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In recent months, many of you have heard me make the following statements:

"You are in the parking industry, this is obviously true. But you are also in the travel business. If your airport closes tomorrow, your company would be in a serious predicament."

"In recessionary times, small to mid-size companies have a real opportunity to position their brand in the marketplace and increase marketshare. The time is right now to implement a strategy while the larger brands struggle to compete and hold marketshare."

"No one goes on the internet to spend more money. Consumers are shopping for bargains first, and then a trusted brand who provides reliable service."

"Travel & Entertainment (a.k.a T&E) is the second largest expense in most companies. In the last three years, companies have cut travel costs simply because they can and must. This trend will continue until our economy shows any sign of growth."

"Common sense tells us that following success is smarter than following failure. Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrylser, once said 'you have to surround yourself with winners'. Having said that, I like following the most successful airline strategy in the U.S. - Southwest Airlines."

Why is Southwest Airlines the most profitable airline in American history?
Because they built a company going against the grain. In other words, SWA did not follow Delta, United, American and all the other others with respect to service, seats, marketing, operations, aircraft, etc. When the internet took off in the late 90's, SWA made a strong stance in being the only airline to block other third party websites (known as aggregators) from reserving seats through Centralized Reservation Systems (CRS). Fast-forwarding through their success, today the company transacts in two ways; http://www.southwest.com/ and 1-800-IFLYSWA. That's it!

The SWA website processes approximately 80% of the company's reservations. And the 800 number has played a recorded message since 1999 "Our lowest fares are found at Southwest.com".

Positioning your Brand and Branding your Business!

In today's competitive environment, it is about providing your lowest rates on your company's website to establish trust with your shopper. As a consumer, think about your own personal shopping experience for any product or service online. If you find a product or service on a third-party website you never heard of offering a lower price than your website, what would you think or do?

You would probably ask yourself the following:

who is this company?

where is this company? U.S. or another country.

what can I expect from this company?

can I trust this company?

why is the pricing lower on a third-party website than the company's website?

This is your time for branding and positioning your business in your marketplace. And if you do it right (plan, prepare, educate, execute and track), you will reduce costs, increase revenue, build customer loyalty and compete at the highest level.

Here is a website that provides great insight into branding and positioning. Click Here.

What is your company's greatest asset?

A trademark is often the greatest asset of a company. It carries along with it invaluable goodwill, consumer trust and an exit strategy. Many businesses put years of hard work, piles of money, and hours of networking to build and establish a brand in the marketplace. When the internet arrived, many thought they could change the rules and shuffle around the law.

Because your busines is so important for many reasons, it is critical for you to read this paragraph and then the Lanham Act.

Although it is said that "all is fair in love and war," the same is not universally true when it comes to business. There are certain business practices that society, as reflected in the law, has said are not fair in a business setting. Unfair competition law is one body of law that is used to assure that competition among firms is fair; one aspect of this law is the law of trademarks.

If you have not registered your company (your greatest asset), please consider doing so today. Fact is, the internet is here to stay and so are those who want to borrow your brand name for placement, reputation and advancement in the space. For information about state registration requirements, applicants must contact the individual state trademark office found on this website:

http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/State_Trademark_Links.jsp

Preparing for the Mobile Era

At the time of this writing, consumers are performing 660 million searches per day on mobile devices. That represents 15 percent of all Web searches. By the time you read this article, the number will have grown.

According to marketing research company ComScore Inc., Smart Phones are now used by one in four U.S. mobile subscribers. Estimates are that by the third quarter of 2011, they will outsell “feature phones.” Add to that the sales of iPads and other tablet-type brands, which should see $55 million sales in 2011, and you see the trend toward mobile Internet use is a powerful tool to market small businesses.

As the mobile channel evolves, data shows that the consumer doing mobile searches for a product or service is a highly qualified buyer. Consumers using their Smart Phones to conduct a business search have an immediate need and are likely to make a purchase within a short period of time. In addition to search and directory applications, they will often use a navigation or mapping application to perform the search and have a high likelihood of downloading directions or maps if they find a local business that matches their needs. This means more physical site visits and a better opportunity to close the sale with a real-time, mobile-friendly reservations system.

Remember that parking is geocentric, meaning customers typically come from within a 1-100 mile radius. That’s what makes local search (Google Places, Bing Local and Yelp) so relevant to the online shopping space. It is essential that your business get branded in all local listings today.

Having said that, there are two ways to take advantage of today’s mobile marketing: mobile search and mobile display. Here’s how each works.

Mobile Search. Mobile consumers search for local businesses in a variety of ways. They may search using the mobile Web (i.e., mobile versions of Google or Bing), or by using applications (apps) downloaded to the phone. The iPhone has more than 225,000 available apps, while the Android has more than 70,000. Of these, there are many search, directory and navigation apps, such as YPmobile, that can drive customers to your location for a relatively low fixed cost. In addition, there are new providers that offer reach by delivering search results across a broad network of more than 20 top apps, providing the attractive option of a pay-per-call campaign.

Mobile Display. Mobile advertising also offers highly targeted display or banner ad opportunities. Your banner ad can be targeted not only geographically but also by specific demographics. For example, finance and travel apps are used more frequently by 30- to 49-year-olds than any other age group and attract a primarily male audience. People ages 50 to 64 access news on a regular basis. If you want to attract a younger and primarily female demographic, media and entertainment is the answer.

Coming soon in 2011, SMC Software will be developing a mobile application for its reservations system and will be announcing partnerships with one or more mobile search directories who provide downloadable applications on the iPhone and Android. Stay Tune!

