Anyone who deals with marketing in this industry knows it isn’t easy attracting heavy equipment leads. Most sales teams are struggling to attract prospects and retain customers. However, posting your equipment for rent online is highly profitable when you do it correctly. It is one of the best lead generation strategies that you can use to get the desired results for your lead generation process.
As you may know, the demand for heavy equipment rentals is a bit low. The available dealers are struggling to share the limited customer base for this very reason.
The only way to stand out is by attracting high-quality heavy equipment rental leads with the right marketing strategies. However, this process can be pretty confusing, especially if you don’t know where to start.
Gone are the days when you would place an ad in the magazine and wait to receive phone calls from potential clients.
In this guide, we will show you some of the proven ways that you can use to increase qualified leads for your heavy equipment rental company.
There are typically two types of channels that you can use in driving sales nowadays. First, there are resources that you don’t own, and you will pay a monthly fee for the company to help you to market your products. The most important aspect is to improve your lead scoring and conversion.
The second category is your services and online properties, like an email list or website. These can also help you get your rental equipment in front of potential clients. Here are some practical lead generation strategies you should value with your life.
Have a Robust & Responsive Website
When potential leads want to investigate your equipment and find more about your offerings, the first place they are likely to visit is your landing pages.
If you provide all the information they are looking for, you will enhance the possibility of them contacting you and making a purchase. This tells you why you need a thorough, responsive, and robust website.
Make sure your website is optimized for search engines so that potential customers can find you with ease. For this, some of the elements that shouldn’t be missing on your website to improve your lead scoring include:
Clear Navigation
As you design your homepage, make sure it is strong enough to help your viewers get a complete understanding of what you offer. It should also have clear links to other specific pages.
When people visit your website, they skim through the copy on the web pages. Therefore, you need to add call-out boxes and bullets for ease and clarity to improve your lead scoring.
One thing that most developers forget is keeping the navigation simple. The website should also have a responsive design to access it on all devices. It will help you improve your sales pipeline with the existing customers.
Comprehensive Products Listing
If a business would like to rent heavy equipment, they should have specifications of the equipment you offer.
Thus, even though listing them and hoping that people will contact your company for more information is easy, you have to ensure that all the products you offer are listed on your website as well so whenever someone visits, you can get their attention as you provide what they’re actually looking for.
Also, include all the additional items that customers can rent to modify the equipment to serve various purposes.
Use Well-Optimized Photos
As the ancient saying goes, “images speak louder than words,” or something like that.
Therefore, you can use them to add a great deal of visual clarity to your text. It tells you why you cannot have a full-text website and expect it to attract the best prospects.
It is worthwhile to invest some money in professional, high-quality photos. It is one of the best ways to attract potential clients at a very low cost.
Remember to include descriptive alt tags as they will tell your visitors what the images are in case they cannot be displayed.
Purchasing Information
It would be best never to forget to add the information about how your selling process works—or more like renting in this case.
Does your company work with businesses directly? If your purchasing information is straightforward, there is a high likelihood that those who visit your website will make the effort of taking the next step.
Optimize Your Website for SEO
Search engine optimization is the process of making your website easy to read and organizing it for the search engine. Once the search engine can read your landing pages, they will show them to the users who would like to become clients.
The SEO concept has a lot of fine details, and we cannot cover everything here. Therefore, you need to learn more about optimizing your heavy equipment company website to help you attract new leads with this element in particular.
Run PCC Campaigns
The other great way of attracting qualified traffic to your website is by running pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. There’s no doubt that the heavy machinery rental industry is highly competitive, which means it can be very challenging to reach new customers, even if you are a distributor or manufacturer with a great reputation and SEO.
With PPC advertisement, you will reach your qualified leads whenever they search for you online or more like for the keywords you’re ranking.
The primary benefit of PPC is that you will not sit back and wait for the results. This strategy is top-notch if you want to increase your traffic or revenue. It remains one of the best options to boost your lead scoring and lead capture.
Adoption of Content Marketing
Content marketing refers to the process of creating articles, blogs, photos, videos, graphics, and downloads, among other informative products on your website.
Content creation should be based on the identified keywords during the research process. Some ideas for content include:
Blogs
Blogging remains to be the most popular way of creating new content. It gives you an exclusive opportunity to discuss the common questions that come across, industry developments, company news, and any other relevant information to the equipment rental business.
