UITP - International Association of Public Transport

The programme has been thoroughly elaborated to cover the main issues and stakes related to marketing in public transport. These sessions will be carried out in each one of the official languages of the UITP (English, French, German and Spanish). All the topics will be addressed by marketing professionals (two for each language) and illustrated by practical examples not only of good practice, but also by less successful experiences.

The activity of public transport has for main characteristic to address in “real time” a massive quantity of customers but also of non customers.

There is indeed no stocking-up phase between the production and the consumption of service and what is more, this service is not only perceived by those who use it but also by all the citizens.


-	What is a marketing strategy, what are its objectives and how is it related to the decision making process of our profession?
-	Which fundamental elements should be identified and acted upon to conceive an adapted marketing strategy?
-	Which are the different possible types of marketing strategies in our field of activity?
-	Which are the different components of a marketing strategy? What are the main factors that allow us to follow-up activities?
-	From marketing strategy to marketing mix.
		- What is a marketing mix in the context of public transport?
		- Which products and services are concerned?
-	From strategy to action plan.
-	Who are the principal actors of a marketing strategy?

Providing a good service, and an appropriate offer, identifying the potential clientele, developing a good marketing strategy, that is both approved and supported, all that is not enough to overcome the most important challenge: to achieve the predefined objectives.

In our profession, communication and promotion are sciences, tools which are often considered as costs instead of investments.

Moreover, we are evolving in a complex institutional environment which is turning around the sacrosanct rule: 1 message = 1 transmitter.


-	Who has to communicate? On what? What are the respective roles of transport authorities and operators in different situations?
-	From marketing strategy to communication plan:
		- The importance of commercial brand in customer relations,
		- How to manage your image?
-	How to optimise the launch of new products?
-	The particular interest of customer information as regards commercial communication and advertisement.
-	The importance of communicating your action plan inside your organisation, and managing the consequences on the internal management.

Anticipation is an important issue of marketing because anticipating is the only solution to combine more and more rapid societal evolutions with implementations which are generally too slow in our sector of activity. This slowness prevents us of being reactive.
In order to assess future needs and develop adequate services, it is essential to monitor and anticipate societal mega trends and underlying factors.

	-	Socio-economic trends have been analysed to depict the future business environment.
	-	Demographic and social/behavioural changes provide the basis for identify future users needs.
	-	Technology developments are highlighting new opportunities that may arise.

Our organisations are turning more and more into a customer culture, but it does not mean that marketers feel more comfortable in their activity. Two reasons for this: first because of the increasing financial pressure and secondly because of the difficulties to convince their environment of the relevance of their recommendations and actions.

Solutions depend of the following questions: How to overcome these barriers? How to convince the decision-makers to invest really in marketing and not to consider it as a budget of expense easy to decrease? How to mobilise the staff in your marketing policy?