Logistics industries are a synonym for complexity; however, that is a double-edged sword- a problem for many and an opportunity for some. It is such an industry that raises more questions than answers. Also, the trends are constantly evolving, so even the most seasoned player will have difficulty staying on top of the game. Thus, they must have a good idea of how to deliver the who, where, what, when, why, and how of transportation.
A study says that according to 87% of b2b buyers, the content they see or read online significantly impacts the air choice of providers. Thus, content marketing plays a crucial role in the implementation of transportation business information. However, logistics have traditionally stuck to old ways of marketing.
Simply put, you need transportation marketing if you have a logistics company. Contrary to popular belief, logistics companies are actually in dire need of digital marketing. However, since it is mostly a b2b industry, people might make an assumption that there is no need for massive digital growth.
However, logistics marketing is of utmost importance if you want to increase your hyper-target audience, conversion rate, thought leadership or produce measurable results. And content marketing forms a huge part of it. So what is logistics content marketing anyway, and how can a transportation marketing agency help you ? Let us find out:
What is Logistics Content Marketing?
Content marketing can be defined as the process of producing and distributing online materials that are relevant, practical, and valuable to a specific kind of audience for building relationships and generating rightful interest in our logistics company. It can be anything-
- articles
- blog posts
- newsletters
- social media posts
- videos
Every content is not just about building your brand. Instead, it is used as a tool for informing your target audience and building the credibility and identity of your logistics company.
For logistics, content marketing surely works. But, having said that, you must plan out and consider suitable pain points and come up with good content that revolves around that pain. Do that, and you will surely witness a lead volume easily triples and quadruples.
However, you will want to stand out from your competitors while doing it. So it is important to offer some kind of context to the readers. Including links that will redirect your industry-based news will help you accomplish this.
You might think that content marketing is limited to one segment of customers but it is crucial for both the b2b and b2c segments. Let us see why:
Why is Content Marketing Important to Cover Both Segments?
A study suggests that almost all marketers leverage content marketing- 91% when it comes to b2b marketers and 86% when it comes to b2c marketers.
The very first reason why this form of marketing is crucial is that your target customers appreciate it. With the help of content marketing, you can see there are 3 times as many leads as outbound marketing, generate six times conversion rates, and can boost 7.8 times current web traffic.
If we speak of reality, content marketing has promoted a customer-centric reality in how people function. Whether a podcast series or a well-researched white paper, content bridges the gap between brands and consumers. Thus, keeping them informed is crucial.
While content marketing began as an alternative to the ad age, it has skyrocketed like anything. If research is to be believed, by 2021, an average person’s consumed 6000 and 10000 digital content in the form of ads between ads every day. So no surprises here, customers and businesses like it.
Needless to say, companies that have neglected the significance of content marketing today will someday catch up. However, the ones that have already adopted the strategy are already scaling their business. They hone their content with upgraded technology, customer data, and a better-developed network.
Now that we know the relevance of serving content to both segments let us see why logistics companies need it.
Why should Logistics, Transportation Companies Use Content Marketing?
Offers a Chance for Thought Leadership
Being a thought leader is quite crucial if you want to increase growth, customers, and trust in your logistics and transportation business. With suitable transportation marketing, your company can give better insight or essential information to the prospects who need it.
A b2b Thought Leader Study was conducted in which 88% of the respondents believed that thought leadership has proven to be quite efficient in enhancing their perceptions of a company.
Delivers Measurable Results
Monitoring your transportation marketing strategies is quite easy and is an established fact. When you implement proper marketing strategies, it will help you get a significant amount of data and understand which is the most successful ROI
Like this, you do not have to constantly fuss over how much money you are spending on marketing or advertisements that do not give you efficient results. It is because you can monitor what strategy works and what does not
Increase Conversion Rates
Improving conversion rates for transportation companies is essential for your transportation marketing. When you execute it rightly, it will boost your revenue per visitor and become a useful asset in growing the company. Having set that, it can be an easy option for your business to boost conversion rate rather than increase the number of visitors to your site.
A good example is a transportation company with 2000 visitors with a current conversion rate of 40% and a goal of 800. In this case, your company has two options: keep the conversion rate steady and double the number of visitors or improve the existing traffic conversion rate to 80%. Experts believe that a combination of the two strategies is an ideal way to go. But when you increase your conversion rate, it will give you results in dividends.
Improves Customer Interaction
In terms of transportation companies, what you can consider the most important aspect is customer engagement which perfectly aligns with thought leadership and boost your conversion rates. In this digital era, now is the time when accessibility to customer engagement is so easy.
