In a recent post , we discussed how the downturn in the American economy was leading to a substantive downturn in the $175 Billion corporate meetings market. 

Driven by companies slashing their conference, event and major meetings budget.  Such budgets incur not only event equipment rental and event hire costs, but also travel, accommodation/venue costs.

Surveys indicate that over 60% of all companies intend to reduce their spending on meetings next year.   See earlier  post in this blog – titled Why tough times should benefit the hire and rental industry

One factor that is concerning is why!  Many companies recognize the importance of holding client and staff events and meetings.  However in the current climate, many shareholders and Government Agencies providing stimulus funds perceive such events and meetings as lavish junkets.  Companies and Corporations are “sheepish” about defending the business value, hence opt to cancel them.

Now a coalition of event and meet industry- including event rental and event hire companies, as well as planners and organizers are fighting back.  They have formed a coalition to lobby the USA Government about the benefits of events and meetings to the USA economy and USA Corporate Health.

The “Keep America Meeting“ campaign provides on line information about the business value of the industry.  Furthermore it includes an online petition to be presented to politicians.

This initiative of the event industry is welcomed, and should be seen as a role model for other event and meeting industries is similarly effected countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK.

Making Life Ezy suppliers of the most innovative event and party rental software welcome the coalitions initiative.

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

Reminding clients the day before the booking is due for collection can reduce your no show cancellations.

If a client does not appear for an appointment, that costs a business money. It’s a missed opportunity for the organization unless a punitive “no-show” policy is put into place. An SMS is a polite, unobtrusive way of delivering this reminder.

For Companies that hire services or even equipment a no show is simply lost revenue.

Most hire and rental companies even if the hire or rent equipment are effectively selling time.  If that time is lost, it can be regained.  For example, if a client hires or rents a service from 10am to 12 pm and doesn’t show, then revenue for that time slot is lost.  Unless a walk in customer appears there and then or another customer can be brought forward.

Even rental of equipment is impacted.  If a client confirms a booking of a equipment for the day and then doesn’t show the sale for that day is arguably lost.

Therefore taking simple cost effective measures to reduce booking cancellations is worthwhile.

People Quicker to Respond to Text’s

It is not just the cost saving that drives SMS effectiveness it is people’s attitudes to text.  Research by USA Telecommunications Company Sprint has shown that people respond quicker to text’s than voice mails.

all age groups are more likely to respond to a text message more quickly than a voice message. Predictably, among adults under 30 years of age, 78 percent say they respond immediately or within minutes to a text message. Even 54 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds said they respond to a text

Integrate SMS in WorkFlow

For hire and rental companies, SMS is integrated into HireEzy. Simply opne the client booking, click SMS, icon, type in the text you want to send and transmit.  The SMS message is then automatically recorded against your customer record.

SMS is an effective tool in that  for a few cents, can reduce lost booking revenue of multiple dollars.

Using SMS with HireEzy is easy.

SMS credits are available from us, at discount rates.

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

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• Vlingo Research: 94% of Teens Use Mobile Phone to Text (debaird.net)

Not just in managing bookings, but in marketing, sales it even has on inbuilt online store!

HireEzy made by Making Life Ezy is World’s most innovative leader!

As one client in recently put it, “we have been looking for twelve months to replace our old system, your software is years ahead of anything else on the market”

So why is HireEzy so far ahead of the rest!
Companies now have three domains that the need to manage the:

Physical site – managing rental and hire sales on site including point of sales;
Web site – managing rental and hire on line leads and bookings; and
Mobile

sites- albeit sales staff operating off site or people working from home or remote offices.

HireEzy provides one fully integrated solution to enable this to happen!

This is the reason why we are growing so fast globally. Businesses want a fully flexible solution that meets there real business needs. HireEzy does that! It is not just about the flexibility but the true cost saving, by eliminating mulitple systems and replacing it with one.

Many customers cite savings in excess of 30% of related operating costs. Plus because of the inbuilt digital marketing and sales tools, many claim to have substantially increased sales.

So even if you are on older platforms, dont worry we regularly migrate customers off older systems to ours so that their historical records are transferred across in to your new HireEzy system.

Here is a short overview of some of the functionality included in HireEzy.

Marketing- Customer relationship management
- Customer transaction history, including damages
- Customer contact records
- SMS marketing and reminders
- High Graphic brochure production
- Integrated web content management option
- Integrated online catalogue option
- Product Marketing brochure production
- Product Combination brochure production
- Inbuilt email for brochures
- Lead Source identification and analysis
- Management Marketing Reports

Sales and Bookings- Equipment Sales
- Equipment Hire
- Equipment Availability
- Calendar view of equipment bookings
- Sales lead management
- Process credit card payments
- POS integrates to most hardware
- Professional high quality quotes
- Licence Scanning to customer record
- Quote to Invoice conversion
- Deposits and Bond management
- Damages and waivers processing
- Long term hire and Cross hire
- Hire Item Packages suggests and manages sub component hire items
- Existing Customer discounts
- Management Sales Reports
Inventory- Bookings generate warehouse pick slips
- Stock purchasing
- Service and Maintenance scheduling
- Service and Maintenance history
- Inventory levels by product
- Bill of Materials for combination hire items
- Management Stock Reports

