SplashSource business listing service just got better via Apple API integration.

SplashSource now has a new and improved way to manage how your information appears in the Apple Maps place card and to more than a billion users across the Apple ecosystem via Apple’s Business Connect API.

By leveraging the Business Connect API. SplashSource can now make updates to your Apple Maps place cards at scale. With this upgrade, SplashSource can also further optimize your digital presence with Showcases, a social posting feature that allows businesses to highlight offers or promotions for specific locations in the Apple Maps place card.

Our Apple integration allows us to sync Payment Methods, Action Links, Gallery Photos, and more. When you consider online profile completeness and the impact that it has on search, these enhanced capabilities can give your car wash a leg up over the competition. Businesses with the most complete listing profiles receive, on average, 62% more clicks from local search.*

The Business Connect API supports the ability for us to post to your Apple Maps placecard. Showcases allow us to communicate updates and special offers to consumers on Apple Maps, which can also help improve your rank in search. If you would like to consider adding Apple social posts to your social services package with SplashSource, please click HERE for a customized quote.

Your business isn’t static — so your data shouldn’t be either. Whether we need to update your business hours for the holidays, add new photos, or mark that your business is temporarily closed due to a natural disaster like a hurricane, Business Connect integrations allow us to update your data across the Apple ecosystem in real time.

To learn more click here and GET SOURCED

 

Annual Marketing Plans – Now’s the time!

An annual marketing plan is a road map of your businesses annual marketing strategy. It should contain goals and priorities that your business wants to attain in the upcoming year, as well as outlining offers, promotions, media schedules, public relations, budgeting, etc. Annual planning can be the key to a successful, more organized year because you can use it as a blueprint for your teams to follow.

An annual plan can be as simple as a Google sheet.  Sheets can easily be shared with others and different tabs can be set for advertising, social media, budget, etc.

There are plenty of templates online to help get you started.  The biggest hurdle is many times, just getting it started, then reviewed and approved by decision makers and then shared with key stakeholders.

Going more in depth with your marketing plan can involve considering and memorializing some key elements:

 

Product: How can you make your products or services better

 

Price: How can or should we change our pricing model

 

Place: Are there new distribution channels for customers to experience our product or services? This can be apps, ecommerce, etc.

 

Promotions: Mapping weekly, monthly or quarterly promotions will go a long way to helping you stay on track and on budget.

 

People: Who are our people, what are their skill gaps and how can we fill them

 

Process: Are there internal processes or barriers to delivering the best customer value

 

Market Research: The foundation of your marketing plan is how well you understand your market. Start with learning the market first.

 

Assess Your Market Situation

Who are your competitors, and how does your brand stand within the market.

 

Set Your Marketing Goals

Be clear about what your marketing goals are. Evaluate your goals against the latest marketplace realities and try to come up with what can be done next. Be concise and specific.

 

Establish Your KPIs

Establish KPI’s which is aligned with the business and marketing goals you  have set and track results of everything you do.

SplashSource Welcomes, Tatum O’Donnell!

NAPLES, FL SplashSource a full-service advertising & digital marketing agency, has added Tatum O’Donnell to their roster as a Social Media Intern. O’Donnell is creating digital content and assisting in client management.  She works side-by-side with account managers and the creative team to help assure timely and accurate project completion.

O’Donnell, a student at Florida Gulf Coast University, is completing a degree in Communications. During her collegiate career, O’Donnell was selected to serve as teacher’s assistant in the marketing department for the Public Relation Research course. O’Donnell has experience creating and posting social media content for a local Italian restaurant, where she is employed as a server and bartender. It is here that she discovered her passion for promoting a brand through social media. “As I near graduation, the opportunity to be a part of and learn from the team at SplashSource, is invaluable to helping me further my career goals,” said O’Donnell.

 

“As we continue to expand our digital marketing services, the addition of Tatum to our team allows us to more effectively meet the needs of our client base,” said SplashSource president, Mary Shallies.

Benefits To Community Involvement?

