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As a Marketing Specialist : what strategies will you implement for quick positioning of a New Service Company ( Travel - Logistics - Fright ..etc )?

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Question added by Sayed Fathy , Manager , 1 and 1 Travel
Date Posted: 2016/06/09
Vaiyapuri Gopalakrishnan
by Vaiyapuri Gopalakrishnan , Manager - After Sales , M/s Saud Bahwan Automotive llc

1. Target audience - Who is it for?

2. Category - What is it?

3. Benefits  - What doest it offer?

Ephraim Joseph Arevalo
by Ephraim Joseph Arevalo , Administrative Officer , Electro Pro Trading

To answer your question you must dinstinguish one from the other as the market and marketing plan for Travel and Logistics/Freight Forwarding Service is entirely different.

If you are a new player in the freight forwarding industry, making a niche is quite hard as most companies have existing freight forwarders.  The best thing to do is to make your weakness your greatest strength. How? Companies may consider you newbies in the business but they will still listen to what you have to offer. The one thing going for you is that you relatively have fewer clients than most freight forwarding companies. By telling them this you might think it will look you weak, and then give them the guarantee that most freight forwarding company cannot give their clients. Tell them "since we only have a few clients, we guarantee to you that you are a priority to this company. We will make sure that we delegate one person exclusively to your account to monitor your cargo night and day. You can reach our representative anytime and we will give you updates on your cargo anytime you so desire". Of course you have to make good on this promise. You may sound desperate but they will be intrigued by your guarantee. They will try you once just to see. So make the most out of that chance and deliver on that guarantee. 

With respect to travel, it is a fickle business as economics plays a large role in the travel and tourism industry. So in tough economic times, dont concentrate on travel packages, instead concentrate on companies that provide airline packages for their employees on a yearly basis. Lock them to an exclusive contract by virtue of discounted price or just by guaranteeing the person in charge of ticketing to a lofty yearly commission on ticket sales. 

Farhana Siddique Fari
by Farhana Siddique Fari , Coordinator , Coordinator at DFA, Dr Fazeela Abbasi, Advanced Skin, Laser & Hair Institute, Islamabad.

Thanks for the the invitation. I endorse answers given by Mr. Vaiyapuri Gopalakrishnan and Mr.  Ephraim Joseph Arevalo.

ghazi Almahadeen
by ghazi Almahadeen , Project Facilitator , Jordan River Foundation

Thanks for the invite ............................ agreed with the answers Mr. Vaiyapuri Gopalakrishnan

I'll leave the answer for experts

Francis Jr Simbajon
by Francis Jr Simbajon , Associate Marketer , C-ONE TRADING CORPORATION

With this kind of industry it would be a decisive job for a specialist since the plan and strategies or lets just say the intrinsic nature is kind a different from other marketing strategies. This would also be the most difficult niches to find success with. It's not really contrasting but there's are some ways that we need to be focused on but still the quality, value and trust with the customers or targeted audiences should have to be considered as they are the revenue of the company. 

Im not really an expert with this type of services but the company im working with have this kind of subsidiaries. And in my point of view, a marketing specialist also need to consider that there are literally hundreds of competitors having this kind of services and some are doing packages. 

Some ways to sustain marketing strategy is to focus on branding. Some are uses content marketing to make their services grow bigger.

Basically, there are some alternative low cost strategy in doing market with this kind of services. One of these strategy is to focus on reviews. Some related services already posted online, this would sometimes break the services. The other one is doing a direct social outreach -meaning if the company don't have much budget for marketing, this would often most cost effective strategy for the kind of services. Some uses facebook and instagram hashtags just to identify their propects. The other one is what they called side project marketing-building unique and innovative solution is also one way to reach out new prospects.

Asad khan
by Asad khan , Product specialist , shaigan pharmaceutical

Agree with the experts answers.

Thank you for inviting me.

"Quick Positioning" is a myth even if your offering is exceptionally unique.

Some hard facts:

  • Facebook established in 2004 took 5years to make money
  • Google est in 1996 took 8 years to make money.

both are among the biggest and greatest companies' in the world with unique offers and yet their "Overnight success" took 5-8years.

Well that does not mean every business will take so long. If there is not much different about your market offering then you need to provide good value proposition for your customers. You need to do this because your competition is providing their version of " Excellent customer value".

As an organization you need to very clearly define and quantify your offering in terms of customer value proposition.

Customer value means offering the right mix of price, service and accessibility for a product or service for a profit but customer focused.

So how do you define what should be your value offering for your customers?

To do this you need to

  • break-up all the element of what constitutes to "customer value"
  • Compare your offering/ map your offering in each of these elements to the industries best- however pls note that it is in very rare circumstances, if any such ceases exist that a single company or brand will be best in each and every component that make up the total customer value.
  • once you have benchmarked yourself against the various industries best, it gives your precise position in the industry on various parameters. and this gives you insight into why consumers buy from you and also why they don't.
  • Always remember you cannot satisfy everyone- it is an over ambitious goal still a good one in a way.
  • You need to give different weightages to the different components based on consumers' needs and organization's goals and abilities.
  • this will help you draft a concise and quantifiable standard of your customer value.
  • now tweek these to offer outstanding value.

You will find many companies that have gone out of business because they either focused tooooooo much on the wrong concept of customer value (lowest price + best products + best service+ most accessible) and lost focus on profitability and on the other end companies that focused totally on making maximum profits today and forgot that the relationship should be for long term profitable sustainability.

Keep doing the right things, it may take time.

Emmanuel Wamweta
by Emmanuel Wamweta , production supervisor , Tembo Steel Rolling

I fully agree with mr.Tafadzwa, mr. vaiyapuri & mr. Ephraim josep's submissions, they make a great deal of sense. Thanx for the invitation

Ghada Eweda
by Ghada Eweda , Medical sales hospital representative , Pfizer pharmaceutical Plc.

There are many wonderful answers are already herein. thank you

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