Delivery and Collections- Bookings generate delivery requests where delivery requested
- Delivery schedule planning
- Complete integration with Google Maps for delivery planning
- Integrated collections planning with delivery
- On-site servicing or inspections requirements can be integrated in to route planning
- Deposits and Bond management
- Damages and waivers processing

Finance and Accounting- Bookings create accounting transaction records
- Payroll option
- General Ledger
- Profit and Loss Statements
- Long term hire monthly/ period payment processing
- Links to Ezidebit for 3rd party collection of period payments
- Financial Management Reports

Technical- Operating systems Windows XP, Vista and Mac
- Minimum requirements Pentium III 500Mhz
- Network up to 250 users

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

HireEzy is the innovation leader for the global rental and hire industry!

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.

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

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

Let’s take a simple example of a Party Rental or Hire Company.

A customer has come in to hire a Spit Roast for the weekend, value say $75.00

Items that may also be of use to the same client, could be serving platters,  carving knives, a condiment holders, an electric meat warming tray etc.

The spit roast hire price, with gas may be have been $75 for the weekend.  But offering the related items may increase the hire price well over $100, an increase of 33%, which would be nice if it could be achieved across all orders.  The 33% figure is taken from anecdotal evidence received from our customers.

So here are some suggestions on how to do it!

Start from the Customers Perspective:

Customers when they are looking to hire or rent something from you have an idea for an event, party or task that they going to have or do.   The vast majority of sales staff merely respond to the customers specific item requests.

Good practise is to aks the client what are they planning to do?

Engage them in a conversation find out what they want to do, it is just a conversation it doesnt hurt.  Once the you or your sales staff have determined what the customers event, idea or task is, then you can begin to suggest other items.

Approached in a conversational tone the customer doesnt feel threatened by a hard sell.  For example:

Sales Rep:  Oh so your having a Spit Roast  for your son’s graduation at you place on the weekend.  That is great, how many people are you expecting.

Client:  About 30 people

Sales Rep:  Wow that is a lot, have you got tables and chairs, cutlery and plates etc?

Client:  Not sure

Sales Rep:  We have a lot of clients who have Spit Roasts parties like you are having, so we put together this Spit Roast package based.  It includes all the common items people were renting from us but we have bundled it in to a specially priced package.

This approach to offer a promotional package, is actually about turning the vast range of choices a customer has into a product offer.  Whilst people talk about liking choice in truth most don’t.  Giving them a “product” that suits there needs eliminates the need for them to think and the risk to them.

In relation to risk, consider the pyschology of a client.  In the above example if the father comes in to hire a spit roast for the Son’s 21st.   His selection of what is needed is based on his planning, so if he gets it wrong they chances of being “stirred up” by his friends and family are quite high.  However if he selects your “productised offer”, then he has in reduced the risk of him being a source of jokes at the event or task.  In effect you are doing him a favour!

Creating a Promotional Package

So how to create a promotional “product”.

HireEzy (the world’s most innovative hire software and rental software)  provides both the analysis tools and in-built marketing tools to both determine what should go in a package and the production of a high graphic brochure (digital or print).

Creating these packages is incredibly easy, but the value they can provide to your business can be exceptional.

Generate Leads

If you do produce a promotional pack, then why not send it out to your previous clients.  Use the inbuilt customer data base to send out emails with the brochure attached to your clients.  Make sure you include an opt out option for them on the email.  These tools for in-built in HireEzy are exceptionally easy to use and the results some clients have obtained have been impressive.

Web Crossing Selling

Research shows that over 50 % of new leads come from the web.  But most hire and rental companies have very limited sales presence on line.  Even fewer have an ability to cross sell or up sell to on-line customers.

HireEzy includes a fully integrated on-line site that allows customers to place booking requests directly into your system.  Not only does this substantially reduce your costs it also includes in-built workflow solutions that enable you to up-sell or cross sell more to such customers.

Summary

The aim of cross selling or up selling is to increase the revenue per client.  As discussed achieving 33% increases in revenue per sale are common.

Achieving this increase requires a combination of good staff training and a supporting hire software or rental software system, such as HireEzy.  The key point is that Sales Staff up selling or cross selling can be assisted by the use of HireEzy.  The result is that you can achieve substantial improvements in sales per customer.  For more information for to www.makinglifeezy.com.au

Many small businesses talk about branding!   But what do they really mean by branding?

Brand

A brand is a collection of your symbols, images and even customer experiences. Consider the MacDonalds bill board advertisements:

A simple billboard with the Mac Donalds logo and the words “Loving It”

The advertising says nothing about price, products or locations, rather as a billboard advertisement in it own right it is really serving as a prompt to your memory.

Why Brand and is it Worth It?