Not only it helps in increasing your revenue, but it also converts the current customer base into your company’s ambassador. Thus, you retain them easily and decrease the amount you spend on customer acquisition.
Now that you know why logistics companies must take up content marketing let us discuss some of the best content ideas to inform, educate, and engage your customers.
What are some Compelling Content Ideas?
Today businesses have moved from simply updating a blog and posting content on social media pages to interacting with their followers, thanks to the lightning speed at which people scroll through content.
For interacting with your content, your customer will stop scrolling long enough as something might have caught their eye. Then, they will either like, put comment, or share your post. Simply put, they will do something that will show that they noticed what you have posted.
So how to achieve that? Here are some compelling ideas that will help you create scroll-stopping content:
Use Attractive Headlines to Pique Audience’s Attention
Grabbing the attention of your audience is the first step to starting the engagement. It means that you have to put all your efforts in order to come up with clear and compelling headlines as it is your first chance to get notice of your content and leave an impact.
You can:
- Write a short and crisp title
- Avoid passive voice
- Question your audience
- Use stats
- Be particular
- Use emoticons
If you are wondering how to combine all of these points to develop compelling content, you can start scrolling through blogs and articles and come up with at least 30 titles that make you stop and interact with them. After this, you have to find the similarities between all these titles to understand what was the most common thing between them.
Use Strategic Visuals to Grab Audience’s Attention
To grab the attention of your post, people usually rely on illustrations and visuals. This is especially true for small-scale businesses, as they do not have the skills or the necessary resources to come up with professional and attractive visuals. Thus, they take up shortcuts and face the music later.
A study suggests that 40% of marketers are dependent on stock images for visuals, but just 13% said doing so helped them achieve their marketing goals.
Cater to the Platform you are Posting your Content on
Often, marketers tend to be busy and use the same old visuals and copy across all the platforms they post their content on. This is an ineffective strategy.
For example, if you are posting something on Facebook, your content has a clickable link added to it. However, if you are using the same coffee for Instagram, understand that Instagram doesn’t have a provision for clickable links. That means you can’t use the same type of text for both platforms.
This means that all the content you are posting or creating should be curated as it fits the primary Platform and audience. For example, you must not publish a long blog on a visual platform such as Pinterest or Instagram, but it makes sense to put it on LinkedIn or Facebook. Similarly, you cannot post static images on video-based content platforms like TikTok or YouTube.
You can use the following:
- Spotify for posting social and audio content
- YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels, if it is a video content
- Reddit, Twitter, and Quora for discussion forums
- Instagram or Pinterest for visual content
- LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for business-based posts
Use Video Content in your Post
Earlier it was quite complicated to come up with videos but with the evolving technology today, developing a video is convenient and simpler. So leveraging all the potential you have for making a video makes sense. It is because the video is said to have the highest conversion rates when compared to any other form of digital marketing content.
Research says that video content produces 90% more conversion than campaigns that don’t have videos on them.
- In case you don’t have enough time to come up with an original video, you can design content and incorporate a highly relevant video in the blog post.
- With the help of your phone, you can easily shoot video testimonials. It is a highly efficient transportation marketing strategy that helps in boosting your brand’s credibility.
- Plan a new purpose for your old blog posts and try to make a video. It is an ideal way of simplifying video creation.
Satiate User Intent Immediately
As soon as your audience lands up on your content, you have a very short period of time to convince them that you are worthy of the time they are spending. This means you have to satiate the user intent in no time, so your content has to be informative, short, and compelling.
After landing on your content, if they feel they have to dig around a little to find the details they want, they are more likely to bounce off your page or the post. Now, you wouldn’t want that.
What can you do?
- Incorporating target keywords in the meta description and the title will grab their interest.
- Whatever you are speaking about in the content, speak directly to your customer. You can do it by adding numbers, using words like how-to, or adding a powerful adjective in the headline to create a compelling and simple headline.
- Optimize the responsiveness and speed of blog posts. If your website is slow or unresponsive, even the best headlines cannot save bounce rates.
- If it is your website, you can streamline the experience of the users by keeping the navigation feature simple
- Focus on the website aesthetics, as visuals are the key to capturing your audience’s attention.
- Keep your primary image light on text, make headlines precise, use visually striking pictures and ensure the content is responsive on different devices.
These are some of the best content ideas that your logistics content marketing strategy must have. Now that you know this, let’s dive into some successful examples of good content marketing in logistics.
What are Some Successful Examples of Good Content Marketing in Logistics?
