Where to start when you don’t know where to start: 5 points

We’ve run across companies within the logistics industry who approach/email/tweet us about marketing rather sheepishly. Typically these companies are small-to-medium sized businesses and their questions all essentially come from one place: Where do I start if I haven’t done a lot of marketing in the past?

So, quickly, here are five things to know if you’re getting started or starting anew. For the mature marketer, these may sound obvious. But they’re often the unasked questions of many:

1. Marketing is not media. Buying advertising is a component of marketing, but no, you don’t need an advertising budget to do marketing. You may never buy an ad at all. It all depends on what you’re trying to do and who you are trying to reach.
2. You can step in slowly. When trying to find a marketing partner/agency, it’s often a daunting experience because there is a fear of needing to ‘commit’ to a retainer or something larger than what feels comfortable. A good partner will be upfront with you and work with you on a graduated basis. But in fairness, they will also ask you whether you are committed, not necessarily to a massive retainer or something like that, but to marketing on an ongoing basis. Building from scratch can be a win-win for everyone. The process needs to be positive for both parties.
3. Your baseline marketing activities are the most critical. If you don’t have a good foundation of a website, an understanding of where you fit in the market, and how your service compares to other, you should figure those things out before diving into things like social media, direct mail/email, or advertising.
4. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. A marketing strategy is created to help position a company and communicate to the right audience as effectively as possible. Chances are, there are people out there doing it already, so keep your eye on them. They’ll lead you in a good direction and chances are you’ll see new opportunities that they are not even deploying.
5. Just start. Don’t put it off until next month’s sales figures come in or until some magical date on a calendar. The best companies in the world drive sales with marketing because it works. And it will work for you. Commit to it and start today. Whether that’s a conversation with a potential partner agency, or a formal internal meeting, take the step. It can actually be fun. It will certainly be profitable for you in the long run.

Building a Brand Worth Something Is Easy. But It’s Hard.

Too often, as advertising people in transportation/trucking/logistics, we’re asked to ‘create a brand,’ which in the context of the request usually means ‘fashion us into a company that people will want to buy from/work for/invest in more than the other guys, without us changing anything about how we treat customers/employees/investors.’

It’s at these times when the fun work of this profession starts, leading with a discussion of how a ‘brand’ is more than a visual mark or stated position placed in an ad. Diving into the essence of a company means looking at it realistically – warts and all – and discussing whether ‘what they want to be’ matches ‘who they are,’ and all points in between. Unfortunately, a lot of companies have large deltas in between the two. Fortunately, their heads and hearts are generally pointed in the same direction, so it’s just a matter of helping them recognize opportunities to bring the two together.

What we do from an output standpoint isn’t trivial for sure … we need to help communicate both the vision and the supporting action … but the real change and growth of a brand comes from within, in every interaction with a customer/employee/investor. Our magic is making that goal or end point tangible so that everyone – internal or external – can see that what the company is doing adheres to a unique value, position and philosophy.

On the surface it’s easy. And often in execution, it’s fairly streamlined and painless, too. As mentioned, it’s not that companies don’t know their market position or where they want to be from a brand standpoint. It’s simply that they haven’t created that tangible ‘calling card’ and more importantly, haven’t identified the actions big and small that happen daily which support that positioning.

Commitment takes but a second to decide upon. ‘Staying committed’ is the hard part. In other words, living the brand is where the challenge lies, and it’s everlasting. But companies that can clearly define brand have a much easier time because they seek customers that match their business intentions, hire around their culture, and partner with investors who see their businesses in the same light as they do.

Branding is not so much an exercise as it is a 24/7 marathon. The more clearly you define what your goals are and what you stand for, the easier it is to run.

So if you want to better position yourself, certainly hire someone from the outside to help (Gee, I don’t know … maybe someone like www.mammoth5.com for example). They will give you perspective you can’t see, even if it’s painful. Remember, your position is your position whether you agree or not. But also share your hopes and dreams and work with them as a partner in business transformation. They’ll help you see opportunities. And those opportunities big and small are what will lead you to the market perception you want.

But it can’t just be a logo or ad. Your part of the bargain is to make sure everything and everyone in your business is pointed at the same shared brand identity.

Want to read a bit more? Here’s a great quick read from Medium about branding.

LinkedIn Usage Statistics – 2014

Confident that your potential customers aren’t using LinkedIn, so you’re avoiding it. Avoid at your own peril. Other social network statistics to come shortly, but below is an image from a recent Pew Research study.

Key in this information are the education and earnings levels. Although thirty-ish percentiles may seem low, this is a study of all American online adults. In other words, cluster this data around the demographic audience of your target customers and these stats go up significantly.

Or in other other words, B2B companies, such as those in logistics and transportation should have a dedicated effort around LinkedIn as at least one of their target social connecting points.

Portrait of a modern trucker from Atlas Van Lines

Atlas Van Lines recently released their survey of drivers in their fleet, along with a fantastic infographic of their results. Why more companies don’t do similar things is a mystery, but nevertheless, Atlas’ insights are reflective of a lot of drivers in the industry, even thought their drivers have a specialized role within the industry. The infographic is below.

