Resources

Software to help you grow your vehicle rental agency

Resources for DRIVE RESULTS:

Money Making Marketing Strategies for Vehicle Rental Agencies

The Book

The products and services on these pages are kept up-to-date. The resources are provided as a compliment to the book, DRIVE RESULTS: Money Making Marketing Strategies for Vehicle Rental Agencies. Although you do not need the book to use the resources on this page, the book will help you figure out:

  • Which resources you should be using

  • How to use them, and

  • Which order to use them in.

The book, combined with the right resources, will help you:

1. Get more customers.

2. Increase the value of each transaction.

3. Encourage more repeat business to earn a higher lifetime value from each customer.

Roadmap to Success Chart

Chart your Roadmap to Success. Download and print this chart to help you map which is the best strategy to start with and where you should go from there. Use the note section to brainstorm budgets, ideas, and goals. The chart lists all the strategies from the DRIVE RESULTS book, plus a fill-in-the-blank row for an additional strategies you may be considering.

Marketing CRMs: All-in-ones

In our business we have used Zoho, Hootsuite and HighLevel (GHL). We were so impressed with HighLevel that we custom built FleetCRM on the GHL platform to meet the specific demands of our vehicle rental clients. We built our custom CRM on GHL, but then we added additional features not available in the native GHL platform. We have improved on process like review management, added A.I. features such as automating advertising for Google ads, Meta (Instagram and Facebook) ads and more. We've simplified the many marketing processes such as database reactivation, and created an onboarding process that works for car rental agencies from economy to exotics, heavy equipment rentals and more. This works great for us and our clients, and now it can work for you too!

We now offer this software to agencies who prefer to do their own marketing in-house.


FleetCRM: We have a team member that can quickly onboard and provide you with email templates, sms templates, workflows and automations customized for your industry and your target market. 

FleetCRM Pricing

  • Pro: FleetCRM is customized for your industry and has customized onboarding which makes it the fastest way to get set up and profitable compared to any other CRM software on the market.

  • Con: Because it is an all-in-one solution the app may be more expensive to start out with than some marketing CRMs that start out cheap (or even free!) with costs increasing as more features are added.Which resources you should be using

Other Marketing CRMs: All-in-ones

SalesForce: Salesforce dominates the CRM industry due to its age. This company has been around the longest. It was built more for operations and large sales teams. www.salesforce.com

  • Pro: Because it is big and old it might have connections with your existing management software. It is scalable for very large sales teams.

  • Con: Not recommended for small/medium teams due to high expense and high learning curve.

Zoho CRM: The software combines standard CRM features to streamline your operations including project management and HR. (Whereas HighLevel (below) and FleetCRM (above) are specifically aimed at lead generation and marketing). https://www.zoho.com/one

  • Pro: The software can be purchased in chunks to build on gradually, or as an all-in-one app. The software can help streamline your operations including project management and HR.

  • Con: More of an operations CRM than a marketing CRM, but it can be used for both. You an outgrow this system. (good for smaller operations).

HighLevel (GHL): FleetCRM (above) is built on this platform (but with added features and fully customized for the vehicle rental industry). If you don't want to use the customized version, if you'd prefer to start from scratch, we do recommend the software and we use it ourselves - we even built FleetCRM on it! It is a great piece of kit for those who love to dabble and are not in a hurry to get more leads and grow their agency.  https://www.gohighlevel.com

  • Pro: You will save a little money if you do it yourself (if you don't have to hire someone to customize and manage it for your agency)

  • Con: No customization or onboarding included.  You will spend a large amount of time learning the software and creating funnels and workflows that will work for your

    company

HighLevel (GHL) affiliate: If you like the idea of GHL and want to start from scratch with just a little help getting started, we recommend you sign up with an affiliate who provides free onboarding and several months of free support.  There are many to choose from, but Extendly is one of the better choices. https://go.getextendly.com

  • Pro: Less expensive than FleetCRM with many of the same capabilities. The same price as GHL but includes some customization - such as branding and colour schemes

  • Con: No customization or onboarding included.  You will spend a large amount of time learning the software and creating funnels and workflows that will work for your

    company. Does not include any customizations or workflows specific to vehicle rental agencies. You will spend a lot more time (a LOT more) learning how to create workflows that work for your company. Support might be an extra cost after the free support period ends.

