Useful Tools
Updated – Is yellow pages still effective for marketing???
Increasing research in the US and Australia has found that the use of the traditional yellow pages is declining.
A survey in May 09 in Australia by Core data, identified that over half of the population DONT want yellow pages even delivered.
People are increasingly turning to the Internet to find information, even local information. Some figures suggest that this the use of on-line search can be as high as 80% of all information searches. The following citation from blognow.com.au, shows the impact:
Even Wall Street acknowledges that the days of printed directories like Yellow pages are numbered.
Dr Lynella Grant is the author of Yellow Page Smarts, she makes the points that relying on just yellow pages is now longer safe: (click any point below to be taken to the article – well worth reading)
Further proof, recently emerged that the recession may be accelerating the decline of Yellow Pages, where the Australian Yellow Page provider Sensis announced on 31 Mar 09, that it was reducing staff numbers by nearly 50 due to a large drop in print classified advertising.
So what to do?
Well the answer is to look at your marketing advertising mix. The Yellow Pages still has a role – but should it be the dominant element? There are alternatives now – the question becomes where to most effectively spend your marketing budget?
This question of balancing the marketing mix is becoming a challenge for all companies. It is no longer static. The Yellow Pages is a barometer of this change. The days of solely relying just on Yellow Pages has finishedfor some companies - we are in a different more social and connected world – where the marketing rules change almost daily.
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Worried about Social Media – in the 1930′s they did too
It is interesting how things change yet still stay the same. Is Social Media new, if not are the problems for business new?
Two great articles look at both questions, both well worth reading:
- The first proposes that Social Media has been around for over a hundred years. An excellent article written by journalist Ron Callari is “100 years of Social Media“.
- The second article is also definitely worth reading, if you are worried about Social Media creating problems in your business. With out ruining the great article written by Ken Burbary for you, I will simply insert the link here.
The Hire and Rental industry whether a party, event, baby, equipment, audio visual rental or hire company are ideally placed to take advantage of Social Media marketing.
If you are a Rental or Hire Business and not sure where to start?
Then contact us at www.makinglifeezy.com.au and we will be happy to help you.
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- Over 80% of Americans Use Social Media Monthly (marketingpilgrim.com)
- Business Is Always About Connecting (kylelacy.com)
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How to Design a Company Name, Logo and Colour Scheme
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At some point, usually at start up, every company has to think about it’s trading name and the image/ colour scheme it uses.
Getting it wrong can be a limitation on growth – or worse!
There is quite some theory behind naming, logo design and colour.
We have put together this list to help you get to grips with some of the theories.
Spending time on name, logo and colour is well worth the effort.
Examples of Getting it Wrong
Here are some examples of getting it wrong:
List of bad logo design’s and names
The Worst Bad, Ugly and Horrible Designs
What Makes A Good Logo?
Developing an Image
Logo Design – How to design a logo
Colour Theory – Theory behind Colour
Color Symbolism - What Different Colours Means to Different Cultures
Colour Considerations – What different colours mean for business
Thinking of a Company Name
Considerations – What You Should Consider
A Process – An approach to developing a name
Name Generator – Automatic Name Generator
SEO Impact – Think SEO Before You Name
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- Why Revamp Your Brand Design (wealthyways4you.com)
- Our logo through the ages (ycorpblog.com)
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Thumbs Down – Techo Twitter Posts week ending 11 Oct
Welcome to the Tumbs 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.
Over the past few weeks my blog posts have grown quite large so I’ve split my review into two, labelled the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down editions to highlight the best and worst of technology news to hit the streets over the past week.
This week in Thumbs Down I started to realise that people are going to think that I’m an Apple hater and I’m really not – in fact I spend every day developing products in an Apple owned product called Filemaker and I love it. Nevertheless, I am continually amazed at how much Microsoft cops flack for the bad things that they do and yet Apple are really screwing people over and people rarely speak out about it. You might have heard about a new law that the US Government are discussing at the moment to force blogs to disclose all the freebies that they receive from tech companies – an obvious poke at Apple who are rumoured to give selected bloggers free gear and early sneak peaks at their technologies and threaten to cut off their access to executives and devices if they ever say a bad word about them. This law will obviously expose all the wimps who are too afraid to lose their free stuff and don’t report objectively. Very funny.
