hire leads

04 Jan

Renewing old hire and rental leads

If business is slowing down, then consider some form of lead generation.

One of the quickest and most effective is to go back through your previous leads.

Leads are previous sales inquiries that have not converted to a sale or booking.

Don’t be concerned that the inquiry may have been for a specific event that has past.

The key point is that they are prospects who have contacted you, therefore they have shown a propensity to consider hire or rental.

Secondly, unless otherwise stated by them, you have the opportunity to make contact with them again. Even if it is to seek permission to send information to them.

HOWEVER please check your local spam laws first.

The most cost effective way to do that is via email, or if you have the time try telephone or letters.

However email is probably the best way, it is quick and low cost.

More importantly you can track the contact through your leads section in HireEzy.

Here is an example:

Email Subject: Follow up from your previous inquiry

Dear Jane,

Previously you contacted Making Life Ezy about hiring (renting) some items for a function you were planning. If you are still planning the function or considering another function then we would love to be of assistance to you.

For your information here, I have attached a brochure of a special theme night packages we are offering.If you are interested in further information on these or would like to talk to us about other ideas, then please contact me.

Kind regards
Ron

Un -subscribe statement

Ensure you include an unsubscribe email link, so that the prospect can elect not to receive ay further information from you.

A note can be made in HireEzy against that lead, that they do not wish to be contacted again. Increasing leads generation especially in the current economic climate is an ongoing challenge, however the inbuilt tools of hireezy can make it easier for you.

HireEzy more information www.makinglifeezy.com.au

Read more about using free Google Marketing Tools as well.

31 Dec

A simple mind map of how to manage your hire or rental business

Some days the task list of things to do is overwhelming,

where to start, what to next, who should do it etc etc. For most small to medium business owners of hire or rental companies this is the daily reality. Stressful enough to think about as you drive to work, without the background radio comments of from dire predictions of economists and commentators.

Everyone will suggest to keep things simple, easy to say harder to do. But one very helpful way is to have a simple mental image of your hire or rental business. Here is one simple mind map.

How to use the map.

In simple terms, the reasons you undertake marketing is to create leads. Once you have a lead, you focus is on converting that lead to a sale or booking, as quickly and efficiently as practical. Managing your stock effectively is a broad term, but encompasses all things to do with your inventory, servicing, delivery and collection costs. Having the right stock, ready to hire at the right time in the right condition. Financials is an interesting one, what you do and how well you do it drives your cashflow and accounting transaction. You are in business to make money, what you do is how you make money, the two are intrinsically linked.

The final stage, manage your existing customers is often forgotten. Estimates on winning new customers range from 5 to 15 times the cost of maintaining an existing customer.

So as you drive to work, you break the broad problems you have down in to the simple stages.

Marketing to Create Leads: If your sales are declining, consider what you are doing to market to generate new leads? Thinking about it this way, enables you to quickly think about your current marketing approach. Are we web marketing effectively, or newspaper advertising etc. Where is the problem? With HireEzy you can quickly analyse your lead sources to identify problem areas. You can also read other posts on this site that suggest or discuss different marketing ideas.

Manage leads to bookings or sales: If you are getting the leads, are you getting the sales or bookings conversion, or are the dollar size of the hires relatively too low or are the taking too long. Again analysing sales using HireEzy can assist in determining where the problem lies.

Effectively manage your product assets: Such a broad area, with so many potential problems. So lets take an example problem – sales being lost because of insufficent stock. What is the cause, is there a sufficient inventory relative to current and forecast bookings, has there been a change in product demand, is too much of the current inventory not available for hire, due to servicing, cleaning or repair requirements, Where is the problem? Again use the analysis reports in HireEzy to identify the cause.

Financials driven by your bookings: What you do should drive your accounts. Not sure what your cashflow forecast is, then it is probably because your booking forecasts are not visible in your accounts. This is the most common problem facing companies who have an accounting package either separate from or being used to manage their business. Ideal for the accountants terrible for operating the business. This problem is solved with HireEzy as the accounting package is integrated into the solution. A confirmed booking creates an immediate accounting transaction entry.

Manage your existing clients: Back to feeding your market leads, are you getting word or mouth referrals or repeat business from existing customers? No, then look at some of the tools in HireEzy and the business improvement suggestions made in this blog, such as renewing old leads. Remember your customers can be your best marketers.

This mind map tool is just a way of helping to simplify you business, to make sense out of the myriad of issues and problems you face daily. Try using it and see if it helps you.

Making Life Ezy is the name of our company and the objective of our products like HireEzy, for more information go to www.makinglifeezy.com.au Available through out USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Singapore.

31 Dec

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:

As the volume of locality focussed searches for products and services increased (ie “beauty salons in Chatswood”), Google and other major search engines responded by adding local search functionality such as Google Local (now Google Maps). Quite suddenly, some competition began to emerge in the Australian directory advertising market.

Even Wall Street acknowledges that the days of printed directories like Yellow pages are numbered.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that advertisement spending in US print directories is expected to drop by 39 per cent in the next four years, the steepest projected decline across all local media categories, as customers migrate to the web en masse.

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)

Most customers research first on the net even for local products.

Trust in the internet as a source of information is increasing.

Search engines now offer local search functions.

Significant percentage of young adults dont use Yellow Pages at all.

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.

www.makinglifeezy.com.au

11 Dec

Is Branding worth the effort for Small Companies?

How much effort should small businesses put it to branding?

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”

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