Articles
It is also possible to use articles to provide similar solutions.
Articles are best if you want to answer lengthy questions that need an in-depth explanation. You may also use them as your equipment pages, category pages, pricing pages, and many more to round up your website.
Downloads
With downloads, you can provide specification sheets, user manuals, condition reports, and usage history to customers looking for special equipment.
You can also create a downloadable guide to help first-time customers or contractors choose a piece of equipment, especially when entering the industry. It is a valuable resource that will help you attract potential customers and prospective quality leads to your website.
Videos
These are great resources for your content as they will help you showcase your equipment while in action. If you get an opportunity to film the heavy equipment, you need to do it even if it just means using your phone.
It is an excellent boost when dealing with a competitive industry.
Photos
You will show those who visit your website that the equipment is perfect with photos. Once you clean and inspect the equipment and are ready for rental, please take a few pictures from all the angles to showcase it. You can even jump under the hood or in the cockpit to help customers see all the details they need.
Graphics
Graphics will help you discuss various ideas and statistics in your content. Some content writers prefer to use infographics to help them attract visitors’ attention.
All said and done; content is a valuable tool for the marketing strategy of heavy equipment rental shops. Remember, it will also help you enhance your search engine optimization efforts.
Take Care of Your Social Media Profiles
Let no one cheat you that social media are only meant for B2C companies. In the modern world, you need to maintain a presence on the top social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Therefore, when running a heavy equipment rental shop, you need an active presence on social media.
You can use several social networks, but we will only choose three that are the most valuable ones. The most important thing is engaging and constructively interacting with your potential customers when using them:
It is a platform that will allow you to connect with more than two billion individuals globally. It means that potential clients in your region will find you on Facebook regardless of your location.
With the use of Facebook, you will be able to talk to your potential clients, share content from your website, respond to their questions, and build lasting relationships with them.
You will be able to engage the primary demographic of your customers and lead them to your website. Once they get to your site, it will be easy to convert them into new leads.
It would be best not to forget to include Twitter in your digital marketing strategy as a valuable tool. It will help you promote the content on your website easily and quickly.
Twitter also allows other users to re-tweet, like, and respond to it, which creates great chains and opportunities to boost your visibility.
It is good to give your customers useful or interesting lead information regardless of the type of content that you are sharing.
This is all to help business owners open up new conversations about their brand, what they offer, and the solutions you provide to your customers.
LinkedIn remains to be the most comprehensive professional social platform in the market. It is an extensive network such that most users on this platform are the real decision-makers in their homes or businesses.
It implies that you will be able to appeal to your target customer base directly with your business’s purchasing power.
These attributes make LinkedIn be a precious tool for heavy equipment rental dealerships. The content that you post on your profile should directly relate to your audience’s interests. It will help them interact with your company and eventually direct them to your website.
The process eventually turns those people who visit your website into valuable leads. It is a great way to get more customers from your inbound marketing strategy. You are not yet done once you convert your social media followers into leads whatsoever.
The other factor you need to take care of is regularly posting on your social media pages. You can do so by adding testimonials, links to your products, talking about your company history, and sharing articles that you find interesting from other websites with your target audience.
If you don’t have enough time to update your social media pages by yourself, you can delegate it to a trustworthy employee within the company. Fresh content means that your website is optimized correctly for the search engines.
Start a YouTube Channel
Are you planning to add some videos to your website? It is one of the best strategies you can use to generate leads, and for it, you can create a YouTube channel.
YouTube will clearly illustrate what your heavy equipment can do. The platform tends to be more interesting than the use of images. Make sure you show the videos of your equipment in action and not just the regular way they look and nothing else.
You also need to post videos of testimonials from your happy clients. It is possible to share different types of content in video format.
It is an excellent opportunity to help you address the crucial elements of the equipment. The videos can help you in educating consumers as well. The most convenient platform for hosting your videos is YouTube. Your sales team can share these videos on various social media accounts and websites.
Write Relevant Posts
Each industry has unique professional publications. Most people see these publications as go-to resources that help individuals stay up to date with the trends and news of the industry.
Try to use these publications to build connections. Also, contact the editorial staff to see if they are shopping for guest columns and articles.