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GREAT objective article, this is what MS was on about with cheap mobile apps – The iPhone App Store Gold Rush Is Over http://bit.ly/doOmM
This article details the struggles that developers are having when they commit a large amount of time to creating a significant iPhone app, such as a game. Apple, in all their ignorance, are alledgedly stuffing around in paying developers on time or at all, causing developers to struggle to make ends meet until they are finally rewarded for their work (with iPhone applications, Apple pays the developer in bulk a few times a year for their 70% of the application fee, rather than each time their application is sold). My comment in the tweet was making reference to the fact that they have gone on record as saying that cheap mobile apps, such as $0.99 apps, are not conducive to a heathly application marketplace to which there has been some pretty negative feedback in itself – personally I think Microsoft are sort of right on this one and there is a lot of talk about how there are 85,000 apps in the iTunes App Store and that this is amazing, but realistically all the iPhone developers are canabalising themselves and this article describes how in turn the developers are being left in the cold profit wise. Couple this fact with that developers are constantly getting their applications rejected for inclusion in the App Store with little feedback, delaying their launch dates and causing further financial pain as a result of loss of planned income and what you get is a real problem that is going to come to a head soon. I think that in about a years time, when better Windows Phone devices are on the market (with a far better OS than this one), legitimately competing with iPhone and providing a more balanced store with less junk and easier to find applications that have some worth and a priced fairly, this will either cause the iTunes App Store to either implode in infamy or more realistically cause them to dramatically change their policies and start doing things like removing applications that don’t sell well or restricting the amount of apps that can compete with each other, for example. It’ll be an interesting saga to see play out, that’s for sure. As an aside not, isn’t it VERY funny that bit.ly auto generated a web address to this article spelling the word “DOOM”. Fate, my friends.
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Wow I never knew about this, good article – Google‘s Abandoned Library of 700 Million Titles (Kevin Poulsen/Epicenter) http://bit.ly/34gIPk
Since this article came out, there was follow up news saying that Google were made aware of this article and the negative backlash that resulted from its publication and as a result were going to proactively attempt to upgrade the old USENET archive to make it as searchable as all of their other offerings. So, it’s an on the fence proposition at the moment, but nonetheless it’s pretty crap that the old USENET archives of information have been effectively closed off to the public by being unusable. For those of you who don’t want to bother reading the ariticle, USENET was an archive of news/comments/general information that predates news websites, blogs and Twitter. There is a lot of information in there such as old photos of company products, info about tech company movements from the 80′s and the like that would be interesting to researchers or other people looking to take a lot more of a detailed look into the history of a tech company. Google ended up buying this old facility for its information as part of their spending spree towards global domination in information resources. We’ll see what Google have or will come up with to restore this.
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Not again – Facebook testing redesigned home page http://tinyurl.com/ydonc7w #Neowin.net/Main
Each update to Facebook has been friggin annoying and has caused its users to have to learn how to use the site all over again. ‘Nuff said. Let’s hope that this next update won’t be as painful but personally I’m not optimistic.
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The best read on the internet I’ve found in a while, blogging irresponsibility, VC responsibility all covered here – http://bit.ly/3ojdgl
I personally appreciated reading this article as our company is heavily involved in Venture Capital funding to facilitate our future expansion – what this article details is how a person got on the ‘net and wrote a rather asinine article saying VC’s are ruining tech innovation, to which this guy responded and rightfully ripped the guy to shreads. What I thought would most interest my audience of readers is seeing a classic example of how bloggers posing as reporters can be destructive without their fact checking. For our company here on our blog, we have an make no illusion to the fact that we have our own products which we think are great for the Hire and Rental industry whilst maintaining a mostly neutral perspective on the tech landscape and writing to an audience that want to find out how the relevant things we talk about are consequently relevant to them. There are other bloggers who try to be news organisations in general and write with far less integrity than an objective reporter and this is where the problem lies in modern day reporting – the author of this article rightfully argued the point that the person he was blasting embarrassed himself by trying to publish his opinion as news on his news blog. In addition to this, the article is actually pretty funny to read as well. 
