It’s very normal to shop around for prices, but when you get the Tire Kickers and bargain hunters,  you don’t want to waste your valuable time on these types of clients. I know what you are thinking? “Wow Jose, why you being so rude?” As you may already know, I’m in the Bounce House Business myself, so I’ve been around the block a few times… I pay close attention to my business.

If you are running a Bounce House Business, your time is very valuable, and wasting time is non productive for your Rental business.

Your website does two things. 1. Engage your customer and show off your products or services. If a potential client liked what they seem, they will continue to seek out more information- let’s call this “Hot Leads” what makes a potential customer a “Hot Lead?” an instant want/need and your website!

Your site showed them a beautiful picture of a unit and perhaps even a video of that unit in action? They immediately called you and answered the phone and booked a unit! Or they simply used your online reservations system and made a deposit and you- Booked a unit!!

Keep in mind “Hot Leads” in this business is very short – You must act on these leads right away! – Business owners without an online reservation system or actual people answering their phones lose thousands of dollars a year. These same owners looses “Hot Leads” for not having prices on their websites as well – Ok, let’s not debate on this because you are more worried about your competitor than your own customers! I like to cater to my potential customers than hiding prices from my competitors…

These same owners are spend most of their time on the phone with “Tire Kickers” or bargain hunters” – Remember I said “Wasted time?” – These Tire Kickers and Bargain Hunters were attracted by website without prices, the same client you thought you were going to up sell too…

Tire Kickers and bargain hunters seem to be lurking in deep water at “Craigslists” looking for their next poor business owner willing to take whatever comes their way. These same lurkers are now surfing from websites to websites looking for bargains…I don’t know about you, but  I like my business to turn a profit than breaking even! I’m not in the business of breaking even or wasting my time.

If you’re breaking even in your rental business, then you’re having a problem with your marketing or website. These issues need to be address to keep you from burning out and losing your grip in your rental business!

Displaying prices on your rental website will eliminate tire kickers and bargain hunters from tying up your phone lines. How you want your leads, Hot or Cold? I like mines Hot!

Jose Lopez

Running a successful Bounce House business takes the correct mindset and tools.  A person who can concentrate on focusing on what’s needed to make it more profitable while making the correct choices!

I’ve dealt with many types of businesses and industries, but I’ve never seen an industry were the owner tries to do everything themselves to save money.

I’ve seen them create their own website without knowledge on HTML, graphics or even understanding how to make it work with SEO. The lack of understanding forces them to get cheap template sites and stuff everything into a single page that looks like it was created by a five-year-old!  This is what they use to showcase their business and products. This is a major mistake because the first 15 seconds is so critical because a potential client will decide if they will use their service based on they see on the website. Wouldn’t they rather leave it to the professionals who are going to help them convert more visitors into clients with a more professional website? It should be a no brainer right?

The industry has many of the “One-Man Shows” and what that means is that the owner will deliver, setup, take down, fold and haul away these units that weight about 200LBS of vinyl. Now, at the storage, he will unfold, clean, fold again to get it ready for the next rental…This is just one unit! Can you imagine doing this for 5-10 units? They do this to save money—Kind of crazy right? Can you think of a better way to use your time?

The majority of these “One-Man Show” thinks they are saving money by doing all this additional work.  In all honesty, this added work takes them away from really promoting their company and using their time more wisely.

I’ve personally seen my Bounce House Business take off in the right direction. I’ve added staff, trucks and other items, so they can do the daily operation while I continue to market my Bounce House Business. Could I have done this myself? Maybe, but why?  I know my objectives and that’s to make money without me doing physical work.

The reason why so many fail this industry, is because they want to do everything themselves. This takes away from doing what they supposed to be doing! This is not running a successful business.

Over the years I’ve met many that don’t have any clue as to how to run a business but at the same token I’ve met just a handful who knew what they wanted and how to get there. These guys were not your typical “One-Man show” or care to wear too many hats!

Jose Lopez

Google doesn’t hate you. You just need to follow Google guidlines to be liked by Google.

If you been struggling to get Google to love your website, you must know what keywords you are going after. Like I always have said, the bounce house industry, is way behind when it comes to the proper way of optimizing a website or page for traffic.

