There's No Replacement for Doing the Work
Here's the Problem:
There is no silver bullet for growing sales at a logistics company. Any sales or marketing solution promising overnight leads is likely a lie and will be a waste of time and money.
What’s happening and why:
The appeal of getting help from a 3rd party to create leads is understandable. Most logistics companies need and want more. The issue is that expecting an outside company (which knows nothing about your business, the shipping industry, or why your customers buy) to help is wishful thinking unless you have a lot of other marketing pieces in place. A one-hour discovery call to discuss your services and benefits so that they can drum up interest is not a substitute for years of experience. No amount of cold calls and poorly AI-written emails can change this.
How to fix it:
Real prospects will only engage with your company’s outreach when there are other basic marketing assets in place. And of course, the more of it the better. However, it does not have to be hard or expensive to create it. Yet, few companies put in the work. Just know this: the moment a prospect receives an email or phone call, or sees an article or social post you’ve published, they are going to dig deeper into your company. They want more proof that you’re real and to be convinced that you're worth talking to.
A cold call or cold email doesn’t work when your website is dated and unprofessional, your social media presence is nonexistent, or your blog hasn’t been updated in a year. Marketing and lead generation results stem from consistently doing the right things, not with quick fixes.
AI for Marketing: Tip of the Week
Go faster with AI. AI offers more than a quick way to write an email or social post. It can be a powerful tool for company and prospect research. This is important because too many companies waste time researching and marketing to prospects that are not a good fit as potential customers. The result is a lot of wasted effort. Tools like ChatGPT make finding companies in specific industries easy. Finding more detailed information about them is also easy. AI research coupled with LinkedIn and other tools is a good way to find contacts with titles that align well with your audience.
Marketing Macro Trend: Keep Up Where the Market Is Going
Marketing Needs to Be about Offense and Defense. Most people think of marketing as a way to proactively find customers, which it primarily is. But in logistics, an industry that is competitive and hard to differentiate within, companies need to protect what’s theirs, too. In our Insight section above, we talked about all the ways you need to show you’re a real company. All those areas are also valuable signals to your existing customers. A consistent presence in your customers’ inboxes (but not in a spammy way) or on social media are good reminders you are there. They are also a good defense mechanism when your competitors are circling.