Choosing The Right Marketing Agency For Your Company

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffMay 23, 2019May 23, 2019Marketing, Vacation Rental Marketing, Vacation Rental Website DesignLeave a comment

There are several important factors to consider when choosing the right marketing agency, whether it’s for a new website or to manage digital marketing for your company. So how do you choose the right agency for you and your company? After all, there’s a lot that needs to be taken into consideration such as SEO, Pay Per Click advertising, social media management, website support, and overall your company’s branding! Here are some things we think YOUR agency should have:
100% Support – This is top of the list because no one wants to get left in the dark when it comes to their website or digital marketing. Make sure the agency you work with offers the support you need whether it be big website redesign projects or swapping out a banner image on Facebook. You and your company deserve 1st class support regardless or how big you are. Read More...

20 Year Anniversary: Q&A w/ Brandon Sauls

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffMarch 28, 2019March 28, 2019Industry News, Marketing, Team NewsLeave a comment

May 2019 marks InterCoastal Net Designs’ 20th year in business and much of our success can be attributed to our humble beginnings with Brandon Sauls at the helm. We recently sat down with Brandon to discuss where ICND is today, where we plan to go and how it all began with a fishing charter website. We live & breathe the tourism industry with our headquarters in the small beach community of Ocean Isle Beach, NC – making us well suited to understand our client’s business model and helping them see success in the vacation rental and tourism industries. Read More...

Ascent Processing Announces Vacation Loan Product

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffFebruary 19, 2019February 19, 2019Industry News, Vacation Rental MarketingLeave a comment

ICND & Ascent Processing have long been partners in the Vacation Rental industry and we’re excited to announce their newest product, ASCENTpay. ASCENTpay powered by Uplift is an essential tool for vacation rental companies that is both beneficial to guests and property managers. It is not required to be a current Ascent Processing client to utilize this product. ICND is fully equipped to implement ASCENTpay on your website today. Read More...

#BookDirect Day: Join the Movement

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffFebruary 5, 2019February 5, 2019Myrtle Beach Web DesignLeave a comment

#BookDirect Day is Feb 6^th and the ICND team has compiled tips to educate your guests. The #BookDirect movement is primarily focused on guest education. OTAs have the brand recognition and marketing bandwidth to get in front of YOUR guests, but what makes booking directly with your company better? Here are a few highlights to market for #BookDirect. Read More...

Vacation Rental Ninjas: A Marketing Podcast Ep.1

David ThompsonJanuary 15, 2019January 23, 2019Podcast, Vacation Rental NinjaspodcastLeave a comment

We finally did it, we’ve finally started our very own podcast! If you’re not very familiar with podcasts, it’s basically like talk radio, only a little funnier. On our podcast, Vacation Rental Ninjas, we talk about everything related to the vacation rental industry including marketing strategy, SEO, social media, website development, and so much more. Our topics are relevant and relatable, and we’re pretty funny to listen to as well. Read More...

Is your Website ADA Compliant?

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffNovember 26, 2018November 26, 2018Industry NewsADA Compliant, Industry News, InterCoastal Net Designs, Website ADA CompliantLeave a comment

We at InterCoastal Net Designs have been helping our clients in making their websites ADA compliant. We have been asked recently why a website must be ADA compliant, so we thought we would share some of the information with you and how it helps your company out.

What Does ADA Stand For?

The ADA is the American with Disabilities Act and it requires that businesses and nonprofit service providers make accessibility accommodations to the disabled public. This means that they have to provide the same service to the disabled as they would for the non-disabled which includes their websites.

What Could Happen If We Don’t Make our Site ADA Compliant?

If your site is not ADA Compliant there are a few things that could happen. The first thing that could happen to your business is you could lose a client or a booking. We don’t want this to happen because the disabled person may go to another site that is ADA compliant. Another thing that we could see in the future is where Google and other search engines would only rank websites that are compliant. We know that they have recently moved in the direction to “force” businesses to make their sites mobile friendly or they will lose the rankings altogether. This could be the future with having your website ADA compliant and if it’s not then you lose your rankings. We don’t want this to happen to your business which is why we can help make your website ADA compliant.

How Do We Make Your Website ADA Compliant?

There are many suggestions on the ADA Website, but we know that there are many other considerations as well. We will take the precautions in checking your site to see if it’s compliant and if it is not, then we will make it compliant. There are several things that have to be addressed in making it compliant, but we will cover a few of the items for you.

Perceivable

Your website will have information and user interface components that must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This ensures that the content on your site is available to view in multiple forms that will be easy to see or hear regardless of the disability. We will make sure to place an alt text tag on an image. Read More...