Major Corporations have invested heavily in branding over many decades, for a number of reasons such as ability to charge a higher price, that it will carry them through tough times or that it makes customers more loyal.  But is this true?

Brand Translates to a Price Premium?

Brand marketing has really been the foray of the major corporations. In some ways brand marketing was meant to translate to customers being prepared to pay a price premium. But consider this:

Would you pay a 20 to 30% price premium to buy a known brand plasma TV from a reputable well known branded store? Or would you buy an unknown brand from another store who offered roughly the same specifications and warranty, for 20-30%?

Despite what most people say face to face, the reality is most people will buy the second one.

The real truth is that the power of brands has been declining for some time as has the ability to charge a price premium without significantly losing sales or market share.  For more inforomation one good book to read is The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

Brands as Insurance in Tough Times?

Previously Corporations traditionally invested heavily in their brands, as a form of insurance to carry them through when tough times, what the Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila, called mis-steps. [1]  However as Nokia also found out, it is insurance than no longer guarantees results.  Nokia estimated brand value in 2002, was $30bn, next year (2003) failed to produced want customers wanted and so Nokia lost $6bn in brand equity. [2]

Brands Build Customer Loyalty

Building brands meant focusing on building customer loyalty. However Jean-Noel Kapferer, Professor of Marketing at HEC Paris, Graduate School of Management makes the point that marketers have sort the holy grail of customer loyalty by restricting their choices [3].  The problem is customers are no longer loyal.

customers .. more fickle than ever, established brands are vulnerable and new ones have a real chance of succeeding….. Consumers are continually looking for a better deal, opening the doors for companies to introduce a raft of new products.

Brand as an Asset

Yes if you were bigger, then the power of your brand can add to the intangible asset value  of your company. That is the premium a company is prepare to pay above you actual earning multiple. However intangible asset values have received some short to medium term collateral damage from the Global Economic Crisis.   The effect of this collateral damage will be to contribute to a further short to medium term erosion of the power of brands.

So Where to Focus your Brand Marketing Efforts

There is one discrete little phrase in the opening definition of a brand used in this post “customer experiences”.  For small businesses this is the real key – for this is where sales leads come from through satisfied customers word of mouth.  Sales leads are the life blood of small business and primary purpose of small business marketing.

Keeping Your Promise

I have heard it said (not sure by who) that “your brand is your promise kept”.

For Small business I think this is the best way to look at a brand.  For example if your differentiation in the market is your service, rather than the products you offer, then your promise (brand) is going to built around your service offering.  You want your customers to experience that service positively and then have them share through word of mouth their endorsement or validation of your promise.

Such positive word of mouth in small communities or within industry sectors spreads.  Especially so these days with Social Media.  The converse holds true as well, dont keep you promise and you can guarantee the word will spread.

So therefore in terms of brand marketing, the real expenditure should be on your systems, processes and people to make sure that they all assist in ensuring that they deliver the brand promise that you have made.   Hence the question becomes only one that you can answer – should your priority of expenditure be in to high end brand logo’s, brand advertising  or in to your people, processes and systems needed tosupport your promise?   Only you and your resource capacity can answer that question.

Consider Social Media as Your Major Marketing Channel

Social Media has been said to be the great brand leveller.  Why because traditional media advertising effectiveness was directly related to how big your marketing budget.  Social media is not the case, marketing effectiveness on Social media is dependent not on your budget (well not to a great degree) but more on how well you engage with your customers/ prospects.

Brands have a disadvantage on Social Media of their own creation.  Brands have put their brand value on balance sheets – its an asset.  Brands perceive Social Media as a risk, they are cautious – have a need to “control” the marketing.  The problem is social media is not controllable by the brands it is controlled by the consumer.

There is only one way to control your brand on Social Media

Consistently deliver your promise – each and everytime.

Where to Focus Your Brand Marketing

It is simple deliver what you say you are going to do!  To this make sure that your people, your business processes and systems enable you to deliver the promise.  If you are an equipment rental or hire company then our business software certainly will help.

If you do this then people will spread the word as they have always done.  Given the growth of Social Media “the word” can now be spread faster and wider than ever before – both good and bad!

References

[1]Surowiecki, J. The Decline of Brands, published in www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/brands_pr.html

James Surowiecki is the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”

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!

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!

]]> http://www.hireezy.com/index.php/294/rental-and-hire-company-web-lead-statistics/feed/ 1 http://www.hireezy.com/index.php/1662/party-hire-and-rental-companies-downturn-opportunities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=party-hire-and-rental-companies-downturn-opportunities http://www.hireezy.com/index.php/1662/party-hire-and-rental-companies-downturn-opportunities/#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:28:45 +0000 HireEzy Research http://blog.makinglifeezy.com.au/?p=7 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.

”The fact that people can transfer some of their entertaining to the home provides us with a certain amount of insulation from the economic downturn,” said David Ozgo, chief economist for the Distilled Spirits Council. “It’s not that our business declines, our rate of growth slows.”

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

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