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ROFL! I wonder if Apple will make an ad about this – 85 Percent of Mac Switchers Forgot to Toss Windows PC http://bit.ly/mY385
Pretty funny statistic – More often than not, people are either buying a PC or their buying a Mac AND a PC, negating much of the rhetoric about Mac’s providing value for money over PC’s. I can understand why people are switching to Macs to escape the daily frustration of Windows whilst keeping a Windows PC on standby to use in situations where they don’t know how to achieve something on a Mac (or just can’t get a similar app that solves a business problem for the Mac as they can for the PC). For me personally, I found Mac OSX pretty daunting at first and it took me a while to learn all the different areas and achieve a comfort level with it and I’ve a developer who works with technology on a constant basis. Where you have to poke fun though is at the Mac vs PC’s ads – this article details that people are keeping Windows PC’s whilst being Mac users because Windows is what they understand and trust, for better or for worse. We’re all learning the new age of technology together and it’s pretty hard to keep up. You know what? We’re talking about making our next computer purchases being the latest Macs that come out next month and using both Windows 7 and Mac OSX on them, because we can, then we get the best of both worlds. It’s a pretty interesting space to watch at the moment and in the meantime, all the Mac vs PC stuff is just really lame, both technologies are really good and should be treated as such.
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The Risk Facing Social Media
Social Media marketing faces a serious risk to its adoption by business.
Many already question whether it is a fad? And if these risks are not addressed then it could well be perceived as a fad?
The hype that presently surrounds Social Media marketing has many of the hallmarks of the late 1990′s and its hype regarding integrated business systems.
The Chasm
Social Media Marketing has its basis in technology arguably web 2.0 tools. Therefore it is considered that some aspects of Geoffrey Moore’s, Crossing the Chasm (1991) could be applied to Social Media Marketing. (note image source wikipedia)
Early Adopter Stage
In life cycle terms Social Media Marketing for business is very much in its early adopter stage.
Early adopters, like us, are the enthusiasts who see the business potential. To businesses like us, we see the potential of Social Media marketing as a way to achieve our business goals. We are driven by dreams and aspirations for improving our business marketing using Social Media marketing without the need for definitive proof that it will work before we start.
However this is the stage at which results must begin to match dreams.
visionaries are easy to sell but very hard to please… because they are buying a dream…
This is where the real risk for Social Media lies!
It must be seen to deliver the results expected. And it is this expectation that it at the very heart of the risk facing Social Media marketing’s future.
Hype Setting Unrealistic Expectations
Social Media Marketing has certainly been hyped up in some many quarters as the new marketing approach for the new age. Whether deliberate or not, expectations are being set that Social Media marketing will deliver above average returns on marketing effort.
If visionaries can only achieve average results or arguably even slightly above average results, their perception may be that their Social Media marketing experiment has failed. Based on the concept that satisfaction is achieved when perception exceeds expectations. For example if you have really high expectations but perceive only above average results then you will be dissatisfied.
Metric’s Needed to Moderate Expectations
The second problem is the absence of benchmarks or metrics to moderate or help define a reasonable set of expectations. Moderation of expectations may be needed by Social Media, given the hype especially by those who advocating the wonderful benefits of “going viral”.
However there is an understandable paucity of metrics to gauge the success of social media marketing due to its infancy. Some research is being to emerge to help guide and even moderate expectation thinking. However such research is still limited, effectively meaning that a real risk exists of visionaries having unrealistic expectations of success hence being disappointed when those expectations are not met.
Risk of Focusing on Applications (Tools) Not Strategy
The next risk element facing Social Media marketing is the focus on tools (applications), ie Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Linked in etc rather than a coherent strategy. Twitter and Facebook’s dominance in the mainstream media may lead to some visionaries building business dreams on the basis of just using one or two of these applications. Such an approach to those of us who are beginning to understand Social Media marketing is fatally flawed.
Social Media marketing requires a coherent strategy with a defined purpose, such as increasing web traffic, increasing sales leads, improving brand awareness or customer retention. Flowing from the purpose objectives can be set. Knowing both the purpose and objectives means that the appropriate applications and resources can be determined. Whilst the absence of metrics (as discussed above) may limit the hardness of objectives this should not be used as an excuse not to create a strategy.
Pressure is On Social Media Marketing
Finally the pressure is mounting on Social Media marketing and with it the risk of perceived failure in the broader business community. In addition to the risks discussed above is the pressure coming from the volume of companies who are planning to undertake Social Media marketing. The Center for Media Research found that…
As Sean Carlton (former Dean of Philadelphia University’s School of Design + Media) from Clickz.com puts it many of these companies are creating a presence with out a strategy.