Email Marketing Software with Tags/Segmenting

Brevo (Sendinblue): Unique feature: Charged based on the number of emails you send (instead of the number of contacts you have). https://www.brevo.com/

  • Pro: For just email, if you don’t mind their branding on your emails, they do have very affordable pricing plans.
    Most of their services are added ala carte, so get pricing based on the number of emails, SMS messages, sales pipelines, etc. that you intend to use. 
    Easy-to-use platform. Basic segmentation capabilities. Email analytics and reporting features. Can integration with many CRMs and other marketing tools

  • Con: Lack of advanced automation features. Limited customization options for emails. Limited template selection (nothing specific to vehicle rentals, but you can customize them to suit)

Constant Contact: Constant Contact was built for sending electronic newsletters. It has a large email template library (none are specific to vehicle rentals, but it gives you something to start with and customize for your agency’s needs), and an easy to use drag-and-drop email builder. It includes easy to use email tracking and reporting features and segments lists by tags. www.constantcontact.com

  • Pro: Integrates with social media platforms and it recently added SMS marketing too (for an additional costs)

  • Con: Limited automation capabilities. Higher pricing for premium features. Limited A/B testing options

ActiveCampaign: CRM, email marketing, and advanced automation features. Robust segmentation options with tags.
www.activecampaign.com

  • Pro: CRM integration for improved customer management. A/B testing for email campaigns.

  • Con: Higher learning curve for beginners. Limited template options for email design (none are specific to vehicle rentals)

Mailchimp: A very popular email app for bulk sending email. It has a drag-and-drop style email builder. Segmentation is based on contact behavior and attributes. It has integration with several e-commerce platforms for tracking sales. They have a tiered pricing structure for advanced feature. www.mailchimp.com

  • Pro: A/B testing for email campaigns

  • Con: We found the interface is confusing. There are limited automation features. Less customization options compared to other tools.

FleetCRM: FleetCRM has all your email marketing and SMS needs already in place. Email and SMS templates are already customized for your rental audience. Workflows are already setup to make special offers such as: upgrade on vehicle rentals, extra mileage, discounted pricing, new renter special offers, and more. https://wedriveresults.com/fleetcrm

Review Management

Birdeye: A huge following of 70,000+ businesses, including major players like BMW. Best for multi-location enterprise businesses. Businesses can monitor the customer experience and manage reviews. https://birdeye.com/

  • Pro: They have good software, but you have to pay for it. Better for large businesses with many locations

  • Con: Not recommended for small teams due to high expense and high learning curve. Expensive!

Trustpilot: Trustpilot helps you to collect, manage and promote real customer reviews. They have auto-spam detection in an attempt to weed out fake reviews. You can get the software for free if you only request 50 or less reviews per month. Over that and the starting cost is $250 to $900 per month. www.trustpilot.com

  • Pro: Easy to get and set up. Free for very small companies (less than 50 rentals per month)

  • Con: It is good at what it does, but for the same starter price you can get similar features and a whole lot more with an all-in-one marketing CRM like FleetCRM

Grade.us: Similar to Trustpilot, it helps you to generate and monitor customer reviews. Starting at $110 for a single seat. www.grade.us

  • Pro: Easy to get and set up. Does Email and SMS requests. Can share your reviews on your social profiles.

  • Con: It is good at what it does if the only thing you need is review building/marketing. SMS messages are additional fee.

FleetCRM: Review management is built right inside FleetCRM. Ask for reviews, get feedback from unhappy customers so you know where your company needs improvement; and have the software automatically respond to reviews in order to create more engagement and boost your SEO efforts. https://wedriveresults.com/fleetcrm

Video Review Requests

Sharing videos of happy customers on your website, social media and email campaigns can help grow trust in your brand and create more fans. Here are several apps that can help you request reviews, and help your customers record them easily.

