Thursday, March 27, 2014

Marketing Your Parking

The parking business is very competitive. Facility owners and operators need to be proactive to compete for customers in this ever changing environment. If you are just sitting back waiting for customers to show up… they won’t!
Effective marketing can help ensure your parking operation is profitable. This blog post will briefly discuss creating a strategic marketing plan for your parking facility, using public relations to increase parkers and building relationships with social media.  
  • Strategic Marketing Plan
    • An effective plan will develop awareness of your brand/facility – who you are, what you do and why customers should use your service over others
    • Your plan must identify the audience(s) you intend to target, activities you intend to undertake, a detailed budget of those activities, how you are going to measure success and who will be responsible for each task
  • Public Relations
    • Good PR campaigns can build relationships with your customers and community, create good perceptions towards your service and help introduce new services
    • Communications vehicles include:
      • Press releases, Articles, Newsletters, Customer Testimonials, Letters to the Editor and Event Sponsorship's
  • Social Media
    • Thinking of utilizing social media for your parking operation? The first step is to figure out where your customers are virtually socializing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Flickr etc.) The next step is to build a relationship with your customers using these channels
    • Customers use social media to get news, promotions and to leave feedback – often in the form of complaints
    • Social media is not about advertising, it’s about building relationships and growing communities. It’s about having a conversation and developing relationships with your customers
    • Monitoring of and quick replies are very important when dealing with social media. These quick responses can quickly turn negative complaints into positive marketing
When PSI starts or transitions a new account, we implement a strategic marketing plan to maximize your facility’s capacity – and maximize your bottom line.  Some of our most successful marketing activities include:
  • Online advertising
  • News releases
  • Referrals
  • Newsletters
  • Partnerships
  • Social media
  • Validation programs
  • Frequent parker and commuter programs
  • Coupon and flyer distribution
  • Corporate discounts for volume purchase
PSI understands the marketplace for parking services. We will analyze your market and your pricing strategy, review your operational attributes, and continue to seek opportunities to maximize your revenue.
Contact us today to learn more.