Of all of the place I travel to, Manhattan, New York juices my brain like no other city. Got here on Sunday. Traveling with my Superstar Marketing Coordinator, Lauren, who’s been with me for over a year. So needless to say we are celebrating many things, learning a ton, meeting lots of interesting folks, doing business and contributing to the local economy.
The next few days while in NYC, we will cover everything from customer service ideas, new trends and hot spots to branding hits and misses and we will introduce you to some new friends and business experts. This trip includes a lot of hospitality content because I’m finishing up our new restaurant branding course set to launch in the next 60 days.
Specifics insight will include:
- How to brand to the Elite, even if you are not a 5 star luxury property like the Pierre Hotel
- How to brand-extend and not brand-dilute from Top Restaurateur Daniel Boulud
- Sampling trends and merchandising from hip, new Indian fare restaurant Junoon
- Video branding ideas from a super cool, online entrepreneurial TV by an insurance company
- What you can learn from a one scene Off-Broadway-production and apply to marketing
- Networking in NYC, it’s really such a small world
- Book Review on Army of Entrepreneurs by Jennifer Prosek
- Marketing and launching my new book Brand Turnaround with the McGraw-Hill team
Our journey started at the Tampa Airport. Which is one of the easiest and stress-free places in the US. We flew Delta, which offers an early and direct flight that lands at 9:30. We were greeted by “Felix” who owns K&G limo. He has been my driver for over 15 years. While there are many national limo services, I’m loyal to Felix and his company because for many reasons, he’s consistent; there are no surprises. I trust him and admire his hard work and family values. Felix has 7 children. 6 by his wife and one who they adopted after witnessing a less than healthy living situation over 30 years ago. Felix and I often talk marketing and branding when I’m in his car.
Since we came in on Sunday, I didn’t have a tight schedule of meetings, I invited Felix to have coffee with Lauren and me so we could take a look at what he was doing with his website and share some wisdom. Even though I only see Felix when I come to NYC, I consider him more than a transportation vendor, but a trusted friend. Felix makes everyone feel special, like a celebrity. And he has no shortage of celebrity customers from Academy Award Winning actors and Grammy winning musicians.
Felix wanted to know what else he could do to attract even more business. His son who recently graduated from law school had set up his site. He did a nice job and K&G Limo was getting calls from their site and other online avenues. We suggested a few added methods to increase his results, which can work with many business models.
7 Tips to drive more traffic to any website
1) Felix had a blog, but it was not connected to the site. We suggested connecting it for search engine optimization reasons and as a helpful content tool for his customers. We also suggested:
2) Adding more and often keyword research and optimization in his website and blog content. And tagging all images with these same high ranking key words.
3) Adding social bugs like tweet this, like this and pass this on, to his blog, so it’s easy for visitors to share and earn links back to his site.
4) Add a site map, search spiders love site maps.
5) Offer a helpful safety travel tip sheet that visitors can download when coming to NYC. This will not only earn points from the site visitors, customers and prospects, it can help Felix grow his opt-in list. Plus, he can tweet and share on Facebook too.
6) Set up a Youtube account that hosts a welcome video or again, helpful travel tips videos. This will not only earn points from the site visitors, customers and prospects, it will help his search ranking, because Youtube is owned by Google.
7) With their permission, add testimonials from customers to the site, and if they are interesting, then blog about them and use them for content on social media platforms too.
Till next time, Brand on!