Bad Publicity will Create a Bigger Chasm
It will take time for Social Media marketing advocates to develop case studies proving the benefits, plus defining the metrics as well as providing the infra-structure of education, consultants, resources etc to teach the “how to’s”.
The clock is ticking though as the high volume of “newbies” entering the social media marketing space creates a real risk of bad publicity. Newbies who fail will be quick to tell the world, “oh we tried that and it didn’t work.” Bad news always travels faster and wider than good news, its human nature.
To cross the chasm, ie to start to become part of the main stream marketing, Social Media marketing needs third party referencing. The early majority, that segment on the other side of the chasm, look to others in their industry for proof that something works:
If some in the industry have been early adopters who have failed to be successful then word will spread. This will have the impact of slowing the adoption of Social Media marketing in that industry. Effectively deepening or widening the chasm depending upon your perspective.
Social Media Marketing is at a Cross Roads
Social Media Marketing has a future and it will in time become a standard component of marketing strategy. However it does face risks to its short term future from over hyped expectations and the focus on tools not strategy.
Greater emphasis needs to be placed on developing strategic frameworks/ guides and as well as metrics, case studies and other reference material to help support the successful use of Social Media marketing.
If you believe in Social Media, and we do, then we need to focus less on hype and more on the tools to help support its growth!
About Us
Making Life Ezy provide business management solutions with integrated web and social media solutions to the Hire/ Rental Industry. For more information email us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au or visit our web site www.makinglifeezy.com.au
Related articles
- Social Media and Socialising…Let’s not muddy the waters. (socialmediatoday.com)
- Establish the beachhead (marsdd.com)
- Why Social Media Measurement needs to Catch Up to Adoption (visinsights)
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Gold Coast Party Hire Suppliers and Party Ideas
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The Gold Coast is Australia’s Entertainment and Party Capital – Not just for Tourists but For Locals As Well.
Make your party something memorable!
Making a party a truly memorable experience is really quite easy given the range of party hire equipment available on the Gold Coast. Everything from costume hire, daquiri machine hire, arcade games, juke boxes and dancing stages with lighting effects, even confetti guns plus the normal range of tables, glassware, marquees etc.
To make it easier for you below is a list by category of the different types of party hire companies on the Gold Coast. Website addresses and social media account addresses (where available) have been included. So that you can read their blogs on party ideas, or view their You Tube videos for inspiration or even follow them on Twitter to get the latest in ideas.
Party & Entertainment
(A-Z List)
HireEzy, developed on the Gold Coast – is the World’s Choice for party hire software. Why because it is the most fully functional with inbuilt digital, web and social media marketing tools.
For more information contact us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au
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How to defend Brand Value in a Social Media World
Image by Damien Basile via Flickr
There has been a run of articles recently citing survey results etc of Corporations that have banned the use of Social Media.
Like most articles the question is posed as to why. Certainly on face value the reasons such as a loss of work productivity are cited and supported. But is there are another reason?
Brand’s Can be an Asset
Many Corporations have valued their brands and placed this brand on the balance sheet as an Asset. Under the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) this may be mandatory for Public Companies.
Why Accountants Want To Control a Brand?
Intangible Asset Value
Why Accountants want control over the brand is pretty apparent when you look at the figures below.
A brand is categorised as an intangible asset, and in the western world now intangible asset values can quite often be far larger than the tangible asset values of a company.
Future Income
If a brand is an asset, then by definition of an asset it is something from which future revenues or benefits will flow. Such benefits could be from revenues created from the brand or the value someone would pay to get the brand. Generally both are related to a calculation based on future cash flows.
Control
So if you were to have a major asset on your balance sheet that in some cases is your biggest asset, wouldn’t you want to control it?
But Who Really Controls A Brands Value?
The brands value may in some cases be the biggest asset of the company. The company may even think that it controls it – but do they? Who really controls a brand?
Before answering that – think about what is a brand really?
A brand is more than logo’s, trademarks etc. These are tangible representations of something more important. That is what people (customers, suppliers, staff and investors) think it is. People’s belief’s of the promise that a brand will deliver effectively define a brand.
