A Strategic Approach to Marketing in the Transportation Industry

The reality is that most small businesses don't have the time or capital to devote to marketing. In order to get a competitive edge, small-to-midsize transportation companies need to become strategic marketers.

A strategic approach will help you grow your business by increasing sales and profits. Think of it as a single approach with many different fingers. You want to be at the center of the activity to ensure all of your messages are unified with clear calls to action (CTAs). This ensures your potential clients know who you are, what you offer, why they should choose, and where to contact you for service.

What is Strategic Marketing?

Strategic marketing is the process of creating a plan for marketing your business. It’s a long-term plan implemented by all your company's departments and based on data-driven insights.

Data-driven insight is the use of data to make decisions, measure results, inform future decisions, and improve your business.

Data can be used in all aspects of a business: marketing, operations, and finance. It can also be used to provide better service to your customers by helping you understand their needs and wants better.

In marketing, data is usually applied to what consumers want and need from your business by anticipating their desires.

Create a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is a plan for your future. It's a set of actions that you can use to achieve your marketing objectives. A good marketing strategy is flexible enough to adapt to changes in the environment but focused enough, so you don't lose sight of your overall vision for success.

Try using these tips to get started:

1 - Put Your Trucking Company on Social Media
Social media is a great way to market your business and communicate with clients. It can also help build relationships with existing customers, so that they trust you enough to refer their friends or family to your trucking service. Social media can even help you connect with potential clients who are looking for a business like yours. You will also start to receive analytics about your client's demographics from social media.

2 - Make Sure Your Transportation Company has a Mobile Responsive Website
A mobile responsive website is a website that adjusts seamlessly to the screen size of any device, whether it is a desktop computer or a smartphone. As technology continues to advance and more people turn to their mobile devices for information, it has become increasingly important for your transportation company’s internet presence and digital marketing strategy to be optimized for mobile users.

3 - Communicate with Your Clients (Email, Texts, Comments, etc.)
Email, text messages, and social media are some of the best options for communication with customers. You'll want to be sure you're sending them out at the correct times and in the right places so as not to overwhelm your customers with too much information or make them feel like they're being spammed by you. If you do it correctly, though, email can help drive sales by providing personalized offers and discounts based on their preferences.

4 - Don't Be Scared of Data Analytics
Data analytics is a powerful tool that can help you make better decisions and better understand your market, customers, and competitors. In the transportation industry, data analytics has proven to be an invaluable tool for understanding the needs and behaviors of travelers. It will help you identify opportunities for cross-selling or upselling products or services in order to increase sales revenue while still meeting customer needs at reasonable prices.

5 - Automate Everything
Automating your email marketing, customer service, sales processes, and more will give you back time that would otherwise be spent on manual tasks. This extra time can then be used for strategic planning and analysis as well as improving current efforts by A/B testing more minor changes or looking at new platforms altogether. Look around for plugins, extensions, and apps that can automate your mundane, repetitive business tasks.

6 - Use Paid Ads
Paid advertising is a well-known and effective strategy. It’s used by companies of all sizes, especially those with limited budgets. You can use paid ads to target specific customers, locations, times, or products. You could also use them to promote different services or offers based on your audience's interests.

Ads are easy to set up and manage with a variety of platforms available for purchase or subscription, such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads. This makes it possible for you to control how much money you spend on advertising campaigns depending on how much traffic you want to attract.

7 - Maintain Your Branding
Your brand is the way you present your business to the world. It’s how you want to be perceived, and it reflects who you are as a company.

Your brand is also essential because it sets expectations for customers, employees, and investors. Branding helps set the tone of how people will interact with your organization, which will, in turn, affect their overall experience.

All the messaging, visuals, and tone of your marketing elements should reflect your brand’s goals.

Still Need Help?

There are many ways to market your transportation company, and we have outlined a few of them here. We encourage you to test out some of these tactics to see which ones work best for your business.

If you still feel a little overwhelmed by these efforts, reach out to our expert team at i90 Marketing. We are a digital marketing agency focused solely on the transportation and logistics industry. We know how to leverage these tips and analytics to ensure your business gets the visibility boost it needs to secure new clients. Give us a call today, and let’s discuss how i90 can help you!