Logistics cut out for SMEs

Sneha Mehta, Country Marketing Manager, Lalamove India talks about the brand’s recent ‘Deliver Possibilities Faster’ campaign and how OOH contributes toward strengthening Lalamove’s engagement with SMEs across the country. 

You have recently announced a new marketing initiative ‘Deliver Possibilities Faster’. Could you tell us about the new campaign?

Lalamove’s mission is to make delivery easier and faster for India’s SMEs. Be it a bike delivery or a mini truck for bulky goods within the city, we help businesses deliver.  Micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses form the backbone of our economy and local delivery and logistics are a major hurdle for many of these businesses to operate efficiently. For many medium sized businesses, they traditionally own and maintain a fleet of mini trucks and drivers, which costs money even when demand has dropped or disappeared completely.

Small businesses like wholesalers and retailers would rely on their office boys to make deliveries, many of whom have migrated back to their cities during the Covid situation or prefer now not to travel.

Lalamove makes it possible for businesses to reduce the disruption that the pandemic may have caused and make delivery and logistics transparent and cost-effective.  With digitisation becoming no longer just a long-term trend but a necessity, it’s vital for businesses to turn digital and we are here to help.

The Deliver Possibilities Faster campaign is Lalamove’s commitment to small businesses and their hard-working entrepreneurs to support them with their delivery and logistics matters. With this campaign, we hope to reach the users of traditional logistic players who otherwise wouldn’t know they can book a delivery online. We hope to reach customers that may never have thought to use a digital platform for on-demand delivery, but who could now use it as a means to rescue or maintain their business. 

The campaign has a fair concentration on the outdoor medium. How does OOH stack up in your communication plan?

This is our first IMC campaign in India of this scale and the outdoor medium is an important way of reaching people who may never have heard of Lalamove. While Lalamove is a digital platform, it’s still important that we connect with customers in an offline setting. Many SME customers who could make great use of Lalamove’s delivery services may not be very present on digital platforms still, so using outdoor mediums to advertise ourselves is a promising way to connect with them and then hopefully transfer them onto our app, which is very easy to use.

 The recent campaign is a part of an Asia Pacific campaign. What are the common elements in the campaigns?

Lalamove’s mission across all our markets is to support SMEs with their deliveries, whether it’s to partially or completely outsource their logistics. The pain points of these small businesses are fairly consistent across the markets and that’s why we’re extending this message of support and to offer a helping hand to many industries to get them back on their feet during what is a very difficult year. This campaign is our effort to reach out to those users who require a fleet of vehicles on an on-demand basis but didn’t previously know this could be facilitated and booked online.

Could you share the markets that will be tapped through this campaign? 

Lalamove supports businesses from nearly every industry with delivery and last-mile logistics. Whether it’s helping F&B businesses to move stock or delivery bulk order to customers, or wholesale manufacturers to deliver their goods to clients on a daily basis, they can take advantage of our easy booking service that connects them with delivery drivers that have the vehicles to safely transport their goods.

Restaurants, florists, electrical shops, grocery shop owners, retail stores, tiffin services, stationary shop owners, intracity C2C couriers and parcels and even e-commerce enterprises can all use the Lalamove platform. Apart from businesses, individual customers use our bike delivery service, whether it’s to send a document or to get a tiffin from someone in the same city.

What is the communication strategy behind the outdoor campaign?

The outdoor campaign will reach people at different touchpoints including at targeted outdoor locations with higher concentrations of small businesses. The communication strategy is designed to inspire hope and positivity at a time when many businesses are finding life difficult. We’re reaching out to provide SMEs with new digital choices that could help them to transform their business in the delivery space and reach new customers. The lasting message is - leave your delivery hassles to us.

What is your expectation from the outdoor campaign? 

We hope to reach new and traditional customers who may use Facebook or Youtube to entertain themselves but wouldn’t know that they can also book a delivery through online mediums; given they are used to looking for offline drivers at the tempo nakas, haggle with them on pricing and then schedule. We solve problems for businesses in the delivery space the same way cab aggregators do for commuters. Taking small steps in digitising their business helps entrepreneurs to concentrate on their core work and make their operations more efficient. Reliable partners like Lalamove can be that helping hand.