There belief’s are largely driven by what they think the brand promises. Whether they believe that brand promise to be true though is driven by their perceptions of their experience when engaged with the brand in some way. This is where a brand can truly become an intangible asset. If that sounds vague then here are some explanatory examples:
A customer has created a set of expectations in their own mind of what a your brand will deliver to them. These expectations are purely based on what they have implied from your advertising or even what others have told them. Let’s say they have an expectation that your brand will deliver them a great service, but when they get it is only average- will they be satisfied?
An employee joins your company because they perceive it as a great brand to work for etc. But when they get there, their perceptions don’t met their expectations – will they be satisfied?
You could cite similar examples for investors who have expectations of returns or suppliers on what it is like to trade with your brand etc.
The short answer for each one is that they will not be satisfied and if they have a global soap box to make their views known, then in fact they begin to control the brand. Marketers have always claimed that a brand is in fact controlled by customers, but customers have never really had the power to truly effect a brand.
Social Media is a Global Soap Box
Pre – global media if people were disgruntled with your brand, well they could tell a few friends via telephone or email etc. But the distribution of their dis-satisfaction was fairly limited and with the power of TV, Radio and Print advertising brands pretty much had the power to effectively suppress the dissatisfaction. This was even the case if they decided to put something on the web, the SEO budget power etc of the big brands could drive the post in to page 300 of a search, so to speak.
But this is not the case with Social Media. For example someone with 10,000 twitter followers can repeatedly tweet their dis-satisfaction quickly and to a global audience. Such dis-satisfaction may be about your brand’s service delivery, brand as a place to work, brand as an investment etc. Whilst the later two may impact your ability to recruit or attract investors, the biggest concern is with damage to revenues.
You can not predict the impact of when or how destructive will be on the brands revenues.
This poses a real problem to risk management of a brand. Brand valuations are based forecast revenues with allowances for risk. But how big is that risk with Social Media is effectively un-quantifiable. This uncertainty then flows back in to brand value placed on the balance sheet and how much confidence investors and others can have in that figure.
Managing the Risk – Could Be Counter Intuitive
There is some evidence that companies may approach the management of such social media risk by limiting the use of Social Media use with in the company. But this could be the wrong way to approach the risk.
Here is the logic behind this thought.
If you control your social media presence through just your brand having just a company twitter account or face book account etc you risk becoming an impersonal entity. Why because you will be a single marketing controlled presence in a sea of individuals unconstrained in expressing their thoughts.
If however you allow your staff to have Social Media accounts both brand and personal (they will have these anyway) then you have multiple points of presence. Not all of your staff are going to be dis-satisfied many in fact could be very strong advocates. But it is deeper than this.
Your staff will create relationships in their social communities and with it some element of trust. Through your staff you are no longer an impersonal entity but a living brand of people. So if bad social media press hits, then through your staff and their communities you have the potential power to defend your brand.
Why- well let’s go back to the very basics – it is not what you say about your self that people really believe but what others say.
So if your brand is under attack from bad publicity and all your have to defend yourself is your “controlled” social media presence – ie what you say about yourself – well you will struggle to win.
But if you have allowed your staff through work and personal accounts to build a community then their comments will count with their communities. Their communities will trust your staff’s opinion and through that trust they well become allies in defending your brand.
It is inevitable for any brand that someone somewhere will be disappointed and will let the social media world know about it. Your best defense is to have as many social world allies (friends) to help defend you, and that may mean allowing your staff to be engaged.
So your best risk management strategy for your brand may be to let your staff be social
About Us
Making Life Ezy are the developers of Business Management Software with integrated web, digital market and social media for the hire and rental industry.
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Business Process Mapping – hire software
- Image via Wikipedia
If you are in the process of implementing hire software or rental software, or even just looking to improve some aspect of your business, then using business process mapping is a really good approach.
Business process maps can be as detailed or as simple as you want to make them.
If you are new to the idea of business process mapping or are simply looking for some tools to help, then this highly rated article from Marianne Franco will be incredibly helpful to you.
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More US Companies Using Social Media Marketing
The use of Social Media is increasingly becoming part of the marketing strategies and tactics of USA companies. Social Media marketing has real business benefits.
The benefits to companies particularly party rental and party hire, event rental and event hire, even equipment rental and equipment hire are real and there to be seized.
The following article in USA Today, explains how some companies are using Social Media Marketing.
Big List of Resources on How to Use Social Media
What Social Media offers to businesses of all sizes is amazing.
