The Five Big Marketing Ideas of Shipping

If you thought it was all about environment, price or partnerships, you'd be wrong.

By Ryan Skinner (email)

For all its desire to stay the same, shipping's changing. You can feel it in the desires of customers and the customers' customers, both shippers and carriers. And anyone talking to them better tune their story accordingly.

Here are the five big issues that marketers in shipping should be thinking about when framing their arguments and conversations:

1. Certainty - As the slow steaming revolution demonstrated, it's not all about speed. Delivering something a little slower, but still on-time can be more valuable than fast and whenever. This simple idea can also be applied to information and advisory systems marketed towards the shipping industry. Suppliers who know that their data isn't foolproof should be providing information about the relative certainty of the data.
   
   This ties back to confidence. Suppliers' marketers and salesmen shouldn't be focused on their own confidence so much as the shipowners' experience of certainty and confidence with what's being supplied.
2. Simplicity - When someone says simplicity, many companies simply think "KPI". No. Simplicity is not a gauge that can say "good" or "bad". It's about tying your product's or service's thinking into the thinking of the user. He or she should be able to see immediately whether something is right or wrong according to his/her own parameters or measurement, with a simple pointer towards what should be done.
   
   This one is about time. Maritime software suppliers frequently muck this one up. They're upset because only 10% of their programme's functionality is used. Maybe the user isn't to blame. Maybe the product or service simply isn't designed to optimize the user's time.
3. Transparency - I've written ad infinitum about the hurdles facing anyone working with data in the maritime industry. The same argument can apply to commercial arrangements, service agreements and licensing. The reason large suppliers are consolidating and increasing market share is mostly down to the transparency they provide the buyers.
   
   We're talking about commercial arrangements here. End customer-facing providers need to simplify their supply chain. And those who are supplying too slim a service may need to focus on serving other customer-facing suppliers, instead of doing it themselves.
4. Reach - This issue is a classic of marketing, and only gets truer for the maritime industry. The value of being everywhere (not just having some hokey agent everywhere) is getting more and more important. The Kongsbergs, Wartsilas, Alfa Lavals, etc. of this world clocked this long ago and have been ramping up accordingly, in terms of their service profiles.
   
   In terms of marketing, this is about demonstrable location. Can you document and demonstrate your strength in multiple regions and markets? As carriers grow and optimize, they're getting less and less forgiving of those who can't work with them wherever they are.
5. Certifiability - This is not certainty. It's not about handling operational risk. It's about the documentation behind suppliers' existence. Take the environmental certification systems being developed by the likes of DNV, Lloyd's Register and Bureau Veritas. Supply companies need to get pro-active in terms of demonstrating their certifiability for carriers, which then build and market their own strong supply management systems.
   
   This is about packaging for an increasingly transparent world. You are as legitimate as you are able to document.

If you can do these five well and communicate them well, you'll probably be chosen in to the big table. Performance is performance. But these are the areas in which you need to talk well.

Comments

[Devremülkler]

Nice post. I love it. Waiting your new posts. Thank you...