Watch Now: Boat Rental Marketing Ideas for the 2021 – 2022 Season

Webinar Transcript - Boat Rental Marketing Ideas for the 2021 – 2022 Season

Speaker: Harry Casimir

Alright for those of you who are just joining us. Thank you so much for coming in. Looking forward to chat with you this afternoon. Just waiting for a minute or two to let more people in. Very exciting stuff.

Can I go over today! Thank you so much for coming in to chat. We’re gonna go over some very good stuff about Boat rentals marketing ideas for 2021/22 season. Just looking forward to unpack some of those items for you again. Thank you for joining us.

Give us one more minute and I don’t want to keep you waiting for to not make it on time right?

Alright. We’re gonna get started right on top of the hours if if you have just move talking. Okay.

So thank you again for joining me for boat marketing ideas for 2021 webinar. So my name just one more thing. So my name is Harry Casimir. I am the founder and CEO Boat marketing for what marketing or is a sister company of main company Atilus. We’ve been in business for 15 years.

I am a US vet. I started this company while I was actually an active dutty and I am the author of the Ultimate Guy for edit marketing for boat dealers. And right now we are about to publish and actually a fully upgraded version of this book specifically for boat rentals and marine construction. So looking forward to drop that very soon be in the lookout. I published multiple articles and different magazine and the marine industry and boat marketing for work exclusively with boat dealers, boat rental, boat clubs and boat services and repair shops to help them leverage their content and being more leads and increase their web presence.

So we have been in the marine industry. Our parent company have been in the marine industry for over twelve years. We have worked with dealers, boat rental, boat clubs and of course the board in the marine industry. So we we spend off the button marketing division to work exclusively with marine industry businesses. So I’m looking forward to share some of the Nuggets with you today and just give you a quick overview of what we do.

So again with marketing for we work exclusively with marine businesses and these are the services that we offer we do from planning to website. So local SEO which become extremely, extremely important now with Google algorithm change changes that’s constantly coming in every two months now, almost every month. Google actually pushed this public so that we become more important than ever to have your local SEO on spot. We do pay per click are we targeting which is part of the pay per click social media advertising as well.

We do repetition management.

We also do ADA compliance for website. We do lead management. We have our own CRM for the marine industry that has automatic built in SMS lead follow up automated drip campaign that’s actually remind people and some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about from a boat mental perspective. How to make sure you have a full follow up drip campaign set up for those who booked on your system and making sure they don’t miss their appointments, but also making sure they have all the necessary documents.

When they come to your duck, they’re ready to go.

So we’re going to go over all that some few hours keeping stuff. I will try to answer questions as I go along, and if not, I will also wait until the very end to answer. There will be a question and answer at the end, so I will make sure I cover all the questions that I have, and if I cannot answer your question, I will reach out to you or we call a different part of that session because I want to be respectful of your time. I want to keep this under 1 hour.

I will answer your questions as I go or at the end.

And if I did not answer your question, do you end the session? I will make sure I address you directly. This session will be recorded. So for those of you who who are here definitely would send you a copy of this. We also offer a free strategy session at the very end of the session for those of stay is only available for people that actually watch the whole thing without further Ado.

Let’s take a look at what we’re going to go over today. We’re gonna go do a deep dive on really how to use your website to promote your board rental business, how to take advantage on the power of Instagram to attract new customers, and how to craft a blog post, multiple blog post actually, to attract tourists out of towners to rent from your business. And really some of the tips and tricks that you can actually use some of them. You probably already have them in place to help you streamline your boat rental process for boat internal and external from a customer perspective without further Ado, let’s get right into it.

So first we got to look at using your website to format your board man of business.

Whenever I talk to people, I always said I truly believe your website is probably one of the best team member among us, the best employee for the company to some degree, right? Because your website doesn’t really sleep. It doesn’t take a break. No matter where somebody is, they can actually get that information on 24 24/7 accessible, accessible to your potential customers. So it is extremely important to take care of that.

Right. Your website help you establish your credibility as a business and we’re going to go over why it’s so important that account for something, if not for almost everything. Really help exchange information about your rental business and things that customer should expect from your business. And we’re going to quickly go over what a very effective web design and how it can help facilitate your lead generation. Let’s drop over, make sure people actually help get to do call to action they need on the website and also really help making sure your operation is very cost effective.

Your website can actually help with all the website that will execute it. One of the things I want to mention about website also is that I have seen over and over where many businesses, even in the rental business, they have a social media presence, Facebook present. But the website is really really in shaky ground and it’s all good to have social media process actually is very, very important, especially from a rental perspective. There are a lot of historic out there that proof that social media is probably one of the one of the top destination for people to actually find and find the social proof and to make that call and select your company.

