Hi all,

Ok, I’ve made the mistake in telling my brother in-law that I was looking for a career change and that for the past six months or so was looking at moving into marketing (online and off).

He runs a small and growing Logistics (transportation) company moving and storing of high value goods (electronic equipment, servers, HDTV’s etc) employing 10 drivers plus support staff.

He asked me to help him gain larger clients and move away from small bits-n-pieces type jobs that seem to dominate his client base.

Now, being stupid I said yes. I have started to research the business and the type of clients he is after but my question is how would you market his services?

Internet marketing, I feel would be a waste of time as the market he wants to aim at don’t look on the net for a transportation company. But it would be good to have some sort of web site for reference, not a problem.

This leaves the Printed Word. What other avenues would you recommend? Trade papers would be the obvious choice but how would marketing to business differ to marketing to the public?

Thanks for any advice

Nick

it is all about bargin.

no one will give you some thing, if you have nothing to offer in return.

you can easly catch the attention of a reader, on one consumer, but it is really hard , to catch th attention of a compagny, you have to deal with creativite.
be the more creatif then you can.


hope that help

Step #1

Lead Generation. How? Like this:

Write a report about the "7 Blunders Companies Make When Hiring A Transportation Company That Costs Them $X"

...or something like that.

Then get your hands on a "very" targeted list of potential clients. Test with a FedEx mailing direct to the person who would make the final decision about using your service. The copy's call to action should be for a "free" report.

Then immediately follow up with a "report" that gives them good information and leads into a sales letter positioning your service as fulfilling the buying criteria you just laid out in the "report".

Or, if you don't have the intial capital to invest, run the FedEx test, and follow up with a call, and make a presentation in essence, quoting verbatim the sales letter you'd write.

This may cut your costs in half, buy would be time consuming.

**side note: Do your keyword research. Companies "may" look for your service online. If they do, follow the exact same formula with optin to get the report, and follow up with autoreponder.

Zachary's given you the nuts and bolts for the lead generation.

However, before you did any of that, I would suggest that you get a bit more clear on what you mean by "business". Small businesses, medium sized businesses, corporations? What sectors of business, what types of industries or SICs?

Who needs logistics, for what purpose, how many jobs per year will they give you and what position do they hold in the company? Do these people already have contracts with large logistics companies, or do they need a few adhoc jobs doing per year?

You also have to think about who will see your b-i-l's logistics company as credible and reliable. You have to think about your competitive stance and positioning. In this case, you might like to go with a USP, or you might like to do more work on an irresistable value proposition.

You need a website whether they search on the internet or not (and why wouldn't they?), for the following reasons:

1) Credibility
2) To provide background information and shorten your sales cycle
3) To create a personality for the business

You should probably also do some market research.

Once you've established all of these fundamentals, then you will have a much clearer idea of who is more likely to buy from you and what they want, plus their pain points. Then, you can source a list of suspects to get in touch with and take the lead generation from there.

Hope that helps,

Jane

Thanks chaps and chapess for your constructive inputs.

I feel that I have taken on more than I bargained for when I said yes. But if I want to really make a change then I need to take the scary path.

Anyway, I think Jane’s points hit right on the nails head and it’s time to take this more seriously, I thought I could just get away with a half hearted set of recommendations but I know that it’s an all or nothing situation. I have got to write a plan of action and be more prepared and business like.

My b-i-l deserves more he is working his dangly-bits off and needs a helping hand. (umm hope that didn't sound like I think did...)

Zachary’s points have been noted down and highlighted! Keep reading about reports/white papers but hadn’t joined the dots!

Going back to my hazy thoughts and questions, I was thinking that about if there is or should be a different approach to marketing depending on if it’s individuals or businesses and then Jane’s points point out that there is a wide difference in business sizes and therefore how you approach marketing to them.

Do you know, I’m starting to like this thinking stuff in a sadistic sort of way…

Nick