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:
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.
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
Rock Content