It’s been weeks since I’ve gotten a call from a rental company telling me – That Google hates them. Unfortunately, I see this too often. The good news is that Google doesn’t hate you; it’s just that your website or page doesn’t meet her criteria as a valuable resource when someone types a certain keyword or keyword phrases in Google’s search box. Google will look for a better defined website or page to meet that searcher expectation. This is the reason you need a “Keyword Focused Website”

I asked the caller “What do you want to rank for?” In my mind I was thinking this person was going to say “I want to rank well for the City/cities I want to service” Instead, the answer I got was “I want to rank for, Popcorn machine, Bounces, Moonwalk, Jumpers, Jumpy things, Moonbounce and portable Bathrooms, ect.” The lack of understanding how the Search Engines works is what’s killing these small rental companies.

You must have a plan of action to attract Google and that’s to optimize your site/page. Once you find out your targeted keyword/s, you than proceed to optimize certain area of that page to convince Google that your page is fully optimized for certain keyword/s and only then, will you see more targeted traffic to your website that will result in more reservations and revenue.

It has become normal for people to type in their City or State after whatever services they are looking for. Example – Bounce House Rentals, Houston.

This kind of precise search will eliminate unwanted results from other States. This is called “Targeted Search”

This is the reason you must have a “Keyword Focused Website”. You must also know what keyword/s a potential customer may type in to find a specific product or service. A good place to get this valuable information for free is “Google’s Keyword Tool”

Here’s a good example of want I wouldn’t use after I’ve done a keyword search. I know in my area people are not going to use the following keywords to find my services…Jumpy House, Jumpers, Colorful Houses, Connecticut, 06114, 06106, 06108 and so on.

People who are doing this are the ones who will stare at their inventory week after week, while seeing their competitors Bounce Houses right down the street and be upset about it! There is no need to use keyword/s that’s not use in your location.

Give Google your well defined website or page and Google will give your website the rank it deserves.

Jose Lopez

Business cards have always been a salesman or business owner the most-used item when out of the office. It’s one of those things we don’t even think about as all we do is hand them out and hope for the best. The problem with this approach is that everyone else is doing the same exact thing! So what are we to do? We all know the average consumer is getting bombarded with deals, coupons, promises, and email marketing on a daily basis because every business wants their business to make what? Money of course!

As a professional marketer myself, I see these simple tactics losing their effectiveness. They aren’t as effective as they use to be. As a business person myself, I had to keep brain storming to keep coming up with ideas that will get my message across and keep my business booming while satisfying my customers.

With any potential customers, you must understand that they have choices and will always look for “What’s in it for me” or “The best deals.” If you keep this in mind, and satisfied their needs you are much closer to capturing their business.

Getting back to the “Business Cards” what’s so unique about your Bounce House Business Card? A business card can have the best graphics in the world, but if it doesn’t have the “What’s in it for me” it won’t work! How many times have you grab a business card, and you flipped it over to see if there were anything else printed? What were you looking for? Were you looking for a deal or a reason to save it? This is the reason why you must utilize that empty space to grab the card holder’s attention by adding a value to the business card. Even if they don’t use it, I’m sure they know someone who will. Here’s my rental business card…as you can see I too use this method to increase my business.

The next time you hand over your Bounce House Business Card make sure it has a value with a call to action. It will be the next best move you have ever made for your Bounce House Business.

I had my cards done at www.gotprint.com. Their prices are hard to beat. Check them out! Also, if you want to spice your cards up a bulletin boards use this serve www.cardcues.com/business-card-holder.php

Jose Lopez

You already know how powerful WordPress is and how valuable it has become to your Bounce House Business. You have enjoyed the ease of doing your own changes and the abilities to do the “Big boy stuff” and this has been a dream come true for most of you coming off those skimpy templates websites that had You in control rather you have it-Under control! Our WordPress freed you from this nightmare.

It’s sad to know 95% of the Bounce House Business owners are subject to being hostage by their designers or their skimpy template sites like Godaddy tonight and Yahoo’s site builder and many other blocking looking site templates. You are one of the elites who demands more out of your website. Now with that being said, lets talk about saving your WordPress site by backing it up. Things can go wrong and we at Bounce House Marketing scored the Internet finding the best plugins for our clients and the beauty of this plugin is that is cost you nothing!! As our client, we will install it for free and show you how to use it with a click of a button!! You guys mean the world to us – It’s our job to make sure your WordPress website runs efficiently and specially if that WordPress website was created by us!

You will find this special plugins in your “Member’s Area”

Ain’t you glad you are part of Bounce House Marketing?