Video Ask:  The go to software for this service. Very popular. www.videoask.com

Interactly: These guys are making similar software to VideoAsk. You can create custom workflows. The branding is a little too heavy. But it works well. www.interactly.video

Trust: Simple and cheap. Starting at $19/month. www.usetrust.io

Generative A.I.

Generative A.I. is a version of "Artificial Intelligence" for creating new content. Generative A.I. can write content and draw/paint images. It can be useful to vehicle rental agencies by speeding up content creation for emails, social posts (text and images!), website content, vehicle descriptions, etc.
The products listed here have Generative A.I. as their primary product/service. The section below, Content Creation, contains many products that have A.I. integrated, but are not A.I. specific.

Writing A.I.

ChatGPT: Currently, ChatGPT is the go-to software for most people. They have a free version that is excellent. The paid version if also reasonably priced. https://chat.openai.com/

Frase: There is a lot, like, a lot a lot, of software out there that uses some form of ChatGPT to help you create articles, titles, etc. Frase is the one we use the most to help with SEO (we have the pro plan with the SEO upgrade). www.frase.io

FleetCRM: Create your content inside the platform. No extra monthly fees - just pay as you go and don't pay when you don't need it.
Bonus feature! The AI inside FleetCRM can automatically respond to reviews and create more engagement :) https://wedriveresults.com/fleetcrm

Niches$$🤑: As you can see buy there branding and URL, Nichesss is an oddball - but an oddball that works quite well. It uses ChatGPT and its own prompts to help companies brainstorm ideas, write content and create images. I'm only mentioning it here because It is currently available on Appsumo for a lifetime deal at just $59. https://appsumo.com/products/marketplace-nichesss/

New Tools: If you are looking for a new tool at a great price... AI writing assistants are constantly being released on Appsumo with Lifetime deals.   Most deals let you try the software for up to 3 months and you get a full refund if you don’t like them. WARNING: It is easy to get sucked into buying software you don’t need, or software that isn’t very good. But sometimes you can get a phenomenal deal of an existing software or new software that is destined to be the next greatest thing. Check it out: www.appsumo.com

Image A.I.

DALL·E 2 (openai.com) Dall-E is the image creation sibling of ChatGPT. They are both part of openai.com. Just type in a description of what you want to see and off you go! https://openai.com/dall-e-2

CoPilot: You can also access Dall-E and ChatGPT via Microsoft’s “CoPilot” which is built into: Windows 10, Windows 11, Microsoft Edge browser and Microsoft 365 accounts

Midjourney: Midjourney can generate stunning images from simple text prompts in seconds. It work directly in Discord. No specialized hardware or software is required. https://www.midjourney.com/

Video A.I.

Invideo AI: Similar to image AI but with video. You can turn any content or idea into a video by describing it in text. They have a very impressive demonstration on their homepage. Check it out: https://ai.invideo.io/

Descript: Similar to image AI but with video. You can turn any content or idea into a video by describing it in text. They have a very impressive demonstration on their homepage. Check it out: https://descript.com

Audio A.I.

ElevenLabs: This software is incredible! If you need clear voice for a voice-over, explainer video, ad or translation, this software will turn text into voice, or fix audio issues in voice recordings. It can also speak your text in dozens of different languages. This is the best AI voice I've ever heard. It can duplicate your own voice, or create an AI voice in seconds. Fix flubbed speech, stutters, mispronunciations and background noise quickly and easily. Your listener will never know it was edited. Check out their support channel for examples of how you can use this software to improve audio clips and podcasts, or create voice-overs and audio books: https://elevenlabs.io/

Content Creation | Graphic Design

Many of the tools listed below also have built-in AI features. The tools listed above, in the Generative A.I. section, are A.I. specific tools. I will specify if the tools in this, Content Creation, section have A.I. features added in addition to their more conventional writing or graphic offerings.