CiiRUS-Integrated Australian Site Launches

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffNovember 15, 2018Myrtle Beach Web DesignLeave a comment

ICND has been in the vacation rental industry for two decades and a key component of that success is our partnerships. We’ve worked with our partner CiiRUS Vacation Rental Software to launch Uptown Apartments. This marks ICND’s first collaboration of many to come with CiiRUS. This site is the second Australian launch for both ICND and CiiRUS.

Now let’s learn a bit more about our new clients, Uptown Apartments. Uptown Apartments’ site harnesses the power of CiiRUS software and our booking engine while utilizing WordPress to manage all content and contacts. The homepage features a seamlessly integrated quick search component linking to all available properties. Custom features include:

Featured properties that pull based on highest availability in a specified time frame

Urgency features, allowing guests to view number of property views in a 24 hour time-frame

Property availability calendars with nightly pricing

Rental add-ons offered at booking, notifies property manager of request

Vacation Rental Marketing Do’s and Dont’s

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffSeptember 24, 2018Myrtle Beach Web DesignLeave a comment

With so many SEO tools floating around the internet, it can be hard to understand what to believe. Raven, SEMRush, Moz and other similar tools have site audit features that crawl your website and spit out a list of items that are hindering your site’s performance.

With so many different issues highlighted by just one of the many site audit tools out there, getting your website optimized can seem like a daunting task. To help you better understand how to optimize your site and not waste time blindly following a third-party audit tool, we created a list of Do’s and Don’ts of Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing Don’ts: Read More...

Google Local Search Update Now Includes Posts From Google My Business

Paul HanakSeptember 4, 2018September 14, 2018Myrtle Beach Web DesignLeave a comment

Your Google My Business posts will now be featured in local search results- if you have any.

As more and more users are choosing to use their phones for basic browsing instead of a traditional computer, mobile SERPs (search engine result pages) are more important than ever. That’s why so many successful businesses hire a digital marketing company that understands Google’s ever-changing ranking algorithm.

Google My Business allows business owners to determine how, or if, their business is displayed in Google Maps, Knowledge Graphs and Organic Search. There’s also an option for business owners to create posts and share information about their business.

The four main types of posts are:

What’s new posts A post regarding general information about your company that can include a photo/video link and a CTA button.
Event posts – These posts require a title as well as a start/end date and time. These posts can also include a photo/video, CTA button, and other information.
Offer posts – Allow business owners to share deals or promotions offered by their business. These posts automatically have a “view offer” CTA button added to them, but may also include a photo/video, terms and conditions, coupon codes, links and more.
Product posts – Share details about a specific product offered by your business. These posts must include a title and photo/video, but can also include a CTA button and other information.

=&1=& Posts can be up to 1,500 characters, but Google says that the ideal length is 150-300 characters. So keep it simple!

For more information about Google My Business Posts, check out the official Google guide.

It’s important to note that the Post tab only displays on mobile searches at the time of writing this post. Here is the desktop result for the same search as above:

Will creating Posts help me rank better?

It’s tough to know for sure. According to a Search Engine Land case study from 2017, Google My Business Posts are “low-impact, low-effort tasks” that are best utilized when combined “with other tasks to help improve Local SEO for a small business.”

The same study showed that Google My Business Posts had a “mild” impact on rankings. Now that Google is putting more attention on Posts, they could play a larger role in the future.
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Conference Travel Ahead: Q&A with Director of Fun, April Burns

InterCoastal Net Designs StaffAugust 24, 2018Industry News, Vacation Rental MarketingLeave a comment

ICND will soon be jet-setting for conference travel and we’re excited to say the least. In September we’re attending Streamline Summit and Rezfest, with VRMA International on the horizon in October. In preparation for September travel, we sat down with resident travel expert, April Burns. Come see us on the road!

On Conference Travel:

Q: What’s your favorite part about gearing up for conference travel?

AB: It is an exciting time of the year when conference season approaches. The energy in the office goes up as we work on new campaigns, swag and new products to showcase.

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AB: During a conference it is great to explore a new town and get to see the local sites, but in the end it is the opportunity to see current clients and meet new friends. There is a core group of vendors that travel to these events and become your second family while you are on the road. They are there to help in times of need and for a good laugh. We also have our usual attendees that come to each event. Some of them may be your client, but some become friends that you get to see and catch up with each year.

Q: Tell us a bit about ICND’s conference theme for Fall travel.

AB: Each season we love to come up with new theme and play off them for our swag and booth. We have many VRM’s looking forward to our t-shirts every year and this year will not disappoint. I think that might be all I can really say…but have you ever seen Better Call Saul(s)??

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