Jason

Here are 3 great reasons why we love WordPress:

1. WordPress is easy for your clients – Once we set up a website for our clients, we can show them how to quickly and easily they can add content, videos, images to it. Our clients love this because they won’t have to wait for changes from us. We love it because it allows us to continue to focus on helping our clients in other areas instead of doing changes to their sites.

2. Plugins, plugins, plugins! – Plugins are great because hundreds of them already exist. Almost anything your clients want, can be done with plugins. Everything from shopping carts to members areas. We love it because it’s quick and easy for them to add with a push of a button. Our clients are the most important part of our business. When they are happy, we are happy!

3. Search Engine Friendly – WordPress is designed to be search engine friendly. This means it will naturally rank higher in Google than a Flash or normal HTML website will or Template site.

Plus, there are WordPress plugins designed to help our clients with SEO… it doesn’t get much easier than that. Our clients love it because they’ll get more organic traffic. We love it because it helps them succeed online.

There are a lot more reasons to love WordPress, but I know these three is what make our clients happy and allows them to grow their business!

Jose Lopez

Ok, so you have a WordPress website and now you are among the elites in the internet world, congratulations!! It seems every new WordPress owner goes a bit tad crazy in racking up on Plugins (Extra feature to make your site do diffrent things). Before you go and pile on tons of plugins keep in mind your function of your website. You don’t need to add extra features you don’t need or help your visitors. Also, keep in mind the risk of installing a plugin that outdated or a plugin with no actual support. Low quality plugin can also hurt or crash your website. Also keep in mind that just because a plugin was created for WordPress it doesn’t mean it will work well with your wordpress website! There’s a lot of low quality risky plugins out there just waiting to get downloaded.

So know what you want and what you want it to do on your website before you start testing different plugins on your site. When we create websites for the Bounce House Industry, we always add the best plugins that will enhance your website and pleases the Search engines and your potential customers.

How to tell if you have a plugin issue?

If your site crashes instanly, than you know that plugin was the issue, but if you are having issues with your drag and drop feature, you may have a faulty plugin causing this issue. The more plugins you have piled on, the more difficult it will be to determine the source of conflicting plugin. You can spend ours looking for the offending plugin, so keep this in mind.

You will also see this warning before you download a plugin. This is a featured the WordPress has to alert you! Pay attention the the warning, don’t get temped with the plugin feature. It can crash your website!

In addition, the more plugins you have the slower your website will load for your potential customers. This will force you to lose customers if they have to wait or freezes their computer, so think before you activate!

Jose Lopez

What is success in the Bounce House industry? Is it the amount of units we have or how new our delivery vehicles looks? or is it how big our storage warehouse is? Success in this industry comes in many different forms. For some it can simply mean by how many more units they add to their inventory…

Success to me means the ability to control my Bounce House Business without doing any physical labor and yet still being able to continue to add money into the business bank account. That’s what success means to me.

When I entered in this industry late 2005, I knew what I wanted and how I was going to get there. I’ve worked long hours figuring what worked in this industry and what didn’t although I had a strong marketing experience.

I’ve been through many ups and downs, but I maintain focus and made sure nothing stop me from reaching my goals. I also learned in this industry that any wrong decision can set you back if you are not careful. What I mean by that is that you as a business owner, must make the right calls. There’s no room for testing on what works.

Success in this industry can be easy if you stick with a well thought out plan. Over the years, I met hundreds of Bounce House Business owners and from those hundreds, I can honestly say 3 were heading in the right direction while the other 93% were destroying their own business by the choices they continue to make. I live to learn and make the right choices to succeed with my bounce house business. I’ve have never in my life came across an industry who make choices based on money value. Don’t get me wrong, I like to save a buck or two once in a while, but to sacrifice quality just to save a buck is just plain nuts! This industry thinks in a weird way and it’s no wonder many fail in this industry.

I’m so happy I’ve managed to show a few companies how to really succeed in this industry without sacrificing quality in order for them to make money in this industry.

What does success means to you?

Jose Lopez

We are very happy to announce our new added Member’s area. This is where our members see their instructional videos on how to control their powerful WordPress websites. We expect those videos to be up and running by March-2012

We at Bounce House Marketing want you to succeed, we just don’t want to create a website or landing page and send you on your way..No! We want to be part of your success! We are looking to build a strong relationship with our customers for many years to come.

Don’t forget to sign up – We will start to approve those accounts late February, so you can start to learn about your powerful WordPress website. See you at the other side!