However, your website actually is the place where people actually put their information to receive promotion, to know what’s going on to actually read blog post.

That is why your website is so important. And also when people want to buy, you would prefer them to buy directly from your website versus buying from a third party anyways, because that information you have, this is a customer you have that you can actually promote and we promote. We put more again to that customer. So it is important to have an actual website that’s really execute on your behalf. So what are some of the things that you can do for making sure when a customer comes to your website and they want to do transaction with you?

What are some of the things that you have to do? Well, the website really is to get the customer to get excited about the experience. So we move the almost like as if your not and rent. Now I remember there is a quote, I’m going to Butcher this for a second. I think Howard shirt from Starbucks, they said they don’t really sell coffee and customer service business the same thing for you as a rental business.

You’re not really in the rental business. You on customer experience business because when people people come to your business or think they come to our website, you make them feel like you’re talking to them. Right? When you said, hey, come explore with us. We have the best fishing boats.

We have the best cruise, cruising, the best boat to cruise. If you really want to take that loved one to go celebrate their birthday, come with us. We have the perfect boat for you. Those are the things that resonate with people because again, everybody can get a rental boats now almost anywhere. But what makes you stand out.

So making sure your website actually speak to this audience and make sure you provide that information and make sure you speak to them and make them feel right and there this is very important from when your website is very well designed and purposely architect to attract and educate and convert those people because you relate to what they want to do. The other thing that on our website is make sure you provide resources to people that come to your website for whatever that might be. So one of the things that I truly believe that every boat rental should have where you are if you have a full map of the geographic location, boat the water and different marinas where people can mix up.

Well, we drew up in the island and where I live here, I basically five minutes away from home for my beach. So we’re very close to the water.

Today is a lot of lot of different entities businesses along the waterways, making sure that people know where they can make stop whether it’s one of the little island or where they can make a stop to grab stuff, making sure it’s clear for them to help them by providing that resource directly on your website, especially if you’re going to attract tourists to come to your website and try to get them to book your rental. So making sure you provide these kind of resources to allow them to get to see where they can plan to go, make the stop and so forth.

The other thing that you want to do on your website is really making sure it’s super clear that there is a call to action and what you want the user to do. So a lot of website you see a very, very big banner that pick what we call the hero space, right? So like we’re looking up here, we show you what we’re looking up here on this top right under the navigation is why we call the hero section or the banner.

So it depends who you’re talking to that a lot of times take what we call over the full space, so meaning that depending on the screen resolution, what the user is looking at your website on whether it’s a mobile device or the desktop. Sometimes this image take a low space, so make sure that the call to action what you want them to do. Although you have the pretty image, you do not want the pre image to be disappear or get obstruct by a button, but sometimes that’s what makes sense.

It’s okay to put the button right on top already, if that’s what you need to, because it helps guide the user what you want them to do. So in this case, making sure that if you have a physical address or even the Marina that you are in, make sure the address is very clear.

It doesn’t have to be on top of the website, but make sure the address is somewhere because this is play a critical role boat from a user perspective. So when I come to your website, I know exactly where you, but I also play a bigger role from an SEO perspective, which we’re not going to go into deep here right now, but it’s very, very important that your address is up there, but also right up there is your the phone number. Put it as big as you want if you want people to have that the other things that you can also actually do as well if you don’t want to put a big button up here, but make sure you put a big reserve now button somewhere, because what do you want people to come to your site for to reserve?

Right. Find out the books that you have, and sometimes some people don’t really care about the book that you have.

Do you rent? Oh, great. That’s all they want to know. So a lot of times making sure it’s clear to them what you want them to do. That’s what’s important.

And I highly, highly recommend that you take a look at your current website structure. Again, the website might be the best well designed website in the world, but if it is not clear to the end user, it might be clear to you, but some people might have difficulty finding information, believe it or not. So it is very important to look at it from the I of someone else, not necessarily just you, because you probably would figure out how to get to certain pages, how to get information, how to reserve, but not everybody.

It’s not so obvious for everyone be aware of that. The other thing is making sure that your inventory is super easy.

This page show here, they don’t have a lot of boats, I believe maybe 12, 16, 20 boats or so. But if you have multiple boats, make sure you apply certain information in. So whether the bot, for example, as you can see on this one, it’s clear. It’s very easy to see that you can rent that book. There’s a big button right up there that says rent and how much it is for half day, how much it is for a whole day.

And the big button to rent. Now I see that there are information sometimes on the website. You will see we serve now up there, but you don’t see those call to action right on the boat itself. Well, if you’re going to show me the inventory, at least of what you have, can you allow me to book from what? As I’m looking at it, that’s very important.

