The Business of Parking

Parking is big business in plain sight without a lot of fanfare. This $120+ billion industry is everywhere without most people realizing its presence. Yet, the second a driver can’t find a space close to their destination, their frustrations skyrocket and the parking industry gets a bad reputation.

This is where marketing can boost brand reputation, increase revenue, and fill the gaps for a scalable business model. If you are in the parking industry, you have likely invested in research about your business, competitors, options in technology, processes, and workflows. You need this collective information to create your marketing plan.

You may ask, “Why would I need a marketing plan for our parking business?” The answer is simple yet powerful: because it generates revenue. Whatever you do to create revenue as a municipality, town/city, parking authority, operator, or developer needs to have a marketing plan associated with it. A flushed-out marketing plan will provide you data insights into this revenue stream, so you know when to push and pull initiatives to create a great experience for people who use your services and provide business forecasting for growth and expansion.

A marketing plan includes research and analysis, setting objectives, defining marketing strategies, an action plan, budget allocation, implementation, and measurement. You likely have the research and analysis at your fingertips, so the marketing plan’s first part is complete. Let’s walk through the other parts of the plan so you can build up your parking revenue success.

Setting Objectives

You need the research and analysis to set your objectives for your parking business. Simply stating, “We want to double our revenue from parking next year,” is not a sustainable business practice. You must develop clear, measurable goals aligning with your business objectives. Setting objectives gives everyone in your organization the knowledge of what you are aiming for and objectives let you measure them so you can improve. Scaling your parking business requires measurement and improvement.

Defining Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategies allow you to differentiate your parking offering in your market. It includes your value proposition, product or service strategy, pricing discussion, and promotion tactics. You can’t do the marketing strategies before your objectives are set because you’ll aim blindly at goals instead of laser-focused on growth. These strategies are not created solely by marketers and aren’t drafted in a bubble in a leadership meeting. This is a collaborative action item involving multiple stakeholders.

Action Plan

You can create the action plan once the strategies are documented and aligned with each objective. This plan gives your strategy legs and creates a timeline. During this portion of the marketing plan, you also want to allocate resources (budget, personnel, and technology) for your action plan. Some ideas for your action plan include advertising campaigns, content creation, email marketing, events, and public relations.

Budget Allocation

While many perform budget allocation earlier in the marketing plan process, waiting until you have more information to base the budget on is a much more effective approach. Once you have a recommended budget based on all available data, this is where the grit and ingenuity of your marketing professionals come into play. Marketers can be resourceful with the budget if all applicable stakeholders and organization leaders are bought into the objective, strategy, and action. Marketers are accustomed to changing budgets off-cycle as the business environment ebbs and flows. Budget allocation at this marketing plan stage helps set return-on-investment projections and creates a breakdown of costs for various marketing initiatives.

Implementation

Make your plan come alive! Assign responsibilities and accountability to team members for the execution of your plan. Having an agile team in place to create contingency plans and strategies for handling unforeseen challenges will exponentially boost your business in the short term and for future growth. This team should also create key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and be able to adjust on the fly to tactics.

Measurement

While this may be the last item of the marketing plan formula, it is ongoing. Regular evaluation of the marketing plan’s performance against your set objectives lets you see trends, feedback, and your competitive landscape in real-time. Constant measurement allows you to adapt and adjust based on market changes.

Your business marketing plan serves as a roadmap for your team, provides a structured approach to achieve marketing objectives, allocates resources effectively, supports informed decision-making, measures performance, adapts to market changes, and aligns stakeholders. It is vital for driving growth and maintaining a competitive edge in the parking market. ◆