Beyond The Box Thinking

A fairly creative parking concept in the 1950's. Enjoy!

Walking on a treadmill can be boring unless you have headphones on listening to your favorite music and a TV in front you to read the headline news or watch a sporting event. Wow, have the times changed.

Back to the treadmill for a minute. It can be the best 30 minutes of your day to evaluate your business every day and keep your mind fresh for new ideas. That said, what if you came up with just ONE idea to attract ONE new parker every day of the week (365 new parkers a year)?

Most ideas are never implemented for a variety of reasons. Although I love the 5th wheel in this video, it was only an idea.

Simple Outline for Internet Marketing Strategy

An Internet marketing outline guides a company step-by-step how to market its product or service to a specific target market and it helps a company remain focused on its marketing objectives.

Your Internet Marketing Plan will define all of the components of your marketing strategy. You will address the details of your market analysis, sales, and public relations campaigns. The most successful Internet marketing plans integrate both Internet marketing strategies as well as traditional (offline) marketing strategies.

The Topics You Need to Discuss in Your Internet Marketing Plan include:

1. Online Market Research

Collect, organize, and write down data about the online market that is currently offering parking services. Some areas to consider:

• Market dynamics – patterns including seasonality and competition;

• Customers – demographics, market segment, target markets, needs, buying decisions;

• Service – what’s out there now and what's the competition offering? Conduct market research by going to Google.com and Bing.com to conduct searches on the types of services you are providing;

• Current trends in the airport parking industry;

• Aggregators – who, why, where and what is happening in your market;

• Target Market(s) – to be successful, focus on one or two small niche markets instead of a large general market. Niche markets have far less competition and they tend to be more profitable. If there is one thing you can do to help your odds of being successful in business it is to focus on one or two small niche markets.

2. Online Competition

Describe your competition. Develop your "unique selling proposition." What makes you stand apart from your competition? Why are you special? Why should a customer choose to do business with you instead of one of your competitors? The better job you can do to differentiate yourself from your competitors, the more success you will have.

3. Online Marketing Strategies

Write down the Internet marketing and promotion strategies that you want to use or at least consider using. Strategies to consider include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What this means is using optimization techniques so search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) will rank your website within the top 10 search results. By doing this you can get literally thousands of people to your website every day for free;

• Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO). Similar to SEO, it is equally important to optimize a short video on the top video search engines (YouTube, Google-Video, Yahoo-Video);

• Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engine Marketing. When you use this service you are bidding on keywords so that your website text ad is displayed when a person conducts a search on a particular keyword or key phrase. Google and Bing offer PPC programs. It is recommended to point these ad links to a supporting landing page;

• Channel Marketing. This is where other partner websites market your services for your business for either a discounted rate or a commission on each sale. This is an outstanding way to create a successful Internet business;

• Email Marketing. There are ten steps to a successful email marketing campaign. We will discuss first six in this piece and the rest later. Here are the ten:

Step 1: Consolidating Your Names
Step 2: Build Your List of Email Addresses
Step 3: Develop Your Email Campaign Mix
Step 4: Write Your Emails
Step 5: Choose Your Recipients
Step 6: Send Your Email Blast
Step 7: Process Opt-Outs
Step 8: Process Bounced Emails
Step 9: Follow Up
Step 10: Refine and Repeat

• Link Exchanges. This is where you and other websites exchanges links to drive traffic to each other’s website. Exchanging links with other websites is also a great way to get better rankings in the search engines. The reason for this is that search engines want to give top rankings to the websites that are most popular in their category/industry. The best way for the search engines to determine which websites are the most popular is to see who has the most links pointing at their website. That is why getting a lot of links pointing at your website is so important;

• Write Articles and distribute them online. This is a great way to get tons of one-way links pointed at your website (which search engines love!). Again, the more links that point at your website, the higher search engines will rank your website. And, if getting tons of links pointing at your website wasn't enough, writing articles will also send targeted traffic to your website and it will make you an expert in your field. The way it works is very simple. You write a 1-page article and use online article distribution services to distribute your article to hundreds of other websites, blogs, and ezines (electronic magazines). People then read your articles to learn about your services. The best two services to use for distributing your article are Ezine Articles and Isnare;

• Write press releases and distribute them online. Just like writing and submitting articles, this is a very simple and extremely effective way to get tons of links pointed at your website. It is also a great way drive targeted traffic to your website. For more information, please visit PRWeb.com;

• Network. Use social networking services like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkeIn.

4. Pricing, Positioning and Branding

From the information collected, establish strategies for determining the price of your service, where your service is positioned in the market and how you will achieve brand awareness in your community.

5. Budget

Budget your dollars. What strategies can you afford? How much can you afford to spend per month?

6. Marketing Goals

Establish quantifiable marketing goals. This means goals that you can turn into results. For instance, your goal might be to gain at least 10 new clients each month or to generate 100 reservations per month.

7. Monitor Your Results

Test and analyze. Identify the strategies that are producing the most customers and which are producing the least customers.

• Survey customers;

• Track sales, leads, visitors to your web site, per cent of conversions to impressions;

• Measure Return on Investment per each marketing activity.

In summary, over ten years ago I read a book from Intel's CEO called "Only The Paranoid Survive". Although I can remember many of the intriguing messages in the book, one stands out from all the rest. Irregardless of size, a company's business strategy must compliment its internet strategy by delivering a real-time value proposition, or face losing market share and positioning.