I know that you might say, well, it’s super simple. Why can someone just click reserve up there? It’s giving the user easy access to what action that they can take. Now, that’s what’s very important pricing and also the detailed information that you want the user to have. So if you click on that boat, you’re going to have a detailed information about the board, but only if the user willing to.

Sometimes the user is here. All they want to do is just run this now. And from the next page. This is like how long they want to rent it for and they understand by just looking at it, they know they’re gonna get a boat that has no golf access or golf access, and this is optional, obviously, depending on what tools you use, because I know some people use for Harbor. Some people use different other tools.

We have our own tools here actually too, that’s actually create the full inventor you manage. You can under manage all the boots right in there. And also we give you all those options as well. Very flush out. But regardless, the tools that you have make sure you make it clear to the user what action you want them to take within that inventory page itself.

The other thing that you want to do on your website is making sure you show some social proof, showcase testimonials review directly on your website. And this is kind of a double effect for you, which basically different customers look at it differently. Personally, I don’t really care about the testimony you have on your website. I care about the reviews that you have from Google, from Facebook, from Yelp. Those reviews sometimes make a big difference, and your reviews does not have to be all five stars.

Actually, I prefer to see a business that don’t have all five star because I know most likely there is someone you’re gonna get someone mad, then the rental business, you will have someone that’s not happy for whatever reason that my for the day it might be your four might be there for, but it doesn’t really matter. There’s going to be someone that’s not happy. So I like businesses that actually have less than five star because I know that’s not inflated, especially if you see a business that has well over 20 plus reviews without one of them on scratch.

People can do that, but it’s very hard to maintain that. So the key here is to ensure that you have those reviews either show on your website all the stuff to when you’re showing on your website.

And sometimes you can have boat of them because they have different effects. And there are tools out there. Actually, you can win those reviews directly from Google. Do you apply on your website so you don’t really have to do a lot of leg work once the initial work is done to import them. And this is very credible from a business perspective, as you saw when it comes to your website, it’s very, very, very critical to ensure that you have the key components from not only a well designed website, but making sure the information that and the website is logically clear to the end user, not just you but someone.

If someone were to to stumble on your website and they were just looking for boat granted, business in the area that they are in, will your website guide them clearly with logical step what they need to do should they call you? Should they stop by? Should they book right now? And can they book online, which we’re gonna talk about in the moment? So the next thing we talk about is honest.

The power of Instagram do not forget the IG Instagram is probably like one of the most powerful social media when it comes to business right now. Facebook is powerful. Obviously, Facebook and Instagram is one in the same in a way. But they’re different, especially the way Instagram is that information is a little bit different than Facebook because Facebook is a bit crowded, although it’s extremely powerful itself. But let’s let’s stick with Instagram for the moment.

So as we speak today, according to Emarketer, Instagram has 77.5 million user. That’s basically an Instagram to learn about products and services. Think about it for a moment. That is huge. A lot of people that’s constantly looking at information to either buy a product or services or possibly even learn about a brand online.

So sometimes people come to a not just just to purchase things, although I know they come in with their own e commerce, which should be a little bit different for the rental business. But they actually people come to Instagram to find that information. And we’re going to talk about some of the things that you can do in the moment.

Instagram users visit their profile on a daily basis, actually more dedicated than Facebook user for from an engagement perspective. So 200,000, 200 million user actually visit Instagram on a daily basis. Visit Business Profile so meaning that if your business has a profile on Instagram, making sure that profile is is up to date, making sure it provides the necessary information to attract the user that you need. So really, Instagram is one of those perfect tools that does a few things extremely well. Instagram allows you to actually make ones and make people aware of your product or services or company.

You can actually educate them once they’re aware of you. And then once you educate them, you can drop them inside your phone and then once they’re inside the phones, you kind of filter them out slowly until whether they become a customer or not. And all of that can be done right with the well talk out combination of boat Instagram itself and make putting together with your CRM or an email platform you may be using. So this is why it’s so important to make sure your business Instagram profile is on spot.

We do have a complete guide on Instagram for business profile as well.

So this is something that resources that we create for the marine business as well.

How do you use Instagram to attract just customers? So as I mentioned a moment ago, Instagram, for those of us in the marketing space, we know the first thing you do. You let people be aware of your product or services is next step. Once they’re aware of you, you start educating them and let them know, give them the education piece that you want to give them. And the third is boom.

You try to turn them into a customer. In your case, from a boat rental perspective, this is not a new business. Most people are well aware of boat rental. Obviously the experience you can make your experience different from the competitors. But at the end of the day, most customers looking for a few different differentiator pricing, your location, really availability.

