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.
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.
- Website design & development.
- Website page content creation.
- Keyword research and analysis.
- Competitor analysis and comparisons.
- Brand story and unique selling proposition development.
- Facebook and LinkedIn social media profile optimisation.
- Google My Business profile optimisation.
- Integration of Google Analytics & Google Search Console data.
- Online profile set ups across Bing, Yelp, Sydney.com & other leading sites.
- Creation of in-store signage & other materials.
- Sorting and organisation of all business materials, contracts & assets.
- Google AdWords revised campaigns and advertising set ups.
- Online booking system research and development.
- Social media management.
THE RESULTS I DELIVERED FOR THIS SCOOTER RENTAL COMPANY
I really recommend to anyone who would like to increase sales and find a better, easier and more efficient way of managing your business."
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.
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
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;
- Vehicle fleet increased from 110 to over 200 scooters
- Maintained an ASP of $120 vs the market at $90-$100
- Over 37,000 pageviews with 85% of visitors in Australia.
- Over 2 minutes average time per website session.
- Over 12,000 website visitors less, than 40% paid.
- Over 21,000 Google My Business listing impressions.
- Over 350 phone calls in Oct/Nov/Dec
- Google Featured Snippet for Uber Eats Scooter Rental, outranking Uber.
- 350% increase in search impressions Quarter 3 vs Quarter 2
- 1st page search results for more than 10 keywords.
- Ranking performance placing Scootering in the Top 3 vs direct competitors.
- 35% reduction in Google AdWords spend with a 6% avg CTR
- Consistent brand voice across Facebook, LinkedIn & other online profiles.
GOOD AND BAD SCOOTER RENTAL COMPANY SEO
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;
- 40,500 Google search impressions
- 25%+ click through rate on key search terms
- Over 3,600 visitors to the website, 40% from organic search.
- Over 280 actions taken, nearly 10% conversion rate.
- Over 170 phone calls and 6,000 Google My Business interactions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
