Marketing your business for results

When marketing your business, you need to think of the overall purchase funnel concept and look at how people search when they are shopping for something, according to David McBee, internet marketing consultant with DavidMcBee.com, based in Olathe, Kan.

The purchase funnel outlines the steps consumers go through from awareness to purchasing. There are basically three main areas of the funnel: The top is the awareness stage. The middle is the consideration stage. And the bottom is the conversion, or action, stage.

“At the top of the purchase funnel, you have everybody and you are trying to make them aware of your brand. It is an awareness play. A lot of rental companies don’t play in the awareness portion of the purchase funnel. I think it is important to get your brand out there so people can recognize the name of your business. It helps with word-of-mouth,” McBee says.

Rental companies can take many actions to raise awareness about themselves, such as having a professional website and placing their logo on their equipment, trailers and trucks. Those are just a few ways to brand their business. “However, there are some things they can do online that are higher in the purchase funnel, such as social media,” he adds.

When it comes to social media, McBee says the most effective posts follow the three Es. “Nine out of 10 of your posts need to be either entertaining, educational or engaging,” he says.

That being said, “no one goes to social media to rent equipment,” McBee says. “Some people expect too much of social media. Social media is about creating relationships so that at some point in the future when they need your service, they will rent from you or recommend you to a friend. Social media is the equivalent to social networking, such as when you go to the Better Business Bureau. You are not expecting to walk away from that with 10 sales. You walk away from that with 10 new relationships that someday might turn into sales. People put time, effort and money into social media thinking it will make the phone ring. It will not.”

That is why, for rental, McBee says, “you have to have a presence at the bottom of the funnel.”

The purchase funnel outlines the steps consumers go through from awareness to purchasing.

Years ago that would have been accomplished by having an ad in the Yellow Pages. “Today that is being at the top of a Google search. They absolutely have to be there — showing up on the first page of Google, usually in the top three positions — because that is where people go when they want to rent equipment. They go to Google, type in the words or service and ask for a provider,” he says.

As McBee points out, there are technically three databases when you go to Google.

Paid search. “This is for those who are paying to be at the top. The paid section is determined by who is willing to pay the most for a click,” he says, noting that paid search works on a pay-per-click model. You pay whenever someone clicks on your ad.

Google local. “This is the maps section. The local section is mostly based on your geography. If you are on the south end of town and the person looking is on the north end, even though you would serve them, you will have a harder time ranking compared with those businesses that are closer to them,” McBee says.

Organic. “This section is all about content, content, content. You have to have photos of all the products on your website, name the photos with the words of the product the photo is of, have product descriptions — 40- to 80-word descriptions of what this product is and how it can be used, what it is good for, etc. It is about describing the product in great detail and having authentic, unique content on your website. You cannot copy and paste the information from the manufacturer. Some might not do a search for the word but for the solution they want to achieve. For instance, I might type in ‘install underground fence’ in my search — like one of those dog fences. If you have a trencher on your website that says, ‘Great for installing underground cables,’ you will have a better chance of ranking,” he says.

Having a lot of positive reviews helps you rank well, too. “All things being equal, the one with the most positive reviews will rank higher,” he adds.

The other part of the search engine optimization (SEO) story is having a blog on your website. “If you have a blog in which you are answering rental questions, such as how to aerate a lawn, when to aerate a lawn in the fall, etc., and providing 700- to 1,000-word original content articles on your website, Google will like that. Google will try to present you higher than your competitor because you are providing more value to the person doing the search,” he says.

McBee, who has worked with many rental businesses over the years, says a common mistake that rental operators make is they think, “Everybody knows me, nobody clicks those paid ads and they will scroll down until they see my name and click me.”

“They have no idea how many opportunities they are missing by not being in the paid section,” he says. “There are tons of people who are clueless about your business or perhaps have never rented anything in the past. If a potential customer does a Google search and your business is not at the top, but one of the larger rental companies is there, that person will go to the larger company because it is easier to find and easier to rent from that operation.”

An interesting statistic McBee shares is that “most people who are doing a search on Google go past the paid stuff and look at the free stuff unless their search is of a commercial intent,” he says. “In those cases, 64 percent of people click on the paid ads. If you are shopping for something, you are more likely to click the paid section.”

McBee also notes that many are doing searches on their phones, which impacts how searches are done.

“If you are not playing in the paid search, you are missing out. If you have a good paid search campaign, you can be at the top.” — David McBee, internet marketing consultant, DavidMcBee.com

“When you do a search on your phone, which most customers are doing, you have to scroll down three or four times to get to the free section. Google is smart. They have figured out that the real estate at the top is what makes them money. If you are not playing in the paid search, you are missing out. If you have a good paid search campaign, you can be at the top. I tell people that SEO is like going on a diet and paid search is like plastic surgery. Diets work, but they take effort, commitment and time. Meanwhile, you can pay a plastic surgeon for their services and in a matter of days you’re thin,” he says.

That is why McBee recommends that “if a rental operator has $2,000 to $3,000 a month to spend on advertising to put it all here at the bottom of the purchase funnel because those are where the people who are saying ‘I need that product’ are,” he adds.

Do you tackle this in-house or hire it out? OK, so you have decided to go the paid search route. Should you do this in-house or hire someone to handle it for you?

“You can hire it out way cheaper than you can hire someone to do it full time,” McBee says. “Rental operators did not get into their businesses to do SEO or marketing. You should have someone else doing it, but you should hold them to a standard where they can prove their efforts and what it costs to hire them are resulting in more than enough sales to warrant the cost. A good search agency, a good partner in this world, can do this for you.”

McBee has seen many rental operators who try to run their own paid search system and do their own SEO. “Usually we see that their campaigns are full of holes and full of mistakes that cost them a lot of money. Or they are using Google’s AI to help them build their campaigns. What they don’t realize is Google’s goal is to get them to spend more money. It is not really to help them rank higher. Sometimes the advice is to up their bid. Rather, my team’s advice is to say, ‘No, you only have five ad groups. You need 50 ad groups. You only have 500 keywords; you need 1,500 keywords. The more specific you build out the campaign, the cheaper and more effective it is,” he says.

Does that mean to forego other marketing avenues? Definitely not, McBee says. “For rental, I say you should max out what Google has available. Then you start adding on other areas like social media or organic SEO so you can rank in the free section,” he says.

McBee is a fan of direct mail because it is very trackable. “You can put a special phone number, QR code or special offer that helps you track the results, but the question is who are you sending it to? For a tool operation, are you sending it to homeowners because you are trying to see if they want or need your equipment? With any legacy media — be it direct mail, radio or television — you are targeting so many, perhaps a million people in a city, but only a smaller amount of those people really need to rent what you have. There is a lot of waste,” he says.

That is why he is prone to the internet side “because you are only targeting a smaller number of people who have shown an interest. That upper funnel still has value because it is getting your name out there. There is value in that, but fundamentally, being at the bottom of the purchase funnel is the most important place to be,” he says.

So, McBee says, to start with the fundamentals of being at the bottom of the purchase funnel with paid search. Then use other avenues to enhance those efforts. Whether it is being on the radio, running a spot on television, sending a direct mail piece, offering promotional items or developing personal relationships with potential customers and ancillary businesses (caterers, wedding planners, corporate planners and other rental operations). All can help. The key, he says, is to start with the basic that has a track record of delivery — paid search.