Ship Talk

"We would strongly recommend Market Transformations to any company wanting to improve its sales and marketing results."
Captain Thomas Brown, Chairman, Shiptalk



The Client’s Challenge
Shiptalk is a specialist maritime recruitment and community portal based in the North of England, but serving the global merchant maritime sector. Founded in order to create an online merchant marine community with a commercial model based on advertising and job placement revenues, the company had established a good position in the market, but was unable to generate enough in advertising and job placement revenues to self sustain or move into long term profitability in line with the director’s plans.

The Brief
At the point of engaging us to help them, the directors were unsure as to why in a booming maritime market the company was unable to make the level of sales targeted by the company. Our brief was to investigate the market and report back to the management with our findings, recommendations and a plan for the company.

Work packages
In order to deliver the results demanded of us, we recommended two work packages initially -

Market Verification  
We investigated the market directly talking to a wide range of companies and organisations to gain an understanding of the market.  

Proposition Development  
Based on our findings we developed a proposition for the company which would address the market’s perceived needs and create a sustainable and strong position in the market for Shiptalk.


Lead Generation
We were contracted to define and run a lead generation programme for Shiptalk which has regularly delivered far better results than the national average for such programmes.

Outcome
The results of our work for Shiptalk delivered some virtually instantaneous results –

• A tuned and market focused proposition was put in place
• The company saw an increase in sales of 50% over the same quarter of the previous year
• Ongoing Lead generation programmes that deliver a ‘list to lead’ ratio of better than 9 percent  – almost twice the national average for lead generation (3 to 5 percent)

"Following the successful implementation of Market Transformations recommendations we saw an immediate return as sales figures increased by 50% on the figures for the same quarter of the previous year."
Captain Thomas Brown, Chairman, Shiptalk