Do you have those? So making sure your your call to action, what you want them to do and what differentiates you is being very clear, making sure your positioning is clear. So educate your customer about your business, your products and services and what makes you different and why they should come explore, have fun, go to business with you versus your competitors. So it’s very, very important. And Instagram is one of the solid list that you can do that to imagery and to a lot of different stuff.

Right. Create post API to your audience. So obviously there’s a lot of different posts that you can have out there right in the US, I believe twelve, eight or twelve national holidays. You can use those national holidays. Your advantage create great pictures, a great post to forward those just as an example.

But also there’s a lot of different things. So some boat rentals, I know they’re very, very niche. The market extremely well and they know the person out really well where they know that the target audience is that mom and dad who has kids. So for example, so they know the target, this specific audience and they really go hard. They know they go after those people that have animals and certain pets.

Obviously not all pets, but certain pets, especially dogs. They love the water. So things like that where you have a picture like this is really, really gets you to get user the potential customer get very excited actually to make sure they book with you. So it is very important to share what’s important, what can attract those potential customers. Also, people love to know who they’re dealing with.

Feeling like there is transparency between what you guys do from important to a business perspective versus what you provide me as a customer. So show some pictures, background behind the scene pictures like, for example, you can have pictures of the crew helping borders get on board. Right. You can show pictures of really helping the dog on board or repair that’s been done to boats. Those are things that people feel like they are part of the action, but also feeling like there is true transparency.

They are other human beings actually work at this company, and that makes me feel related to them. So it is important to share, get to the emotions part of the customers so that they can feel like they are part of part of the company or feel like that those are people that I can deal with.

Another one that we see often is really engage with customers so that they can actually share the information. And I’ve seen this over and over. It’s a mis opportunity. Actually, I see a lot of boat rental places that one of the thing that you can do is get permission first. Let me make sure.

Let me press this first. Make sure you get permission from your customer that if it’s okay for you to take pictures or video with them, and then once they accept that, obviously you don’t want to show an appropriate pictures, but also ask them if they’re not okay to even take picture for you taking their picture. Ask them if they can share some of the pictures with you. And this is not something you even need to get them to sign. But if that’s something you want to get legal piece behind it, making sure within the agreement the consent form that you can send to them, make sure to ask them.

It’s okay to use a picture of yours for the purpose of showcasing or beautiful Marina or beautiful boat in place. I think those are the things that I feel like it’s a missed opportunity because when a customer actually share that information, social media, especially Instagram, actually look at it. Their algorithm actually look at it a little bit differently and actually give you a very big boost as well, making sure customers actually tag you ask them to tag you if they don’t tag you. When the first post, ask them to go back to tag you.

Sometimes you might have to incentivize them to actually tag you, but making sure you get customer generated content, and if they cannot give you the content, ask for the permission you get to contact yourself.

Another thing that you can do, making sure you use hashtag to attract new customers with similar interests. And this is one of the most powerful and beautiful tools about Instagram. I know many of you guys use Instagram, and some of you already know what all this means, but for for those who do not know. But it is very, very important. When you write your post on Instagram, not only you want to put a nice little description, it doesn’t have to be too long, just enough so people can understand what you’re talking about and what it is about and then put some Tags in there.

There is no limit to tag, but I always believe in too much can be too much. So don’t put a lot of Tags in there because again, that can really I don’t think it’s gonna it’s gonna hurt, but I think it’s best to keep it t0123 Tags, and because you cannot use different Tags that associate with different posts. So you don’t want to have a few people hold fish with phishing Tags, and then with a bunch of kids going on a board with a bunch of phishing Tags again and again, so you can overdo it.

That’s what I’m trying to say. So make sure you use the tag strategically and wisely.

So again for me, boat went through. From Instagram perspective, Instagram is becoming a Super Super. They are really, but become even more powerful when it comes to marketing. Get your business name, product and services out there where customers actually visit. We have two plus 200,000, 200 million plus people actually visit Business profile on a daily basis on Instagram.

That’s a lot of people. When you think about the amount of people you have in the US alone, when you have that many people, you should make sure you pull the string on their heart, making sure you get your information out. The other piece that we we see that some people neglect, but also becoming more important than ever is how to attract outside tourist. So crafting blog post, a blog post or blog post to attract tourists, people from out of town to get to your business. So we’re gonna kind of do a little bit deep dive on this.

So what is the purpose of creating a blog for someone that is not and down? So really, the blog post actually serve multiple purposes, and sometimes the business itself. Sometimes the owner, the marketing director or whoever is in charge sometimes don’t even see the purpose of it. And even if you try to explain it. But really, blog added a lot of credibility to your business as a trusted source.

Actually, blog can help you generate more traffic to your website, which basically increase your visibility and debility. And search engines such as Google. The blog actually can help you pull more boat rental business. Also, blog can actually help answer some of the questions that people ask you all the time. Right?

