Buying a generator for a home or business can be expensive — especially considering that this piece of equipment may be useful only on the rare occasion that the power goes out. 

While some generators are small enough to run just the essentials, like a refrigerator, others are designed to power an entire home or commercial building. These are expensive, not only to purchase but also to run, but miss the list of most expensive construction equipment.

This is why many people opt instead to rent generators as needed. There are several benefits associated with rental, aside from reduced upfront pricing. Rental generators are sure to be well-maintained, and customers have the flexibility to get the right equipment for their needs.

Generators are useful for events where no power supply is accessible or for construction projects that have a limited term. Often, renter’s insurance is offered to protect renters against damage or loss.

In other words, there are many reasons why residential, commercial, and industrial customers might want to rent generators. It’s a great niche to focus on if you want to start a rental business.

Having the right equipment, pricing, and marketing strategies can help you get your business off the ground. 

What do you need to get started? Here’s how to start a generator rental business of your own.

Assess the Local Market Landscape for Generator Rentals

Before you really get into the nuts and bolts of how to start a generator rental business, it’s best to research the local market and make sure there are opportunities for your venture to thrive. Start with some competitive research.

How many other companies in your area offer generator rentals? Chances are you’ll find several types of businesses that would compete with you in this area – ranging from hardware stores that rent or sell small units for residential use, to larger companies catering to commercial, industrial, and construction projects. 

You need to consider who you plan to cater to, whether there’s a niche you can fill, and who you’ll be competing against.

This is a good time to consider your startup costs as well. If you’re renting to local residents, the equipment and costs may be considerably lower than if you plan to serve commercial or industrial clients or target event companies or concert venues.

You also need to assess the demand for generators in your area. Who needs them and how often? How many options do they have locally and what prices are potential competitors charging? 

This information will help you determine how best to go about launching a successful business venture.

Identify The Costs of Starting A Generator Rental Business

When it comes to starting your business, there will be a range of costs to consider. You’ll need to account for all of these various costs in your business plan if you hope to secure adequate funding to get your operation off the ground. 

Perhaps the biggest expense in a generator rental business model is the equipment itself, with models ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on make and model, size, capacity, and features. 

Which types of generators do you intend to rent out? How many of each will you need to get started?

Next, you’ll need to consider a commercial space. If you elect to run your business online, you may require only a warehouse (to store equipment when not in use), along with appropriate devices and software to manage bookings, inventory, and payroll.

If you want a storefront, you’ll have the cost of leasing office space. You may need to

outfit your space and hire employees, adding to your startup costs and ongoing overhead. 

Don’t forget essentials like the cost of setting up a DBA and corporate structure (LLC, S-Corp, etc.), insuring your location and/or inventory, security, and so on. 

Every expense should be factored in, along with operating costs for up to a year or more while you get your business going.

Rent Commercial Space for Your Business

Leasing can be expensive, so it’s important to find the right commercial space. You don’t want to pay for an oversized warehouse, complete with utilities, if you’ll fill only a third of it with inventory.

The first thing you should decide is if your generator rental business needs a storefront for walk-in customers and pick-ups or just a warehouse from which you’ll ship out equipment for bookings. 

From there you’ll need to consider your inventory, including the size and quantity of units. Can some of it be shelved? This may require you to know weights and add appropriate shelving and moving/lifting equipment like a forklift.

You might be interested in having room to grow, but don’t get too far ahead of yourself. If your business really takes off, you can always move to a larger space. You don’t want to fail because you’re paying too much for a lot of unused square footage.

Choose the Right Products to Offer for Rent

The equipment you offer for rent needs to meet customer demand, and if you’ve done your market research properly, you’ll have a good idea of who you’re catering to and what potential demand looks like. 

This can help you determine the brands, models, and types of generators you’ll need to get your business started and satisfy your customers. With the right products, generator rental can be one of the most profitable rental businesses out there.

