Question 1

Can you really grow my store if you are not local?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We've run campaigns from a ski town, from Thailand, and from motorhomes parked up in ski resorts, both for stores we've lived close to for 15 years and in countries we've never visited. Good marketing does not need proximity. It needs someone who understands the ski rental industry as well as the digital marketing one, and does the work properly.

Question 2

We are an independent rental store competing with bigger players. Can we still win?

Accepted Answer

That is exactly who we work best with. Plenty of independents have years of experience and loyal customers but are not using the digital marketing side to grow their business. Get that right and you will win back the market share you deserve, the share a newcomer could quite easily take with a decent budget and experience. Protect your business. Don't lose it to some newbie.

Question 3

Which channels actually work for ski and snowboard rental?

Accepted Answer

It depends on your market, but in our lengthy experience Google Ads, SEO, Meta and email all earn their place when used well. We pick the mix that fits your season and budget, measure honestly, and put the money where it pays back. The biggest difference is your level of investment: the less you do, the longer it takes to gather data and grow; the more you invest, the faster we can move. This is the ultimate test of whether you view marketing as a cost or an investment in your business.

Question 4

When should we start marketing for the season?

Accepted Answer

Before the snow falls. Ultimately the start date depends on your market. In the Southern Hemisphere, which relies on holiday bookers from overseas, we start marketing five to six months before a four-month season starts. It also depends on whether you are daily, weekly or seasonal bookings. The stores that win fill the diary pre-season while everyone else waits for walk-ins. We build the pre-season booking engine so your season starts with confidence, not hope. The earlier we start, the more of the season we capture. We find it frustrating walking around a resort watching people go from store to store comparing prices.

Question 5

Do we need a new website first?

Accepted Answer

No. We've worked plenty of times with existing websites that didn't reflect the quality of the products the store was selling, and still got results. We will tell you straight what will make a difference, and in what order, rather than selling you a website rebuild you don't need. The reality is that marketing brings people looking for your product to your website, and your website is the ultimate salesman. If it is not up to scratch it will hurt your sales, but that does not mean the marketing will not work. You still need a decent offer. We've even had record-breaking seasons for stores where we encouraged people to stop en route and go out of their way to pick up their rentals, because the offer was that good.

Question 6

Will this work for my market?

Accepted Answer

Every market is slightly different, but we have worked with seasonal rentals, daily rentals and weekly holidaymaker rentals, and the same principles apply. Darren, the founder of Fully Charged Media, has skied since he was five, snowboards too, and has been lucky enough to ski all over the world and spend seasons in Canada, New Zealand and Europe. He loves being in the mountains.

Question 7

How does your system work?

Accepted Answer

We have many parts to our system, but one thing we guarantee is that we will not start working on your marketing until we can set up accurate conversion tracking. This usually involves an initial setup that needs doing regardless, and it runs across all your marketing channels, including organic. Without it we don't have the right data, neither for us to report on nor for the platforms to optimise. This is where most people have been burnt before: someone comes in, clicks a few widgets in Google Ads, and months later you are left thinking, well, that didn't work. We need that data to know what is working as well as what is not. After that, we run the campaigns and marketing we would recommend on a monthly basis, and we like to work with people for one season as a minimum.

Question 8

How much does this cost?

Accepted Answer

You are asking the wrong question. If you view this as a cost, you are not looking at marketing the right way. Our goal is to make your marketing a profit centre and an investment in your business, not a cost. It is always our goal to make you more money than you are spending on us and your ad spend, otherwise it does not work for either of us. We like to work with clients long term, and some of them we've been lucky enough to work with for over nine years. We get it if you've felt burnt by digital companies in the past. That's what we detest about this industry too, so we'll always be up front and transparent with you. But we also need enough revenue to be profitable ourselves, and enough ad spend from you to make it feasible.

Question 9

Will you guarantee your results?

Accepted Answer

In all honesty, nobody can. When people tell us they'll spend as much as it takes once they start getting results, it usually means they are too scared to invest in their business and want guarantees and promises. If guarantees worked all the time, we would all be buying lottery tickets and having powder days every day. Anyone who guarantees success is playing roulette. A lot of factors affect results:

what your competitors are doing
the competitive landscape
what other people are investing
and never mind the snowfall

That said, you have seen our results. They are realistic and not cherry-picked. This is an industry we love, and we love it when things work for both of us, so we will do everything we can to drive your success. If we make recommendations and you don't follow through, like website changes, your results won't be as good as they could be, but that does not mean you won't be profitable. The best way to look at it: what happens if you don't do this? Will you lose the business you've spent years building, or will some young schmuck come in with a budget and a few ads and take the market share you built up over years?

Question 10

I'm only a small store with a small budget. Can you still help?

Accepted Answer

We are very respectful of everyone's budgets and we work hard to make them go as far as they can. The honest reality is that if a budget is too low, we can't get creative enough to use the advertising platforms properly. If yours is below a few thousand dollars a month, and remember that needs to cover ad spend too, it's worth watching our on-demand ski rental workshop to see how much is involved in following the full system. One of our most successful stores started with us before they had even reached six-figure rental revenue, and a few seasons later we are expecting them to get close to seven figures. At the end of the day this is an investment in your business, and we can't work magic with tiny numbers.

Question 11

How do we get started?

Accepted Answer

Book a Growth Plan Session. We look at your store, your season and your market, then tell you straight where the growth is. There is no obligation, but we do charge for it to keep the tyre kickers away. You will get value out of it regardless of whether we work together afterwards.