THE CLIENT:
U.S. Xpress; Haulynx
U.S. Xpress is one of the nation’s largest asset-based truckload carriers by revenue, providing services throughout the U.S. and across North America. The company is known to excel at the trucking business, because it is more than a trucking company. U.S. Xpress is also a solutions company powered as much by brainpower as by horsepower. Together, over 10,000 of our problem-solvers ensure your freight moves as efficiently and safely as possible.
The Haulynx ELD is the only ELD designed to make you money. How? Haulynx provides an ELD with no monthly fees, obligations, or contracts, which allows Haulynx to push exclusively priced, tailored freight offers directly to you. Freight that you may not have had access to before at a better price.
The Challenge:
U.S. Xpress Technologies, powered by U.S. Xpress, acquired a company called Haulynx, which created a new type of ELD that could revolutionize the trucking industry as a whole. An ELD (Electronic Logging Device) is required by the government to be in every commercial truck on the road as a way to track drivers' drive time.
The challenge for us was to figure out whether the target users would actually use this new ELD and which features they would be interested in most. In addition, we had to determine the best ways to create an optimal user experience, as well as sell, market and get people to actually start using the product.
The Solution & Process:
While working in tandem with internal stakeholders from both U.S. Xpress and Haulynx, we would create, develop and execute a brand, digital, content, marketing and product strategy – along with a buyer/user experience strategy – for this new technology platform and app. This was a multi-step process, with various moving parts and deliverables. Below is an outline of our approach and execution strategy.
Step 1: Customer Research
Create, host and analyze an online customer research initiative to collect as much data as possible around the target users' habits, routine, patterns, goals and more. We used an online, multi-day questionnaire to give users time to enter their responses and feedback. The final step of the initiative involved introducing the new concept to these potential users, and based on their responses and feedback, determine whether they would be interested in, and willing to, try the new platform and app. This research was crucial, because what we found out was that while the overwhelming majority of those who participated weren't quite convinced that the concept would ever be available, they did show interest and a willingness to try it if it did – giving us proof of concept. So, at that point, we knew we had a product that that our target users were at least wiling to try. After presenting the data/research results to key internal stakeholders, it was then time to outline the product development roadmap, as well as new and innovative marketing and sales strategies.
Step 2: Product Development Roadmap
Using the data collected during the research phase, we then hosted a product development workshop with the internal development team to create a product roadmap that outlined platform features by priority, in order to ensure that when it was time for these people to actually use the platform, it would give them exactly what they wanted to get out of this new product, which they expressed during the research phase. In addition, we had to determine the type of data we needed the platform to collect and display, in order to show current users (as well as to utilize in sales/marketing tactics) that it was in fact improving their workflow/process/revenue opportunities.
Step 3: Develop Product Marketing & Buyer Experience Strategies
This phase of the project involved hosting a workshop with the product, marketing and sales teams, in order to present the data and get a better idea of current workflows, roadmaps and goals. This was crucial in order to align all of these teams with the new product development roadmap and new strategies for marketing and selling the actual product.
Step 4: Go-to-Market Product Launch Plan: Product Marketing & Buyer Experience Strategies
After meeting with these internal teams, we were able to determine the role(s) that each would play moving forward, ensuring that their efforts were all aligned with the new strategies that were being put in place. This involved delivering updated and comprehensive product marketing and buyer experience strategies, which included updates to current roles, workflows and product roadmaps – along with a go-to-market product launch plan that included details around how and where the product marketing process would work.
Step 5: Content
Part of our role was to also create a content plan that would support these new efforts. These strategies were development for the website, sales/marketing material and social media.
