Problem: By the time you read this update, a competitor has likely called or emailed one of your customers. Or they’ve published something on social media that a customer clicked on. In other words, they’ve made a connection (however small).
What’s happening and why: An important part of successful marketing (e.g., making connections and generating leads) is consistency and putting in the work, even when the results aren’t immediate. It’s never been easier to find email addresses and write content. So, more of your competitors can create and run campaigns and create “touches” with more prospects. The problem is that those contacts are often your current customers.
How to fix it: You have to put in the work, too. The solution is not to become complacent about what you’re doing for your customers. Yes, you need to provide a high level of service. But you also need to play some defense by providing value in other ways. Content (such as articles, emails, and social media posts) is a tactic competitors use to reach your customers with insights and information. It gets their attention because it offers value or is at least interesting. You have no choice but to fight fire with fire. Logistics companies that lead the way with BETTER and MORE USEFUL content drown out competitors’ messaging. When it’s done right, their customers don’t notice or engage with other providers because they feel they’re already seeing and learning what they need.
TLDR: Your content strategy should be as much about protecting valuable customers as it is about finding new ones.
AI for Marketing: Tip of the Week
Check the work! We’re all looking for new and better ways to use AI. Here’s something to be aware of… LLMs hallucinate. Well, maybe not in a literal sense, but they do make mistakes. In our testing, LLMs do a reliable job of responding to prompts in which you give it specific text and command it to, for example, make a social post using “this” content, or rewrite “this” to be 50% shorter. The problems tend to sneak in when the prompt is less specific and the LLM starts checking for other resources and citing links. We do not have enough data to measure the frequency of the issues (yet), but it is definitely worth checking the work more closely in those circumstances.
Marketing Macro Trend: The Biggest Surprise About Trade Shows
Trade Shows Are Back, But Are They Worth the Investment? A long-standing debate that can be polarizing is whether tradeshows are worth the cost. Attending and/ or exhibiting comes with a lot of expenses… many are obvious and quantifiable, while others are not. But there is a surprising “trade show trap” that many companies fall into. It is that most companies cannot calculate the ROI of their tradeshow investment or even accurately attribute leads to specific events. Often, this is the result of poor post-show follow-up and how leads are captured. With many logistics industry trade shows costing six figures or more, this is a problem. Before you write that big check for the next tradeshow, make sure your sales and marketing teams are on board with a strategy and plan to put in the work on lead follow-up, and be prepared to measure the event’s ROI.
