Category Archives: Car Rentals
PPC vs SEO
There is a debate in the industry around the benefits of using pay-per-click (PPC) adverting instead of search engine optimisation (SEO) as your main source of website traffic. While I feel that there are many benefits of search engine optimisation to me as a business owner PPC can be rewarding in so many ways over SEO.
Here are some interesting points to be aware of;
- PPC traffic converts at 2.03% versus 1.26% for natural traffic
- PPC visitors spend about 10% more money on your site than naturally found visitors
- PPC visitors stay on your site 29% longer than naturally found website visitors
Here are my thoughts on why these stats are as they are
With PPC you control what phrases you want to appear in Google for, with natural search (SEO) you dont have the same control over these search queries. In some strange instances your site might be found for search phrases that are not related to your business at all but the search engines have tagged your website as having content relevant to this.
For example, you can state in PPC that you want to show for a phrase that directly relates to your product, for example “dog collars” and then when someone types in “looking for dog collars” your site comes up at the top of Google ready for that person to click, visit and then buy.
The reason I believe PPC visitors stay longer on your site is that they know what you have is what they have searched for and now want to know more about your website before making a commitment to buy from you. They are just checking you out more before they spend their cash with you…
The reason people spend more from you is an interesting one, is it because the PPC visitor is a more serious purchaser and hence has more to spend than the naturally found website visitor.
My final words, PPC gives you more control on who see’s your business online and where your business shows and doesn’t show. It typically gives your business an instant boost of traffic due to the fact that you can show in google today, tomorrow and the next day as long as you are willing to pay for the traffic you get. PCC also gives you the ability to test product prices, collect feedback and gather really quick information due to the ability to send alot of traffic to your site via PPC advertising. It’s all good food for thought…
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
More website sales tips
Credibility
Credibility is key so make sure you site conveys messages of confidence; ensure that you have testimonials from customers on your site so that you can give the people visiting your website confidence in your company’s ability to perform to their expectations.
If you don’t have any testimonials, please don’t make them up! That would be just kidding yourself and lying to your customers. Go ahead and ask your current customers for testimonials, if your products and services are really that great, your customers will be more than happy to send you some nice testimonials.
One approach I have used in the past is to send my customers an email asking them for a testimonial and giving them some lead questions like: how did you find our service? would you recommend our services to others? what benefits have you gained so far from working with us? how long have you used us? etc.
These lead questions make the testimonial easier for the customer to just fill in the gaps and send it back to you.
Everyone is busy out there, working harder than ever before in business so making this as painless as possible will give you the biggest chance of getting a response.
Once you have this information, assemble the testimonials into categories if relevant and then place them on your website. Get them on the home page so that new visitors see this information straight away!
The perfect testimonials have photos of the customer, the customer’s website if relevant, as well as a contact number. If you do place this information about the customer on your website, please ensure you seek their permission first.
What’s in it for me?
When a visitor first arrives at your website they are looking for indicators that you have what they are looking for. To ensure they can see these indicators it is really important that you make it very clear what you are selling or offering.
A lot of websites have “Welcome to” and while this is very polite, it does nothing to ensure that the client sees what you have to offer instantly. What I recommend website owners to do is to remove the “Welcome to” and replace that with a main heading.
Say for example you are offering “Walking Tours in Auckland” I would advise my customer to ensure that was the main heading and it was clear and visible to all that entered your site.
At the end of the day you have to “Scratch the itch” of visitors that come to your site, by having your main offering in big bold headings it ensures they see “What’s in it for them” straight off the bat.
Your photo is worth having a look at
Having your photo on the website works well to really personalise the website experience. It helps reinforce to visitors that there is a real person behind this website and it also indicates that you are happy to stand behind your offerings.
I also believe it helps the sale process because at the end of the day people buy from other people, not from websites!
If you can bring your photo and personal approach into the site it will bring in more sales.
People like to see who they are buying the product from.
Your location does matter
Make sure people know where you are located, if you are selling products and services, people want to know that you do actually exist, you are contactable by phone, email or even by fax. At the end of the day, people want to be able to see that you are a real company with a real person behind it. These factors go a long way to reassuring visitors your products and services are in fact real!
Bring people to your site but only when it’s ready to sell for you.
You should be marketing your website to customers as much as possible. Get in touch with a marketing company that knows how to market your brand and site effectively.
Look for a creative marketing company (like us!) that will help you not just in your marketing of your site in Google but can also help you with your website.
There are many ways to market your site but Google AdWords in my opinion is the best method to instantly have customers banging at your door; but as I said above, make sure your website is ready and armed with tools to aid your sales numbers.
There is little point in having a marketing plan with Google AdWords if your website has major selling flaws. Get your marketing company to guide you through making your website sell more. If you have a marketing company now and they don’t offer you assistance with this, then go out and find a new one!