Of course, you should also think about possible seasonal fluctuations. If you live in a winter climate and you’re renting primarily to construction teams, you might see significant demand only during the summer months. The same could be true of party/event rentals.

Or you might rent out residential generators during the winter months if outages are common in your area. Knowing this could help you to secure the right equipment in the right quantities long before you ever start scheduling rentals.

Choose the Right Software Solutions

If you’re going to start a generator rental business, you’ll need the right online platform to manage it. First and foremost, you’ll need software designed to track inventory and manage bookings.

Your platform should integrate seamlessly with other software you’ll need, such as QuickBooks for accounting, Avalara for automated tax compliance, Google Analytics for online marketing, and more. What else should your software provide?

Types of Software and Features You’ll Need

The right business management software for your generator rental operation should include a number of key features, such as:

• Inventory and registration management
• ECommerce storefront integration
• Renter login portals
• In-store point of sale (POS) systems
• Data reporting

It’s important that you have the right digital tools to easily make sales, get paid, track inventory, provide convenience for customers, and track the health of your business.

Create a Website and Marketing Strategy to Get Your Business in Front of Customers

Whether you run a physical storefront or not, it’s imperative that you build an online arm for your operation. Customers often perform online research before making buying decisions, and you need a website if you want to be competitive. 

For customer convenience, the option to book rentals online is vital, and this requires a CMS or plugin that allows to you take orders and accept payment.

Your website is also a great starting point for digital marketing. It not only acts as a point of interaction and sales online, but when properly optimized, it can attract visits from targeted demographics — consumers seeking your goods and services. 

Marketing efforts could include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) and/or display advertising, social media marketing, and more.

Tracking the right KPIs for your rental business can help you refine your marketing efforts over time.

With extensive research and a comprehensive business plan that includes information about market demand and competition, starting costs, equipment purchases and rental pricing, a commercial lease, software, and marketing, you have the best opportunity to impress lenders and secure needed startup funding for your generator rental business.

Quipli’s rental business software provides the tools to manage orders, payments, inventory, and more. Book a demo today to learn how it elevates your business.

Have you recently launched an equipment rental business and found yourself looking for ways to get the word out about your new venture? 

Thinking about starting your own company, but want to ensure that you know how to effectively market your services? Want to fuel continued growth by leveraging proven marketing ideas for equipment rental businesses? 

If your answer to any of the above questions was a definitive “yes,” then you are definitely in the right place. 

In the article below, our team has composed a list of some well-established marketing tips for equipment rental businesses. Your company can benefit from these tactics whether you are well-established or new to the equipment rental industry. 

As you explore ways to build your brand, acquire new clients, and boost revenue, we suggest that you use the following tactics.

Clearly Define Your Target Audience

You must first identify who you plan to target before you take to social media, launch paid ad campaigns, or start writing blogs. Without a clearly defined target audience, it will be incredibly difficult to put together a cohesive strategy to execute your marketing ideas.

When defining your target audience, you should focus on attributes such as:

• Demographics (age, gender, etc.)
• Occupation
• Location

After you have gathered some preliminary data on your target audience, you can segment it into subgroups. While there are many ways to segment your audience, one of the most effective tools for doing so is a system known as “buyer personas.” 

Buyer personas outline specific segments within your target audience. These pseudo-representations of your customers describe each segment’s pain points, challenges, and interests. Buyer personas will help you tailor your marketing message for each audience segment. 

For more on creating buyer personas, check out this guide from HubSpot.

Create a Content Strategy and Publish Content Regularly

Next on your to-do list is creating a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. SEO is the art of improving your website so that your content is more visible on search engines.

Search engines like Google and Bing rank websites using complex algorithms. These rankings are designed to connect users with relevant search results based on the keywords they queried. 

While there are many components of SEO, keywords remain the core. In order to boost your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to strategically target keywords and incorporate these phrases into your content. 

On that note, you cannot aimlessly pump out content that is jam-packed with semi-relevant keywords. 

