Rent1 Equipment Rentals – A Drip Marketing Case Study
Challenge
The original agreement before upgrading online marketing package: Basic SEO: On-going search engine optimization Monthly reporting Checking and regularly building local citations Very basic link building campaign August 2014 – We were given a budget 8x larger than when we started In August 2014 Rent1 decided to increase their online marketing budget by 800%. They were seeing amazing results with basic optimization being done and came to the conclusion that they would decrease marketing efforts in other platforms like the Yellow Pages and move most of it to their online marketing campaign with Drip Marketing.
Solution
We were pushing to advertise on Google and Bing with a small budget as a test just so that we can show Rent1 missed opportunities where they don’t dominate. Rent1 gave us a fair PPC budget to work with. Our target was the lower mainland in BC. Onsite search engine optimization, which included: Speed optimization Meta tag optimization Duplicate content monitoring Internal linking structure setup and improvements Changing the architecture into a silo system with user intent in mind Copywriting on most important pages Creating and managing URL structure Optimizing code for search engines Landing pages Copywriting, wireframing, designing, and testing different landing pages Monitoring sales team Using custom numbers and an AI system to determine if the sales team is doing their job after we guide visitors down the sales funnel Offsite search engine optimization Basic link building Local citations Pay Per Click Ad Campaign (Google & Bing) Search/display network on both Google and AdRoll Facebook LinkedIn Website improvements Continuing edits where needed Tracking user behaviour Recording user sessions to see pain points while they’re browsing Heat mapping important pages to see if visitors are completing given tasks Landing pages Copywriting, wireframing, designing, and testing different landing pages Monitoring sales team Using custom numbers and an AI system to determine if the sales team is doing their job after we guide visitors down the sales funnel Email marketing campaign Running behavioural email marketing campaigns Personalizing marketing messages based on user behaviour Showing different messages to visitors who have visited certain websites Presenting incentives to call when a visitor is leaving in the middle of the sales funnel Viewing the browsing and conversion history of each visitor Completing the SEO audit We score each client based on overall SEO-ability. We look at key elements like content, indexation, accessibility, speed, and overall domain authority. Rent1 had clear areas where it could improve. Here’s a list of tasks that we had laid out for better search engine visibility: Increase the number of indexed pages (machine pages and all category pages) Increase the number of short and long tail keywords Increase conversion rates and overall revenue from the website We had to make sure we tracked everything because the main point of contact for visitors was going to be phone calls and not form submissions Increase local mobile search Some, if not most contractors need rentals fast so they search on their mobile phones. It was important to increase overall rankings on desktop as well as mobile rankings Making sure the website loads a lot faster Determining user intent based on search phrases Measuring and determining phone call conversion Tracking and optimizing top landing pages Using structured data to guide search engines Improving meta tags for better click-through rates on the search results page Benchmarking and tracking leads It’s very difficult to benchmark and track online marketing when most conversions happen over the phone. We decided that the best way to resolve this issue was to use a custom number on every single campaign. Our tracking system isn’t just meant to record calls for later review. Our AI system can automatically determine if a call is not going well. With triggers, we are able to send emails to important figures in the company if a sales rep, front desk clerk or an office administrator is having trouble with taking calls. As you can see, it’s very important to this client that all customers be treated very well on the phone. This data was a gold mine. For example, we found out that the agitation level was fairly high for most reps. When we pointed this out to our client, we were told that reps handle multiple calls at the same time so they need to finish the call and go to the next customer. We suggested a call centre where calls would go to a local company who can capture the lead and report back to the client. This way reps can spend more time with the customers. Their agitation levels have dropped significantly since then. Increasing the number of calls and conversion Increasing the number of leads was extremely important to us. We decided to run multiple targeted campaigns in Google AdWords with custom designed landing pages. Landing pages ranged from having a promotion on them to simply having specific equipment featured as the primary message. We also focused on changing key areas of content to include better copy, which performed really well. AdWords Campaign Rent1 had an AdWords campaign last year. Because of low conversion and lack of tracking, they decided to stop the campaign. Google AdWords has always worked really well for most of our clients so we wanted to try setting up a new campaign with best