Websites for Logistics Companies Will Not Get Found Offering Capacity Alone!
- Take a look at the websites of most logistics companies. What are the first statements you see? Capacity and customer service.
- Now think to yourself: When in the world would anyone type that into an online search engine?
- The not-so-secret to being found online has not made its way into the logistics industry—yet. Be first to take advantage and let us show you how.
1. Prepare Your Website for Your Visitors
There’s no bigger letdown than being enticed to do something, read something, or see something only to be let down by the experience. Think about a mega-hyped movie you went to see only to come away disappointed. Don’t let that be a prospect’s response after visiting your website!
Your website should communicate your brand and be the central hub of your digital marketing program—ads, social posts, news articles, SEO strategy, etc. These activities should funnel excited prospects back to your online information epicenter—your company website.
Whether you proactively drive people to your website or they find it through online search engines, your website is the public face of your company. With that in mind, you must make the experience worth the trip.
2. Understand Your Customers and The Problems They’re Trying to Solve
To best populate your website with concise, relevant information to satiate future prospects, ask your current customers what solutions they want from a logistics services provider. Then ask them “Why?” Maybe even ask them “Why?” again.
You’ll end up with an accurate list of the real reasons prospects will be searching online for new logistics solutions. Notice we said “solutions” and not “services.” Prospects want solutions. Your services provide the solutions, and it’s the solutions you need to emphasize. You should be communicating about customer solutions as part of your online strategy.
You need to articulate how your product or service meets your customer’s needs. The more you show that you understand their challenges, the more likely they trust you can help them.
Are prospects the entirety of your target audience? What about future employees? Truck drivers? Current employees? Chances are, your website has several customer groups it should appeal to.
3. Make Sure Your Website is SEO-Friendly
Paraphrase the solutions you now know prospects and other customer groups are looking for in the content sections of your website. These phrases are “keyword-rich’”meaning search engines take note.
In combination with keyword-rich content, meta tags, alt text, titles, and other page elements all combine to appeal to the top search engine web crawlers—programs that index pages so they can be called up as search results. These are complex website attributes to manage, and if you’re not delving into your website platform regularly, then this is something you should be paying someone to do for you. If not maintained correctly, issues here can negatively affect your search engine page results’ placement.
4. Create Customer Journeys
Make it easier for your target audience to find the information they’re looking for, and they’ll show their appreciation by engaging with your website.
Customer journeys—strategic pathways of information with clear instructions about what to do next—can be curated to lead your customer groups through information that reinforces your organization as the perfect solution provider and creates highly qualified leads for your sales and BD teams to further nurture.
5. Create Mobile-Optimized Pages
Most research agrees that mobile versus desktop computer use for online research has been, and continues to be on the rise.
64% of SEO marketers call mobile optimization an effective investment. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
Mobile web traffic has consistently accounted for about half of all global web traffic since the beginning of 2017. (Statista, 2020) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
Your logistics company website must look and perform equally as well on a mobile device as it does on a laptop or desktop computer screen. User experience, ease of use, and navigation are imperative.
Keep in mind that search engines such as Google, have moved to a “mobile-first approach.” This means that your website is judged on its mobile experience over desktop, even if your visitor is using a desktop computer. If your website is not mobile-optimized, you may not get found! The criteria for effective search engine optimization (SEO) is a long complex list of qualifications that changes constantly. Your team will need to stay on top of best practices.
6. Create Clear Calls-to-Action
In order to better qualify leads, you want to know who’s visited your website and what they are looking for. You also need to capture their contact information.
Your website needs to be engaging and informative, and offer valuable content that compels website visitors to share their contact information. Using calls-to-action, you can capture lead information and any stage of the buyer’s journey.
A call-to-action—or CTA—is a marketing term that refers to a prompt or invitation to perform a desired action. Basically, you are allowing your visitors to know what the next step is that you want them to take.
Some examples of great call to action are:
- Download our checklist
- Get our white paper
- Request a quote
- Contact us
- Chat with us
- Talk to a logistics expert
Make it easy for website visitors to reach you. Place CTAs in logical, easy-to-see places on your website, so it’s easy for your visitors to take the next step. Then respond as quickly as you can.
Website visitors are most ready to transact the moment they share their contact info but will begin to cool off if you don’t respond in a timely fashion.
After analyzing 1.25 million sales leads, a Harvard Business Review study found that responding within one hour makes it seven times more likely you’ll close a sale than if you reply within two hours!
Now, Make It So!
You’ve worked backward to plan customer journeys through your website and ensure you can respond in a timely fashion. You’ve updated content to reflect the solutions your customer groups are looking for versus just listing the services you offer. And you’ve prepared your website’s layout to be aesthetically appealing no matter how your website is viewed.
Your website’s ready for prime time. Congratulations!
To Sell in The Logistics Industry You Need to be in The Logistics Industry
It’s one of the reasons that logistics marketing expertise is always in demand—there just isn’t that much of it. And in an operations-driven industry, additional resources for logistics marketing aren’t easy to come by.
Congratulations on what you’ve created so far. Let’s see if we can help you take things to the next level.
Ocean 5 Strategies is a Logistics Marketing Agency
Ocean 5 Strategies has worked with some very large logistics companies on website redevelopment, SEO, messaging, content and campaign management, sales collateral development, and trade shows.
- We have the experience, expertise, skills, and resources to help logistics businesses like yours meet their sales growth objectives and new client acquisition goals. We can even help with recruitment marketing.
- We offer a full library of resources to help you and your team hone their skills. We think you will welcome our expert insight. We have lots of articles available to guide you on best practices. Ocean 5 Strategies offers insight into Inbound Marketing Best Practices, SEO for Business, and even How to Build Successful Email Campaigns.
- If your resources are already stretched—and you don’t have the bandwidth to become an expert in every facet of marketing—it may be more productive to leverage our fractional support.
Read more about our logistics practice here.
What Does a Typical Engagement Look Like?
We know logistics and the support we offer is comprehensive, including:
- Messaging workshops to align who you are and what you do with what your customers are looking for
- Tactical campaign execution, including messaging, content development, landing page creation, ROI measurement
- Marketing strategy development, including conference and event planning, campaign management, content, and collateral development.
If your main hook is the availability of capacity and great customer service, you’re not standing out. Let us help you refine how you communicate about your company’s capabilities to move you beyond the capacity price wars.
What would be the first step?
We want to support you, and if you believe our support will be beneficial, then let’s connect.
