There comes a time when every entrepreneur decides that they need to start selling online. In the case of rental business owners, this means accepting bookings online. After you’ve finished setting up your store and all your products are online, there’s often the question of what to do next.
Of course, the question of how to get traffic to your website isn’t only necessary when you launch. Generating traffic is a crucial aspect of growing your business, no matter what stage you’re at. If you’ve optimized your website for the best conversions, getting more traffic will mean more customers for your rental business.
The process of getting more traffic to your website is the same if you’re trying to get your first customer or your hundredth. As long as you have good products that are appealing to a mass audience, there are many ways you can increase traffic. Some require more effort than others, but some also provide better results than others.
So, let’s dive into some of the things you can do to increase traffic to your website, whether it’s just launched or needs more attention.
How to drive traffic to your rental website
There are four main ways that you can increase traffic to your website. They are high-impact tactics that can be implemented with enough time and dedication. These tactics are:
- Paid social media and search ad campaigns
- Engage in conversation on social media
- Attract customers with content marketing
- Use SEO to increase your store’s visibility
The quality of traffic that these tactics will generate can vary between each one depending on your implementation. You will know where your audience is more likely to spend their free time so you need to target your advertising to that channel.
To determine which tactics are best for you, it is essential to consider the tactic type, how much effort or experience it requires, the return on investment, your budget, and the traffic potential. Once you know the answer to these questions, you can decide which will work best for your business.
Paid social media and search ad campaigns
A key component of getting more traffic to your website is placing yourself in front of your ideal customers. With paid social media ads, this can be done very effectively as you can create targeted campaigns that will show tailored ads to customers who are most likely to rent from your business.
The most accessible entry point for social media ads is Facebook and Instagram, as they only take a small amount of learning to get started. Of course, as you get more into them, they become more advanced, but they are easy enough to set up, to begin with. To narrow down your target audience and optimize campaigns to get the most out of your money, there are many options.
On the other hand, Google Ads is slightly more challenging to get a grip of and has a significant learning curve. Rather than serving your ads to people with certain traits and interests, they are served to people searching for relevant search terms relating to your products. For example, “bike rental + location” can be a really strong keyword to target as a bike rental business serving a local area.
Engage in conversation on social media
Many rental businesses will simply share links on social media and think their job is done. However, it is about much more than that if you want to drive traffic to your website. Engaging on social media means encouraging conversations with the right people, responding to people, and driving excitement for your products or service.
One way to get the conversation going is to ask friends and family to share their support for your business. Many small companies have got their first sale because a friend was interested in their products. You can also respond to people talking about relevant topics and share what your rental business offers.
Another way is to offer time-sensitive discounts or even contests and giveaways to get people talking. Not only will this boost the engagement of your social media, but it can also increase your visibility to people who would neither have heard of your rental business otherwise.
Attract customers with content marketing
Content marketing is probably something you haven’t really considered before. After all, you’re a small business owner, not a content writer, but it can be invaluable to your business. Your content should be interesting, informative, and engaging to attract customers to visit your online store.
Original content can promote your rental business as a community leader and local expert, whether it’s an in-depth look at a new camera you have in stock or a guide to the best cycling trails in your area. People love to read engaging content and know that the business they are renting from has knowledgeable people at the helm.
Not only that, but content marketing also gives you the chance to appear in more search results in Google. For example, someone might be looking for the best cycling trails in California and come across your post. This puts your business in front of eyes that may not have been interested in it before but now look favorably upon it.
Use SEO to increase your store’s visibility
When customers search for the products and services your rental business offers, they will most likely go to one of the top results. Therefore, you need to optimize your website to ensure you’re visible among those key first-page results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a fine science, but it can be done with enough time and effort.
Some key things you can do on your website are:
- Write titles that match user intent
- Write appealing meta descriptions
- Leverage internal links
- Add long-tail keyword variations to your pages
Over time, as you develop your skills more and learn how to improve the SEO of your website, you’ll start to see results. Of course, it won’t happen overnight, but if you’re committed and persistent, you will be able to reap the rewards of your hard work.
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More traffic = more customers
Having these marketing tactics in your toolkit should help you to generate more website traffic. As you go on with each, you will learn which are most effective and focus on them. In addition, your skills will constantly be improving, and soon you’ll be a marketing genius. Just remember to put in the appropriate time and effort to master these bases.
If you would like more advice on getting traffic to your website and increasing conversions, we have many more blog posts to help you achieve these goals.
