Let’s face it; freight brokers still have a bad rap. Maybe it’s jealousy because the broker doesn’t have to  make the heavy investment into their business that carriers do. Maybe it’s presumed or documented unethical behaviour. Either way, most freight brokers don’t want to be called freight brokers and many carriers would like to see them wiped off the face of the planet. Why? They have been successful in capturing freight that used to belong directly to carriers at a higher rate. Brokers can provide a lower rate and they are a contributing factor to the erosion of freight rates for the carriers.

We did a website for a small broker a couple of years back. He was happy with the results and referred us to one of his flatbed carriers in the region. When we met with that well established carrier, he was extremely frustrated. “How is it I keep losing out to a freight broker? He gets the freight and then I move it. I don’t understand.” I didn’t understand either, so I spoke to the broker in question. My assessment, after a brief discussion, was that the broker in this case, was a more confident sales person and he offered the customer a choice between several carriers, at several price points. Customers like choice.

It’s a funny world. There are many carriers that fill their trucks with broker freight. Brokers are their sales force and these carriers have very few relationships with customers directly. There are carriers that successfully outsource key lane segments to other carriers, like the corridor between Windsor and Quebec City or Ontario to Atlantic Canada, without a hitch. The message I get from that, is the shipper is mostly concerned about getting the job done, not how it gets done.

Lee’s quote for the day

“In the music business, there is a saying that the side men all want to be front men and the front men all want to go home. In the trucking business, it seems most carriers want to play in the “freight pimp” world and most “freight pimps” have the dream of building up key lanes so they can put on their own equipment. Whoever orders their new Cadillac first, is the winner!” 

B2B companies are ahead of their B2C rivals when it comes to social media adoption

• 81% of B2B companies maintain company-related accounts or profiles on social media sites versus 67% of B2C
• 75% of B2Bers participate in microblogging (eg. Twitter) versus 49% of B2Cers

Source: Business.com – 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007404)

And the FTSE 100 are just plain running scared of Twitter

• Just 16 of the FTSE 100 companies are using Twitter, despite the fact that 20% of Tweets contain a reference to a product or brand

Source: Virgin Media Business (http://ow.ly/1gDTf)

But CIOs could well be the biggest blocker to social media adoption

• 54% of CIOs prohibit use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, while at work

Source: Robert Half Technology (http://rht.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=131&item=790)

Use of social media by B2B companies is validated by B2B buyer perspectives

• 93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media
• 85% believe companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them

Source: Cone Inc – Social Media in business (http://ow.ly/1dLqJ)

And that’s because the B2B buying process is fundamentally changing

• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you

Source: DemandGen Report

• Over 70% of purchases are restricted to established vendors or are heavily dependent on Word of Mouth recommendations

Source: Buyersphere ebook, Enquiro (http://ow.ly/YbQm)

• More than 8 out of 10 IT decision-makers said word of mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions

Source: Forrester Research, How to take B2B relationships from Indifferent to Engaged: Jan 2009

• 59% of B2B buyers engaged with peers who addressed their challenge, 48% followed industry conversations on the topic and 37% posted questions on social networking sites looking for suggestions

Source: Genius (http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/2767/a-glimpse-inside-the-mind-of-the-new-b2b-buyer.html)

Yet there are differing opinions as to where search comes into play in the buy cycle

• 7 out of 10 buyers say that they start their buying process at vendor sites, not Google

Source: DemandGen Report (http://ow.ly/1d82N)

Versus

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process

Source: Marketo (http://bit.ly/9O6pix)

If you think C-level executives aren’t active online, you’re sorely mistaken

• The Internet is the C-Suites top information resource (74% of C-Level executives say it’s very valuable)
• 53% of C-level executives said they prefer to locate information themselves
• The C-suite first turns to mainstream search engines (63%) to locate information
• 6 out of 10 C-Suite executives conduct more than six searches a day
• Executives in IT are the most prevalent users of the Internet for information gathering

Source: Forbes Insight – The Rise of the Digital C-Suite (http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html)