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Car Rental Marketing Online
Here is a really simple marketing plan for any car rental business to follow.
We have a number of clients who have been growing using this Internet plan.
Step 1
Design your website so that your home page is designed to meet your main objectives. Break your objectives down into main areas and ensure these are placed on your websites home page in a clear, well thought-out layout.
Step 2
Have a page for each objective, for example if you have trucks to rent then have a page entirely dedicated to trucks. Discuss the benefits and features, include the sizes available, have a video showing how easy it is to drive, park, load furniture, include testimonials on the page to add creditability. Don’t be afraid to include a lot of information about the trucks. People can elect to read it or not. Let people know if you include free kms, trolleys and/or blankets. In this case more information is better.
Step 3
Make sure you have your websites set up for search engine optimisation. This is still key to driving visitors to your front door and into your wallet! Make sure you look at other companies that have worked with rental car companies as this will give you an advantage as these search optimisers will know how to attract more customers to your site having worked in this area in the past. Make sure you ask for evidence that they know what to do for your business to help make it grow.
Look at how we have generated leads for a client over the course of the last three years.
Step 4
Include an advertising campaign – look to use Google, Yahoo and MSN to drive more business your way.
So, there are four steps to get your website working for you. It’s marketing for car rentals 101. Start today and build more customers, sales and leads tomorrow.
If you want a tailor made marketing plan for your car rental business or for any business please give me a bell, I am happy to assist you.
Take care…Cheers.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Five website tips for car rental companies
Follow these five guidelines for increasing your leads.
The car rental business is a very competitive space. In order to attract and obtain more customers I recommend a number of items for you to consider if you want to generate more sales and leads.
Make sure your homepage is not cluttered. Think about your main objectives (which are to gain leads and sales from visitors) and ensure your booking form or search form is located on your home page so that visitors can start on that journey of finding a rental vehicle.
Make sure your contact number is placed on your home page and even consider having your entire location on this page so that people can see exactly the location of your business… this can be helpful if your rental business includes truck hire, or is not dependent on places like the airport for your main revenue stream.
To add credibility include some testimonials on this page from people in the past that are your fans!
Look to add a real support option (a live person) into your website in the form of live chat function. Research has shown a connection to the business from within your website will increase its sales by up to 30%.
Make sure you make the most of the social networking opportunities that exist today. Place a connection to your Facebook and Twitter accounts directly from your home page.
For more tips and advice on ways you can generate more business from your website, join my newsletter or give me a call so that we can start working on your site together to generate more sales.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
Online marketing for car rental companies
Discover a marketing plan that grew a rental car business by 1800%.
The Internet is full of companies advertising themselves in search engines as the company to use when looking to rent a vehicle. Yes, it’s a crowded space, and many have gone down the slippery slope of competing for business by cutting their rental costs per day (especially within the car area) where the larger companies have thousands tied up in stock and must look to discounting just to empty the yard! It’s a competitive area and one that must be managed carefully if you want to make a splash. But there is hope, we have managed to find thousands of leads for our clients using our creative marketing models.
Here’s how…
I have been working with rental companies for around five years now and over this time we have tried many ways to find opportunities to grow businesses. We started off like most do, with a search engine strategy to ensure we had all of the ingredients in place for search engines so that they could be found by Google, Yahoo and MSN (now known as Bing).
The method in the early days was to optimise their website and display all products and offers, ensuring they had all their offers and specials at the time nicely placed on the home page. This method worked for a while but we ran out of home page space with these traditions and the sites just become a clutter both to manage and to surf around.
I can only imagine what site visitors thought at the time – we were just overloading them with offers for specials and deals for vans, cargo trucks, cars, people movers, minibuses etc, and it was not working to the levels we were happy with. We then thought we just needed more visitors to the site, so we started an advertising program using Google’s platform. We soon found out that having more people visit wasn’t the solution, the problem in fact was due to the confusion and clutter we had on the home page – people just could not see the woods for the trees!
The question now was, how can we increase our leads and sales without having a home page include all the information needed for each customer type? What we did then was create a new creative marketing model to direct these customers to sites that closely matched their requirements. We did this by using the models below all bundled up into a web strategy:
- Landing pages
- Sales pages
- Advertising with Google, Yahoo and Bing
- Search engine optimisation
- Website Optimiser
- Live support/chat
- Facebook profile & brand advertising
- Automated customer signup process.
Line chart showing growth for one of our clients.
The results not only spoke for themselves, they were almost too good to be true. This marketing method worked and we were able to track the progress of this business and over the course of four years build up the sales from the Internet.
If you would like to know how you can grow your rental company to the levels seen above please contact me using the details below.
Dave Lemmon
Business Development Director
Redcow Marketing
Phone: 04 2935846
Mobile: 021 425 692