So a lot of times when you go to Google, actually, you see there is a section on their website actually show questions and answer right away as soon as you type that specific keyword. Those questions, most of them coming from website that actually have an FAQs or blog post that actually answer that specific question. So a lot of times it’s very critical. But what happened for me to his perspective is that your blog post when you write a blog post that need to attract people from out of town, a customer that haven’t visited you, it’s really just to showcase not just telling them, hey, come rent from us because were the only two and down most of the time you won’t be.

So what you want to present this giving people information that not only they will find your business, but also the businesses or related business that they can find information about.

A good example. This is a good example we take from the Florida Keys boat Rentals ten plus things to do in the Key West and December. Now we all know a lot of people go to the Key West around that time. And think about someone that’s grandma or grandpa Auntie that’s coming from the Midwest or from up north. It’s very cool up there.

Everybody migrated down to Key West looking for things to do, things to do in December and Key West or something like that. Imagine someone’s number on this website. Boom, that information. So for you as a business owner or the marketer or whoever the position that you might have on the company, this post, you already know all the spot anyway. So it’s not a big deal for you, but it is really important from a touristic perspective, because if I’m coming to town, the first thing I do, I’m searching on Google.

What’s going on? What’s up in the town? What can I do? Where can I bring the kids, the friends where they hang out. That so making sure you have blocked that related to not only your business but also related to the Syrian area.

Also give people information that they can use and eventually ended up come to you as well. So again, I think there shouldn’t be just one blog post to try to attract people. There should be a few different blog post that address different elements. That when tourists to the area. So this is very, very important to make sure you have that in place on your website.

The other thing is, what you can do is also feature really big related events that’s going on. So for example, right now we live down here in Fort Morris, and I think there’s a risk boat risk that’s going on last weekend this weekend. Don’t quote me on the specific time. This is a perfect time for you to get people really into those people that want to come down most likely not gonna have a bot for themselves to go to compete. But they might be interesting in getting a boat to rent and go out with their family.

So make sure those events that’s going on. You can actually tag those or create blog posts within your website about the specific events that’s going on. And I have seen that you can actually attract fairly good success with those blog posts that actually talk about the specific events that related to your industry. What you do again, it doesn’t have to be just a Championship or a boat race. It could be anything, really, for example, Buthow is a big deal right now.

As you know, a lot of people want to get out. And as you know, the marine industry have been just explored last year. So a lot of people cannot really go out and buy a boat, even when they get there in the boat club, they’re gonna have to go wait to get their boat in boat. Winter is very, very hot hot community right now. So make sure you are in front of those people, including one days.

But showing down, make sure you show up from a search engine perspective, and you have to think about that strategically so that you can clean this content to take advantage of that as well. So really writing allow, too, is when they come to town, they don’t know the area. They don’t know much. Sometimes they don’t even know any rules about boarding. They just think it’s just like you go to a car rental place, you give you a license and you get the key, walk out.

Except that a lot of them think that they can just walk in and give their license and walk out the same way. And as we all know, boarding is a little bit different, close enough, but a little bit different. So make sure you provide some of the credibility of information, give them the resources that they need right on your website. Create this blog post to actually educate, get people to be aware boarding is a fun thing to do, but also get them to know here’s the information that you’re going to need if you actually want to board our render board.

And here’s how you can get those information.

And when you finish, don’t forget to visit us. We love to get you on a board. So all those things that making sure your blog post resonate and very, very well relatable to what you provide them.

You can also create this about excitement. I I personally travel a lot with my family, although I push her to drive instead of whenever I go places. But everywhere we go, wherever the States or town we’re gonna go to ahead of time. I look at the fun things that I can do with the kids, and part of that is boarding. I like to get in the water with them.

So I always looked at when I get to town, where can I get a boat to rent? So making sure you provide some of those elements of services. And sometimes you might have to even partner up with some other local businesses that actually compliment what you offer. Obviously, at the moment, everybody wants to get a boat rental, so a lot of it you don’t. You don’t have to scrap a lot because I have seen some businesses the barely can handle the volume that’s coming in.

So. But it is very, very important to make sure the blog post that you’re writing today. Keep in mind, they are not just for today or tomorrow. The blog post. It today can be the blog post that actually bring new customers at your front door a year, two years from now, depending on what search engine looks like down the line.

So keep that in mind as well. So the first thing that we’re going to talk about is streamline your rental process. This is one that it’s boat ends, the front end and the back end what the customer go through and what your team has to do to ensure that it’s super smooth for the customer. Right. So a few of the things and I’m going to go over some of the specific one really be available for inquiries and respond quickly.