Canva: This online tool allows you to quickly and easily create popular graphics for logos, social media posts, ads, websites and more.  It can remove backgrounds from images automatically and add background to change the cropping of a photo to larger than your existing image. It has thousands of graphic designs, including social posts and logos, for you to build off of. It also does video. And, it has A.I. built into it too. You can do a lot with the free account, but if you need more features the pro account is great and reasonably priced. www.canva.com

VistaCreate (formerly Crello): Similar options to Canva and brought to you by VistaPrint (VistaPrint purchased Crello). Great if you want to move your designs onto VistaPrint products (although you can easily do that using graphics you created anywhere). Since becoming part of the VistaPrint family a lot of the features are free. They have a Pro version that includes more features (which again is similar to Canva).   https://create.vista.com

Invideo Assemble your images and clips into short videos for advertising, social posts, etc. This is the non-AI version of the software mentioned above. They have tons of example videos that you can edit with your own images and clips to create short videos quickly. Note: Canva also has most of these features but with different starting videos. Check out each softwares templates to see which ones would work best for you. https://invideo.io

HyperLocal Check-ins

For a quick and easy app that allows your staff to create "check-ins" that easily post to your social profiles and GBP. This is an inexpensive and easy way to create content and show off your vehicles, agency and location. It can be a great boost to your SEO efforts too!

NearbyNow: This online tool allows you to quickly and easily create popular graphics for logos, social media posts, ads, websites and more.  It can remove backgrounds from images automatically and add background to change the cropping of a photo to larger than your existing image. It has thousands of graphic designs, including social posts and logos, for you to build off of. It also does video. And, it has A.I. built into it too. You can do a lot with the free account, but if you need more features the pro account is great and reasonably priced. www.nearbynow.co

Link Building: Citations, BackLinks & Tiered Links

Links are very important for SEO. Links help convince Google of your company's trustworthiness and authority. A strong link profile not only boosts your site's ability to rank in search results, but also enhances your web presence through improved visibility, credibility, and traffic. Not everyone will agree with this, but think about it, the web is built on links. They are important. Google knows this.

Let's break links down into three categories:

1) Citations: These are mentions of your business online. They usually include your business' Name, Address & Phone Number (NAP). They usually include a direct link to your website, but not necessarily. Most often you will find Citations in business directories (such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, or industry-specific directories), social media profiles, and local chamber of commerce pages.

Yext :  Yext is an easy way to get citations. It integrates with over 200 directories. Add your information once and Yext distributes across all it's pertinent directories AND you will be able to edit them the same way.

  • TIP: SAVE $400 PER YEAR! Yext is built into FleetCRM. Get Yext's highest plan, regularly $999 annually, for just $49 per month with any FleetCRM plan.

Pro: Huge timesaver! It creates multiple citations almost instantly. You can also update your citations instantly; which is great if you move location, change phone numbers, etc.

Con: There is a monthly fee to keep the connection live. Don't worry. Yext won't delete your citations if you cancel. Links don't disappear, but you won't be able to monitor or update them anymore.

2) BackLinks: These are what you think of when you think about Links. They are direct hyperlinks from other websites to your website. A backlink could be on a blog post, or news article, or on another website. It will point the reader to your website for more information. Backlinks only count if they are a quality link. They can actually damage your SEO efforts if Google deems them spammy, low quality links. The link should be on a webpage that is related to your niche or to your location AND the page your link is on should be a respectable website that Google deems as trustworthy. This makes quality backlinks one of the more difficult and expensive links to procure. You may find it easy to get them from a few personal connections, but building hundreds of them can take time and resources.

SEO Service: Quality backlinks are tricky and based on your specific vehicles, services and service locations. The best way to grow backlinks is to make connections with website owners in your niche or service area. Ask them for a backlink to your site. Ask them to feature you in a blog. Sponsor a local team or event that provides links on their local website. Beyond your friends and business associates it gets a little trickier. Your best bet is to hire a high-quality company who can do competitor research to find out where your local competitors are getting links from and then trying to get those sites to link to you too. Avoid using unknown link builders from Fiverr or Upwork who may create links that Google deems low-quality or spammy. This can negatively affect your search results in a huge way. Vehicle rentals is not a popular SEO niche. Hire an SEO company that knows the niche and how to build quality backlinks for your target area and your niche. https://wedriveresults.com/

3) Tiered Links: Similar to backlinks, but instead of pointing directly to your website they point to an external webpage that points to your website. It is a strategic, layered approach to building backlinks. The tiered links could be on lower quality/less targeted pages where you do not want to risk Google penalizing your website. Point those links to an important link that points to your website. For example, if there is a great news article about your company, get some easy, lower-quality links pointed to that news article. This can boost the article and add more weight to the backlink that points to your page.


