There are certain times in everyone’s life when a limo is a great idea. From birthdays to weddings to special nights out, a limo is a great way to make the night even more memorable.
St Louis isn’t a huge town. It’s not like New York or LA where limos are seen every day. If you see one here, chances are it was rented for some sort of event, not because a famous person is cruising by. And this isn’t Vegas, where they’re waiting by the hundreds at the airport.
I imagine that owning a limo rental company can be a bit stressful. Those rides aren’t cheap, they have a somewhat high need for maintenance (especially cleaning) and need to be on the road more often than not. So keeping the limos booked is a huge priority. The following is a few things I’d do if I owned such a company.
First and foremost, I’d get a website. I’d fill it with pictures of people having fun, enjoying a night on the town. I’d have a wedding specials section with pictures of brides laughing with their girlfriends, toasting with champagne. Pricing would be easy to find, and pictures of each limo would be available. I’d create special pages for certain events. Weddings is the obvious one, but so are birthdays, bachelor and bachelorette parties, Girl’s Night Out and even Father-Daughter dances.
I’d also make the limo pages easy to share. When people are thinking about getting one, often they email their friends and tell them to take a look. Or choose between a few different ones. “Should we get the Hummer or the Cadillac?” Share buttons on these pages would be mandatory. The buttons could be one-click posts. When they click on the Facebook button, it automatically creates a post to the brides facebook page and has a thumbnail and link back to the site. A really smart limo company could even build a ‘Help Me Choose’ page that compared two limos on a page, listing all of their benefits, accessories and prices. Then that page could be shared amongst friends.
A search for limos in St Louis brings back only 5 organic results – and only two of those are actual limo companies in St. Louis. One is a pagerank 2, the other a 0. That means a nicely SEO’d website could climb to a page one ranking fairly quickly.
We can’t forget to add the site to the Google LBC, either. This is pretty crucial nowadays. Fill in the profile completely and create a few special categories. Be careful not to put geographic-related words in those categories, though, as it is against Google’s guidelines and will surely get your submission rejected. Don’t forget to geotag any pictures you upload, and get your listing verified as quickly as possible.
Video is another great tool you could take advantage of. Make a few video interviews of your (still sober) guests at the end of the night and post them on a ‘memories page’ (at an additional cost, perhaps). Use some of the good videos on your LBC page as well.
You could also give video tours of each limo, highlighting the special things about each.
A limo driver blog would be a great linkbait and content tool. Post funny stories about things that you’ve seen as a driver, interesting facts about driving such a long vehicle, and use the blog to post content around the job in general. A well written and consistent blog specifically about driving a limo would start to get comments from other drivers, thus increasing your overall content. Be careful of local competitors who’d try to spam comment your blog, but let them comment if they don’t link out in every post.
Lead Generation
Now let’s talk about getting those limos full every night. Beyond having an SEO’d website, there definitely needs to be plenty of ‘Call to Action’ buttons on the site. Have them big and obvious. Reserve this Limo Now or Compare this Limo.
Consider advertising on websites that have your same target audience, for instance St. Louis Weddings. The rates aren’t that bad and they’ve already got a captive audience.
Team up with local florists and have them give out your cards, perhaps with a $25 discount attached. Do the same for DJ places and funeral homes.
Target Facebook ads to groups related to brides, grooms and weddings in general. Offer a Facebook Discount that they can only get by Liking your page. Have a monthly contest for a free 4 hour limo ride (driver’s tip not included).
Find some local What to Do in St Louis type websites and get a listing there. See the Arch from a limo might attract some families with an adventurous side (and it’d have your limos running during daytime hours).
The web is ripe in St. Louis for a limo company that’s ready to pounce. There’s little to no online competition, and a well executed online marketing plan could net some serious money for one that’s willing to jump in headfirst.
There are tons of ideas for an industry like this – what are some I missed?
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Great article. If I ran a limousine company, I’d be all over this. Thanks for the link as well.
Thanks Tyler. As with most industries, one limo company will grab hold of the Internet marketing concepts and really kick ass online.
These ideas are really wonderful. Being able to do all of this would surely make you very successful on your own business. You can be able to entice people for you have lots of things on your mind that would surely make everyone feel great about it.