company then we are happy to help share our experience and knowledge, as an industry service.

HireEzy the global innovation leader in equipment rental software and equipment hire software – and it includes embedded integrated social media marketing tools – amongst a whole lot of other things

For more information email us at More Information

Social Media includes Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, YouTube etc – for articles on how to use Social Media for hire or rental business marketing see other posts we have in this blog.

4 Online Marketing Techniques Your Business Should Be Using (smtusa.com)
SEO vs. Social Media: Which is Better? (shoemoney.com)
Shifting CPG resources from traditional to social media (smartblogs.com)

15 Dec

Developing a Unique Selling Proposition

A Unique Selling Proposition is a critical element in your marketing. Not only does it convey to your customers your value it can also help in keeping your staff focused.

This article helps clarify the difference between a Unique Selling Proposition and a Tag Line. Then how to develop a Unique Sales Proposition, it also offers some examples for different business types. The application in our blog as always is on hire and rental companies.

Firstly what is the difference between a USP and a Tagline?

The following slide show is brilliant and really helps not only define them and the differences but also how to develop them.

Unique Selling Proposition & Tagline

View more presentations from Gregar Donaven Valdehueza.

Example USP for Rental and Hire Companies

Having now understood the difference it is worth looking at some example USP’s for different Hire and Rental Company Types

Party / Event Rental or Hire

It is assumed each Party/ Event Rental Company understands there key benefits. Uniqueness is often related to the geography serviced or specific market segment ( eg Corporate Events etc, Up market, Budget ).

The next step then is what is the pain that customers of Party companies are feeling? Well some examples could be:

We rarely entertain so can’t justify buying the party equipment;
We want to impress our neighbours but haven’t got the stylish equipment; and
We have a Corporate Event we need to impress our customers and we need advice and equipment.

These are only sample examples and certainly knowing your own market you will be able to define them far better to suit your particular need. But there will be common elements such as:

Value or renting over buying,
Need for advise and ideas, and
Access to a wide range of equipment.

Having established the benefits, uniqueness and the pain the final element is proof. Often this can be a simple as the number of clients serviced, years of operation etc.

The final step is to create the USP. An example of which is below.

Enabling our Hunter Valley clients to affordably entertain in style for the last 25 years

or for a Corporate Event Market Segment

Leave a lasting impression on your clients with our event solutions or

We create the client impression for you – so you create the relationship

Risk Reducing Rental Companies

Some business rental types such as Baby, Safety equipment etc have a more specific customer pain. Such rental companies actually take away or certainly mitigate the risk of law suits from their clients. For example Hotels and Motels that provide baby cots etc to their patrons, potentially incur a risk through injury. If a baby was hurt using the cot and that cot was found not to be compliant with changes in regulation or had not been serviced, then the Hotel could be found liable.

So specialized rental companies such as Baby Equipment supply to hotels effectively mitigate the clients pain of incurring a risk in maintaining their own in-house stock of equipment. Hence a USP could be

We let you service your clients Not your lawyers

Construction or Major Equipment Rental

Major equipment rental companies often have a value proposition built around helping their clients take equipment off their balance sheet and/ or improve cashflow. The later occurs by eliminating long term equipment hire purchase lease payments for major equipment. The point of value lies when the equipment is not used often by the equipment- and is held just in case by the client. So a simple USP could be:

Project Equipment without the financial pain

Delivering the Promise

Once your USP has been developed you now need to communicate and deliver on the USP promise. And that is where HireEzy helps. HireEzy is a complete hire and rental business software package that manages all aspects of your business processes. PLUS the tools to communicate including web integration, mass communication (email and SMS), digital catalogue production AND inbuilt integration to Social Media Marketing.

To find out more go to our web site or email us sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

09 Dec

5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business

If you are a hire or rental company, albeit a party, equipment, AV or event then social media marketing should be at the forefront of your 2010 market plans.

What is it and how to do it – well this article below does a great job explaining it.

5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business

Posted using ShareThis

Remember HireEzy 2.1 is a functionally rich hire and rental management system with inbuilt integration to social media tools – plus your website and blog. For more information email us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

6 Marketing Mistakes Made by Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs (lazerpromotions.com)
Social and Collaborative Marketing Trends (debaird.net)
3 Things You Need to Know About Social Media Strategy (mashable.com)

02 Dec

Rental and Hire Company Web Lead Statistics

| 1 comment

HireEzy Web Integration Brochure- PDF download

A survey of HireEzy clients and prospects revealed some interesting insights into the major sales lead sources for rental and hire companies.

