Guide for a bus company to develop its digital marketing strategy

by Marisol Morelos | Jul 26, 2024 | eCommerce

Develop a digital marketing strategy for your bus company with our guide. Define objectives, analyze the competition, and optimize resources.

Developing an effective marketing strategy is crucial for any company looking to stand out and attract its audience. With the proliferation of digital channels and the constant evolution of technologies, understanding and applying the basic principles of digital marketing has become an indispensable skill.

This guide aims to provide a clear and structured vision of the necessary foundations for a bus company to build a digital marketing strategy. 

The first step in creating a digital marketing strategy is to clearly define objectives and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable progress to be measured. Thoroughly knowing the target audience is equally essential; this includes researching their needs, behaviors, and preferences to offer relevant and attractive content. Additionally, analyzing the competition will help you identify opportunities and areas for improvement, helping you position your brand effectively in the market.

Once the fundamentals have been established, it is crucial to focus on creating and distributing quality content, optimized for search engines (SEO). Social media marketing, digital advertising, and email marketing campaigns are essential components that, combined with automation tools and continuous analysis, will ensure that your digital marketing efforts are measurable and adaptable. By following this guide, you will be able to develop a comprehensive strategy that not only attracts and converts your audience into customers but also fosters long-term loyalty.

Steps to Develop a Marketing Strategy for a Bus Company

María Fernanda Brito, Head of Marketing for Reservamos SaaS, shares from her extensive experience in marketing and transportation the essential steps a bus company should consider to start developing a digital marketing strategy:

1. Define the Objective and Goals

In this step, it is necessary to define the objective of the marketing strategy for the business to be developed, and what goals are expected to be achieved once the strategy is executed.

For example, an objective could be to increase online sales by 30% with the help of digital marketing. This involves defining from the business vision which are the appropriate channels to achieve this, ensuring that the eCommerce platform is the right one, and having the necessary team to support the sales generated by this channel.

Regarding marketing goals, these can be defined based on the main objective. Some of these goals can be brand positioning, greater engagement with customers, increasing conversion in eCommerce, and fostering customer loyalty, among others.

2. Audit Your Company’s Strategy

In this step, it is necessary to conduct an audit to evaluate which marketing strategies have worked previously and which have not yielded the expected results. Some questions worth asking at this step are:

• What marketing channels are you currently using (e.g., SEO, SEM, social media, email marketing, traditional advertising)?
• What tactics or campaigns have been most effective so far? Why do you think they were successful?
• What tools and technologies do you use to manage and analyze your marketing campaigns?
• Who are your main competitors?
• What marketing strategies are your competitors using?
• How does your brand differ from the competition?

It is also necessary to work with different teams or areas of your company. For example, before starting the execution of the marketing strategy, it is necessary to know the brand perception from customers in different areas, such as meeting with the customer support area to share the feedback received from customers at various touchpoints: chat, call center, or social media. The feedback can focus on two aspects:

• Online feedback: How good is the online ticket purchasing experience?
• Brand feedback: How is the bus company’s service rated in general?

The audit will help to have a more complete picture from different areas, to align the strategy correctly.

3. Establish a Budget

It is important to know how much you are currently investing or willing to invest in marketing. A general rule is to allocate between 5% and 10% of annual gross revenues to marketing.

New or growing companies may need to invest more, around 10-20%, to gain traction.

The most convenient approach is to focus marketing efforts on an omnichannel strategy, such as digital marketing (Google Ads, social media, email marketing, SEO, etc.) and traditional marketing (TV, radio, print, events, etc.).

Especially if you are starting from scratch due to a rebranding issue or if you are renewing the company in the digital sales area, to gain brand recognition. An omnichannel strategy allows companies to reach their different audiences and maintain brand recall or promote various services or channels, such as promoting the download of a mobile app or announcing a new route.

It is also important to analyze how much your competitors are spending on marketing and what strategies they are using. This will give you an idea of the budget needed to stay competitive.

In addition to these factors, one of the most important is considering the internal human resources of the bus company, whether they decide to carry out the strategy internally or hire an agency, it is important to have one or two experienced marketing people to monitor and manage resources.

For a medium or small bus company, the most recommended approach is to hire a versatile person with diverse skills, someone who knows a bit about design, social media management, and performance (paid ads on digital channels). That person can rely on artificial intelligence tools, for example, to generate copy for a blog or social media posts.