You are a new wash in town.  Or maybe you’ve got some big competition moving in.  You have a brand identity you are proud of. You’ve determined your single wash and club packages are priced competitively. The site is clean and well maintained. The wash chemistry is dialed in to deliver a great wash consistently.  Your staff is trained. All of these components are critical to your success. But how do you differentiate your wash so that you stand from the competition.

More and more washes are realizing the benefits of a strong community involvement commitment as a way to attract new customers and retain current members.

 

Community involvement provides you with an opportunity to communicate your values while displaying a spirit of giving back to the community.

 

HOW YOUR CAR WASH CAN BECOME INVOLVED IN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY

 

There are several ways a car wash can get involved in the community. Below are some of the ideas to help you get the ball rolling:

  • Sponsor an event, such as a fundraiser, a marathon or a local sports team.
  • Encourage employees to volunteer (and possibly provide incentives for doing so).
  • Start a charity drive to help the underserved.  Consider a food drive to benefit a local food pantry or a coat drive for a homeless shelter.

 

HOW DOES COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT BENEFIT A CAR WASH

 

HELPS INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS

Every business wants to get noticed for the right reasons, and community involvement is the best way to go about it. A business that actively contributes to society creates awareness of its brand in a way that shows what the company stands for.

 

BUILDS TRUST WITH YOUR COMMUNITY

Consumers want to see that a business cares about more than just raking in profits or meeting the bottom line. This has changed how businesses engage with the community, with companies needing to care about how a community perceives them. With involvement, businesses gain the consumers’ trust and send the message that what benefits the business benefits the community.

 

ALLOWS CREATE ALLIANCES WITH LIKE-MINDED BUSINESSES

Community involvement tends to bring a company into contact with local businesses enabling them to network and find ways they can benefit from each other. The goal is to promote thoughtful referrals. Due to the nature of reciprocity and a pay-it-forward attitude, this ends up benefiting everyone.

 

 

LEVERAGES LOCAL CONNECTIONS

Engaging with local businesses gives smaller, independent car washes an edge over national chains due to its close ties with the community. This is because your wash will have more boots-on-the-ground awareness and have earned your customer’s trust.

 

ATTRACTS TALENT

A business that is active in the community tends to attract talented individuals who care about where they work and that the business is positively impacting the local community.

 

KEEP IT LOCAL    

While national or global charities are extremely important to supporting the needs of individuals across the nation and around the world, teaming up with local organizations helps connect your business to your local community and can be easier to coordinate partnerships with versus national organizations with more aggressive requirements and lead times.

 

Community involvement may be challenging to track in terms of direct results but incorporating QR codes and landing pages tied to profiles in your POS can help overcome this issue.  Best wishes for a giving, growing year ahead as you work toward incorporating more community involvement at your wash!

Programmatic Display Ads VS PPC?

Everybody wants to jump on the paid search bandwagon. At the same time, this leaves programmatic display advertising out because many advertisers think they only want “traffic / conversions / leads”, while programmatic is for brand advertising and creating awareness for your business among those not familiar with your brand or services and may never search for what it is that your business provides to help make their life better, easier, more fulfilling. So let’s talk about why it is important to use a mix of these two advertising tools.

Consider these two simple scenarios. John searches “crossfit shoes new york”. He has already planned the purchase and has intentions of buying. He is at the bottom of the sales funnel, where search advertising can convert him into a client.

 

The, there is Jack. He does not think of buying CrossFit shoes and so he does not google anything. But, if we look closely at his interests and online behavior, we can see he fits the CrossFit brand’s target audience. Since Jack knows nothing about the product, he will not google anything and will therefore not see the search advertising. Now imagine that Jack saw a banner ad or video about CrossFit shoes. He got interested, clicked on the ad, visited and looked through the website, and then left.

Why Isn’t My Business Showing Up In Search Results?

YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS LISTINGS

When it comes to how consumers experience your business, your website is only the beginning. Today, consumers use a diverse range of maps, apps, voice search tools, digital assistants, search engines, GPS systems, and social networks to find and engage with information about your car wash. Are you in control of the answers consumers see across all these platforms?