Whilst there was a range of results, those that clearly lead in their rental or hire market segments all showed similar statistics.

The clearest result was that the leading hire and rental companies in Australia, UK and the USA now generate over 50% of all new sales inquiries from their web site. This can be a combination of direct web submitted inquiries or customers who have checked out their web site prior to calling.

Secondly that most now find Yellow Pages or Yellow Pages on Line a rapidly declining source of new business. One customer with a long established business, cited that his father use to spend $25 000 a year on Yellow Pages, they now spend less than $2000. The reason is that yellow pages is no longer the major source of new business for them, rather it is business from the web.

Compare yourself to the best performers from the survey!

Benchmark Yourself

Your Answer

Survey Results – Industry Leaders

What percentage of your new business sales inquiries come

from the Web?

55%

What percentage of converted new business sales come from

inquiries that started from the Web?

35%

If you are below these benchmarks, then here is what they were doing.

The websites of those that were successful in achieving more than 50% lead generation, demonstrated some common characteristics:

· Frequent changes to the content;

· Ability of customers to view their hire and rental catalogue;and

· Ability of customers to place orders.

Cost of website development to achieve this frequency of change and maintain catalogue updates was however cited as an issue.

Now this is where HireEzy comes in to its own, HireEzy enables you to make changes in your back end catalogue and have those posted straight to your web site. The Website provided by HireEzy also enables customers to create booking requests, these booking requests then appear as sales leads in your HireEzy system.

The attached brochure provides more information.

This solution is perfect for:

· Party Rental and Party Hire;

· Fencing Rental or Temporary Fencing Hire Companies

· Tool Rental and Tool Hire

· Equipment Rental and Equipment Hire

· AV rental and AV Hire

In fact most companies who hire or rent products or services!

No wonder HireEzy is the innovation leader in the global hire and rental market.

For more information go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au or download our brochure at the top of this post!

26 Nov

Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation

| 1 comment

In the last blog we discussed the decline of traditional media (including yellow pages, print and TV) as a source of advertising effectiveness to create sales leads. Research has shown that such media is still part of you advertising mix.

The fastest growing advertising media is the internet.

However the biggest problem facing many companies is that the internet is still a novelty.

When in fact it should be an integral part of their business and business marketing mix.

The foundation of all digital marketing (internet marketing is but one element) is arguably the company web site. Presently most run a web site that is no more than static brochure ware.

Some have employed Search Engine Optimization SEO to help raise their organic rankings (ranking in which you appear in a search engine result) to improve lead generation. However this is often more of a technical solution rather than a total true business solution.

Consider this analogy

Say you were running a transport and distribution business in 1900 using horse teams. You go to a trade show and they show off this new technology called a transport vehicle.

You buy a transport vehicle. Now do you replace your horse team drivers (marketers) who know the transport routes and processes with mechanics (SEO and technical web people) who know how the vehicle works? Most would I hope say, no they would train their horse drivers to be vehicle drivers. You still need the mechanics they are essential to maintaining the vehicle at optimal performance ( SEO and technical web people). But also would you design and build your own vehicle, or would you provide input into what you needed to the vehicle builders (web designers and builders). Most likely the latter, they are the specialists and they have economy of scale. This analogy strongly correlates to the web.

So back to the internet foundation, the vehicle.

We would contend that the foundation of your digital marketing – your web presence should be driven from within the company. By all means engage good web designers and most definitely use SEO specialists. But use them as a value add, people you actively work with, not abrogate your responsibility too.

So in their focus the companies marketing operations should focus not only on messaging and technical search ranking improvements, but most importantly on their content. Content is king, so the adage goes! Basically doing what marketers do – create awareness to generate sales leads.

The tool most internal marketers use now is called Content management systems. These have developed which enable companies to control their web content of developed web sites. Many of these are excellent.

However a primary source of content, the things people search for, is product information. The business management system often contains all the primary product data, images, text etc. Furthermore, if you are a modeling agency, entertainment agent or even a hire or rental company, the business system also contains your availabilities, promotions etc.

The problem is that YOUR CONTENT – product information is stored in your business management system – which is separate from the content management system.

This is where the third wave of digital marketing management (not related to former UK Prime Ministers political agenda) comes in. Enabling selected business information to be published direct to the company web site, or even third party marketing sites, from within the business management system. .