Instead, you need to create a cohesive plan that outlines what keywords you want to target, why, and how you intend to go about it. Once your plan is in place, you will need to produce high-quality blog content and publish it on a regular basis. Over time, this will help you improve your rankings.

When creating content, focus on delivering value to your readers. The majority of your content should be educational, informative, and perhaps even fun and entertaining. Your blogs’ specific tone and style should align with your brand values and voice. 

For instance, if you rent bounce houses or party supplies, it’s okay to be a little more whimsical in your blog content. Conversely, if you rent construction equipment, your blogs should be more professional and focused. 

Make Sure Your Site Includes High-Quality Photos

When prospective clients are contemplating renting equipment from your company, they want to know that they are getting quality products. While describing the quality of your rentals will help sway their decision, a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Professional photographs will allow customers to see precisely what they are renting. Photographs are also eye-catching, which means that visitors to your site are more likely to slow down and actually pay attention to the content on your site. 

Rental photos are not just useful for your website, but they can help you garner additional attention on social media platforms as well. If prospective clients are rapidly scrolling through their news feeds and come across a big, bold image of the equipment they are interested in renting, they will stop in their tracks.

Get Active on Social Media

Speaking of social media, various social media platforms are great tools for building your brand and attracting new clients. When marketing on social media, we suggest using a combination of organic and paid marketing. 

Social media can be one of the most versatile marketing ideas for rental businesses, giving you a lot of options for the kinds of content you can share to engage with your customer base.

Organic marketing involves generating traffic without the use of paid ads. You can drive organic traffic by creating social media pages, growing your following, posting regularly, and interacting with followers. 

Paid campaigns on social platforms work very similarly to those on search engines. When setting up a campaign, you can customize your budget, ad display options, and bid amounts. These capabilities give you total control over your marketing budget while also maximizing your reach.

Which Social Media Platforms Should I Use?

While there is no doubt that you should be marketing your rental company on social media, the question is, what platform should you be using? There is no one size fits all answer.

When selecting which platforms to leverage, you must consider your target audience. Let’s stick with the party and bounce house rental example to keep things simple.

Bounce house and party supply rental businesses primarily target consumers who are hosting personal gatherings. In light of this, such a business would probably benefit the most from marketing on Facebook and Instagram. 

On the other hand, a business-to-business (B2B) company that rents to construction companies needs to connect with other business owners. Therefore, LinkedIn would probably be the ideal marketing channel for that business. 

However, B2B businesses can still benefit from marketing on mainstream social channels like Instagram —although it should not be their primary channel. Regardless of which platforms you choose to use, be careful not to overload yourself. Doing so can make it difficult to manage all of your channels.

Engage on Your Chosen Channels

When marketing on social media, you must do more than just run ads or post content. You also need to engage with your followers or people who comment on your posts. 

To be clear, we don’t expect you to spend hours replying to followers every day. You have a business to run, after all. However, you do need to check your social media at least once or twice daily and strive to be responsive to customer inquiries. 

If your social media followers become unruly, you may want to bring in a full-time digital marketing professional to manage your accounts. Alternatively, you could hire a freelancer to spend five to ten hours per week managing your social channels if you don’t have the need or budget for a full-timer.

Create an Email Marketing Strategy

We know that email marketing sounds old-fashioned, but it remains a great way of connecting with customers. Setting up an email marketing campaign can help you connect with new clients, nurture existing leads, or solicit reviews from past customers. 

Managing an email marketing campaign has become easier than ever before, thanks to platforms like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign. These solutions allow you to segment your email lists into various groups so that you can target each segment with specific messaging. For more on email marketing, explore this guide.

Follow Up with Past Customers

Staying connected with past customers is a great way of keeping your brand top of mind. You can keep up with previous clients in many different ways. 

One simple tactic involves adding them to a recurring email list using the tools mentioned above. Alternatively, you can use ad retargeting by installing cookie-based trackers on your website. This approach will help you display ads to prospects who have visited your site but may have left without contacting your company. 