The Cheap way: If you want to go cheap, this is where you could test the waters with a Fiverr, Upwork type of link builder. But never have them create a link that connects to your primary website or any important online profiles or other key online entities you may own. It isn't worth the risk. Find webpages with quality references to your own entities, and have them link to those pages. For even less risk - have them link to a quality reference that links to another quality reference that links to your entity. https://www.fiverr.com/

The Better Way: Hire Fleet Car Rental Marketing for all your link and citation building. They'll create a strategy multi-tiers deep to bring the best results for your link profile. They know your industry. They have the experience to lead your target market to you in the safest and most effective way. www.wedriveresults.com

Map Listings

Your business is location based. Improve your SEO efforts by making sure your company is on all the major Map based websites and hardware providers. And, start building entities that include map directions and other location based content to help your website rank.

Map Listings: Get your agency listed on these map based websites and hardware providers:

Missed Call Text Back + Call Tracking

Missed call text back services provide a significant advantage for businesses like independent vehicle rental agencies by ensuring they never miss out on potential customer interactions. When a call is missed, the system automatically sends a text message to the caller, offering them information or the option to engage which increases conversion rates.

There are several affordable software solutions that can automatically send a text message to a missed call. Here are a few options to consider:

Zapier: Zapier is a web automation tool that allows you to connect various apps and create automated workflows. You can use Zapier to automatically send a text message to a missed call by setting up a "Zap" that triggers when a call is missed on your phone. Zapier offers a free plan with limited features, as well as paid plans that start at $19.99 per month. It is not plug and play, but if you are techy or have someone on staff who is, you could get this to work for you. https://zapier.com

IFTTT: (If This Then That) is another popular automation tool that can help you send a text message to a missed call. Like Zapier, you can set up an "applet" in IFTTT that triggers when a call is missed, and then sends a text message to the caller. IFTTT offers a free plan with basic features, as well as a Pro plan that starts at $3.99 per month. Again, this is not plug and play. You will need some tech-savvy skills to set it up. https://ifttt.com/IFTTT

Google Voice: If you have a Google Voice account, you can use it to automatically send a text message to a missed call. Simply log in to your Google Voice account, go to Settings > Calls > Missed Calls, and then enable the "Send missed call notifications to my email" option. You can then set up an email autoresponder that sends a text message to the missed call.All of these options are relatively affordable and easy to use, but you may need to do some setup and configuration to get them working properly. Be sure to check the pricing and features of each solution to find the one that best fits your needs. https://voice.google.com/

RingCentral: RingCentral offers missed call notifications, automated text messaging and VoIP phone systems. It does offer a comprehensive phone system including missed call text back. If you need a full communication solution, this could be a contender if a phone system is something you need. Pricing might be prohibitive for very small agencies, especially those not requiring the full suite of VoIP services. It will require some setup time and some might find the initial setup and customization options complex. https://www.ringcentral.com/

CallRail: Track calls by source. Are your staff delivering 5-star customer experiences over the phone? Listen in on how your phone operators to make sure they are acting professionally, closing sales, and representing your agency the way you want them too. https://callrail.com

FleetCRM: Missed call text back and call tracking is built right into FleetCRM. It will be setup and running for you during onboarding. It has built-in workflows to provide different messages depending on whether your office is open at the time of the call. And all the workflows are fully customizable if you need to send specific messages. Awesome. https://wedriveresults.com/fleetcrm

Virtual Meeting Software

Need to make a high-ticket sales call, or discuss a joint venture partnership, solve a customer problem or collaborate with your team?  Today it is fully acceptable and often preferred to have a virtual meeting instead of an in-person meeting or phone call.  Here are some great online solutions that you may already have access to through an existing work account.