Business tools for a range of needs and functions from:
- collaboration,
- marketing,
- knowledge management,
- document management,
- sales,
- logistics, etc
But what are they and where are they?
Cameron Chapman made this post on Mashable, it is one of the best consolidated resource lists we have read. Not only does it list sites but also provides a succinct summary of what they do.
Click the link below to read it, it is well worth it.
HOW TO GUIDE: 60 Great How To Sites and Resources
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Managing Standard Package Offers
Many hire and rental companies offer standard packages for equipment hire, or even equipment rentals that include a bundled service.
But are they effectve?
What do You Know About the Packages Effectiveness?
This question relates to whether or not the package is being hired or rented in the frequency and quantity you anticipated. To know this you need to have access to information such as:
- Do you know how often a package is booked out in the last twelve months?
- Which month or seasons are the packages rented or hired in the most of least?
- Correlation of marketing effort (social media, sms or email campaigns) to package bookings?
- Are their combinations of packages that people book out? If so could this in turn be bundled in to a promotional offer package?
Knowing this information and more, can lead to deductions such as knowing that the most effective time to market package B, is in June and July as this leads to 30% increase in bookings. But marketing it in Dec and Jan leads to only a 3% increase in sales. Or knowing that Package C, has been marketed heavily yet it has not been booked out in sufficient quantity to justify continuing with it?
To start the process of analysing a packages effectiveness you firstly need to define the package.
Defining Packages
Hire and rental packages can take multiple forms. They can be a bundle of equipments for a specific purpose, the same or different bundle with a service – may be installation. Or you may even offer a complete turnkey solution package which includes everything includng planning, staffing or service delivery as well as the equipment.
If you do offer such packages then you need to define the package with all of its component equipment and services. HireEzy enables you to do this including packages that may include services or even sales items.
Allocation of Standard Packages to Bookings
Each defined package is allocated to a booking as a template offer, with all of its component equipments. Such packages can still be modified for each client booking to suit there specific need. This automation simplifies the whole process of booking out a standard offer, whilst enabling subsequent product offer analysis to be done.
What Event or Activity is Driving the Customers Booking
What is the customer hiring or renting the package for. Obviously sometimes this is obvious, but sometimes it is not. For example you may have a generic 20 person party rental package. Certainly knowing the frequency at which this package is booked out is really useful. But knowing which type of event the client is renting it for would be even more useful in marketing terms.
Is it for a corporate function? And if so what sort of corporate function? Many companies dont capture this information so hence may miss out on potential market opportunities.
Imagine knowing that the 20 person party pack has been hired out 25 times in the last 6 months, and 80% of these were for Small to Medium sized business staff functions.
Being imaginative you may determine that if you rename to a business function package you may increase sales. You could even based on your analysis change the package as per their most common variations. Or you could even go further and look at teaming up with a local catering provider and offer a complete solution offer traded under your brand with your handingly margin.
Information is the Key
The key to any good marketing analysis information of your standard package offers is information and teh ability to easily analyse it. HireEzy (hire software and rental software) provides you with the ability to not only manage package easily as bookings but also the detailed market information you need.
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How Rental Hire Companies can use Twitter
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Image by On Stage Lighting via Flickr
Hire and Rental Companies are increasingly finding Twitter as a brilliant lead generation tool.
Specifically in pointing people towards their Web Sites, Blogs or even You Tube sites.
Some studies have shown traffic increases of up to 100% using Twitter.
HireEzy 2.1 – complete hire and rental business software – includes in built Twitter integration which when combined with the fully integrated online web store and blog option, provides hire and rental companies with a powerful simple to use digital marketing platform.
Not sure how to develop your Twitter marketing plan for your business?
Then read this excellent article.
Twitter Launches “Twitter 101″ Step One Of The Business Plan
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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.
How to Use Social Media Tools
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Marketing Problem
Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO
Creating a Digital Marketing Platform
Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics
Marketing via Twitter
How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter
Marketing via Facebook
Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s
Marketing via YouTube
How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media
Marketing via WordPress
Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog
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Business Uses of Twitter – Taco Mac
Twitter is one of a number of emerging Web 2.0 social media marketing tools.
Some businesses have been creative in how they use such tools in their marketing promotion mix.
Hire and Rental companies can benefit in using Twitter for marketing their business. Although not a rental company – this article on how Taco Mac uses Twitter to successfully market their business is useful in promoting thought on how your hire or rental company could also use Twitter.