Nurturing relationships with previous customers can generate repeat business. In turn, this will lead to stronger revenue and help you build your brand’s reputation.

Invest in Quality Rental Management Software

All of the above tactics will help drive customers to your website. But what sort of experience are they going to enjoy once they get there? Will they be able to book their own rental or easily explore what items you have available? If not, then you have fallen short of customer expectations and hindered your own growth efforts.

The good news is that you can modernize your online storefront with Quipli’s rental website builder. To learn more about our online scheduling and rental booking platform, sign up for a free demo.

We offer a full suite of digital growth services for equipment rental businesses. To find out more about how to take your marketing to the next level with Quipli, reach out any time!

Your rental business is only as good as the equipment you have to offer, and you’ll find that selling construction equipment is an important part of inventory management. 

While some clients may prefer solid, older equipment that their workers are familiar with, others want the newest machinery. This demand will require periodic turnover of equipment. 

How do you go about selling used construction equipment to help pay for newer models?

Evaluating Your Equipment Before Selling It

Even though you’re an expert on equipment rental, you might not have the first idea of how to sell heavy equipment. 

Start with inspection, cleaning, and appraisal. You need to assess the condition of your equipment as part of determining its overall value so you can set a reasonable sale price.

Take a Thorough Inventory

Get started by taking a full inventory, including anticipated return dates for items out on lease. 

If new purchases depend on selling old equipment, you can always discuss an upgraded booking with current renters to fulfill their contract.

Determine Which Items in Your Fleet Should be Kept or Sold

Once your inventory is complete, it’s time to carefully consider what you want to keep and what should be sold. 

In some cases, you may want to hang on to older equipment that’s in high demand among your customers. The condition of the equipment may play a role as well. Before you decide to sell construction equipment, think about whether it has more use value as a rental. (Our free equipment rental cost calculator can help you get a handle on this value.)

Prepping Your Construction Equipment for Sale

When you decide to sell construction equipment, you need to make sure it’s in shape to fetch the best possible price. Perform a thorough cleaning and inspection, service machinery, and make needed repairs to get it in optimal condition for sale.

Pursue a Thorough, Professional Appraisal

Calculating what you’ve spent and earned over the life of equipment ownership can help you determine a break-even price and hopefully exceed it when selling heavy equipment. 

A professional appraisal is the best way to figure out what your equipment is worth and what you can reasonably try to sell it for.

Selling Your Construction Equipment: Your Options for Finding Buyers

Your business requires you to keep a finger on the pulse of the rental market. When you’re considering how to sell construction equipment, however, you may not have the same level of expertise. 

For this reason, it’s a good idea to explore your options when it comes to effective avenues for making sales.

Selling at Auction

There are auction firms with a worldwide audience that specialize in heavy equipment, and the process can include both in-person and remote bids. This can expand your pool of buyers, especially considering that auction firms have their own marketing and contact lists in place. It could be a great way to sell off a lot of equipment quickly.

An auction could take place at your facility or at an auction yard along with other sellers. As a bonus, you may have options for additional services like appraisal, repairs, detailing, and equipment transport.

Reaching Out to Local Equipment Dealers

It’s not unusual for dealers to sell heavy equipment that is used alongside newer models. Consider making an appointment with dealers in your area to discuss the prospect of selling on their lots. 

They may buy your equipment outright to sell or offer a contingency deal where they take a cut of the sale, so you’ll need to work out the details.

Listing Your Equipment Online

Online sales are a great way to expand your potential buyer pool. There are websites (like Machinery Trader) designed for selling construction equipment. 

You will have to pay for listings, but you could have access to useful options like SEO and search ads that get your listing in front of targeted buyers searching for used equipment like yours.

Paid Facebook ads are another option to consider. Alternatively, you could join Facebook groups dedicated to selling heavy equipment or list on Craigslist for free, but these options could limit your buyer pool.

