Search for a car rental service in your city/town and you will find many. This might be good for customers but not for the owner of a car rental business as more competition equates to decreased market share. In order to defy the competition and start growing your car rental business, you will have to implement effective marketing strategies. This post is power packed with key car rental marketing ideas that can propel your business to a new level. These ideas are:
1) Improve Your Car Rental Website
Even though creating any generic website is a relatively easy task, optimizing it for high conversions is a different game altogether. Generating more leads from the existing site traffic requires handling certain elements. A website is said to be successful if its conversion rate is higher. To calculate this metric, let’s have a look at an example: If your car rental website receives 200 visitors per month but out of them, only 10 people call or book a car, it means that the conversion rate is just 5%. Some essential features that can boost this metric are:
a) Customers who are looking to book a car instantly should be given the option to do so directly through your website interface.
b) Phone number should be provided on the header of your site’s primary page.
c) Mobile device optimization for your website should be ensured so that clients using mobile devices do not leave your site due to page size adjustment concerns.
d) Site must be swift in its loading time so that potential customers do not move over to the site of your competing business.
e) Best features of your business like awards, recognition, testimonials and other accomplishments need to be displayed in the right spot to grab the trust of visitors.
2) Take Your Car Rental Website to the First Page of Google
It is estimated that when a user initiates a search query on Google, he mostly interacts with those results that appear on the first page i.e. there is just a 10% chance that he might go to the second page. Hence your car rental website won’t receive a lot of organic traffic from Google search results if it is not on the first page. This makes it crucial for you to look for techniques and different methodologies to position your website within Google’s top 10 results. But in order to achieve such rankings, you must handle SEO (Search Engine Optimization) well. You can easily explore free materials to learn more about SEO online. Hiring an SEO service provider is another secure option for improving the SEO performance of your website and for getting more bookings.
3) Pump Content to Pump Visitors
Publishing high-quality content regularly can be a low-cost and rewarding marketing strategy for your car rental business because when you post content regularly, your website will appear more frequently on the search engine results page for a greater number of keywords. This process will produce more traffic to your website which can drive in a lot of car bookings passively from search engine traffic. To produce content, you can start researching different topics closely linked with your car rental services. Once you consistently start producing such content on your website, you will be able to see an increase in search engine traffic to your website which will definitely increase your revenue.
4) Optimize Google Business Profile
Google’s “Google Business Profile” [also called “Google My Business” (GMB)] listings are prominently displayed in the vast majority of Google’s local search results. When creating a Google Business Profile, it’s important to include as much relevant information as possible, such as the business name, hours of operation, address, photos, phone number, and more. It’s because they’re a reliable source of generating new clients from your local region. Not only do these profiles show up in regular Google search results, but they also make their way into Google Maps. Since Google My Business offers a great advertising opportunity to generate local leads, you should not only create a GMB but must also take all steps to optimize it in order to get your car rental business to be shown more frequently on Google.
5) Consider High-Quality Paid Advertising
Marketing a business through paid ads is an effective strategy to see leads coming in quickly for a business. If you start paying to advertise your car rental business online, you won’t get the same quality of results from various platforms as only a few platforms are effective in providing good results. Google Ads is the most recognized and high-performing paid ad network while Facebook ads network is next to it. To get positive results from paid ad campaigns, make sure to develop a good understanding of the fundamentals of ad management before starting your ad campaigns. Using the services of a digital marketing agency can give good results with your paid ads strategy.
6) Send Out a Press Release for Your Car Rental
Even today, most businesses fail to see the benefits of creating and distributing a press release. It is a common fallacy that press releases may only be used to provide some announcements related to the business. It’s just a fraction of the overall benefits rendered by a press release. Using a premium press release syndication service to distribute your press release makes it much easier for a business’s content to get published on major news websites like Yahoo News, the Associated Press, Digital Journal, many Fox news affiliated sites, etc. They are not only a great tool for building brands, but also for improving your sites’ Google rankings via the high-quality backlinks earned during distribution across many authority sites.
7) Start Building Your Social Media Audience
People are spending a lot of time on social media and this is the reason why you must make your business presence there. Social media is a place not just for socializing and making new friends, but also for generating leads and driving business growth. However, this can be only possible if you have the necessary perseverance to build up a following on social media platforms. If you rush your social media marketing efforts, you might not see any noticeable results. The good way out for social media marketing is to first focus on creating quality content for the first few months followed by increasing your marketing efforts. Local Facebook groups also present a good opportunity to know and connect with people from your region.
8) Rope In Influencers to Get Your Business Promoted
Marketing products and services through people who have a big following on social media platforms is the crux of influencer marketing. All those people who have social media followers in the range of a few thousand (called influencers) are good prospects to promote your car rental business. Search social media profiles for finding such influencers from your city/town succeeded by enquiring about marketing collaboration with them. Once you land business promotion deals with such influencers, you can easily advertise your car rental business to all those local people who are followers of these influencers.
9) Catch Big Fish (clients) with LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the best platform for the majority of marketers targeting B2B audiences and higher-level management executives of companies. LinkedIn is also a great place to get top-notch and premium clients for your business from any region or city around the world. You can use LinkedIn to connect with owners of big tour and travel companies, event organizers, etc who may frequently require car rentals. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, are nowhere close to the professional reach of LinkedIn as a result, you won’t unnecessarily waste your time pursuing cold clients.
10) Start Increasing Your Referrals
Word-of-mouth advertising is one of the most revered marketing methods. A simple but less efficient way to do this is to ask your customers to let more people know about your business. However, in order to catalyze this process, a good way out is to provide referring coupons or some other form of incentives to your customers so that they can get some or the other form of profit by referring your car rental to their friends or relatives. With this strategy, you can grow your customers by using the efforts of your current/previous customers.