While there wasn’t much that shocked us (hey, they’re mobile!), it is interesting to see that drivers continue to fight an ongoing battle with fitness and health. And with the tight labor pool for drivers in the U.S., it is equally interesting to see the commitment of many of the companies in the industry lagging behind in supporting the healthy ‘desires’ of their workforce.

Often when driver health is addressed, it’s in a peripheral manner, which is understood. It’s trucking, not a gym. Job one is getting freight safely from Point A to Point B on time.

That said, trucking companies need drivers and drivers greatly desire a more healthy lifestyle. Following that train, it would seem that those willing to commit to making a true effort to help would be more successful. But where the rubber hits the road is in two parts: 1) Commitment and 2) Communication.

As far as commitment goes, there is a market opportunity to craft internal programs to help drivers with their fitness efforts (eating, working out, etc.). Companies can’t ‘make’ people fit, but they can help them get set up for success. This is more than providing brochures and a rusty gym in an occasional break room. It’s developing a full-fledged program or having a Q&A resource available for unique driver questions, or creating challenges among drivers and staff.

But commitment alone will not lead to success. Companies need to communicate these efforts to their employees constantly and in a way that doesn’t seem like a ‘regulatory’ information update. Excitement, collaboration, and evolution are key. Getting employees to understand your commitment to them is fun, so internal communication should be reflective of that. When you’ve got that settled, you can turn your attention externally to try and attract similarly ‘fitness-hungry’ drivers (pun intended) to your company as well. Statistically, that seems to be a good move.

There are many more actionable items in Atlas’ survey, the least of which is … if you run a trucking company you should be doing this every year like Atlas. But companies should not just look casually at data like this. They should figure out how the data applies to their businesses and make a commitment to create better opportunities to communicate and match the stated desires of the survey subjects (better health for drivers in this case) with opportunities to fill company needs (companies who need to retain and recruit drivers). Commit. Communicate.

Modern Day Truck Driver by Atlas Van Lines

Not mobile in trucking? Get ready for a long 2015.

Whether your target is internal staff, external prospects, carriers or fleets, 2015 will be a landmark year for the increased push toward mobile communications in logistics and trucking in particular.

While connecting ‘traditionally’ over the Internet will continue to have a place and comfort zone for many, branding-related communication needs to be focused on this shift, which is no longer an effort ‘ahead of the curve’ as much as it is a requirement for the here and now.

Looking for a bit more meat? Here are some recent stats from an industry publisher study by Randall Reilly (full article can be found here):

• 54.3% of contractors used internet-enabled phones. Of those 34 years old and under, 100% use internet-enabled phones.
• 52.6% of fleet owners use handheld devices to access the internet, with another 28.3% also using tablets.
• 49.2% of owner-operators use handheld devices to access the internet. Another 22.5% use tablets for the same purpose.
• 55.1% of company drivers use handheld devices to access the internet, with 22.3% using tablets.

3 Questions from Supply Chain Companies about Marketing. 3 Answers.

We’ve received a few questions and comments over the past weeks. Keep them coming to info@mammoth5.com. In no particular order, here they are (paraphrased for brevity’s sake):

Q: How do I get my management team to see that I need to do more marketing to support sales?
A: First, clarify marketing and make sure you have a common definition. To some it may mean pure sales support. To others, it may mean media and advertising. You’ll only make progress if your mental pictures align. From there, the best way to communicate a marketing need is to show it. Go through your sales process, but as a prospect. Document their journey, where and how they see you in the process, in both meetings and in their own independent research. Have management do the same if they can. You’ll see gaps and inconsistencies that may not ‘seem’ that important until you walk a mile in your prospects’ shoes.

Q: Should I do social media?
A: You should participate in social media. ‘Do’ is precisely what you should not do. More to come on this later, but quickly, social media is a commitment. It needs a strategy and vision and a large amount of diligence. More importantly, it needs an understanding that to be successful, you need to give as much as you expect to get. Your goal is generating interest and illustrating expertise. Help people solve their problems, but don’t make them feel it’s a quid pro quo proposition. Like anything, being a resource has value which will ultimately come back around to you. Don’t force it. Don’t just ‘do’ it. Participate in it, for sure.

Q: Where do I start?
A: Question for a question … where are you now? Not every situation is the same, so each company will have a different answer to this question. The best way to understand your needs is to start as your prospect as discussed above. This will help you fill gaps in a much-changing process of sales in business-to-business sector, such as logistics. But be aware that this is gap filling. There is tremendous value in cleaning up the things that are peripheral to the sales process in this first stage, but beyond that there is additional opportunity. For that, you may need to dig a little deeper. Look at your industry, but also look into other B2B verticals or get some help. Phase one is about maintaining competitiveness by not having influencing factors work against you. Phase two is about creating action and defining and differentiating heavily.