Remember Twitter, and other social marketing media tools, and fully integrated into HireEzy – making the use of such marketing tools a natural part of your business marketing.
Taco Mac uses Twitter to tweetup business | ajc.com
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Rental Sales or Hire Sales Management
1Many rental and hire companies often sell items either with a booking or as a standalone sale.
For example:
- Up Sells: Party Rental or Party Hire Companies may sell Balloons, Helium Gas etc
- Services: Tool Rental or Tool Hire companies may sell a tool sharpening service
- Solution Services: Temporary fencing hire or Fencing rental company may sell Safety or Warning Signs and the labor to erect both the fence and the signs.
- Disposal: Audio Visual rental or AV hire company may sell off old stock
Easily Manage Sales
What ever the type of sale, the process of the sale needs to be managed. HireEzy enables the sale process to be managed easily, whether a:
- Product, Service or Solution sale related to a booking or
- Stand-alone sale unrelated to a booking.
HireEzy enables sales of products, services or solutions to be added to any hire or rental booking agreement. Enabling a single invoice to be produced that incorporates both the hire or rental as well as the sale (including labour, services, products etc).
Or
Use the inbuilt POS system to quickly process sales of standalone items. Everything from labour, products, services of even equipment disposal.
All transactions are processed and automatically update the inbuilt accounts package. No double handling of data, no errors just results.
More Information
For more information go to our web site www.makinglifeezy.com.au or email us at sales@makinglifeezy.com.au
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Good News for UK Tool Rental Market
- Image by Toban Black via Flickr
After 21 straight months of decline the UK construction market has shown its smallest rate of decline.
The smaller rate of decline at least provides some glimmer of hope!
This is good news for the UK Tool Hire market which has also suffered as a result of the decline.
To read the full article in the Guardian click here.
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Cross hire or Cross Rental Management
Many hire and rental companies often find themselves short of stock to satisfy customer orders. To overcome this most hire or rent from another hire or rental company to satisify the order.
This is a fairly common process and most have pre-existing arrangements with other hire and rental companies that include price and may be even a percentage split on the rental or hire margin. However managing the cross hire or cross rental process can be an issue especially when large inventories are held.
HireEzy solves this by embedding a cross hire or cross rental workflow process in to the booking order. This workflow process eliminates errors and improves order management delivering a simpler and easier to manage solution.
Cross hire or Cross Rental reports are real time, and enable operations staff to easily determine forward future order requirements. This is particularly important in managing delivery lead times for items to meet customer order requirements.
When an item is added to an order and there is not enough stock in inventory to cover the order the uses receives a warning prompt.
If the user proceeds the item is then added and the item row highlighted Red. Also the over booked amount is entered into a field.
Once the item has been ordered from another supplier in the Cross Hire Management System, the item row turns green suggesting the item has been cross hired. Clicking on the question mark brings up details such as who placed the order, who was the item/s ordered from and any notes relating to the order.
HireEzy offers the hire and rental industry a comprehensive yet integrated software package packed full of valuable tools that will streamline your complete daily business practices increasing productivety and reducing costs.
Click here for more information or to trial the software for 10 days.
Presentation on Why Traditional Marketing Fails
The primary purpose of most Marketing for most Small to Medium Businesses is to generate leads.
However many of the traditional Hire and Rental Company marketing techniques and tools that have been the bedrock of the industry are now being challenged.
- Yellow Pages. Yellow pages is declining
- NewsPaper. There very existence is under threat
- Television. Advertising decline
The problem faced by traditional media is substantial and in some cases probably terminal.
To understand the problem traditional media faces, view the slide deck below.
Related articles by Zemanta
- New Survey: The Impact of Sales 2.0 Tools (thecustomercollective.com)
- Cost-Per-Lead Figures Vary by Vertical (marketingvox.com)
- Why Internet marketing is just getting started (mikemoran.com)
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Party Hire and Rental Companies Downturn Opportunities
Small to Medium Party hire and rental businesses could be set to benefit from the downturn. There is no denying that the world is heading in to uncharted economic waters. The issue though for all small to medium party hire and rental businesses is survival and identifying opportunities.
Home Entertainment Market
One such opportunity is the apparent growth of the home entertainment market. At first glance this may appear to be of little interest, but further investigation suggests it could be worth consideration.