11) Use Inexpensive Items as Rewards for Promotion
The demand for custom-printed products is on rising and one of the reasons for this trend is the use of custom-printed products for promoting businesses and services. Just getting low-cost items printed with your company’s name followed by distributing them to your customers is an easy step towards advertising your car rental service. Most common products for merchandise marketing include custom printed calendars, pens, mugs, diaries, etc. As these products have some monetary and utility value attached to them, people find them useful and this opens a window for creating a brand impression of your business.
12) Lets Emails Help Grow Your Business
A common misconception about “email marketing” is that it involves spamming thousands of people with unwanted messages. If you want to expand your customer base and business reach, email marketing is definitely one of the right ways to do so. If your company actively works towards gathering the email addresses of its present customers and of visitors coming to your car rental website, it can develop a list of thousands of targeted customers to whom it can send offers and new announcements anytime. Though it is true that compiling an email list is a time-consuming process, the long-term benefits are way better. Therefore, you should set up email opt-in forms and place them strategically on your website and social media profiles.
13) List Your Car Rental Business on Selected Directories
Creating your business profile on a wide variety of trustworthy and high-ranking directories such as Yelp, Nextdoor, Manta, and so on, can work extremely well for getting more customers for your business. The majority of these top websites provide free company listings while having the option of premium upgrades as well. To come across such high-ranking websites, you just need to type keywords related to car rental business on Google followed by evaluating the top 10 search results shown by Google.
14) Start Video Promotions
YouTube’s established reputation is one of the key reasons why videos posted on this platform tend to quickly rank in search engines. For this reason, you should also start creating and uploading videos for your business on Youtube as this will cause an increase in the number of views and leads for your business. For better results, produce videos that address solutions to low competition keywords (at least 5,6 words long). With more videos being posted online, accordingly the number of views to these videos and leads resulting from these videos will also start increasing.
15) Use Traditional Offline Advertising
More money is nowadays spent on online marketing because of the ease of tracking and lower cost than offline marketing. Yet, there are many businesses that utilize both online and offline marketing together to get the maximum benefits out of their marketing plans. Placing ads in newspapers, magazines, billboards and distributing flyers, and pamphlets are some common methods that your business can apply as part of its offline marketing strategy.
16) Sustain Good Reputation Online
Managing online reputation is a key marketing component in ensuring that a business doesn’t lose customers due to a low or negative reputation. People can easily make decisions about buying products/services online by going through reviews of businesses online. Hence it is true that the likelihood of someone utilising your service will depend on the discovery of positive reviews about your car rental business on Google. Therefore, it is very important that you become proactive in asking your clients to put out reviews online if they are satisfied with your services. To pump up this process of getting reviews from customers, you can also offer good incentives like discounts and gift cards.
17) Start a Customer Loyalty Program
Give away coupons for discounted rides to your customers so that they can avail of your service for the next occasion or can handover this coupon to any of their friends who would like to avail of car rental service.
18) List On Various Car Rental Portals
Do a search for top car rental portals on Google and make your business profile on such portals so that you can open a new medium for getting extra leads for your car rental business. Apart from this benefit, listing your car rental business will also provide niche-related backlinks to your site which is an influential determining factor for good SEO of your site.
19) Shake Hands with Tour and Travel Operators and Travel Guides
You can associate your car rental business with tour and travel businesses in order to get more customers consistently. You can offer commissions to the operators of such businesses in order to get them to refer your business. The same process can also be done with travel guides in your city/town.
20) Hold Campaigns on Car Driving and Safety
Your business can organize car driving and driving safety campaigns in order to get more people to take note of your car rental business. You can announce your car driving and safety campaigns in local newspaper ads to generate much-needed attention. You can also approach local clubs and charities to announce free safety and driving lessons. You can also teach car driving as an added service in order to open a new channel of revenue.
21) Grow Your Business with Travel Guides
Make a list of all the prominent locations in and around your city followed by creating travel guides on them on your website. Such travel guides will attract many people who are considering visiting your city and therefore, you can also promote your car rental service to these people on the same blog posts. As these people will be new to your city, you can sell them many add-on services by partnership with different businesses, in order to grow your overall revenue.
22) Wrap Up Vehicles with Advertising
You can advertise your car rental business through your vehicles wrapped with your business ads. You can also pay other vehicle owners to display your business advertising on them. These vehicles can become your mobile advertising units as they will promote your car rental services even while driving on the streets.
23) Partner with Car Repair Services
Any person leaving away their car for repair in a garage will most probably not have access to their car for a few days. You can utilize this opportunity to advertise your car rental business to them by asking the garage owners or car mechanics to refer your business to such people whose vehicles currently need repair. In exchange for this, you can give some commissions to these car mechanics or garage owners.
24) Get Your Business Promoted Through Various Planners
Be it, wedding planners, event planners, or planners of any other occasion, you must make them familiar with your car rental business so that their customers can utilize it. In order to increase your chances of getting more customers from this group of people, you can add a few luxury cars to your portfolio as they are more in demand for special occasions.
25) Open Affiliate Advertising Opportunities
You can delegate the promotion of your car rental business to other people if you open up an affiliate program for your business. All the people who are affiliated with your business will promote your business to get some commissions from their promotion efforts. In order to get more affiliates ready to advertise your car rental business, you can join any big affiliate marketing network like Commission Junction, ShareASale, etc.
If you find this list of car rental advertising ideas useful, do let us know in the comments below along with asking any doubts or giving feedback.
