Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Uber took the metro consumer lane and nobody's rebuilt the website for what's left
Taxi services have lived through the worst single market disruption of any Australian SMB vertical, and most operators still market themselves like it's 2014. Uber and the rideshare apps took the metro point-to-point consumer lane, full stop, and it's not coming back, but that's not actually where the money was. The money was always in the lanes Uber and Lyft literally cannot operate in: wheelchair-accessible taxi (WAT) work which requires a regulated WAT-licensed vehicle and a trained driver; NDIS Transport provider accounts (worth hundreds per week per client); the airport pick-up rank exclusive licence (still held by taxi co-ops at most Australian airports); school-run and aged-care chartered work where the same driver picks up the same kid or resident every week; the hourly hire market; and the regulated 13CABS / Silver Service / Black & White incumbent network that pays for branding. Operators who have built their website around those six lanes, with the Cabcharge / EFTPOS terminal and the Point to Point Transport Commissioner licence surfaced, are quietly running full diaries while the cab-on-the-rank operators wonder why the phone doesn't ring.
Good taxi-services marketing is three things, in this order: a page library that splits the website by the lanes Uber can't operate in (wheelchair-accessible taxi WAT, NDIS Transport provider, school-run, aged-care chartered, hourly hire, airport-rank exclusive licence, Cabcharge / EFTPOS terminal corporate accounts) plus suburb pages for the bookable area, with the regulator's licence number above the fold on every page; a Google Ads campaign on the converting long-tail queries ('wheelchair-accessible taxi [city]', 'NDIS transport taxi [city]', 'school-run taxi [suburb]', 'aged-care taxi [city]', 'airport taxi [airport]') and not a cent on 'taxi [city]' because Uber wins it; and a trust-signal stack on every page (Point to Point Transport Commissioner licence for NSW or equivalent state regulator, Taxi Council Queensland membership where relevant, WAT vehicle count, NDIS Transport provider registration number, Cabcharge / EFTPOS terminal in every cab, the cab fleet photos, the network membership badges, 24/7 dispatch contact). Get this right and the lanes Uber abandoned to you start paying like they should.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the lanes Uber can't operate in (WAT, NDIS Transport, school-run, aged-care chartered, airport-rank licence, hourly hire) rather than trying to rebuild the lost metro consumer lane. Briefs the other agents so the lane-specific pages, the long-tail Google Ads, the rank-side social cadence and the Google Business profile all push toward the recurring regulated work, not a doomed Uber price war.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a 'web guy who thinks Cabcharge is a brand of credit card', and makes spinning up a new lane page a five-minute job. Ships clean pages for every Uber-immune lane (WAT, NDIS Transport, school-run, aged-care chartered, airport-rank exclusive licence, Cabcharge / EFTPOS corporate accounts, hourly hire), with the Point to Point Transport Commissioner licence (or equivalent state regulator) and the NDIS Transport provider number above the fold.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move taxi rankings: TaxiService schema with WAT count, NDIS Transport provider registration and regulator licence number in the structured data, lane-specific keywords on every page, internal links from lane pages to the suburb-coverage page, and a Google Business Profile rebuilt with all 5 secondary categories (Wheelchair-Accessible Taxi, Aged-Care Transport, Airport Shuttle, Disability Equipment, Tour Operator hourly hire). Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Launches Google Ads on the queries that actually convert ('wheelchair-accessible taxi [city]', 'NDIS transport taxi [city]', 'school-run taxi [suburb]', 'aged-care taxi [city]', 'airport taxi [airport]', 'hourly hire taxi [city]', 'Cabcharge taxi [city]'), with no spend on 'taxi [city]' because Uber wins it. Skips Meta unless you specifically chase the aged-care-facility-decision-maker audience on Facebook.
Turns every regular pickup and every airport-rank job into a post in your real accounts: the regular NDIS Tuesday-Thursday client, the WAT ramp-out moment at the day-program centre, the school-run pickup loop, the aged-care facility transfer, the airport-rank pre-booked job. Builds the trust signal that wins the disability support coordinator and the aged-care facility manager. You snap one photo per shift, the agent drafts the caption in your voice, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces decision-makers Google before they book a regular contract: 'how does NDIS-funded transport work and how do I find a registered provider', 'what's the difference between a wheelchair-accessible taxi and a regular taxi with a ramp', 'aged-care facility transport: what to look for in a regular taxi provider', 'school-run taxi services in [city]: how the regular pickup model works'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull in the disability support coordinator and aged-care manager doing the research.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill cancelled
- Annual plan around the Uber-immune lanes delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile rebuilt with WAT, NDIS Transport and regulator licence surfaced
- Lane pages indexed for WAT, NDIS Transport, school-run, aged-care chartered
- Airport-rank exclusive-licence page live with pre-book flow
- Google Ads live on WAT, NDIS Transport and hourly-hire queries
- First fortnight of regular-pickup and rank-side captions queued in your voice
- 'How does NDIS-funded transport work' explainer drafted and live
- TaxiService schema and on-site fixes shipped
Taxi services lost the metro consumer point-to-point lane to Uber in 2018 and the operators who are still trying to win it back are bleeding out slowly. The operators who pivoted to the lanes Uber literally cannot operate in (WAT, NDIS Transport, school-run, aged-care chartered, airport-rank exclusive licence, hourly hire) are quietly running full diaries on recurring, higher-margin, regulatorily-protected work. The work now is making sure that when a disability support coordinator, an aged-care facility manager, a school-run parent or a corporate Cabcharge buyer types 'wheelchair-accessible taxi [city]', 'NDIS transport taxi [city]' or 'aged-care taxi [city]' into a phone, the first thing they see is you, with the regulator licence and the NDIS Transport provider number above the fold.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the lane-page library and the WAT / NDIS ad set for $3.5k a month. Tools are cheap but you write every post after the late shift. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, launch the long-tail ads, post the regular-pickup moments and keep the Google Business profile out-completing the rideshare apps where it counts. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop fighting Uber for the lane they've already won, and start owning the lanes they can't touch.