Useful Tools

19 Feb

Resources for Hire and Rental Entrepreneurs

Hire and Rental can be an extremely profitable and high growth business.

Examples abound of incredibly successful entrepreneurs in the industry who have grown their businesses to impressive levels. Continued growth in the sector is a given. Particularly with the growth of niche based rental or hire companies, such as Baby Equipment, Handbags, Cocktail machines, the list goes on.

To support Industry growth we have started this list of tools and sites that entreprenuers can use. We will add to it over time to provide a single resource to support the industry’s entrepreneurs.

If you have any resource sites you think useful then please let us know so we can add them.

12 Do’s and Don’t For Entrepreneurs

Top 10 Social NetWorks for Enterpreneurs

Entrepreneur Resource Centre

MIT Sloan Management

Entrepreneurship – Kauffman Foundation

Invest to Exit – Dr Tom McKaskill

Fact versus Fiction: What makes a good entrepreneur

Does failure mean you have failed?

A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs

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

Baby Boomers are Today’s Entrepreneurs (boomercafe.com)
Anatomy of an Entrepreneur (yogeshnaiks-blawg.blogspot.com)
Which augmented reality startups are most ready to dominate the market? We rank them. (digital.venturebeat.com)
The entrepreneur whiz kid myth (money.cnn.com)
The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur (myventurepad.com)

19 Feb

Seeking Funding to Expand Your Hire of Rental Business

The hire and rental business model can be extremely profitable.

Continuing growth can often encourage thoughts of how to expand the business. Often such expansion though requires investment funding.

However the question becomes how to approach an Angel Investor?

Like everything in business the best approach is to understand their thinking, as you would a customer.

This Video by Dr Tom Mcaskill, successful entrepreuner and academic provides a great insight in to this.

About Us

18 Feb

Free Wedding Planning Software

Here is a great value add to wedding hire or wedding rental companies clients.

Wedding Decorating Ideas is a blog with a great range of wedding decorating ideas.

It also has Free wedding planning software

The site doesnt compete with you as it doesnt hire or rent wedding equipment.

However just be aware of the annoying pop up that appears occaisionally.

Remember if you are a Wedding Hire or Wedding Rental company we provide the world’s most innovative wedding hire software or wedding rental software business management system to help run your business. Includes complete booking management, financials, digital and social media marketing PLUS MORE.

About Us

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)

02 Feb

Global List of Rental and Hire Associations

Here is a useful set of links to the main international rental and hire industry associations, in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Such associations can often provide useful business advise to Rental and Hire businesses, especially in times like these.

Amercian Rental Association

Canadian Rental Association

New Zealand Hire and Rental Association

Australia Hire and Rental Association

United Kingdom Construction Rental

European Rental Association

South Africa Contractor & Plant Hire Association

If you know of any more please let us know and we will add them to the list

About Us

30 Jan

Series Two on SEO for Rental and Hire Companies

In the [intlink id="series-one-on-seo-for-rental-and-hire-companies" type="post"]first article in this series[/intlink] we looked at the basics of SEO.

Now we will move on to getting started.

Step One: Analyse your current site.

Why? Because firstly it will give you a list of things you need to do to improve your SEO and secondly it will enable you to track your improvement overtime.

There are a number of great sites which help you do this, but we love Web SEO Analytics tools.

WebSEOAnalytics has excellent SEO analysis tools, best of all they are free. The first one to use is the Web SEO Analysis Tool, it will give you a comprehensive report on your current site.

Step Two: Get the SEO Tool Bar

Download the SEO tool bar for Firefox, it you have IE or another browser, you may wish to consider installing Firefox.

This tool bar gives you excellent analysis tools for every site you visit. The information it has is really useful as you go forward in undertaking the SEO yourself.

You could also consider using the Alexa toolbar as well, it has some useful tools in it as well. Alexa can help your search rankings as explained in a [intlink id="how-to-use-alexa-to-improve-your-search-rankings" type="post"]previous article[/intlink]

Step Three: Start Fixing the Issues

The Analysis Report you received from Web SEO Analytics may include some issues or errors you may not understand. Don’t stress, either go back to Web SEO Analytics web site or get this really good free ebook that can help.

29 Jan

Why Party Hire and Party Rental Companies should be Natural Social Media Marketers

| 1 comment

: Image via Wikipedia

We recently completed a two month market research project and found that the vast majority of Party Rental and Party Hire companies are not using Social Media.

This is really odd – given that Social Media is a Natural Fit for Party hire and Party Rental companies.

Social Media is how we now increasingly conceive and plan events and parties….

Well Social Media is how people connect with people socially in a digital world!

