A large part of the Logistics industry is still reliant on referrals and outbound tactics to win leads, with marketing activities limited to press releases, trade shows, and, to some extent, email campaigns. This scenario is gradually changing, and logistics companies are making a gradual shift from pure outbound tactics to exploring several inbound marketing hacks.
But is there a need for an effective Marketing strategy for Logistics Company?
The global logistics market is witnessing rapid growth, i.e., its value increasing from USD 8.96 trillion to USD 21.91 trillion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 9.35%. Beyond an iota of doubt, with a surge in the value comes a gamut of opportunities for logistics companies.
However, with around 21,253 logistics businesses in the USA alone, marketing your services is not a walk in the park. Without a compelling logistics marketing strategy, you will shoot arrows in the dark! However, as a logistics business striving to achieve your sales targets, there are numerous bottlenecks preventing you from achieving your desired objectives.
Some of the challenges impacting marketing in the logistics landscape include the following:
- The ethos of logistics B2B marketing is to not sell the sizzle but the steak, which makes selling your offerings as value to users difficult.
- Influencing numerous people with different priorities at various stages of the buying process is cumbersome while marketing your logistics services.
- Finding common ground that will convince all the decision-makers to purchase your service makes logistics marketing even more difficult.
- The buying cycles in the logistics industry are long, leading to higher costs and a lower ROI for enterprises.
- Zeroing in on an apt communication channel for the best marketing results can be tricky.
Here are some of the time-tested tactics we have outlined to help you navigate these challenges efficiently and build a robust marketing strategy.
1. Take a Moment to Understand Your Business
As a logistics service provider, you must put effort into understanding your business and not focus only on the market. The best way to achieve this is by including a SWOT analysis in your marketing strategy. Understanding what your logistics business excels in, what its uniqueness is, and why a target audience should prefer your services over your competitors will allow you to gain a good perspective on your strengths. Once you have grasped your enterprise’s strengths, you can leverage them appropriately in your marketing conduits for higher sales growth. Assessing the internal aspects that will become stumbling blocks allows you to understand the factors that need improvement in your venture. Comprehending the external opportunities in the market helps you outsmart your competitors. Inferring the threats that might sabotage your business allows you to formulate some contingency measures and secure your financial pursuits.
2. Uncover Opportunities to Outperform Your Competitors
Study your immediate and significant competitors to perceive their offerings, marketing methods, and sales. Besides empowering you to understand the potential opportunities to outsmart your business rivals, competitor analysis ensures that you stay abreast of the latest industry trends. It enables you to formulate services that stand out from the rest and gain more users. An extensive benchmarking analysis provides insights into your competitor’s prices, and service models. You can devise an appropriate strategy from the derived insights to outwit your competitors and secure your business interest.
3. Determine Your Buyer Persona
After understanding your business and gaining insights about your competitors, the next step for you as a business is to know your buyer’s persona. Regardless of the scope of your logistics business, knowing your buyer is vital for increasing your revenue growth. In this era of growth marketing, relying heavily on results obtained from running advertisements might not have a high impact on your enterprise’s profitability. To get the best out of your efforts, you need to pitch your offerings and engage with the right audience, and this can be done by creating a buyer’s persona. Creating an appropriate buyer persona allows you to understand your ideal customer, streamline your promotional endeavors, avoid unnecessary marketing spend, and secure ROI.
You can leverage business databases available in the market to understand your audience or prospects. It enables you to gain insights into prospects’ geographic, demographic, firmographic, technographic, professional, and financial attributes, the industry to which they belong and several other attributes. From these insights, you can chalk out an appropriate buyer persona, understand your prospect’s needs better, market the right services accordingly, and seize the deals quickly.
4. Invest in Branding
Branding shapes your audience’s perception of what they think and feel about your services or offerings. Creating a brand perception with an appropriate logo, messaging, and product naming allows you to create a memorable presence in your total addressable market. Besides helping you increase awareness about your business, a good brand identity helps visually differentiate your competitors. Additionally, by investing in branding, you can effectively secure your business’s required identity, easily introduce any new service in the market, and acquire uses with apt sales tactics.
5. Identify the Right Marketing Channels
Discovering the right pockets or channels to market your services allows you to reach your target audience quickly. The best way to choose the right communication channel is to comprehend where and how your buyer’s persona consumes information. Trade shows and conferences, Google ads, and Email marketing are some of the channels imperative for logistics service providers to promote their products.
6. Unleash Your Online Potential With Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is the best way to pull opportunities into your logistics sales funnel. Inbound marketing initiatives allow you to create a self-sustaining lead-generating resource for user acquisition. SEO (Search engine optimization) and content marketing are effective inbound marketing tactics that you can utilize to attract potential users through the internet by producing and sharing messages and online content to captivate their interest. Making your website your best salesperson works wonders in buyer-controlled internet research. Optimizing keywords relevant to your business on your website’s content allows you to garner search engines’ attention and gain visibility in the internet search. Hosting gated high-value downloadable content with a contact form about logistics services on your website allows you to access information about potential users. Additionally, sharing inbound content on social platforms will enable you to stay on your users’ minds and easily nudge them to buy your services.
7. Go the Extra Mile to Meet User’s Needs
A satisfied user is likelier to become a loyal customer and further your brand’s advocate. Hence, putting in extra effort to meet your user’s needs will transform your logistics enterprise’s growth trajectory. Creating touch points throughout your users’ buyer journey with prompt responses and quick mitigation of issues they face goes a long way. Additionally, you can leverage such happy customers for testimonials or social proof to create a good impression about your services and drive sales.
8. Capitalize on Your Expertise
As a logistics service provider, your specialty might be shipping, freight drayage, or more intricate 3PL/4PL solutions. Creating marketing endeavors that speak about your service’s unique capabilities in the conduits of logistics allows you to showcase your domain experience. Besides this, it empowers you to initiate niche-specific marketing endeavors for rapid sales growth.
Top Logistics Player in the USA
| Company | Gross Revenue(Millions) |
| Amazon.com Inc. | $140,053 |
| C.H. Robinson Worldwide | $16,746 |
| J.B. Hunt Transport Services | $12,510 |
| UPS Supply Chain Solutions | $11,461 |
| GXO Logistics | $9,778 |
| Kuehne + Nagel Americas | $9,617 |
| Expeditors International of Washington | $9,300 |
| Ryder Supply Chain Solutions | $7,700 |
| Total Quality Logistics | $6,866 |
| DSV A/S | $6,000 |
| Armada Sunset Holdings | $5,702 |
| Transportation Insight Holding Co. | $5,279 |
| Uber Freight | $5,245 |
| DHL Supply Chain | $5,025 |
Wrapping Up
As a logistics service provider, you can use marketing to maintain demand, your enterprise’s reputation, competition, and your offering’s relevance in the total addressable market. With a rapidly evolving logistics sector, marketing has become one of the important tools for strategic growth. By including traditional offline marketing methods and inbound marketing endeavors, you can steer your logistics business toward success.