practices and see if we can increase ROI. Our challenge was that most construction workers, engineers and architects won’t fill out a form if presented with one. We decided to use a custom number for each landing page to track each lead dynamically. All calls were recorded and analyzed through an advanced system with our phone tracking software. We made sure ALL landing pages had relevant copy with the visitor in mind. Our ads all had great scent so that if someone clicked on a message on Google, they wouldn’t be confused on the page they were landing on. It’s also very important to keep the average CPC low with high-quality scores. We wanted the best position possible whenever someone was looking for a key phrase we were targeting. Over time our relevance increased with better copy and landing pages making the most profitable keyword $4.87/click in the course of five months. With Ad Extensions, we were able to make our sales funnel even easier to go through for potential clients. If our ads were compelling enough, they can call directly from search. During the course of five months, we were able to get 57 direct calls from search. We had 67 calls in total with both search and our landing pages combined. Adwords can be a black hole with your budget if you don’t know what you’re doing. We needed to make sure we had scent, great copy, excellent landing pages, the right keywords targeted and a proper way to track a sale from the top of the funnel to the bottom. Let’s look at our digital marketing plan for 2018-2020 At this point, we’ve become very familiar with Rent1. Our agency is helping with: UI and UX Video Software development Market research Because calls have been the primary source of leads with Rent1 (this will change), I am going to share call data for 2018 compared with 2017. Market research + results We run 100s of user tests with heatmaps, surveys, user recordings, and studied click data of 1000 visitors. A lot of eyebrows got lifted from what we discovered. It took some convincing, but we decided to: Remove “rental” from the global navigation links Reduce the size of the contact page and emphasize the phone number Offer a search option at the top. We didn’t hypothesize on why we should put a search bar at the top. We quickly realized that customers were selecting, “pick a machine” and getting nothing. Completely redefine the category page Revamp the individual product pages based on collected data over the last year We’re going to get into the details of what we’ve done in separate posts. A media strategy Before Drip, Rent1 had no real media strategy. We now have a whole new campaign for photos and videos. Here are some examples to help their customers and staff: We have a whole new content strategy which will be discussed on other posts with details. We will incorporate a lot of our media in social media and focus on value-added content on their blog. It’s going to be night and day compared to what you see right now.
Results
Organic traffic grew by a whopping 117%. The plan was to increase: The number of indexed pages Get those indexed pages to rank high Increase click through rates And have visitors convert with great copy Overall sales from organic rankings reflected the increase in traffic from Google. We were able to double the revenue from the website because of the visibility increase within Google. The total revenue increase from Organic traffic totalled more than $100,000 in less than 6 months. Our revenue numbers for Google AdWords were also impressive. Our first 6 months was a test run. We’re going to increase the budget in the New Year to reflect demand. Here are some of the PPC numbers, which are interesting: Spent $300 in August ROI was $3000 Spent $300 in September ROI was $7000 Spent $268 in October ROI was more than $10,000 Because calls have been the primary source of leads with Rent1 (this will change), I am going to share call data for 2018 compared with 2017. We’re looking at a 43% increase in the number of calls (1,687 versus 1,179). Our primary keywords are killing it nationally. For example, “excavator rental” is doing very well: The Visibility score is calculated considering a proprietary formula, based on the keyword rankings retrieved during the updates (done once a week). The score reflects the progress of your websites in search, across all keywords and search engines targeted in a project. Conclusion Rent1 was a great example of how a well-executed online marketing plan can pay off in the short and long term. With increased rankings, secured more qualified leads from search and a new pay per click campaign we were able to almost double the rentals compared to 2013. By March 2015, Rent1 intends to double its online marketing budget for even more leads across different cities in the lower mainland. 2019 update: We now dominate the heavy equipment rental market in all aspects (not just online visibility). Our agency has helped Rent1 become more than just a website. Their website is a hub for online media and valuable information. Our next few campaigns will be a little more hands on. With the help of the staff from Rent1, we’re going to create dedicated areas on the website for different industries like mining, city, landscaping, and contractors. These pages will then be designed and printed for potential high-level large clients, which will be hand delivered. The demand is there and we’ll be there to capitalize on behalf of our client.
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