4. Hire a Branding Consultancy Service

Especially if you are in the process of establishing or renewing your bus brand. However, for established companies, it doesn’t hurt to conduct an audit, as users evolve their ways of buying and connecting with companies.

This type of consultancy helps develop a complete branding plan, which includes brand strategy, visual identity, key messages, positioning, according to the company’s objectives, and a deep understanding of the target audience.

For example, if most customers do not usually buy their tickets online and the goal is to increase online sales, this consultancy can help develop the key messages and channels to achieve this, as they align marketing objectives with the appropriate visual support.

The important thing is to know the target audience:

• What are the demographic and psychographic data of the customers?
• What is the main reason for travel for their customers?
• What do their customers value most about their brand?
• How do their customers find them?
• What are the most popular routes and why?

At this step, it is about having a clear understanding of the company’s purpose, i.e., what problems the bus company is solving and how that aligns with what the traveler is looking for, to better connect. Perhaps the company is the only one on that route and its main purpose is to ensure people can move because it is the only means of transportation. Therefore, it is important to do the appropriate dissemination to ensure this.

5. Execute the Marketing Strategy

Implement the strategy derived from knowing the target audience and knowing which channels to share the key messages. In addition to assigning and distributing the budget, for example:

• Google Ads: $2,000
• Social Media: $1,500
• SEO and Content: $1,000
• Email Marketing: $500
• Events and Promotions: $500

Assign tasks to team members or external partners, such as agencies, to ensure proper implementation. These tasks range from reviewing branding, and key messages, scheduling posts on social media, and creating visual resources, to hiring monitoring tools or documents to analyze the performance of efforts.

For bus companies to start, it is ideal to do so with a recognition campaign, rather than seeking sales. This is to ensure that people know them and see the quality of their services.

6. Monitor Metrics

After implementing your marketing strategy, it is important to constantly monitor the metrics with which your marketing team will measure results.

Focus on measuring the number of website visits, conversion rate on the site, ROI in advertising, i.e., how much revenue is generated for every X amount of money invested, social media interaction, etc. These are the main metrics that should be monitored to know if the strategy is achieving the planned objective.

Additionally, other important metrics to monitor are open or click rates in email marketing or SMS campaigns. The marketing channels that every bus company should have are website, blog, and email marketing, as they are the ones that can have more control. Many companies underestimate the power of a blog or email marketing to connect with their audience and prefer to post only through social media. However, this can be counterproductive, as these are not owned channels and there is a dependency on algorithm changes or business models, according to each network’s interests, as has happened recently with X or Meta’s ecosystem, limiting reach in publications.

Recommendations for Keeping Your Team Updated

It is important that once you have developed a marketing strategy, your team stays constantly updated on market trends. Therefore, we selected some resources such as free courses and blogs that specialize in marketing and related fields. Below are the following sites:

HubSpot Academy

It is an online platform offering free training for marketing and customer service professionals. They offer courses and brief lessons aimed at empowering company teams.

Semrush Academy

Provides free courses and certifications in various areas of digital marketing, including SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay Per Click), content marketing, social media, and data analysis, among others.

Blogs:

Think with Google

www.thinkwithgoogle.com

Rock Content

rockcontent.com/blog/

>>>>You may be interested in reading more about How to read your Digital Marketing metrics <<<<

Digital Marketing Tools Your Bus Company Needs to Know

by Marisol Morelos | Jul 26, 2024 | eCommerce

Discover the essential digital marketing tools for bus companies. Improve your visibility, attract new travelers, and optimize resources.

In the digital age, marketing has evolved significantly, offering businesses in all sectors the opportunity to connect directly with their customers and enhance their reach. 

Bus companies in Latin America are no exception. With the increased use of the Internet and social media, companies have the opportunity to implement digital marketing strategies that can increase their visibility, attract more passengers, and improve traveler loyalty.

This article aims to provide bus companies with the tools and information they need to know and implement digital marketing tools, without needing to rely exclusively on external agencies. With the right knowledge, they can make the most of digital opportunities, optimize their resources, and achieve their business goals more efficiently.

That’s why we’ve selected the main digital marketing tools that every bus company should know and implement.

From social media management platforms to analytics and automation tools, these technological solutions will increase the efficiency of your marketing efforts help connect better with your audience and improve the customer experience.