Rising wealth over the last decade from both increasing property values and incomes led to an increase in away from home entertainment. People went to clubs, venues and events to celebrate, relax and enjoy. Not so anymore, people are staying home and inviting friends around.
This trend to home based entertainment has generated some interesting Corporate and Industry responses. The USA spirits industry provides an example of how you too could consider accessing this market.
To access this market change Spirits companies are chasing the home-entertaining consumer with a vigor, finding ways to aid their customers to re-produce their favorite cocktails they previously drank when they went out.
Accessing the home entertaining market means more than just creating awareness of your products. It means painting a vision to your target market of what they could do! Here are some examples:
“Bring Back the 70’s” – Invite your friends and family around for a Barbeque, dance to Juke Box in the backyard under the party lights. Let us help you bring back the fun – XYZ party-hire
“Entertaining at Home Theme Packs” – Make your next home entertainment event the best night of your life with our “Entertaining at home theme packages”. Themes for every occasion!
Marketing such packages could include a combination of letterbox drops, newspaper advertisements, television advertisements. However by far the cheapest remains digital marketing such as on your website and emails to your customers. Even consider using social media and other digital marketing ideas. Articles below explain how to use Social Media and Digital marketing.
HireEzy, hire business management software, has the tools to enable you to do your own emails campaigns to your clients. With the full web option, you can even update your own website yourself, saving time and money. It also improves your web site ranking the more frequently you change your web site information.
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 www.makinglifeezy.com.au
How to Use Social Media Tools
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Marketing Problem
Hire Rental Advertising Considerations
Why Traditional Marketing Fails
Yellow Pages Versus SEO
Creating a Digital Marketing Platform
Creating a Digital Marketing Foundation
Hire Rental Web Lead Statistics
Marketing via Twitter
How Rental Hire Company can use Twitter
Business Reason to Use Twitter
Marketing via Facebook
Using Facebook for Business
They worried about Social Media in the 1930′s
Marketing via YouTube
How Rental and Hire Companies can use YouTube
Big List on How to Use Social Media
Marketing via WordPress
Why Blogs are Effective for Small Business
Why Small Businesses Should blog
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Rental cars Competitiveness to Increase
This post discusses if there are opportunities for the smaller vehicle hire or smaller mixed hire and rental business, that has a small vehicle fleet?
Current Situation
One of the many flow on effects of the downturn is that major Rental Car companies are holding on to their vehicle stock longer. Car rental companies have previously relied on the credit provided by the Automotive Car giants. Such credit lines are no longer available or at least until such time as funds are provided from Government resources.
Compounding the problem is a decline in car rentals, particularly in the corporate and tourism markets.
Corporates are not only cutting back staff but also on travel. This cut back has flow on effects accross the hire and rental industry. As Corporates cut back – not only the Car rental, but also the taxi and limousine markets feel the effects. All three are related suppliers of transport services to the corporate sector. As the market shrinks, all three will begin to discount fares or hire charges to maintain cash flow. Car rental companies with older stock may have greater room to move on discounting rental fees. But such discounts may need to keep pace with the discount rates being given by the alternatives – taxi’s and limousines. Limousines drivers are slashing their charges, in some cases being only marginally more than the cost of a taxi for the same trip.
The tourism sector is also declining. This will further reduce car rentals. Whilst domestic tourism may increase it is unlikely to provide a significant boost to the car rental market.
So where is the opportunity for the smaller vehicle rental operator and/or mixed rental hire business?
Those rental businesses with a good local clientele may be best positioned to survive the downturn. Whilst longer term rentals may decline, the demand for short term rentals of specialist vehicles (trucks, utilities etc) may increase. See post on growth in home repair market – Construction, Tool etc. Specialist vehicle rental companies such as wedding limousines etc may also suffer increased competition.
Pro-active marketing to your clientele with not only specials but examples of use would be effective. For example – Time to clear up the garden? Then make it easier to take the waste to the disposal site with our weekend gardeners special – a 1 tonne truck or ute for $x per weekend.
With HireEzy creating marketing material such as this is easy. And it is even easy to email it to your clients. HireEzy has all your vehicle hire needs in one software package. Go even further and use HireEzy to manage your on -line vehicle bookings all from the one package.
HireEzy is a product of Making Life Ezy, a company committed to positive ideas for our clients no matter what the economic conditions.
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