Yes I know I’ve been a bit lazy with this blog as it has been almost two months since my last post. However, lots has been happening in the personal and business life of Anand Pajpani (yes that’s me!).
All the big weddings of 2009 are now over and what a ride it has been. Two weddings abroad, and umpteen dance practices, and a plethora of activity! Time to get back to reality and making some serious cash!
My little boy is growing up fast, started now on solids and becoming naughtier by the day. Its great seeing him develop his own personality and traits!
Leading Route Cars has been growing very well recently too, with another Gumtree advertisement for drivers going up last week. As expected, the response was great and I’ve signed up some new people already. This should stop or at least reduce the amount of work being turned away or passed to other minicab companies.
Leading Route Cars also takes credit and debit card payments over the phone too, so if you’re short on cash but need to get somewhere, don’t worry, we can help.
- SEO activity on our website, www.leadingroutecars.com
- Introducing an intelligent software solution to better manage bookings and the dispatch of jobs
- Pondering of whether to employ staff to man the phones during the night-shift
The website has been heavily worked on during the past few weeks to make it more relevant and easy to find by customers looking for a taxi/minicab. I decided to focus on journeys to and from Heathrow airport and quickly found the competition to be fierce.
Using Google Adwords would cost in the region of £2-2.50 per click (at time of writing) so this was clearly cost-prohibitive (I had received a call from a PPC optimisation firm a few weeks ago providing a better deal, but unfortunately their details have been misplaced!!).
So I decided on first and foremost using SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques to better my position in Google’s organic listings. Having created and developed the website myself and implementing these on-page SEO techniques myself too, seeing the results over the following days and weeks was very gratifying.
Type in “heathrow taxis” in Google now, and we’re on page 1. Type in “w1 taxis” and we’re on page 1. Use the same phrase for stanmore, camden, and a few others and again, we’re on page 1. This has resulted in a big increase in calls and website visits, with more and more price requests and bookings coming through.
Some off-page methods have also been employed which should begin making an impact shortly too.
After weeks of pondering, I’ve decided to take the plunge and make an investment in a truly remarkable system that will vastly upgrade and update my current method of taking bookings and allocating work to drivers.
Watch this space, as I expect booking time to reduce and the customer experience to get even better.
This question is still bugging me. Realistically, I can’t afford it, but then I’m losing a great number of calls and potential work during the night while I’m in la-la land. Virtual assistance has been considered and rejected due to the cost-benefit numbers not stacking up.
In any case, I expect I’ll have someone manning the phones in the office before the end of January, but I’m still hesitant to take the plunge! I did receive a speculative CV from a potential employee this week though!
Getting some good accounts on board is my next job, and then completely focus on providing them with top-notch service. We already offer free daily newspapers in all our cars for airport runs. A nice touch don’t you think?
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