Discover how these tools can transform your digital marketing strategy and take your bus company to the next level of innovation.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the widely used tools for web analysis. It allows companies to track and analyze their website traffic, understand user behavior, and measure the performance of marketing campaigns. With Google Analytics, you can obtain detailed information about traffic sources, the most visited pages, the time spent on the site, and conversion rates. This information is crucial for making informed decisions and optimizing your digital strategy.

Google Ads

For companies that want to increase their visibility and attract immediate traffic, Google Ads is an essential tool. It allows you to create and manage paid advertising campaigns on Google and its partner network.

With Google Ads, you can reach your target audience through search, display, video, and shopping ads. It offers a wide range of targeting options and analysis tools to optimize your campaigns and maximize your return on investment (ROI).

Google Search Console

It is a free tool offered by Google that allows website owners to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their site’s presence in Google search results. It allows you to see how many people visit your site from Google search, what search queries they used, which pages they visited, and on which devices.

It provides data on the keywords that generate traffic to your site, including impressions, clicks, CTR (Click-Through Rate), and average position in search results. It allows you to inspect specific URLs to see how Google crawls and indexes them and to identify any specific issues. It informs about possible content improvements, such as duplicate titles, missing or duplicate meta descriptions, and non-indexable content issues.

OneSignal

OneSignal is a customer messaging and push notification platform that allows companies to send targeted messages to their users across various channels, including push notifications, emails, SMS, and in-app messages.

With automation capabilities, advanced segmentation, and detailed analytics, OneSignal helps bus companies improve user engagement, increase conversions, and optimize their communication strategies.

Twilio

It is a cloud communications platform that allows developers to add communication capabilities, such as phone calls, text messages (SMS), and video messages, to their applications using various APIs:

– Voice API: To make and receive phone calls.

– SMS API: To send and receive text messages.

– Video API: To add video call capabilities.

– Chat API: To integrate chat into applications.

Twilio is commonly used in mobile applications, notification and marketing systems, customer service, and any other application that requires real-time communication capabilities. Twilio’s flexibility and scalability make it a popular choice for both small and large businesses.

SEMrush

To improve search engine visibility, SEMrush is an indispensable tool. It offers a wide range of functions for keyword research, competitor analysis, SEO audits, rank tracking, and more.

SEMrush helps identify keyword opportunities, analyze competitors’ strategies, and optimize content to improve search ranking.

With this tool, you can ensure that your website is well-optimized to attract high-quality organic traffic.

Hootsuite

Managing social media can be challenging, especially for companies with a presence on multiple platforms. Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule, publish, and monitor content on various social networks from a single platform. Additionally, it offers detailed analytics to measure the performance of your posts and gain insights into your audience. With Hootsuite, you can save time and improve the consistency and effectiveness of your social media strategy.

Market Explorer

It is a market analysis tool that offers detailed information about the competitive environment of a specific industry. It provides a comprehensive view of the market, including key trends, market size, and market share of the main competitors.

It allows you to identify market growth rates and emerging opportunities, helping companies focus their strategies on areas with the highest potential for expansion.

Mailchimp

Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your audience. Mailchimp is an email marketing tool that makes it easy to create, send, and track email campaigns. It offers a variety of customizable templates, automation tools, audience segmentation, and detailed analytics. With Mailchimp, you can create attractive and relevant email campaigns that drive conversion and customer loyalty.

HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer service platform that offers a wide range of tools to manage and optimize all stages of the sales funnel. It includes features for marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), content creation, analytics, and more.

HubSpot helps align your marketing and sales efforts, improve operational efficiency, and deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Canva

Creating attractive visual content is essential to capture your audience’s attention in the digital environment. Canva is a graphic design tool that allows users to create images, infographics, presentations, social media posts, and other visual materials easily and professionally.

With a vast library of templates, graphics, and images, Canva makes it easy to create impactful visual content, even if you have no graphic design experience.

Buffer

Similar to Hootsuite, Buffer is another social media management tool that allows you to schedule and publish content on multiple platforms. Buffer stands out for its intuitive interface and focus on simplicity and efficiency. It offers detailed analytics to measure the performance of your posts and gain insights into your audience. With Buffer, you can maintain an active presence on social media without needing to be constantly online.

Implementing the right tools is fundamental to the success of any digital marketing strategy. From web traffic analysis to social media management and content creation, these tools will provide you with the insights and efficiency needed to stand out in the competitive digital environment.

