INSIGHT: Scootering Scooter Rental Lead Generation Marketing Program

I transformed this scooter rental business into a $1M+ company with digital marketing and seo services that led to a second location being opened in Melbourne.

Scootering Scooter Rental Lead Generation Marketing Program Case Study by Paul D'Ambra Marketing Consultant
Summary

DIGITAL MARKETING AND SEO FOR SCOOTER RENTAL COMPANIES

I was engaged to provide marketing consulting to this scooter rental company in Sydney that included website re-design, SEO development & content creation. The work I completed led to record results and created a $1M+ rental revenue stream and the opening of a second location in Melbourne.

This six month marketing consulting project started in August 2019 & finished in February 2020. I overhauled their entire sales, marketing & brand development activities leading to more than 80 bikes being added to their fleet, maintained the highest average rental price in the market by more than 25% and got the site ranking for more than 70 high value keyword search terms.

Scootering Case Study by La Lente photo
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sales growth
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online search impressions
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page views
1 st Page
GOOGLE SEARCH
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Average rental price
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Paid TRAFFIC

THE BACKGROUND TO THIS CONSULTING PROJECT

Paul started Scootering in the middle of 2018 and for nearly 12 months relied on local students or online freelancers to try drive his business. He began spending over $2,000 per month on Google Ads to try and generate leads & grow his scooter rental business and had no real understanding as to whether the website was generating any real traffic.

 

Frustrated by a lack of growth and a workshop full of rental scooters he decided to contract me to provide my marketing consulting services for his Sydney business.

 

His initial thoughts were to drop the rental prices to match competition who were up to 30% cheaper and come up with social media promotional gimmicks to create awareness. Although, after a deep marketing analysis of the competitive scooter rental landscape I recommended a more measured, long term, approach that was focused on improving discoverability via digital marketing and improved search engine optimisation (SEO).

 

With a budget of less than $10,000 to spend on marketing, I constructed a marketing mix that included a new website design, seo development program, optimised Google My Business profile, revised social media usage, new Google AdWords Campaigns, changes to how the brand communicated to consumers and achieved listing on high profile websites like  Sydney.com.  

 

My focus was to increase credible online visibility, craft a strong brand profile and tap into growing scooter rental market trends that included the incredible growth of food delivery services like Uber Eats.

WHAT WAS THE MARKETING SITUATION FOR SCOOTERING?

Scootering had tried to do it themselves, then engaged various online freelance website designers and even local students to help with their marketing, website design and search engine optimisation. I conducted a deep marketing analysis of their data to reveal the truth behind the work that had been done; 

  • There was little to no website traffic & the owner wasn’t aware of this.
 
  • The business relied on Gumtree and Google AdWords to generate leads.
 
  • The business was poorly presented from a branding perspective.
 
  • Their unique selling propositions weren’t displayed prominently.
 
  • The business wasn’t ranking for relevant keywords and not even visible as a ‘scooter rental’ option in Sydney.
 
  • There were more than 20 bikes were sitting in the garage waiting to be rented.

 

So my marketing scope of work wasn’t just about website design but taking a look at their whole business operation to make improvements to increase their online presence but also convince potential customers to choose them to rent a scooter.

 

My work began in July 2019 and concluded early 2020, I worked across all aspects of their marketing and demand generation activities including Google / Facebook / Gumtree Online Advertising, social media management, seo activities and even conducted an audit of over 30 online rental booking platforms to help them move to automated online bookings.

THE RESULTS I DELIVERED FOR THIS SCOOTER RENTAL COMPANY

"Paul D'Ambra's marketing it’s a great way getting your business on the right track and you can be sure of great results. Paul it’s very honest and giving from himself more than it’s written in the contract.

I really recommend to anyone who would like to increase sales and find a better, easier and more efficient way of managing your business."
Paul Wojtek photo
PAUL WOJTEK
DIRECTOR - SCOOTERING
Scootering website design for scooter rental business photo

IMMEDIATE BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT.

The results I delivered for this scooter rental business were almost instant. The business started to get more phone calls and email requests to book scooters as soon as the new website was launched. Everything was being tracked and measured using Google Analytics and Google Search Console to prove the results. The website began to show improvements in visitor volumes but more importantly the % of visitors converting to a lead began to change very quickly.

Scootering Sydney website design by La Lente in 2020 photo
New website traffic growth after five months photo

INCREASED SCOOTER RENTALS.

Scootering was presented as the most professional, leading scooter rental company in Sydney, a trusted location to rent a scooter. My website content creation work focussed on creating new pages to help people learn about how they could rent a scooter to earn money, travel while on holiday and even simple things like getting a rider’s license. These pages helped the brand secure a broad range of search keyword positions very quickly.

Everything was cross-promoted on social media and Google My Business which helped accelerate the visibility for the brand. Within 6 months the business achieved top 20 Google search page results across over 200 different keywords and phrases.

 

 

FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE.

My search engine optimisation work both on and off page helped Scootering to quickly grow its organic search traffic and Google Page Rankings. It wasn’t too long before the brand began securing 1st page search results for more than 20 different keywords and phrases. I delivered this with a mix of content creation developed through consumer insight research and identifying specific target customer groups.

The results included winning the zero position on Google SERP for the term ‘Uber Eats Scooter Rental’ which meant the brand was outranking a number of established competitors, but also Uber themselves. 

 

 

MAINTAINING THE HIGHEST MARKET ASP

Scootering managed to hold an average rental price over $120 in a marketplace where budget rentals are available from around $80. Initially the business owners wanted to drop all their pricing, but our marketing development work not only helped maintain their pricing but grow the business, saving over $150,000 in just a few months from not discounting.

 

 

THE RENTAL FLEET DOUBLED IN SIZE.

