Key Components to your Long Term Internet Strategy

If you are reading this post for the first time, I highly recommend reading it over and over again until you do something about it.  Or what?  Well, for starters, you will lose market share and watch your profits shrink.

If you want to make your business fly, there’s no good excuse for not having a small business internet marketing strategy.   A common bad excuse is, I don’t know how to grow our organization with more customers, clients, or sales using the internet.  Working with SMC, this excuse is no longer valid. 

Please review these bullets and then review the four points below to support these key components:

Don't Be Penny Wise & Pound Foolish

• MODERN, STRUCTURED WEBSITE with Mobile Application and Flexibile for Landing Pages
• SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
• PAY PER CLICK (PPC)
• VIDEO SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (VSEO)
• EMAIL MARKETING
• SOCIAL NETWORKING
• REAL TIME CENTRALIZED RESERVATIONS SYSTEM (CRS)
• CHANNEL MARKETING PROGRAM 

1. To save time and money

A well-planned internet marketing strategy will assure that you’re allocating your time and your small business’ resources optimally by eliminating excessive trial and error, misuses of marketing budgets, and sporadic efforts. Sadly, most small business entrepreneurs aren’t aware of the tremendous impact that an online marketing strategy can have on their business’ bottom line.

2. To gain a competitive advantage

The online marketing your competition isn’t doing is your competitive advantage – but only if you seize the opportunity. If you’re following a solid small business internet marketing strategy, you’re putting yourself in a position to gain a competitive advantage over your competition. Why? Because you’ll be making consistent improvements to your tactics in the areas in which your competition is most likely lacking.  NOTE: Spend plenty of time planning and outlining your small business’ internet marketing strategy prior to investing in pay-per-click PPC campaigns and other online advertising; following a plan will assure that you have the foundation necessary to fully capitalize on online advertising.

3. To yield consistent results

A systematic approach to internet marketing yields systematic results. Consistency is key to unlocking online marketing success; a solid strategy will lay the foundation to make it happen. Religiously following a strategy (while making adjustments as necessary) assures that you’ll keep up with your online marketing efforts; that, in turn, will yield long-term results.

4. To build a foundation for long-term internet marketing success

Online marketing is evolving at a rapid pace; staying on top of the latest and greatest trends can feel daunting. The need for online basics, however, aren’t changing: a website, search engine optimization (SEO), social media presence, email marketing, and great content are all must-haves. A solid internet marketing strategy will provide you with the basic core elements that your business needs for long-term online marketing success – a foundation to build upon.

Implementing a successful online marketing strategy is a learning process; the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be on your way to seeing the results in your business.  And the sooner you get started, the faster you will find your company branded in the market place.

SMC is ready to help you with your online strategy.  It starts with a plan!  To begin, go to www.smcsoftware.com and click on internet marketing.

Understanding SEO Importance for Your Website Productivity

Usage Stats

The percentage of Internet users who use a search engine varies by study, so it’s difficult to define the exact percentage. However, a 2008 report released by TNS Global Market Research titled “Digital World, Digital Life” stated 81 percent of Internet surfers used search engines to find a brand, product or service.

There were 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of September 2009, according to Internet World Stats. When doing the math, it equates to approximately 1.4 billion people using search engines to find what they're looking for. Compare this to the world population of around 6.7 billion, and that means nearly 21 percent of the Earth’s inhabitants use online search engines. Keep in mind this number reflects the entire population of the world, including impoverished and underprivileged nations with little or no Internet activity. North America, with approximately 252,908,000 Internet users, is near the top of the scale, coming in third after Asia (738,257,230) and Europe (418,029,796).

Considering these hefty numbers, maintaining an optimized online presence has never been more important for small to mid-size companies, allowing them to reach Internet users who are searching for a reputable parking company serving their airport.

SEO by Google Webmaster Central

Impressing Visitors

Consider your parking website a full-page color spread in a phone book. Your business has one shot to impress shoppers and convince them to choose your company over the competition before clicking elsewhere. This should be kept in mind when allocating your website development and search-engine optimization (SEO) budget. If shoppers do not like what they see or experience online, they likely won’t even bother checking your prices before moving on to the next search result.

It’s inevitable that you’re competing for search-engine ranking with many other parking websites. Aside from ranking well in the search engines, having a website that’s both visually appealing and user-friendly can often be the determining factor in whether shoppers will choose your business over the competition. Having a disorganized or difficult-to-navigate website will often drive users away, no matter where your business ranks in the search engines or how low your prices are.