It may be surprising that these professionals are open to such arrangements. In general, you will not be saying that your products are better than what the other companies offer. However, you will not run away from the fact that you will be giving your company and name some visibility.
Besides, publishing online will be an excellent strategy for building high-authority links for your website. The result will be gaining qualified links for your shop and the marketing team at large.
Offer Your Expertise
If you have a well-known company, you will become an expert in the niche. You should clearly state that you are open to any interviews in such a case.
Those who write industry publications may wish to talk to you about your brand or the industry in general. If such an opportunity comes your way, do not hesitate to offer your expertise.
It will increase the level of confidence that your audience has in you. As a result, it will be easy to attract new leads and convert them.
People hate reading generic or unhelpful articles because it wastes their time. Therefore, you should be ready to share valuable and insightful information with your customers to get a qualified sales lead.
Attend Conventions and Conferences
Attending your industry’s major conventions and conferences is a good practice. Even though this will cost you money, it will pay you back in the long run.
The cost implication makes the heaviest equipment rental dealers hesitant about it. However, staying away from these events will cause you to lose some critical and high-quality leads in the industry.
You need to set aside some money for this purpose in your budget. The events give you a fantastic way of building connections with both dealers and buyers. It is also a great content source for your social media accounts and website.
Stay in Touch Using Emails
The sales pipeline cycle of heavy equipment tends to be very long. It tells you why you need to contact all your leads as they make their decisions. The best way for your marketing team to do this is by using email campaigns.
You can use drip campaigns, newsletters, and lead nurturing emails to ensure that the leads you get will not forget your business. The prospects will see your company as a great source of helpful information from this lead generation campaign.
Reach Out to More Clients Online
To enhance your visibility, you have to use the keywords your target customer is searching for online. It is a great way to increase the number of clients for your heavy equipment rental shop.
All you need is a robust digital marketing strategy for your heavy equipment company.
A reliable digital marketing agency will help you reach more clients and grow your business. These experts know the strategies that work for your niche best. The most important thing is to get a highly professional team to work on your project.
Get More Leads From the Equipment Marketplaces
It is easier to sell heavy equipment rental services on various digital marketplaces than ever. It is easy to discover listings on popular equipment websites, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and Bing Shopping.
Therefore, it is easy to get qualified leads when you choose this direction. Let me share some of the top suggestions to help you get more marketing qualified leads for your business. It is one of the best lead generation tools in the market.
Post on Multiple Services
Gone are the days when the heavy equipment rental business would be a one-horse race. We cannot run away from the fact that a website like Machinery Trader.com has been around for several decades. However, it is wise to put your machine on multiple websites to maximize getting leads.
The other useful sites for this purpose could be equipmenttrader.com and Fleet Up. Some websites allow you to post one machine, while others support multiple listings. Look for the ones that work well in your region and use them to maximize your marketing qualified leads.
Always Show Your Pricing
When you include the pricing of your equipment rental services on the website, it will generate more leads than if you don’t indicate the prices. Customers naturally compare various businesses’ quality with the pricing to determine the best deals.
It is not always about offering the cheapest services but giving customers value for their money. Always look for the best way of telling your target audience that your company stands out in the market.
Use Google My Business
Never overlook the available free options whenever you are promoting your business online. Most people use their phones to browse and want the quickest ways to get equipment rental services online.
Mobile users turn to Google My Business to get the business address, phone number, and store hours quickly. Therefore, it is good to register your presence on this platform to get the best sales-qualified leads.
The Use of Google Analytics
When you do a Google search, the first results you are likely to get are Google Ads. The beauty about Google is that it will only charge you for your Ads’ clicks. Write a detailed but precise description of your equipment and let people view it on Google Ads. You will begin to get an increasing number of phone calls for your Ads.
Final Thoughts
In this article, we have been helping you to understand how you can generate sales-qualified leads for heavy equipment rental companies. It is worth noting that this process is not a hard one as long as you know what you are doing, which comes with some practice.
The most important part is applying an online lead generation strategy to your niche.
There is no way the sales teams will fail to improve lead quality if you use our advice from beginning to end.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Heavy Equipment Rental Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Heavy Equipment Rental Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Heavy Equipment Rental Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.