Sonwil Transportation Truck Driver Marketing Case Study

Background:

Sonwil Transportation is a long-standing and successful transportation, warehousing, and logistics business based in West Seneca, New York. Jason Ickert was brought to Sonwil as President in April of 2021, to continue to drive Sonwil on an aggressive growth path. One major constraint Jason noticed immediately was Sonwil’s ability to attract and retain qualified truck drivers, just like many trucking companies in North America. Jason reached out to the Farmers team and we engaged in August 2021.

Audit & Initial Learnings:

As the Sonwil and Farmers team dove into solving the driver recruitment problem, we found that there:

  1. Was a very complicated and lengthy application process
  2. Were very few drivers visiting their website and calling
  3. Wasn’t a compelling value offer about why a driver should consider Sonwil Transportation.
  4. Most ads were ‘me too’, meaning the messaging was similar to most other trucking companies saying ‘Now Hiring’, ‘Great Pay’, ‘Steady Miles’, etc.
  5. Was no clear strategy on how to consistently hire drivers
  6. Was high turnover which also contributed to unseated tractors

Action Items:

Now that Farmers had audited Sonwil’s truck driver marketing environment and identified the high priority items, we quickly went to work and:

  1. Implemented HubSpot marketing automation and built out a recruitment sales pipeline
  2. Surveyed drivers and repositioned how we presented the driver role and Sonwil's value proposition
  3. Sonwil also made significant improvements to the position by adding guaranteed pay, and more home time
  4. Created new digital assets and recruitment pages on their existing website
  5. Launched online ads
  6. Managed the driver leads pipeline
  7. Most importantly, delivered on our promises

Results:

Initially, Jason Ickert commented that “If we can hire three drivers from this program, it will be a success.”, By December of 2021, 19 drivers were hired!

  1. Unseated tractors were reduced to zero as well. This contributed between $70,000 and $90,000 per week, between avoiding opportunity costs and adding revenue.
  2. In addition to numerous reports and dashboards, we built a revenue scorecard showing our weekly results. Sonwil can easily see at a glance their weekly results, including what percentage of MQL, become SQLs, the become hires, and how much their ad cost is per MQL, SQL, and hire.
  3. There is now a marketing machine in place and we can dial up or down driver recruiting, even at the specific job level, based on Sonwil’s weekly needs.

This is just a short summary of the many strategies and tactics that the Sonwil and Farmers team implemented, but due to Sonwil’s action, they solved a major problem. With confidence in their ability to attract qualified drivers, Jason and the Sonwil Transportation team can now focus on their next constraint - finding more tractors so they can hire even more drivers!

Client Testimonial

Sonwil testimonial