According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the logistics industry is on track to experience an explosive 18% growth from 2022 to 2032.
While the landscape is ripe with opportunity, logistics marketing is becoming an even more essential component to standing out from the crowd. Join us for a thorough breakdown of how to build a marketing strategy for logistics company success.
Importance of Marketing for Logistics Companies
Let’s face it, logistics has become an incredibly competitive industry. Since the pandemic, companies around the world have been scrambling to adopt new logistics strategies to meet shifting customer and market demands.
Identifying the right marketing strategies for your logistics company can go a long way toward attracting new customers and keeping your current client roster happy. The right marketing approach can promote company growth, attract high-quality leads, and position your company as a trusted industry authority.
Key Marketing Strategies
First, it’s important to understand that logistics marketing relies on business-to-business (B2B) strategies, as opposed to those you’d use to attract individual consumers. B2B marketing can be a bit trickier, as it often involves winning over multiple shareholders. With that in mind, let’s look at several winning strategies that can set your company up for success.
Form a Solid Marketing Foundation
The right information can make the path to success a lot smoother in pretty much any situation. Logistics marketing is no different, which is why a little research can go a long way. In order to map out a solid marketing plan, you'll need to get to know three things incredibly well:
Your Audience
To effectively reach your audience, you need to understand who they are, where to find them online, and how to talk to them. Assembling a collection of demographic and firmographic data can increase your odds of attracting high-quality leads with targeted marketing campaigns.
Your Company
The SWOT analysis is a time-honored business strategy that involves examining your company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. By taking a good look at your company from every angle, you’ll gain insights that can help hone your approach.
Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
Why should a prospective client or customer choose your company over the competition? Your unique value proposition is a statement that should answer this question by highlighting the unique solutions you have to offer. Take your time finding and refining your UVP, as you’ll be drawing on it a great deal throughout your logistics marketing campaign.
Your Competition
We’ll let you in on a little secret – competitor analysis is not only common but encouraged in the marketing world. Scoping out your competition can help you differentiate your company’s offerings, find out which tactics are (and aren’t) working for your target audience, and spot industry gaps you may be in a unique position to fill.
Unleash Your Full Online Potential
The widespread adoption of the internet has forever changed the way marketing works. Today, many companies are making the shift to inbound marketing, a strategy that relies less on mass sales pitches and more on attracting the right leads with valuable online content. Here are a few key inbound logistics marketing strategies:
Have a professional website
A recent article by Forbes highlighted several reasons why a company’s website is now as important as its storefront. Among them were the facts that the average user forms an impression about a website in 0.05 seconds and that nearly 90% of visitors won’t return to a site where they had a bad experience. Not only can your website make a valuable first impression, but it can also be a powerful lead-generation tool.
Understand the buyer’s journey
Inbound marketing involves guiding prospective leads through a process known as the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey acknowledges the truth that few clients will arrive at your website ready to jump right in with a purchase order. Embracing this fact can help you carefully create content that guides leads through different stages: identifying their problem, understanding why you have the perfect solution, and converting to paying customers.
Select the right content formats and channels
One of the perks of inbound marketing is that it offers a wide range of different approaches. Some companies draw in new visitors with informative blogs and videos, while others launch social media marketing campaigns on sites like LinkedIn. Check out some online B2B marketing strategy examples and consider which might work well for your brand.
Make Your CRM Your Secret Weapon
Many future trends in logistics marketing are already making early appearances on the scene. You can find some of the best logistics software on customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, like HubSpot. Here are some of the innovative tools HubSpot offers to boost your logistics sales, marketing, and customer relationship strategies.
Drag and drop web creation
Gone are the days when you had to speak code to have a killer website. HubSpot’s free marketing tools include everything you need to create website pages, ads, or forms.
Nurture leads
With HubSpot, you can launch a logistics lead nurturing campaign with tools like Hubspot email templates, auto-personalization, and tracking.
Optimize your website’s performance
Analyze your website’s performance with free traffic analysis tools and search engine optimization recommendations.
Dashboard analytics
HubSpot’s free CRM also offers powerful visualization tools that can create custom reports for your marketing, sales, and service teams – all in the same place.
Contact management
Effortlessly store, organize, and track your contacts through every stage of the sales pipeline. HubSpot will even auto-populate each contact’s profile with information from a vast database of over 20 million companies.
Conclusion
In a rapidly evolving industry, marketing is becoming one of the most important logistics strategies for growth. The good news is that there are now plenty of great resources out there to help you bring your business up to speed. To learn more about digital marketing, email, search engine optimization, and more, head over to the HubSpot Academy. There you’ll find completely free online classes and certification courses that offer valuable insights into how to take your logistics marketing strategy to the next level.For personalized guidance, consider reaching out to a provider of manufacturing marketing services to tailor these strategies to your specific needs.
