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

You tube is a greatly under utilized resource for hire and rental companies.

You Tube can be used for a variety of purposes such as:

Risk Reduction:

Reduce OHS and Public Liability Risk:

Upload safety instruction video’s for clientsand Contractors/ Staff on how to safely use hire equipment.  With HireEzy you can include the link to the safety instruction video with the client booking documentation.

Reduce Product Damages:

Assembly and Installation instructional video’s can be uploaded.  Often your supplier will have these, so it is simply a case of uploading the video.  Incredibly simple with HireEzy, as the instructional video for each specific item can be uploaded to you tube with one click.  

Reduce Customer Dissatisfaction:

 If a client can not assemble something, then generally they will blame you, before they blame themselves.  You need to make it easier to show customers how to erect or use things.  Showing through a video is far better than handing them a set of written instructions, it is just a fact of human nature.

Increase Revenue:

Youtube can be a very effective lead generation tool or sales reference site.

Examples

We have created a site on you tube which shows examples of how different companies are using You Tube to address each of these business requirements.  Click Here to Go to Our YouTube Channel

Remember HireEzy provides you with a powerful tool to integrate Web2.0 productivity tools like You Tube in to your hire and rental business processes.

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• McKinsey and Web 2.0 (arnoldit.com)
• UShow.com – Share Videos Using Tags (killerstartups.com)

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

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

For example:

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

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

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

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

HOW TO: Create Online Video That Works

Posted using ShareThis

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

About Us

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

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

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

Reduce Marketing Spend Yes or No?

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

The simple answer was no!

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

Green Shoots of Growth

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

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

Low Cost Marketing Options

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

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

Achieving such increases though does depend on doing some basics:

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

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

Making it Easy

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

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

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

Follow us on twitter

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

 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. Industry professionals such as Kevin Maguire, President of National Business Travel says ” I have been in this business for over 40 years and I have neer seen anything like this before”
The issue at hand is not that there is a downturn, that just has to be accepted, but rather what to do about it.

The hire and rental sectors most impacted would be event hire, event rental, av hire and av rental, with some flow over in to the party hire or party rental markets. There are some potential solutions.

Event Solution versus Event Product provider.

If you are a provider of products to the events, ie you react to orders from marketing departments or venue organisers, you may be in a difficult position. Because you are effectively removed from the Corporate decision makers who make decisions on whether to hold events or not. Often the first thing you know about it is in your sales figures as the orders dont come in.

However if you offer event planning as a service to support the hire or rental of your products then you will be better placed. The reason why you will be better placed, is that your engagement with the Corporate decision makers will enable you to understand what their company is doing and more importantly why.

Why is important to know? Whilst some companies will be adamant that the cuts will be made, others will be less rigid. The corporate person you normally deal with will generally be keen to see events re-instated, as often it is an important part of their role. If you can help them by assisting them to sell the business value of holding events then not only will it aid you in potential sales it will most definitely aid you in gaining a long term relationship.

Selling the Business Value of Events

So if one of your market segments is the corporate event marketing then ask yourself the question can you sell the business value to them of maintaining or even increasing their event budgets?

If you can not, then do you know management consultants, meeting facilitators etc who also target the same market. Remember many of these consultants are also impacted by the downturn. They are often key participants, organisers etc of such corporate events. Such consultants are specialised in selling business value.

Meeting with them can assist you in understanding the key issues and focus. Consider the information you gain from the meeting, is there an opportunity for you to partner with them. Ie is there a mutual value for both of you to be gained from such a relationship?

Finally a downturn is an opportunity for some a threat to others, it depends upon your attitude.

HireEzy is committed to helping our clients turn the downturn in to a business opportunity.

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

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!

Fully functional business management software for Hire and Rental businesses PLUS full integration to the Web and Social Media Marketing.

Given the increasing global interest in HireEzy.  Making Life Ezy, the developers of HireEzy are now seeking expressions of interest from companies interested in becoming the Sales and Marketing agent within their country or province/state.

The partner program adopted by HireEzy ensures that partners are well rewarded and supported for their efforts.  The partner model emphasizes collaboration and openess of communication to achieve the best results for both HireEzy, the partner and the customer.

To find out more please contact sales@makinglifeezy.com.au

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

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

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

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

Top 20 SEO Tools

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

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

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

]]> http://www.hireezy.com/index.php/218/predicting-the-downturn-winners-in-the-hire-and-rental-industry/feed/ 0 http://www.hireezy.com/index.php/69/party-hire-and-rental-where-to-target-your-marketing-in-the-downturn/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=party-hire-and-rental-where-to-target-your-marketing-in-the-downturn http://www.hireezy.com/index.php/69/party-hire-and-rental-where-to-target-your-marketing-in-the-downturn/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:12:14 +0000 HireEzy Research http://blog.makinglifeezy.com.au/?p=69 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.

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