Its how they communicate and even plan get together’s, events, parties and [intlink id="how-to-plan-a-diy-wedding-using-social-media" type="post"]even weddings[/intlink]!

AND its not just Gen Y, that use Social Media!

The fastest growing segments are primarily middle aged people and businesses.

Baby Boomers and Seniors are flocking to social media – Stats to Prove it

Primary Marketing Demographic of Party Rental and Party Hire companies is…

And who is the primary market demographic for Party hire and Party Rental companies – Middle Aged people (disposable income, children to be married off, home based entertainers etc) and Businesses (corporate events, client events etc)! The very segment flocking to social media!

Hence why it is so strange!!!

Party and Event rental companies supply equipment and services to people holding events or parties.

As such they want and need to connect with people planning to hold such events or parties.

A primary segment that buys these services and hence they wish to connect to is the middle aged demographic. Why because they are the a major purchasing of such services!

Missing A Golden Marketing Opportunity

Fundamentally Party hire and Party rental companies are missing a golden marketing opportunity.

To take the lead in connecting to these market segments.

So Why is it Not Used?

The research identified that the primary reasons for the failing to use Social Media was not understanding how to use it.

In the [intlink id="aligning-social-media-to-the-buying-process" type="post"]next article[/intlink] we explain how to use Social Media at each stage of the buying process of your customers.

Or for more information please contact us Email Us

HireEzy party hire software and party rental software for growing businesses

generation x is now on alltop. thanks, gen x files, guy kawasaki! (jenx67.com)
Different generations, same objectives: Boomers, Gen-X and Gen-Y want the same things at work (newswire.ca)

28 Jan

McKinsey Global Economic Conditions Survey 2009

Hire and Rental companies considering their 2010 business plans or even next quarters activities will find the following article from McKinsey well worth reading.

A year after the global economic system nearly collapsed, many companies are finally finding ways to increase profits under the new economic conditions. But almost as many expect profits to continue falling, and executives also indicate that their broader economic hopes remain fragile. Many expect more government involvement in economies and industries over the long term.

To read the full article click here

Vital Signs: Is capitalism dead or dying? (ctv.ca)
Navigating The New Business World After This Recession (insightcommunity.com)

28 Jan

Look To Small Companies For Social Media Innovation

Necessity is the mother of innovation – so the adage says!

The tough times create the business circumstances that foster necessity. Businesses are forced to be both more creative and at the same time more brutal in their decision making. Innovative ideas whether:

market solutions,
business models or
technology will be created.

Whilst many of the ideas in this post are applicable across all business sectors, the focus of this article is on the Equipment Hire and Rental market.

Social Media as Basis of Innovation Ideas

The range of ideas that may be implemented can not be predicted. However it can be confidently predicted social media will form the basis of many innovations, around areas such as:

Revenue Improvement: Marketing areas such as lead generation, customer service, customer retention;
Cost Reduction: In marketing budgets by reducing expenditure on traditional marketing methods
Mitigation of Risk: Such as in areas like Product Damages and Safety through use of YouTube, see post.

At the end of this post is a series of examples of how to use each of the major Social marketing tools.

Where to Look for the Innovative Ideas?

Where will the innovation emerge from, large corporations or small rental or hire business?

Let’s look to what has happened over the last thirty years as an indicator of what may happen. Consider this, that since 1980, Corporations have completely lost their monopoly on new ideas. This change in innovation sources ended the era of IP monopolization. We are no longer in the era when “feudal lords” (i.e., a small handful of large “old economy” companies) controlled all the (intellectual) property and those who were without property had no rights. [1]

In 1980, Corporations accounted for 80% of all innovation (research and development outcome), they now account for under 20%. The beneficiaries have been small to medium sized companies who now account for 80% of innovations.

A key trend emerging in the knowledge economy is the change in the sources innovation. Prior to the 1980’s, large corporations dominated US research and development, with over 80% being undertaken by companies with more than 5000 employees. However since 1980, this has completely inverted, with small companies accounting for almost all the growth in R&D. [2]

Hire Rental Industry Innovation

The discussion above may not sound applicable to the Rental and Hire Industry but it is. For example in the 1980’s only the large Corporations could afford the innovation R & D expense of developing computing based management systems. Such rental software or hire software management systems are now powerful and affordable to businesses of all sizes.

Importantly though even more powerful tools such as Social Media are available (in may cases freely) to any business.

Innovation in the use of these tools is not constrained by not having financial resources but more by the extent of the will and imagination of companies.

