My son plays minor league baseball, so I spend a fair amount of time in baseball stadiums. The bathroom layouts in these and other stadiums are pretty similar – long rows of pretty generic white urinals. But during a recent trip to New Jersey (sad to say I met neither Snooki nor The Boss), I used a bathroom with urinals that were quite different.
Each urinal featured an ad, in the urinal itself, with a prominent headline. The one I used said, simply “Back again?” Others read:
- “Has your bat gone silent?”
- “What, you again?”
- “Standing here longer than you stood for the national anthem?”
- “The only dribblers should be from home plate to the pitcher’s mound.”
The ads were placed by a local urology medical practice. Brilliant. Any other urinal ad might seem tacky, but here you are presenting a possible solution to a genuinely worrying medical problem exactly at the time when the person is most distressed and anxious for answers.
So the question this raises for logistics marketers is: “Where are your best prospects hanging out?” (No pun intended.)
The answer won’t be the same for all buyers of logistics equipment and services. That’s why it’s important to understand your target personas – profiles of the people you are trying to sell. Your persona descriptions will include the prospect’s goals, motivations, pain points and other profile data. Find a basic persona description here. But you’ll want to go deeper and learn how and where they get information about industry news, new strategies and service providers.
I recently did some research on marketing 3PL services that includes data on logistics information sources. The downloadable document does not deal with buyer personas, specifically, but does share information on what prospects think about sales and marketing communications from logistics service providers. So it might help in developing personas.
Your buyer personas should give you a solid idea of where, when and how to communicate your message. In addition, check the lead source data on your best sales opportunities. If 50% came from consultant referrals, that’s a pretty good hint as to where your time and money should be invested. (Note: it’s not in urinal ads in consultant office buildings.)