There is no way around this. Your social media making sure that someone, whether it’s in house or someone you outsource all an agency you deal with, make sure that they are available to answer right away, especially for when the customer comment on anything that you have online, and that can also be even your reputation. Any reviews that they provide on Google? Yep. Or wherever that might be negative or not.

Make sure you respond to it. This is very, very critical, and we have actually a full webinar we did a few months ago just about reputation management wise, so critical to actually answer comments that customer or potential customer leave for you, whether it’s negative or positive, make sure you answer and be consistent on the delivery. Create processes to help you deliver services that consistent across the board. So people know what to expect, because if I have a good experience today, there’s a good chance next week or next time I’m coming to the board, I’m gonna go with you because I had a good experience until you give me a bad experience.

As we all know, if we have a good experience, we’re gonna come back.

If we have a bad experience, we’re gonna question whether we want to go back or not, or should we go with the competitor. So making sure the experience is very consistent across the board and I’m going to go into a little bit detail on consider automate most of your board rental processes. There’s a lot of different systems out there that you can actually use to do that. So making sure that you have some of that so that you don’t have to do lifting yourself. There are tons and tons of software that’s actually rarely available.

So whether you have it in house or you have an agency that helps you build those process and create the workflow that can automate part of their business, making sure those are in place so that boat the leads that’s coming in and customer that want to become a customer is very easy for them to be. Also making sure you ask for feedback. This is one of the things that most business don’t do enough asking for feedback from boat rental perspective, just like car rental, but actually boat rental is more intimate.

So you actually have the customer, they actually have to come in and get the key. You actually have to talk with them.

So you can actually train your team to ensure that not only you make those people feel very good about getting on board, but when they’re getting out, ask them some basic questions. You can actually train your team to ask them some very key questions, and people may not even realize that those questions how important they’re going to be for your business but you know how important they will be, because you know exactly why you’re asking those questions, because they help you streamline certain pieces of your process and so forth.

So make sure that you train your staff, your team members, to ask specific questions that can automate some of that part of that as well is automate part of that, for example, and for your reputation, the reviews that you’re getting online. This is something another opportunity I have seen over and over that get list by boat rental is getting people to give you feedback. Reviews online.

We’ve used or becoming even more important than ever. I know we did a webinar a few months ago just about reviews as well. And reviews is becoming so important. And Google gives that so much weight as Google going fully local. The geographic location does matter and that they also bring in reviews and how they’re looking at how often people comment or give you reviews and what those reviews looks like.

And that’s really, really starting to impact a lot of businesses. So this is very important for you to ensure that not only you get good services, but also making sure you ask for those reviews so people can give you feedback. Make it super easy for the customer. Nobody wants to go online and trying to figure out things. As I mentioned earlier, make sure the business your website has clear call to action so that people know where they can get that information they’re looking for.

So some of the processing and I know I talk a lot about different things here, but some of the process key takeaway on this from a process optimization perspective. What you can do to streamline your rental business to ensure that you make it super duper easy for boat the customers that you have and your internal team booking online and reservation. So make sure your website is super easy to navigate. Click call to action. We serve now.

Book now. Request a quote now and here’s the price. Here are the things that include in that boat. Here are the things that you can and cannot do when you’re in that boat. Here’s how you get your license if that’s what it takes.

And here’s an example of the consent form that you must sign and you must be X amount of age, whatever that might be. So make sure the information not clear, but also make it super simple for the customer to actually book directly from your website. That’s also part of the streamlining your business to with remove that battle neck because when people cannot book online, most people getting used now to buy things online, so it’s second nature to them now. Most people can actually do that. Not everyone, but most.

But if you don’t do that, then they’re gonna call your line. If it’s not easy for them to book online, they’re gonna call the phone line. I have seen businesses that actually have a lot of boats, and they have only one phone line coming in. And you know what that means? One that phone line is busy.

They cannot really take another call, take another call. And people get frustrated because they want to reserve something, and usually they cannot get to work. All those people most of the time would probably be going directly on your website, make their reservation themselves without involving you on the phone, and get frustrated because if you had that process, make sure you have that in place. The consent form, actually, you can send the consent from ahead of time for them or provide it right after they make the reservation online.

So that way you don’t have to wait until they come in or if they are coming actually send it to them so they can point it.

Or at least they actually have a chance to review it. When they come in. Then you can Zoom them and write in a check them and make them sign and get them on their way to go. Automate. Allow the processes that you have.

So the follow up customers. So, for example, when someone booked something online again, as I mentioned a lot of times, people check in and do things very quick. Oh, yes, I’m 25. What are you talking about? Yes, I have my license.

They don’t even think of that. They just check, check, check. And even no matter how clear you make it, sometimes they just Zoom through it. So this is why it’s so important to make sure you have a very well written follow up sequence. Email that actually automatically goes out and say, hey, thank you so much for reserving rid us.