Expert Tips for Selling Used Heavy Equipment

Once you’ve chosen the appropriate platform for selling used equipment, you need to make sure it’s ready to go. Getting the best price in a sale means knowing the value of what you have, presenting it in the best possible light, and offering straightforward descriptions so buyers are satisfied with what they receive.

Know the Valuation of Your Machinery

When determining how to sell construction equipment for the best return on investment, you need to make sure you know what it’s worth. The value will depend on a range of factors, such as the make and model, age, and condition. Understanding market demand will also play a role in setting an appropriate price.

Take High-Quality, Well-Lit Images

A picture is worth a thousand words, so you need to take pains to post high-quality, well-lit images displaying your equipment from multiple angles. Show the machinery in full and highlight areas of interest like the engine, cab, gauges, tracks, hydraulics, and so on. Consider what you’d want to look at if you were a buyer.

Be Honest and Transparent

If you’re planning to sell heavy equipment online, it’s important that you’re upfront about what buyers will receive, especially where condition is concerned. If a buyer feels like you lied about the condition of the equipment, you could not only suffer bad reviews that impact your rental business but you might also face a lawsuit.

Determine the Tax Implications of Selling Your Equipment

Before selling equipment, discuss tax implications with your CPA. If you sell lower than the remaining un-depreciated value, can you take a write-off? How much will you be taxed for gains? Can you offset gains that will add to your taxable income? These are all things to find out before setting a price and selling equipment.

Learn more about construction equipment in our guide to the most expensive construction equipment, the most popular rental equipment, and which heavy equipment is in trend by renters. 

Research and Prep Are the Best Strategies for ROI

When you take the time to thoroughly evaluate used equipment, find the right venue to sell it, and present it properly at a reasonable price point, you have the best chance to complete sales and see some return on investment. This can help you purchase newer equipment that will keep your rental business going and even facilitate expansion.

The best rental software can help you manage all aspects of your business, including equipment rentals, payments, and inventory. 

Book a demo with Quipli today to learn more about streamlining your operations.

Every healthcare practice — from hospitals to private clinics to ambulance services — relies on medical equipment. However, purchasing and maintaining an expansive inventory of necessary equipment could be too expensive for some facilities, especially those with diverse disciplines.

This is where your medical equipment rental business comes in. You can purchase a wide range of equipment to rent to local healthcare practices and facilities, offering them the equipment they need at a price they can afford. Alternatively, you can specialize in a particular niche and cast a wider net for your client base. 

Of course, getting a successful business up and running requires careful research and planning. Before dropping startup capital on medical equipment, you need to make sure there’s ample demand, then create a solid marketing strategy. Here’s what you need to know to get your venture off the ground.

Choose a Niche Carefully

When you’re considering how to start a medical equipment rental business, the first thing you should examine is how many niches there are in this industry. If, for example, you rent to hospitals and clinics, you could offer patient monitoring and critical care equipment like ventilators, aspirators, pumps, DVT therapy units, and more.

Alternatively, you could provide hospital beds and durable medical equipment (DME) like wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, and oxygen equipment. Or, you could rent DME to home healthcare practices or even private individuals.

You should also consider specialized healthcare practices like dentistry and veterinary medicine. Finally, you can look at offering medical equipment rentals to targeted groups like cosmetic surgeons, physical therapy practices, and so on. 

Knowing what options are available to you is just the beginning. From there, you need to research local demand and competition before you choose a niche where you can thrive.

Assess Your Local Competition

You may enter the medical equipment rental field with a niche already in mind. Perhaps you have some experience in healthcare and you want to parlay your expertise into your own enterprise. Or maybe personal experiences have led you to this business.

However, before you jump in, you need to make sure there’s space for you to succeed in the marketplace. If there’s too much competition in your chosen niche, you’ll find yourself fighting an uphill battle against established brands to gain customers.

Start by looking into medical equipment rental businesses in your area and see what they’re offering. If possible, find out who their clients are. Some businesses offer information about prestigious clients on their websites to attract new customers.