So the product information, even your catalogue or portfolio can be one click published to the net, or elements of it if you so desire. An added benefit, one that management consultants the information provided comes from a single source so that it provides a single version of the truth.

Considering a practical application

Any change you make in the primary business database to product information,( new product, feature, text change, image, specials, promotions etc) can be automatically published to the web site, if so selected. Frequent changes in the catalogue create equally frequent changes in the web content. More changes in the web content, then the more likely you are to have a higher organic search result ( the best result to obtain).

Now if you add your SEO team and some adwords to a dynamically active web site with good content, then you have an exceptionally strong foundation for digital marketing. All other campaigns you undertake whether digital or traditional can now include your strong digital presence as an entry point to your business.

If you can not do this in your business management system, and you are a Hire or Rental company, then could I suggest you go to our website www.makinglifeezy.com.au to find out how we can help!

18 Nov

Is Traditional Media Still Relevant In A Social Media World?

: Image via Wikipedia

There appears to be a perception amongst some that social media marketing and traditional marketing are unrelated.

This is not the case!

The following well written article explains how traditional marketing still has an effective role and how it supports social media.

Is Traditional Media Still Relevant In A Social Media World?

Posted using ShareThis

Online Advertising Stronger in the Recession in Russia (profy.com)
Global ad spending to top $13 billion…yet to be effective, freebies seem to be key (thisisherd.com)
Why Measure ROI Of Social Media? (regulargeek.com)
Twitter Isn’t Over-Hyped; It’s Just Misunderstood (markevanstech.com)

Cross Platform
MAC & WINDOWS SOFTWARE

Marketing Ideas

A key cost driver is often the high volume of product images needed

Creating Low Cost Quality Product Photo’s

About Us

About Us

But It Does Takes Effort

Content

Let People Know About Your Blog Article

Effort Versus Return

Key Lessons Learnt

If you have any similar experiences or even different views please take the time to add your comments – they are most welcome!

About Us

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But is print media advertising it still effective?

Why the decline?

So back to the Political Cartoonists

Print Advertising

The Answer

About Us

Reduce Marketing Spend Yes or No?

Green Shoots of Growth

Low Cost Marketing Options

Making it Easy

About Us

Why Is It More Difficult!

but are you actually reaching them?

Traditional Mail

Decline of Email

Tele-Sales Now Seen As Least Effective

Decline of Yellow Pages/ NewsPapers/ Television

So Where Are Customers Going

It is Discretionary

Common Interest

It Works!

Summary

Interested in more articles on Social Media and Marketing?

About Us

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Haha – Google Wave – Early Impressions: Too Much Effort & Unintuitive http://tinyurl.com/yzhn4st

Interesting read, if you’re a geek – YouTube‘s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net http://tinyurl.com/yfhcuuv

LAME – Google enters the e-book arena http://bit.ly/wFDAM

WOW Mac Users should read this – Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data http://bit.ly/10PdGD

About Us

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Creating a blog for your rental or hire business is an essential element in your digital marketing strategy.

Free Image Sources

Necessity is the mother of all invention!

Great Point But Where To Start To Look For Innovation?

So What Are Some Ideas for Innovation?

First - Increase Revenue

Second - Cutting Costs

Reducing Risk

Still Unsure?

What do we get out of it?

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But the suddenness of the crisis was thought to have left many exposed!

Cash flow Impacts

Positioning for Growth

Look to Social Media Marketing

About Us

In this article we will explain how to align Social Media to the customer buying process.

Understanding the Customer Buying Process

Now Align To Social Media

[table id=7 /]

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The question many ask is – Well what should we post on our blog?

However for many the question becomes how to make a promotional video at an affordable rate.

Most of these tools are low cost or even free yet powerful.

Last century the one of the critical business marketing tools was to have your company listed in the Yellow Pages.

First Listing Importance

This is what SEO is all about

Ad-words and Yellow Pages Advertisements

Social Media Effect could be the New Aardvark

SEO for Beginners

Related articles by Zemanta

Research shows that most rental and hire companies nowgenerate the majority of their new business from the web, estimated at over 50% of new leads.

HireEzy, the hire software and rental software solution for growing companies, has solved this problem!

Related articles by Zemanta

The same can be said of much of the equipment hire and equipment rental industry – where wall flowers dominate

HireEzy the global innovation leader in equipment rental software and equipment hire software – and it includes embedded integrated social media marketing tools – amongst a whole lot of other things