Meeting Tools: Because Zoom isn't your only option!

Zoom: - This became THE tool very quickly. Very popular! https://zoom.us

Google Meet - If you already use Google workspace, then you already have Google Meet. It works well too.  https://workspace.google.com/products/meet/

Microsoft Teams: If you already use Microsoft 365, then you already have Microsoft Teams: https://www.microsoft.com/en/microsoft-teams/

Sessions: I love this software. You can customize the domain to your own brand, use their built-in AI for transcribing and summarizing the meeting, and build in agendas for different types of meetings and to keep your sales team is consistent with up-to-date information at their fingertips. It has built in calendars for your customers to book a meeting, and of course the calendars are synced to your sales teams calendars. You can even run Webinars with Sessions. Brilliant. https://sessions.us

Calendar Tools: If you are going to run virtual meetings you need a calendar system that syncs with your sales team's.

Zoom: - Zoom now has a calendar add-on. It costs a little more, but it works. https://zoom.us/

Google Business Profile: Google has a meeting calendar built right into your GBP profile. But, to sync with a sales team and have other features, such as round-robin, we recommend you link the GBP calendar to your more robust calendar of choice. https://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/business/

Sessions: As mentioned in the previous section, Sessions has built in calendars for your customers to book a meeting, and of course the calendars are synced to your sales team. https://sessions.us

FleetCRM: Robust calendar systems are built into FleetCRM. Sync with your personal and professional calendars, set up round-robin calling for your sales team and more. https://wedriveresults.com/fleetcrm

Social Media Management

Social media management tools should include multiple features to save time and make your life easier. Important features to consider include: posting to multiple platforms simultaneously, scheduling posts in advance via a calendar feature, provide an easy way to respond to comments on multiple platforms (no need to visit each platform separately). The management software may or may not include post creation tools (this may not matter if you are using content creation software that works for you) or AI processes.

HootSuite: Hootsuite does social and only social. It does it well. Probably one of the best ones. It has Canva templates built in and serves "small business" as one of its niches. It is not specific to vehicle rentals. https://www.hootsuite.com/

  • Pro: Excellent software. It specialises in social media as it's one and only thing, and it does it well.

  • Con: Not cheap. A single seat costs $99 per month (includes 10 social profiles). A small team of 3 costs $249 per month. Add-ons can add up if you need more seats or more social account connections. But it certainly does the job well!

SproutSocial: This is a great one for larger teams. It integrates a lot of data to help create actionable insights to amplify your brand and continuously keep up with the ever-shifting social media landscape. Has all the required tools and more, including helping with Influencer Marketing. https://sproutsocial.com/

  • Pro: Best for larger teams. Distills large-scale data to help you adapt your social strategy

  • Con: $249 per month per seat and only includes 5 social profiles (it is easy to burn through 5 profiles when you consider Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Youtube, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Pinterest... oops. We are already at 7).

Life-time Deals: If you are looking for a new tool at a great price... social management software is constantly being released on Appsumo with Lifetime deals.  Most deals let you try the software for up to 3 months and you get a full refund if you don’t like it. Check it out to see if they have what you are looking for: www.appsumo.com

  • Pro: Sometimes you can get a phenomenal deal of an existing software or new software that is destined to be the next greatest thing.

  • Con: Make sure you follow through on getting your refund if you try it and decide you aren't going to use the software. It is easy to get sucked into buying software you don’t need, or end up buy software that isn’t very good. WARNING! Appsumo is kind of addictive if you like shiny things. Consider yourself warned!

FleetCRM: It doesn't have all the features of HootSuite, but it does have all the important ones including scheduling calendar and posting to multiple platforms simultaneously. It lets you communicate with fans. It also includes dozens of editable templates specifically for vehicle rental agencies built-in. Edit them in Canva to add your logo and boom! https://wedriveresults.com/fleetcrm

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