It is in the area of will that the true constraint may appear. Major Brands have demonstrated in some instances a reluctance to engage in social media for fear of losing control of their brand. This is understandable as the brand is an asset that could well appear on the balance sheet. Hence taking avoiding perceived risks with the brand is understandable. Numerous articles in this subject.

Smaller hire and rental businesses whether though the pressure of necessity or less attachment to a brand are therefore more likely to undertake innovative social marketing ideas.

So if you are looking for new innovative ideas in the equipment hire and rental industry look to the Small business sector rather than corporations – the results may surprise you. Below is a list of how equipment hire and rental can use of each of the main social marketing tools.

About Us

How to Use Social Media Tools

Marketing Problem

[intlink id="246" type="post"]Hire Rental Advertising Considerations[/intlink]
[intlink id="572" type="post"]Why Traditional Marketing Fails[/intlink]
[intlink id="875" type="post"]Yellow Pages Versus SEO[/intlink]

Creating a Digital Marketing Platform

[intlink id="254" type="post"]Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation[/intlink]
[intlink id="294" type="post"]Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics[/intlink]

Marketing via Twitter

[intlink id="592" type="post"]How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter[/intlink]
[intlink id="607" type="post"]Business Reason to Use Twitter[/intlink]

Marketing via Facebook

[intlink id="990" type="post"]Using Facebook for Business[/intlink]
[intlink id="781" type="post"]They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s[/intlink]

Marketing via YouTube

[intlink id="507" type="post"]How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube[/intlink]
[intlink id="481" type="post"]Big List on How to Use Social Media[/intlink]

Marketing via WordPress

[intlink id="641" type="post"]Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business[/intlink]
[intlink id="762" type="post"]Why Small Businesses Should blog[/intlink]

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

18 Jan

Protected: Example Blog Post A for Hire Rental Company

17 Jan

Why tough times should benefit the hire and rental industry

During the tough economic periods it is worth revisting your business value as a hire or rental company, no matter what sector you service. The business value of hire and rental companies is actually at its highest during tough times, particularly those servicing the business to business sector.

So what is the business value of the hire and rental industry?

Well here are five good reasons why companies should hire from you.

Cash flow saving
Companies who elect to hire or rent equipment from you are able protect cash reserves. Rather than spending valuable cash on buying items up front, your clients can effectively defer cash outlays through period payments for the hire or rental items. If timed correctly by your client, their receipts from their customer payments from the project can help fund the on-going rental or hire payment (obviously for medium to long term hires). For those of you who have Corporate clients, hiring or renting is often perfect. Many corporate clients have capital budget constraints during a downturn. Therefore hiring or renting can be an ideal way for some corporate clients to get what they need, as hiring or renting is considered to be an operating budget expenditure. Operating budget expenditures are often delegated substantially down the corporate ladder.

True costing
For many clients hiring or renting actually aids their project costing, in turn aiding them in improving their profitability. Hiring or renting is a known cost. Whereas often supplying the equipment from their own internal assets does not enable them to determine the actual cost of the item. Many don’t know the actual depreciation (replacement) value to be assigned, the actual cost of servicing and storing the item. It may sound trite, but for many companies true costing is a major issue.

Risk reduction
Buying items also increases risk. How long is the item they buy going to be used for? Will it be needed again? Should we buy something that may last for the project duration or something that we can be used again? What happens if the item breaksdown? How long before the manufacturer can get a replacement, this can impact the project and hence cash flow. Hiring and renting eliminates these concerns.

Servicing costs and compliance
Related to the risk element above is the need to ensure that the item is correctly serviced and maintained. Many hire and rental companies, especially in the construction hire and rental, eliminate this concern by providing on-site servicing and service histories. If your hire system doesn’t do this then you really need our HireEzy product.

Minimizing Assets
Assets require maintenance as described above both when in use and when stored. This costs money, in fact in Logistics the average assigned value to store, maintain, insure and account for an item is usually 35% of its cost, depending on the equipment. Furthermore, many listed companies and larger companies use Return on Assets as a performance measure. The more they hold in asset value the greater the revenue they need to generate in order to meet this performance figure. Hence hiring or renting can actually aid them in achieving there performance targets as the hired or rented item is not considered an asset.

For many people these statements above will be blinding statements of the obvious. But are they so blindingly obvious to your customers? Renewing and reminding them of your value proposition is often a good activity in these times. Especially when many of your clients are going to look at the costs they spend with you on hiring and renting. Many of your clients will just see the dollar figure and not reflect on the benefits you provide.

If you are a party rental or party hire company the following article provides more specific how to information on this subject.

Making Life Ezy are the makers of HireEzy the world’s most innovative hire software and rental management software. We are committed to helping our clients grow through the provision of business value, such as the information provided in this blog.

