LOGISTICS MARKETING BLOG

In marketing, we need to do a better job of establishing standards – marketing objectives against which we measure our performance. Luckily, we have high-tech tools that make it easier to measure marketing.

Recently I had a chance to do a Q&A with my colleague, Brian Carroll, consultant and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. I have followed Brian’s B2B Lead Blog for years and was interested in his latest focus area, empathetic marketing. Here are the highlights of our discussion.

The world is small, and getting smaller. When clients are looking for specialty services, their search can go world-wide. What are you doing to attract them, stand out, and avoid the crowded middle?

It’s smart business to be aware of what your competition is doing. But be careful that the effort does not become a primary focus. If you have plans for a large-scale competitive analysis, here are some reasons to re-think how much time and resources you expend on the effort.

Marketers can gather tons of data, but CEOs want to know whether their investment in marketing is contributing to top-line growth and whether the results justify the marketing budget expense. Giving them these answers requires metrics that link marketing efforts with actual sales results.
Here are some of my favorite ways to demonstrate marketing’s bottom line return.

Data indicates that the best marketing ROI for your logistics marketing business comes from investing time to get other people to tell your story for you.

You need to weigh the costs of marketing automation software like HubSpot against the value of time – and how that time can contribute to meeting your ultimate sales and marketing objectives.

Too few logistics businesses practice “outside-in marketing.” Instead, they focus their marketing on the services and key features they (and 500 other companies) offer. That’s a great strategy if your marketing goal is to blend in and go unnoticed…

This week’s logistics sales tip: change your approach from “selling” to pure, selfless, ask-nothing-in-return “helping.” You’ll build stronger, longer-lasting relationships with prospects, get more referrals and, ultimately, close more business. Learn more in this blog post.

Companies invest time and energy to explore a change – new carrier, new warehouse provider, new software – but in the end they do nothing at all. Meanwhile, logistics businesses invest thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of dollars to chase accounts that, very often, can never be caught. Learn the top 5 tips that prospects are unlikely to buy.