Challenge
The Alabama Trucking Association, promoting fair and reasonable regulation of Alabama’s trucking industry, engaged Markstein in 2020 to address a severe workforce shortage. To alleviate this deficit, Markstein was asked to strengthen how Alabama’s trucking workforce is informed and how the industry is viewed.
Solution
Markstein used research and analysis of the industry to inform a recruitment program, implementation plan and fundraising approach named the Careers in High Gear initiative. This initiative helped to recruit a group of donors to fund a workforce solution. Dedicated funds created The Real Faces of Alabama Trucking campaign, featuring testimonials from active professional drivers and diesel technicians. The campaign creative was used to develop educator toolkits and execute a paid media strategy that led users to a careers page featuring optimal training programs. These efforts were created to scale to support other careers within the industry as the initiative gained traction and additional funding.
Results
Within three months, website visits and new users nearly doubled, and the pilot advertising campaign received over 500 responses to direct training requests. This helped rapidly grow a donor base to support a statewide extension of the program.