Adopting digital marketing tools is essential for bus companies in Latin America to optimize their online presence and connect more effectively with their customers.

With the proper implementation of these tools, bus companies can not only increase the efficiency of their marketing efforts but also improve the customer experience and stay competitive in an ever-evolving digital environment.

How to read your Digital Marketing metrics

by Marisol Morelos | Jul 22, 2024 | eCommerce

Understanding and analyzing digital marketing metrics is crucial for any successful online strategy. Learn how to interpret them and optimize your campaigns.

Data is a key factor in any company area, from sales, marketing, customer service, finance, and many other aspects. Processed data becomes information about users and is the most valuable resource a company can have.

According to a PwC study, companies are three times more likely to achieve significant improvements when they base their strategy on data. Therefore, if you plan to implement digital marketing strategies or have a marketing team, it is important to familiarize yourself with the basics of analytics and know how to use them to make informed decisions.

Understanding and analyzing digital marketing metrics is fundamental to any successful strategy in the online environment. Metrics provide a clear view of your campaign performance, allowing you to identify which tactics are working and which need adjustments.

Where to start analyzing metrics? 

From website traffic, and conversion rates, to social media engagement, each metric offers valuable information about how users interact with your content and move through the sales funnel.

To read and interpret your digital marketing metrics correctly, it is essential to have clear objectives and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). These objectives can vary, from increasing brand recognition and attracting more traffic to boosting online ticket sales.

When defining your KPIs, make sure they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you might focus on metrics like the number of unique visitors, bounce rate, and average session duration.

Once you have your objectives and KPIs defined, use analytics tools like Google Analytics, social media management platforms, and marketing automation systems to collect and evaluate the data.

These tools not only show you the performance of your campaigns but also provide actionable insights to optimize your strategies. By regularly monitoring and analyzing these metrics, you can make informed decisions, continuously improve your campaigns, and ultimately achieve your digital marketing goals more effectively.

What are digital marketing metrics for? 

According to HubSpot, marketing metrics are used to improve customer experience, increase the ROI of marketing initiatives, and develop future innovation and growth initiatives.

The key to good marketing analysis is asking questions. There are many ways to read and interpret reports, but you should strive to keep it as simple as possible. When analyzing your company’s data, use the following best practices as a guide:

• Summarize what you are looking for in one question.
• Look for patterns and trends in the data.
• Analyze data that contradicts your expectations.
• Compare current data with previous trends.

To improve your analysis, you can also classify your conclusions:

• What works well?
• What needs improvement?
• What requires investigation?

General digital marketing metrics you need to know 

According to Semrush, general marketing KPIs focus on basic data points, such as conversions and ROI, which are relevant regardless of the channels the digital marketing strategy focuses on. These KPIs help understand how much value your bus company’s marketing efforts generate.

Here are the metrics that are important to understand and consider in your next digital marketing strategies:

1. Traffic sources 

This refers to identifying the sources from which visitors access a website. This metric is crucial to understanding how users arrive at your site or eCommerce platform. Traffic sources can be categorized into several main sources:

• Organic traffic: Users who arrive at the website through search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo without clicking on paid ads.
• Paid traffic: Users who access the website through paid ads on search engines (Google Ads) or other platforms (Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads).
• Direct traffic: Users who enter the website URL directly into their browser or have the website saved in their favorites.
• Referral traffic: Users who arrive at the website through links on other websites.
• Social traffic: Users who access the website through links on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
• Email traffic: Users who arrive at the website through links in email marketing campaigns.

To measure traffic sources, web analytics tools like Google Analytics track and record the visitors’ origin.

2. Number of unique visitors 

This digital marketing metric represents the number of distinct individuals who visit a website within a specific time, regardless of how many times they do so. Unlike the total number of visits, which counts all visits including repeat ones, unique visitors count each person only once. It helps understand the size of your audience and the effectiveness of your campaigns in attracting new users. Additionally, it facilitates comparison between different periods or campaigns to assess growth and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.

3. Bounce rate 

Indicates the percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page, without interacting further. In other words, a “bounce” occurs when a user enters a web page and leaves without clicking on any other link or taking any additional action. A high bounce rate can suggest that the page content is not relevant or attractive to visitors. It can reflect user experience issues, such as complicated navigation, slow load times, or unattractive design. The bounce rate is measured using web analytics tools like Google Analytics.