 

The SplashSource SOURCED platform manages the public facts about your business everywhere your business app

ears online, including location addresses, menu of services, hours and even in-store promotions. This is next to impossible to do on your own and every time something about your car wash changes, all of these outlets need to be updated! Let us take the hassle out of managing your online presence with SOURCED, an affordable way to help grow your local search and

be sure the information customers are looking for is there when and where they need it.

 

REVIEWS

Customers and search engines make decisions about your business every day based on your ratings and reviews. If you don’t actively manage this important set of facts, you could be leaving your star ratings up to a few detractors.

It is important that reviews are answered in a timely manner, with a professional and caring tone. At SplashSource our specialists know the car wash business and are prepared and able to answer the tough reviews that inevitably get posted for every car wash.  Answering positive reviews is equally important.  Review response shows excellent customer service too – furthering your brand image of a professional, customer centered car wash.

 

We help customers garner new reviews too.  Just ask us how!

3 Tips To Social Media Success

A lot goes into promoting your business on social media. From content calendars and photography to analytics and graphics, there are many pieces to the social media puzzle. Here are three tips to step up your online presence.

 

First, write down your goals. Before you get started on social media, it’s important to lay out what you want in return. Whether it’s more sales, brand awareness or promoting an event, organizing these factors will make it easier when it comes to creating graphics and a content calendar, which brings us to our next tip… create a social media calendar.

 

Second, create a content calendar. Once you’ve decided your goal, it’s important to strategically plan when your content will go out. Do you know when your followers are most active? Posting on specific days and times that cater to your audience will help maximize your results and improve your analytics. Plus, a calendar will just make your life easier!

Our third tip is to create graphics that are branded specifically to business. Posting graphics, photography and video with a consistent style will help your audience connect to your brand. Using the same font and color scheme is a must! Remember, social media is all about showing what you’ve got, and you want to make sure your products or services have a cohesive look to them.

 

Now, we can’t give all of our tips away that easily! Stay tuned for our next newsletter for more advice on stepping up your social media game!

 

 

 

Sophia Evans Joins SplashSource

NAPLES, FL SplashSource, a full-service advertising & digital marketing agency, has added Sophia Evans to their roster as Social Media and Administrative Assistant Intern. Evans is creating digital content and assisting in the flow of agency projects and daily administrative tasks.  She works side by side with account managers and the creative team to help assure timely and accurate project completion.

Evans, a student at Florida Gulf Coast University, is completing a degree in communication with a concentration in public relations and a minor in economics. During her collegiate career, Evans was selected to become teacher’s assistant for the Promotional Writing course in the marketing department.  It is here that she discovered her passion for writing and content creation. She practiced these skills with various local community partners through FGCU affiliated campaign projects, which offered her the opportunity to apply the knowledge gained in her degree studies to a real-world business setting.

 

“I feel fortunate to begin working for a well-established agency at such an early point in my career path” says Evans, “The team has been extremely welcoming, and I look forward to learning alongside them.”

 

“Attracting the best and brightest from our local university system has been a pivotal component of the agency’s continued growth,” says Mary Shallies, SplashSource president. “Sophia is no exception to that standard and we look forward to seeing her creative and organizational skills flourish under the agency umbrella.”

The Key Is Consistency

When a business markets its products and/or services, the importance of consistency can’t be overstated – consistency in graphics and messaging.  Consistency, or lack thereof, lets your buyers either know and understand what it is your business stands for and is marketing, or they become confused, thus leading them to your business or away from it.

Here are a few things to consider regarding consistency in your branding…is the logo applied properly (follow your brand style guide), are you using the established brand colors and tagline? Is the messaging conveying key points about the business in a way that works with other messaging, does it follow the tone of voice established for the business? Are the images crisp and clear?

A brand guide is a good place to start. If your brand doesn’t have one, ask a professional for help in creating one. This guide will serve as just that – a guide to help assure your branding is consistent and clear. Moving forward, always take a moment to consider if what you are communicating to your target audience is following your brand guidelines.  Don’t cut corners. Don’t rush it.  Taking the time and effort to review your messaging for consistency will pay off in the short and long run, with more customers who are qualified to purchase what it is your business provides.