Over the six month period the vehicle fleet needed to be increased to cater to the growth in rental demand. It doubled in size from 110 bikes when my work began to over 200 by the time the Melbourne location was opened.

 

 

A SECOND RENTAL LOCATION IN MELBOURNE.

With a successful business and marketing model developed, Scootering didn’t need to rely so much on paid advertising and their rental availability rate was less than 3%. So the owners decided to expand the business into Melbourne buoyed by their performance in Sydney. 

 

Here are some highlights from the marketing development;

GOOD AND BAD SCOOTER RENTAL COMPANY SEO

Scooter rental company responsive website design by Paul D'Ambra Marketing Consultant in Sydney

RECORD SEO RESULTS

As of February 2020 this scooter rental company was enjoying record levels of online visibility via their website, social media and Google My Business activations combined with the SEO development I had implemented.

Some of those highlights include;

FIRST PAGE GOOGLE KEYWORD RANKING

Even though the implementation was only a few months old the website was already achieving first page keyword ranking positions on Google Search. Examples include; 

  • Scooter Rental Sydney; avg #3
  • Best Scooter for Food Delivery; avg #1
  • Scooter Hire Sydney; avg #3
  • Uber Eats Scooter Hire avg #2.2
  • Uber Eats Scooter Rental avg #2
  • Rent scooter for Uber Eats avg #2.3

 

While all the other brands were focussing their efforts just on ‘Scooter Rental’, I took a consumer focussed approach and created SEO friendly content that was aimed at people that needed to rent a scooter.

Taking this approach meant the brand was getting found online by a wider variety of keywords that were less competitive, but just as relevant, to grow rental service traffic to the website.

Uber Eats Scooter Rental Google SERP Result photo

LOCAL SEARCH MARKETING

The other aspect I put a lot of focus on was local search marketing. I managed to get the scooter rental company to outrank even Uber Eats and other established brands in the area for rental searches.

It was the first time the brand was ever seen for these types of searches.

Local search marketing for scooter rental company for Uber Eats Scooter Rental photo

PROOF OF PERFORMANCE

To help the scooter rental company owner build his trust in the marketing efforts everything was tracked and measured using Google Analytics and Google Search Console. It meant the business owner could see exactly what was happening at any time and how fast the improvements were being made.

This even included making changes to the positioning of the business to focus more on motorcycle rentals to complement the existing scooter rentals being offered. I was able to implement new service pages that began to deliver search improvements for motorcycle related searches very quickly.

Scooter rental company keyword ranking report from Google Search Console February 2020

COMPETITOR TRACKING

I wasn’t content with just looking at the scooter rental company’s performance in isolation. I also used SEMRush to do competitive tracking and comparisons. 

This helped provide relative performance measurements to give the business owner confidence in the work being completed.

Competitor tracking for scooter rental company photo

SEO TACTiCS THAT CAN GET PENALISED

The scooter rental company owner decided to end the marketing consultant contract and continue their efforts using internal staff. One of the actions that was taken was to outsource their SEO efforts to another contractor. One of the first actions they took was to inject their website with more than 2,000 pages of motorcycle and scooter parts.

Why?

This tactic is aimed at gaming Google’s search algorithm by introducing content related to the product or service being sold by the brand. The idea is that it will generate greater traffic to the site & improve keyword ranking performance.

While it does improve website traffic, any visitor quickly leaves the site once they realise it isn’t legitimate and this leads to high bounce rates. This type of website engagement activity is treated by Google as an indication that the site isn’t delivering what people want. This effects site ranking over time and therefore becomes a false economy.

The other aspect to consider is these spammy looking pages reduce the credibility of the brand. As you can see. in the image on the right it looks terrible and would lead many people to wonder what they really do or sell.

This type of activity also creates the risk of receiving a Google Manual Actions Penalty that can lead to the site being removed from Google’s Index all together. These pages were visible to Scootering’s competitors so could have been an easy way for them to take action against the brand.

I alerted Scootering to the issue and they eventually removed the pages, but this has probably left the site with thousands of broken links and a large mess to clean up.

Example of scooter rental company trying to rank on Google scaled photo

This marketing project delivered incredible results and completely transformed this scooter rental business from a small operator with less than thirty scooters being rented to a fleet of over 200 and two locations trading in Sydney and Melbourne. The business owner decided to try and take on their marketing activities internally, but that led them down a path that nearly had them penalised by Google by using ‘spammy’ tactics aimed at achieving deceptive short term results. 

As of June 2021 they no longer enjoy as many first page results as they didn’t continue to employ the tactics I had implemented & new competitors have entered the market. They have now resorted to price-based tactics to match competitors & sadly their Melbourne location has since closed. They have expanded their fleet of rental bikes to include various models of motorcycle, but they don’t get found online for that & rely on paid advertising.

Business is tough but I am available to help solve that situation. I offer straightforward consulting tailored to your needs that will ease the pressure of competing in highly saturated segments and allow you to flourish. As the economic landscape continues to change it is important for business owners to implement marketing tactics that have medium to long term benefits that can build their brand reputation.

Paul D'Ambra - marketing consultant

Paul D'Ambra - marketing consultant

I pull everything apart to work out what is not working with your marketing activities. I'll then create a practical, action driven strategy to improve the results you are getting.

I will reduce your paid advertising spend, get you more organic search traffic & improve the ratio of people who look at your business but then decided to buy. I am a marketing consultant that can help a start-up, small business owner or six-figure medium sized business to deliver incredible marketing impact.

Whether you are a start-up or existing business, you may find yourself stuck and unsure how to execute to achieve your marketing goals.

Do you want more customers?

Do you want to grow beyond referrals or your existing clients?

I can help solve these business challenges by using clever marketing tactics.

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