Next, research what competitors are offering and how they’re positioning themselves. Who are they trying to attract as clients? Through the process of elimination, this information can help you spot areas of need that lack coverage — or at least find marketplace segments with minimal competition.

Insure Your Equipment Properly

As a business owner, you’re responsible for insuring your company against potential harm, such as legal liability, theft, or damage to tangible assets. Because medical equipment could cost lives if it fails or malfunctions, you have to be extra careful.

Rental equipment management has two steps: First, you have to insure your inventory while it is in your possession. That is, your policy must cover equipment while it is being stored at your retail location or a warehouse. Seek an insurance policy that will cover a range of potential catastrophes, such as theft or natural disasters.

The next step is deciding how to insure equipment while it is rented out. You can offer your clients the option to either buy insurance or take on the cost of repair or replacement if the equipment is damaged in their care (beyond normal wear and tear).

Pinpoint and Understand Your Customer Base

Once you’ve chosen a niche and performed market research, you’ll want to understand the needs and expectations of your customer base. Determining how to start a medical equipment rental business is all about figuring out the best path toward building a swift and loyal following.

Who are your customers? If you’re in an urban center, there may be scads of hospitals, clinics, rehab facilities, and other healthcare providers in search of your services. In a rural area, you might cater more to private practices, emergency services like first responders, or even individual consumers.

Find out what types of equipment are needed and used most, what prospective customers are lacking, and how many units are required. Keep in mind that most rental businesses must take into account the element of seasonality. For example, ventilators might be in higher demand during flu season.

Make sure to talk to a range of healthcare providers, such as administrators, doctors, nurses, techs, and EMTs. While decision-makers handle details like budgets and scheduling, knowing what facilities and organizations need from the ground up could help with your marketing efforts.

Create a Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve got a handle on how to rent out equipment for the healthcare industry, you’ll need to promote your business.

Knowing who your customers are and the pain points they’re dealing with gives you a good starting place when it comes to creating a sound marketing strategy for medical equipment rental. However, coming up with compelling content is only one aspect of marketing.

You also need to consider the marketing channels available to you. What are the costs and potential returns? Which

h are most likely to reach your target audience and result in desired conversions like website visits, sales, and so on?

While traditional marketing efforts like radio ads and mailers can have an impact, especially in a local market, most businesses these days rely heavily on digital marketing. With the right marketing strategy, you have the best opportunity to make the most of your marketing budget and see the returns in rental bookings.

Types of Marketing for Medical Equipment Rentals

Even if companies and consumers seeking a medical equipment rental business receive word-of-mouth recommendations, chances are that they will also do some research online to make sure they’ve found a reputable and reliable partner. At the very least, they’ll probably comparison shop for pricing.

When this happens, you want to be among the first options they find, and the right marketing can help. Some of the most effective marketing strategies include:

• SEO
• Paid Google search ads
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing

Search engine optimization, or SEO, revolves around efforts to ensure that search engines like Google recognize your business as relevant to specific search terms. You want your business to show up in the top results when users enter searches like “medical equipment rental,” for example. SEO is one way to make this happen.

Paid Google search ads can also be incredibly useful for building brand awareness and boosting website traffic, especially with the right strategies. 

You can also build a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, and similar sites. Social media marketing has incredible reach and can catch your audience’s attention even when they’re not actively searching for you.

Finally, content marketing adds value for customers without pushy sales tactics. It also supports your SEO strategy and other efforts. Each of these can be an important part of your overall marketing strategy.

Choose the Right Software

Streamlining your rental business operation requires the right software. What should you look for? You need a comprehensive platform that not only facilitates bookings, payments, and inventory management but also integrates seamlessly with other software, such as QuickBooks and Google Analytics.

If you’re ready to get your medical equipment rental business up and running — or it’s time to streamline operations — book a demo with Quipli today to discover the benefits of advanced rental software.

Explore our medical equipment rental agreement template for additional medical equipment information.