Many, if not most, parking companies have websites that aren’t optimized or properly maintained. This is partially due to operators underestimating the importance of this component as part of a good overall marketing strategy.

A high-quality website should consist of a well-designed structure that is easy-to-navigate internal-link architecture, with easily accessible and quality original content. A basic rule of thumb is all content should be accessible within no more than four clicks. This makes website navigation easy for users, which mitigates the risk of them getting frustrated with your site and moving on to the next website.

Building On-Page Optimization

Once your business has a website that’s visually appealing with a user-friendly interface, on-page optimization is the next step to gaining visibility in search engines. Titles, descriptions, keyword targeting, internal anchor text and other on-page attributes must be optimized for search-engine crawlers, commonly called spiders. This requires keyword research and term/phrase selection that will help your business rank well for your targeted key terms.

An SEO consultant can help you’re company determine the best titles, keywords, descriptions and more for your website to get you the top search-engine result placement. Once you’re finished with the development and optimization of your website, link building, content creation, social media and viral marketing are the next actions to reach page-one ranking on the search engines.

Having followed the aforementioned suggestions, your final result should be an impressive-looking and fully functional website that satisfies visitors and search engines. When consumers use a search engine to find parking at your airport, your business must be among the top results with a simple, friendly and fast website. This will give consumers the good first impression that’s necessary to convert them from website visitors to paying customers.

Take The Shot

In the fast-paced, ever-changing world, business owners must observe and adapt to the way consumers behave to most effectively market their services. With more people using search engines than ever before, having an optimized website is more of a necessity than an extravagance.

Search engines currently are at the top of how people find what they need, and there’s never been a more opportune time for parking companies to use the Internet as a targeted and cost-effective marketing tool. Why wait for your competitors or third-party aggregator's to take advantage of SEO before you do? "Take the shot now and make it" (your online presence) known with a fully optimized website designed to showcase your parking operation and draw in the potential customers your business may be missing.

5 Essential Tips for a Successful Online Internet Strategy

There are plenty of competitors on the Internet and it is important for your business to stand out from the crowd. This information provides five essential tips to make your business a distinct branded service to increase customer visibility and traffic while maintaining market share.

1. Get on the Internet the Right Way

The most important rule of the business world today is to “get on the Internet with a professionally designed and structured website”. Create WOW, and not UGH! Shoppers are using search engines like Google.com, Bing.com, and Yahoo.com to find a product, service, or brand. Additionally, video websites, YouTube and Google-video, and Facebook are gaining momentum with mobile devices (cell and pad). And don’t forget about blogging and tweeting!

2. Optimize Keywords for both Low and Hanging Fruit

All search engines utilizes special tags (called meta-tags) to categorize websites. If your website doesn't provide the expected tags and search keywords, the search engines will not be able to pick up and categorize your website correctly, resulting in few, if any, shoppers from the Internet. Many hosting companies provide tools to help you optimize your keywords. Some websites automatically makes your search keywords visible to the major search engines on the Internet, making it easier for your shoppers to find you. Remember to always include your products or services as well as your business location in the search keywords.

3. Describe your services well to enhance Customer Relationship

The more information you provide on your services – the more shoppers you will convert into parking customers. Compare your website to your competitors and then provide your customers with more information about your business and services. You can also include links to nearby business partners (i.e. travel agencies) to encourage others to link back to your site and improve the overall quality and experience of your site for your shoppers. And note, a picture is worth a thousand words, so don't forget clean images of your facility and services. With a digital camera it is easy to take pictures of your business and the surrounding area.

4. Provide Real-time Information in a Transactional Environment

A large number of websites are unfriendly, complicated and provide no means of allowing shoppers to make a reservation directly from the website. Instead, the shopper is provided with a contact form, email address and phone number to reach out to the business. Through the evolution of reserving a service online for travel, many shoppers favor a website that provides real-time reservation capabilities directly on the website. When your shoppers can reserve directly from your site, the sale is closed immediately thus creating a paying customer, and providing your business with valuable customer data. A real-time reservation system is open 24 hours every day, and therefore, you have no more lost sales due to shoppers trying to make a reservation outside of regular office hours or on third-party websites.

5. Utilize Affordable and Measurable Email Systems

Your business must be in the marketplace on a regular, continuing, and ongoing basis. Not necessarily the same amount every week, but on a regular monthly basis. To successfully market your service, you must first position your company in relation to the competition. Know how you want your company and/or service to be perceived by customers before they leave for the airport. In other words, get a commitment from shoppers before they leave their home or place of business. Printing just a coupon does not mean a shopper will drive right into your parking establishment!