When we are talking about logistics content marketing, not mentioning Flexport, in the beginning would be the wrong thing to do. So let us get started:
- Flexport
Seven years ago, Flexport started as a humble logistics company that is worth 3.2 billion dollars today. It is the San Francisco-based company that understands the value of content marketing and is doing it RIGHT.
When we talk about their main navigation menu, it has just 5 sections, one of which is resources. When you hover over it, you see the menu with subcategories, special collections of the company, and the industry’s latest news. They call it the latest and greatest. The variety of content they publish is quite versatile.
In terms of videos, white papers, webinars, tariff insiders, and market updates, Flexport is a step beyond its competitors. Apart from the regular blog they post, they also have a help center which is categorized into different sections in the sidebar. It allows easy navigation and contains short and precise articles that will answer the users’ basic what-is and how-to questions.
If you are a novice in logistics, you can check out the glossary section, as it helps you wrap your head around the many shipping terms. Moreover, it is a great technique for getting featured in Google’s ‘people also ask box.
All this speaks volumes about the content Flexport posts. It caters to meeting the requirements of its clients at every stage of the sales funnel.
- iContainers
As complex as the logistics industry is, it is one of the sectors in which long format and well-developed content can perform. iContainers are right here!
It is a Spain-based online freight forwarder that leverages
industry’s complexity to publish in-depth content like guides and ebooks as a part of lead generation strategy and a platform to educate and inform people.
A clear example is their guide on the Bill of Lading, which ranks first on Spanish Google. This guide is a reflection of how nicely this strategy works for them.
- Freightos
Talking about content marketing and not mentioning Freightos is a crime, as they have mastered the art of content marketing. However, their emails are pleasant, and their quarterly reports on the latest guidebooks and news are quite interesting too.
But what makes them a true standard among the competitors is their online tools like port code finder, tariff calculators, and most importantly, Freightos Baltic Index (FBX). FBX is defined as an index that indicates everyday price changes or the different rates of international shipping.
This is one of the best examples of what good content marketing is. FBX’s absolute magnet for digital media relations is the cherry on top.
- Xeneta
If we were to give the award for the best logistics blog, Xeneta would definitely be in the race. Their content marketing team not just posts blogs regularly but also makes sure that they are extremely consistent.
Xeneta primarily focuses on producing content that provides value for new businesses instead of repurposing previous company details, which reflects on its resource page. On this page, you can find blogs and articles on saving money while purchasing parcel insurance, how to hire a courier, and even how a shipment gets affected by mining.
Thus, their content marketing strategy provides insightful information into the logistics industry. Apart from this, it also offers the useful and latest information from other websites. So that the readers have an idea about other logistics companies in case Xeneta doesn’t serve their purpose.
Two of the three latest blogs posted within 2 weeks of another are based on coronavirus and its impact on the logistics industry. Speaking about keeping up with time, Xeneta has done it right.
- Cerasis
Another offerer of supply chain management solution is Cerasis which leverages content marketing to the advantage of helping new customers get an idea about the functioning of the logistic companies. Through their information, they offer a lot of insights into digital technology and advances made in logistics.
For example, Cerasis has posted content about the significant technology distributors of the logistics industry. Another blog talks about how blockchain will be beneficial for the supply chain management.
This is one of the best tactics for increasing business and gives prospects an idea of how smart you are as a company. In addition, the informational content engages readers about the services offered by Cerasis’ services without manipulating them into buying their services.
- Kinaxis
Kinaxis provides software solutions that help companies with supply chain management, purchase order management, and warehouse operations. Apart from that, they also provide numerous consulting services to make all the processes as convenient as possible for all their clients.
Thanks to their business diversity, they have made a blog where they have written posts. This type of logistics content marketing is ideal as the audience can learn about the services of Kinaxis. Moreover, the posts also inform the reader of the company’s industry-based distinct ideas and concepts.
The informative posts by the company allow the new customers to understand the personality of Kinaxis’ rather than just reading their sales pitch about why they would be an ideal choice for your business. So, apart from giving potential customers some insight into how a business uses its services, it also builds trust with them.
Concluding Words
Coming up with appealing and reader-worthy content is not a difficult task. All you need to know is which components are going to work and which will fail. Then, you can use all the tips and strategies we have mentioned above for your logistics business and be surprised at how your business booms. Gradually, you will start seeing how much it boosts content quality and increases your metrics.
When you look for the “best content marketing agencies logistics business,” you will come across different potential solutions, such as deploying a logistics growth marketing agency.
Lean Summit Solutions is one such agency that will address all the areas you are lagging in your business and provide you with the best content that increases your Google SEO rank and sales and educates your prospective customers in the process. We are a content marketing company that will help you devise a well-curated content strategy. Try us today.
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