4. Engagement rate

The engagement rate is a digital marketing metric that measures the level of interaction users have with a brand’s content on digital platforms, such as social media, blogs, websites, and emails. The engagement rate can vary depending on the platform and the type of interaction being measured.

Social Media: On social media, the engagement rate is generally calculated using the following formula:

• Total interactions: Includes likes, comments, shares, clicks, and other forms of interaction.
• Total impressions or reach: The number of times the content has been viewed or the number of people who have seen the content.

Blogs and Websites: For blogs and websites, the engagement rate can be measured through various combined metrics, such as:

• Time on page: The average time users spend on a specific page.
• Pages per session: The average number of pages a user visits in a single session.
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing only one page.

Emails: In the case of email marketing, the engagement rate can be measured using:

• Open rate: The percentage of recipients who opened the email.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within the email.

>>>You may be interested in reading more about the Benefits of Digital Marketing for Bus Companies.  

5. Cost per lead 

The cost per lead (CPL) is the amount paid to acquire a new lead through marketing efforts. You can track CPL across different channels and campaigns, allowing you to evaluate which activities generate leads at the lowest cost. CPL is calculated by dividing the total cost of a marketing campaign by the number of leads generated from that campaign. The formula is:

Example:

Suppose you spent $1000 on a marketing campaign and generated 50 leads. The CPL calculation would be:

In this case, the CPL would be $20.

It is important to consider that the total campaign cost includes all expenses associated with the campaign, such as advertising, tools, personnel, agencies, or experts. 

Additionally, the generated leads refer to the number of qualified contacts obtained from the campaign, i.e., people who have shown interest in your products or services, provided their contact information, or entered your eCommerce site to perform a search.

6. Conversion rate

The conversion rate is the percentage of users who perform a desired action after interacting with your marketing ads, campaigns, and other assets. This desired action can range from subscribing to a newsletter to purchasing a ticket online, or any other objective you want your audience to complete. The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions (desired actions completed) by the total number of visitors and multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage. The formula is:

Example: 

Suppose a webpage received 2000 visitors and 50 of those visitors made a conversion (e.g., completed a purchase, registered, etc.). The conversion rate calculation would be:

In this case, the conversion rate would be 2.5%. The conversion rate helps you understand how much of your traffic is converting into leads. Additionally, it helps you know how many of these leads convert into paying customers and contribute to revenue.

7. Cart abandonment rate

 The cart abandonment rate refers to the percentage of users who add products to their shopping cart on an eCommerce website but do not complete the purchase. This indicator is crucial for online businesses, as a high cart abandonment rate can indicate issues in the purchasing process that need to be addressed to improve conversions. The cart abandonment rate is calculated using the following formula:

Example: Suppose in one month:

• 500 carts were created in your eCommerce
• Out of those 500 carts, 150 resulted in complete purchases Then, the number of abandoned carts would be:

8. Net Promoter Score (NPS) 

NPS is a metric used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction with a company or brand. By focusing on this metric, bus companies can quickly identify areas for improvement and foster stronger and more loyal relationships with their customers. The metric is based on a single question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our bus company to a friend or colleague?” The NPS calculation is done in three steps:

1. Response Classification: Respondents are classified into three categories based on their scores:

• Promoters (scores of 9 to 10): Loyal and enthusiastic customers who will continue buying from your eCommerce and recommend the company.
• Passives (scores of 7 to 8): Satisfied but not necessarily loyal customers. They could be attracted by the competition.
• Detractors (scores of 0 to 6): Unsatisfied customers who could harm the company’s reputation through negative comments.

2. Calculate the Percentage of Each Group: Calculate the percentage of responses in each category.

3. Calculate the NPS: Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters:

9. Marketing Return on Investment (ROMI) 

The marketing return on investment (ROMI) refers to the amount of money generated by your marketing efforts compared to the cost. A positive ROMI demonstrates that marketing is contributing to the company’s bottom line and that the marketing budget is being spent effectively. The basic formula to calculate ROMI is:

Understanding digital marketing metrics is essential for making informed decisions and optimizing strategies. Metrics provide a clear view of your campaigns’ performance and allow you to identify areas for improvement. 

Defining clear objectives and KPIs, using analytics tools, and regularly monitoring data are fundamental practices for any digital marketing strategy. Analyzing metrics with a clear and specific methodology ensures that your marketing efforts generate the highest possible value for your company.