16 Jan

Absolute must google marketing tools for hire and rental companies

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: Image via Wikipedia

Google’s Place Pages are a MUST for every Small to Medium Hire and Rental Company.

The Place Pages provide Small to Medium hire and rental companies with an excellent free marketing resource to add to their on line marketing.

WHY?

The target market for most SME hire and rental companies is their local city, region or county.

Big hire and rental companies with big marketing budgets can often dominate even local area searches through either their ad-words or large dollar spends on SEO.

For example even though you may be the nearest party rental company, major party rental companies can still appear highly ranked in the search results and as well as in the paid advertising links on the page. Previously discussed in a previous article.

Your advantage often can be your proximity to the person. You therefore need to emphasize this fact.

Google Local Business Center

Google has a local business center with excellent resources to help you in this marketing objective. They are free and easy to use.

To access the tools, simply create a google account and then claim your web page etc.

Then with in the local business center you can add your business to the Google Maps search. As shown below with ourselves.

You can also enhance this feature by clicking on the Pages icon in the local business center to add even more detail to your page.

So that when they click on the map pin, they can see more information about your business, including images and text etc, even promotions. For example if you are in the USA you can even use the coupon feature to add to your map pin.

For example “10% off all Marquee hires in Mar”

Easy to follow steps and easy to use. However be aware that Google needs to verify your change and this can take a few weeks. But it is worth it.

Link to Social Media Marketing

If you link your Google Local Business Center marketing actions with a social media campaign, then you have an extremely effective marketing combination that can substantially counter any major competitors marketing budget.

Don’t Know How

If you don’t know how or want further information, then please contact us. We provide this as a service to our Hirezy hire software and rental software clients. But we are always happy to talk with other hire and rental companies.

By the way, HireEzy not only is the best hire and rental management software it also comes with all the embedded digital and social media marketing tools you need to conduct really cost effective marketing.
EMAIL Us – we are only too happy to help

16 Jan

Hiring strategies shift toward social media – Mass High Tech Business News

: Image by deanmeyersnet via Flickr

Hire and Rental companies have been in the main relatively slow to adopt to social media as a marketing tool.

This is despite the sector probably being one that could benefit most from using Social Media as a marketing tool.

Those Hire and Rental Companies who have adopted social media as a marketing tool have realized the benefits, particularly in lead generation.

The benefit of social media marketing is now becoming apparent to most business sectors, as evidenced in the article link below.

Hiring strategies shift toward social media – Mass High Tech Business News

Posted using ShareThis

HireEzy 2.1, business management software for hire and rental companies, makes social marketing easy for you – with its inbuilt and easy to use tools

Social Media Marketing Findings (biztipsblog.com)
Why Kodak Thinks You Should Use Social Media (kylelacy.com)

15 Jan

Party Hire and Rental Where to Target Your Marketing in the downturn

| 1 comment

Whether you operate your party hire and rental business in country is Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK or USA, there is one marketing segment that could provide some growth opportunity.

The target segment to consider focusing your attention on is families in the mortgage belt or suburbs. There are three key factors that drive this analysis:

Vulnerability to Unemployment Risks

The OECD has forecast that the most vulnerable labour groups are the oldest, youngest and unskilled. As a generalisation the mortage belt is generally made up of middle aged couples with either technical, trade or professional skills. Hence based on the most recent OECD forecasts, these are the least likely to face unemployment risks.

Interest Rates

Interest rates for mortgages across the board have fallen sharply over the last year. Some estimates show that this has meant that mortgage belt families have been able to free up a few hundred dollars per month. This saving to them is also being complimented by tax cuts in a number of countries.

Trend Towards Home Based Entertainment

There is a societal trend towards home based entertaining, rather than off premise entertainment. This trend has been accelerated by the recent global financial crisis.The home entertainment market is a target segment for party hire and rental companies. Another factor influencing the trend towards home entertainment. Whilst interest rates are coming down, so are house prices. So the overall sense of perceived wealth is declining, therefore home entertainment is seen as a low cost alternative to socialising.

A final point consideration in the potential growth of the home entertainment market is time. During the boom years, perceived wealth amongst home owners increased rapidly but at the cost of perceived time to spend with family and friends. Despite the increasing prosperity people seemed to work longer hours, unable to “find” the time to spend with family and friends. As we move into new economic conditions, how people make and spend their time will be worth watching. It may well create a new market opportunity for hire and rental companies.

Taking advantage of this segment is discussed in more detail in an earlier post Party Hire and Rental Companies could benefit from downturn.

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