We’re looking forward to see you. Here are a few things that we need you to look at, and we want you to make sure to have those and you’re going to have to make sure that email goes out two or three times, because most of the time people delete the first one, the second one and the third one. Most of the time they look at it, make sure you send those email consistently, and all of that can be automated. You don’t really have to do the work over and over.

It just needs to be done once and provide a system in place.

Use a CRM lead management system to do that for you. Actually, most arm now fairly sophisticated. They can do most of the stuff that we talk about. The CRM that’s just better added than order. For example, we have our own CRM here for boat rental itself.

So not only we manage the inventory of the boat, meaning the calendaring and when the boat is actually booked and when it’s available. But we also do Drift campaign for boat rental. So that when someone booked with that boat rental, they get an email that actually automated the system for them. And that’s something that you want to have in place doesn’t have to be with us. You can actually use most systems to do that, but make sure you have that system in place.

Make sure your phone system is integrated to your CRM. So that way, when a customer call and the customer call can automatically get logged directly in your CRM, make sure your reputation management meetings we view that you’re going to get from customer is part of the process, part of the company culture, but also, most importantly, is train your team members, making sure they understand what a stack here. A customer is not happy is a customer that you may not get again or the happy customer. You’re probably going to get it.

As they said, it’s easier to maintain a customer that you have then trying to get more customers.

So if you have your customer happy, most people that read the book from you today, if they are happy with your services, there’s a good chance they’re coming back, get them to be happy and a lot of it. It doesn’t really take much to get them to be happy. So also create a CRM, an email platform that’s fully integrated or one or the other to ensure that you create this promotion for those existing customers. So when a customer call I I have seen where boat window do not have a system to system in place.

So a customer call, they just write a note down very quick.

John Doe, make reservation. X, Y and Z. They don’t even have an email address for that person. There is a ton of system out that there is no need for this. Just make sure you get the email information so that way you can report mode.

We reach out to them. So when promotions come in, you can win this customer back. I know we covered a lot today on this, but to give you a quick quick recap. So we went over how to optimize your website, making sure the flow. The architectural structure of the website is there to help you to help the customer find the information they need and book the information.

Right. We talk about how to take advantage of Instagram, making sure your business profile is properly set up and make people aware of the business services and product as you offer and give them an opportunity to actually get in your funnel. Right. So that we can bring more business in. We talk about how to create blog posts to attract out of towners tourists, how to create those different section of the blog posts, a different blog post topic so that you can bring those people in town when they’re in town.

They can actually book with you. And we talk about how you can stream them. Your rental businesses. I know there’s a lot of stuff that we talk about from a streaming perspective, but you get different, right? We apply to the customers.

Stay efficient, be consistent. You can actually automate. Almost every on a boat ran to a business. I do know one person. One business is that actually figured out how to automate everything from a rental perspective, and they’re just crashing it because again, the only team that you really, really need from an online perspective is either a good marketing team.

Obviously, with software, you do need to have it in place. But for the most part, if those things are in place, we just need your mechanical piece, the functions based from the operation perspective to be in place. So I hope this has been very helpful. I just want to do that quick recap.

So running for this whole of the hours here. If you haven’t been to our website, our website is boot marketing post. Com. You can or you can go to our website and take a look at some of the resources that we have. As I mentioned, I have written the book.

We have another book coming out that specifically to boat rental and other services in the marine industry. We have a lot of blog posts that really addressed different topics from SEO to PPC, some of the things that you can do, how to even write basic checklist for your customer to download that they can get themselves educated about boat rental and when they need they can come back to you. They have a lot of white papers. As I mentioned, we have webinars once a month here, so I love for you to stop by and register for more, but we also have a podcast as well.

I run a podcast.

We have one episode that’s coming out every two weeks. I believe for you to this is syndicating everywhere or podcast, so you can actually get it from Spotify and Apple podcast as well and all the other places that podcast are available. So for those of you who stay all the way to the end with me today, it’s my free strategy session for you. Within the strategy session. We do actually a full assessment of your website to look at your current online visibility.

We actually do a custom keyword list for you. Some of the keywords that’s very important to your area of where you at because different boat rental offer different levels of different services that we do that for you. We give you a ranking report to show you where you rank versus your competitors and from your the area that you are in. We actually show you where you are from the online actory listings, citation and how consistent your listings are, because that’s really important from Google’s Eyes, but also we do a complete review of your reputation and your reviews online, your social media presence and as well as your website conversion, architecture and effectiveness.

So we do that for free for you.

