CORNERING THE MARK
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Get rid of the myth of marketing men as people in red spectacles, striped shirts and bow ties. Every haulier should be a marketing expert, argues Peter Robinson.
• Medium-size transport companies ignore marketing at their peril. But few of these firms will have written a marketing plan outlining their strengths and weaknesses and where they want to be in three years time. And many are in competition with giants such as TNT and NFC which have full-time marketing departments, says Peter Robinson.
He has set up a consultancy to provide marketing advice for companies who cannot afford permanent marketing staff yet could be persuaded to employ him on a one-day-a-week basis, he believes. A typical client might be a parcels company with a turnover of £15-30m.
PROMOTION
Most transport bosses think of marketing only in terms of advertising. But promotion is only the final link in a chain of thought leading to the right service at the right price, he says. Advertising alone is a waste of money if the product or service being sold is not right.
If he is approached by a potential client, Robinson first spends three days with the company, building a picture of its strengths and its threats in the market. "I find out whether there is something they are not capitalising on, or an area of weakness which they could get rid of. Finally I have an idea of what corporate image needs to be projected," he adds.
He charges a consultancy fee of £195 a day and at the moment has two clients, one of which is a parcels company for which he is helping to launch a new service. He envisages having four or five firms on his books at a time, including, perhaps, a parcels outfit, a distribution company and a freight forwarder. He avoids working for rivals in the same market.
Robinson, who launched PWR Marketing in Burton upon Trent six months ago, believes one of his strengths is that he has spent all his working life in transport. He was marketing manager for haulier and ERF dealer S Jones, and parcels carrier Tuffnells, and has worked for freight forwarder Thompson Jewitt, P&O in France and German haulier Hellmann.
"With many marketing companies, the first thing you have to tell them is what a truck looks like." He claims he can work directly for a sales and marketing mana
ger, who because of his wide brief will often not have time to concentrate on specific marketing projects. "If something needs to be completed by a deadline, I can take away the files and brief and come up with something. The company gets everything they would otherwise get from an in-house marketing department."
One of the biggest problems transport companies face is losing direction because they have never drawn up a marketing plan and budget. "People plan their operational side ahead, buying new tyres at set times. Why not marketing?" he says. "The penalty is companies lose their way and they become reactive instead of proactive. Someone comes along offering advertising space and they take it, without really thinking of what it is achieving.
"I want transport firms to say 'this is where we want to be in three years and this is how we are going to get there'."
Contact Robinson on: (0836) 679474. LI by Murdo Morrison