Logistics and B2B Sales Support Through Online Marketing: Simple Guidance from Google

The increasing influence of ‘invisible’ online research at the initial stages of B2B sales processes for the transportation and logistics space means that companies will need to be more aware of their brand presence and position throughout the web.

CEB and Google outline a few ways to better organize and create opportunities to build a positive and influential presence online. Critical to logistics companies – typically short on staff and time – their research notes that cohesion and focus of messaging coupled with well-timed ‘helpful’ buyer information are the most critical components of a good strategy, as opposed to undertaking inconsistent, massive efforts to generate enormous volumes of sales-centric material.

Read the full article here: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/b2b-digital-evolution.html

LinkedIn Adds B2B Service Tool Which Can Help Trucking/Transportation/Logistics Companies

LinkedIn introduced new tools this summer that have upside potential for companies looking for lead generation/prospect intelligence opportunities. Indicators show that the business social network is increasingly turning its focus from recruiting to the Business-2-Business space.

More here: http://goo.gl/xrtpMx

The Sales Hurdles You May Not Know Exist

Generating sales in the transportation and logistics community follows many of the same paths that other B2B sales professionals know well. Sales teams pursue leads in an effort to help prospects understand key differentiators of their company relative to the rest of the pack. Phone calls. Presentations. Mailers. Emails. Controlled communication pushes the funnel forward.

But what if the game begins before such sales engagements?

Studies continue to show that B2B sales processes are beginning to look more like those of B2C. Specifically, that business procurement professionals are engaging with your services and offerings before they’ve held meetings or even taken calls from your salespeople.

So what does this mean? For starters, B2B companies in transportation, trucking, and other logistics entities must be more aware of their online presences and how effectively – or not – such a presence builds or depletes the confidence of a potential buyer of your services. Missing the role and importance of these ‘invisible’ stages of the sales processes might leave you out of the game, without so much as an invitation.

“A recent Corporate Executive Board study
of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that those
customers completed, on average, nearly 60% of a
typical purchasing decision—researching solutions,
ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on—before even having a conversation with a supplier.” – Corporate Executive Board/Harvard Business Review

Source: Anders Pink

Best practices abound when it comes to building a good online presence, but the starting point for many companies is to better understand the reality of today’s B2B buyer and buying process as exemplified above. Without such a recognition, company websites, social presence, and general online personas will be viewed as second-fiddle sales components as companies evaluate their efforts for 2015.

Honest assessment will help determine whether there is need, and begin to help create shape to the sales conversation that includes all stages of the funnel, visible or not.

B2B Marketing/Sales Alignment Impact on Trucking and Logistics

Alignment – or rather lack of alignment – between sales and marketing is common in many organizations, trucking and transportation or otherwise. In fact, it’s not uncommon for separate departments to be set up which never talk to each other or have ‘frosty’ relationships at best.

As the inside of organizations become more transparent on purpose or not (five minutes of Googling can tell a prospect everything they want to know about your company that you might not want them to know), the connection between marketing and sales is tightening out of necessity.

When the two are aligned, they help one another, greasing the wheels for sales efforts and helping craft a picture of a company that follows a narrative to be carried by your sales team to the finish line.

Some evidence of the power comes from a recent 2015 B2B trend article from business2community.com:

Marketing and Sales have historically had a somewhat contentious relationship, at least in many organizations. But as B2B buyer behaviors have changed, the need for increased alignment and closed-loop communication between marketing and sales teams is absolutely critical. Many company leaders cite alignment as an ongoing priority, but in 2015 it will become more mission-critical than ever — and rightfully so. According to SiriusDecisions, B2B organizations with tightly aligned marketing and sales achieved 24% faster revenue growth and 27% faster profit growth over a three-year period.

Don’t have a marketing department? You’re not alone, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune, either. A lack of marketing support for your sales team will become more apparent as competitors refine their sales/marketing messages and align their efforts in a more organized manner. Those with a full-circle effort will put more and more distance between their less organized competitors (hopefully not you).

On the surface, organizing and aligning such efforts may seem daunting (as in, thinking of how to connect social media and mobile marketing with your sales effort). But in reality, technology has created opportunities to manage and conduct dynamic marketing with a fraction of the resources previously needed. The key is recognizing (a) that quality is critical and can’t be exchanged for token efforts and (b) it must be sustainable and match the resources you want to put behind it. (Too many companies jump on a bandwagon they can’t keep properly rolling.)

So what to do? We’ll cover that more in this space, but a good start is to simply start procuring your own services. ‘Remove yourself’ from the company or have someone else you trust go through your buying cycle from discovery to close to see where you’re exposed because of lack of sales and marketing alignment. And use someone who matches the demographic profile of your prospect (ie: don’t have a 30 year sales veteran go through the process if a younger, 10 year procurement veteran is a better representation of your buyer.)

Be honest about it, because your prospects will not be looking through your rose-colored glasses when they do the same. From there, you’ll at least be able to start thinking about gaps in your marketing and sales program and where you may need to seek professional help to re-craft and bring them together.