If you are interested in getting that feel free to go to this website to this URL board marketing post. Com schedule a call and I’ll be more than happy to get my team and I would create a full assessment for you and present that to you and go through with you. And there is no charge for this. And these are the things that you can actually take and go home with and implement yourself. And if that’s something that you want us to help you with, we’ll be more than happy to do.

So again, you can schedule this. Ideally, we would want you to go to put marketing Port cost schedule or you can actually call us and book that with you. I’m going to answer a couple of questions that I see a few questions that I see that’s coming in. Let me go in. There one question.

How should I respond to a negative review on my Google page? Quick question. So this I think it’s really straightforward. It is kind of straightforward, but it is not. No matter what review you get, you should respond to it.

And don’t go on a big fight with people. Some customer. Actually, when a potential customer, most people can read through some of this review, I can see who’s wrong there. So don’t go on it. Even if you if your team is right, don’t go on.

I say I’m sorry to see you had that bad experience. Is there anything I can do to help make sure that you are the growing up in the room when it comes to bad reviews so that it shows that you actually care because people what’s going to happen when someone will a very bad you, someone bash you and your response is, hey, actually, I’m sorry you have that bad experience or anything. Can I help you or can I give you a free rental for half day? If I’m a customer, I see you treat that person that way.

I feel good that if something goes wrong with my reservation with you, you cannot take care of me.

So there is a good thing that can come from bad review. So don’t take it fully negative. It is negative, but it is not as negative as you may. Look at it. People love to read reviews, but they look at those reviews from different eyes.

And obviously people look at reviews differently anyway. But I would. I always encourage customers, clients to go head on with negative review response. And sometimes you got to win the cross. We never actually spoke with Joe.

But Joe, I’m sorry you had that bad experience. Is there anything we can do to help feel free to reach out directly to us directly on our website or here’s the phone number to reach out to us. We would love to speak with you that alone really solve the path, even if you may not even want to speak with Joe anyways. So how many times I’m going to go to the next question? How many times per week do you recommend posting on Instagram?

This is a very good question, depending on how often you’re pulling content from your customer or your users. But I would highly recommend at least twice a week, at least now, again, depending on how much activities you have. If you have a lot of people coming in and you’re reading the consent to post, you almost can post almost every day. Now you can overdo it very quick. So I would say if you consistently post maybe up to five times a week, maybe a couple of days where you just kind of go low.

But on the weekend you can actually go hard, because that’s when you make people jealous. Should I plan to run Google Ads to? Yes, we actually have a webinar just about Google ads, depending where you are in your business. What you want to accomplish Google Ads is very, very important tools. It gets people to what they need, what they’re looking for at that moment.

So it is very, very important sometimes to do that. But depending what you want to accomplish with Google ads. So I would take a look at some of the key element that you want to run and what you want to accomplish and depending on your market. But yes, you can actually run Google ads as well. So the other question we have is what CRM do you recommend for boat rental companies?

Well, there are a lot of different CRM out there, not going to mention specific CRM, because we have our own CRM here as well for boat rental. But there are plenty almost every CRM with enough customization. You can actually fit in and make it work. But there are CRM that’s actually dedicated their time to actually work there. I will work out the kinks to work with boat rental.

They actually exist, and you can actually take one of those and run with it.

But again, there are a few out there that actually do a decent job. I know Fair Harbor claim to be a CRM. I think they do a pretty good job at processing the payment, but I don’t know about CRM itself. They are there, and they can make the payment process easy for your customers, sometimes depending on your preference, although they do charge a decent amount of fees. So you might want to take a look at that.

But I know the CRM is not met for boat rental. You can have to do the legwork to make it work. So one last question is if you don’t have time for blog, how do I make time for it? Well, blogging is one of those things a lot of people don’t pay attention to from a business perspective, but it’s probably one of the most important one one of the most easiest way to get index to get visibility from search engines. So I highly, highly recommend that you do it.

Create the time. The other way you can actually create a blog post is hire a freelancer or a marketing agency that specializes on writing blog for the marine industry that you are in for us here. We write lots of hundreds of blogs constantly. So that’s something that we do for boat rental, and we specialize in a specific market and geographic location. But again, if you have someone in your team that can actually write those, it’s a fantastic way to get very well known.

Very well. Index and research engine. And I highly, highly recommend that. So now we are just over a few minutes on our time here. I really appreciate you all for sticking with me today.

We drop a lot of different information. I would love to get your feedback on this. If there’s any other webinar that you ever would like to see, we run. Feel free to shoot me an email at harry@boatmarketingpros.com.

We would love to hear from you your feedback. Thank you so much for taking your time to be with me. I hope you get some Nuggets out of this. And if you have any questions, feel free to email, call or go to our website. Shoot us a note again.

I appreciate your time. Thank you so much and have a great day. Thank you.