Client marketers are warming to the idea of social media, but many are still to act

• While 92% of client marketers agree that it would be unwise to ignore social media, 63% do not have a social media strategy

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

The relationship between Marketing and Sales in B2B organisations still remains fractious

• Sales generate 53% of their own leads and marketing contributes just 24%

Source: 2009 CSO Report (http://bit.ly/7EbaHS)

• 90% of marketing deliverables are not used by sales

Source: The New Rules of Sales Enablement (http://tiny.cc/jXRxX)

• 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI

Source: The B2B Barometer (http://www.b2bbarometer.co.uk)

And if you still don’t get the whole social media thing, it’s worth bearing in mind…

• 89% of journalists make use of blogs while conducting their online research and 96% turn to corporate websites
• 56% said social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories

* Note: We have used and abused the above information, as the author insisted. A special thanks for the folks at Earnest Agency.

1.  Who are your clients / customers?
Many of our clients are operating in a very niche market, with only one or two customers. Why waste resources and time on the cyber space, if you can have an old fashioned face to face communication with them, especially when the client prefers it this way.

2. Do you have resources for it?
Social media will help you to generate leads, but only if you do it properly. If you are not conveying the right message to your customers, the chances are you are conveying the WRONG message. Frankly, if you are conveying the wrong message, you are better off doing nothing at all. What does it take to do it properly? Marketing specialists on social media, time, and money. Many people think social media is cheap. Don’t get me wrong, it is. Social media a free platform for businesses, but marketing specialists and their time will cost you money, just like any other marketing campaign.

3. What is your short-term business objective?
Will social media help you drive sales? It will. But if you want it to happen tomorrow, forget about it. Social media is a very cost-effective channel for you to reach prospective clients; it is not a salesman however. Even if you are using the social media properly, it will take some time before it generates positive ROIs. Why? Because “creating transactional opportunities on the web takes trust, but trust takes time to establish” (Chris Brogran, Co-author of Trust Agent Says). If you are thinking of using it to drive short-term sales, there are better methods to leverage your efforts, such as direct mail, price incentives and enhanced sales support. 

I am not suggesting that social media is not good for B2B, instead I am suggesting that your reason to use social media shouldn’t be “because everyone else is doing it!”

If you find your situation is not as outlined above, or you believe you have a very unique experience with social media in the B2B world, let us know.

The more recognized the brand the more you can concentrate on information and functionality. In our case, building sites for the B2B world, our customers are well known but in smaller circles. With an emerging  change of the guard in decision makers (younger, more educated, more  internet savvy and increasingly more female) we feel injecting some clear messaging and marketing spin is a critical ingredient.

Within our transportation niche, customers put online management tools and real time visibility ahead of everything else. They feel the need to compete with big integrators like FedEx and UPS and many put their website on hold for years until this functionality is in place. As much as these online tools are now a necessary part of doing business, I think this is a mistake. Here is why…

First. Your website makes an impression on several  markets. Existing customers, potential customers, existing and prospective employees, partnership opportunities and possible strategic alliances. Your web development approach can address all these elements now while your back end functionality is being developed. When they are ready to marry up, we’ll arrange the wedding and your IT department can take a well deserved honeymoon. The “front end” can work for you immediately and needs to be developed independently anyway….why wait?

Second. Your customers could use FedEX or UPS now. Why don’t they? In the same way you can’t offer the same level of online functionality (they have 30,000 people in their respective IT departments)they cannot offer the same level of customization and personalized service that smaller companies excel at. That’s the slingshot that can bring the giant down. Keep it loaded.

Third. Your customers ‘ requirements are as unique as a top ten song or a Picasso.  There is a reason you exist. Recognize that uniqueness and speak to it. With the help of a well developed site and the latest search engine marketing you can pull customers in that need your brand of service. It’s not immediate, it may take 6-9 months to see results…but it’s time well spent.

In this week’s post, we’ll talk about creating a custom mobile site, and why you should look at creating one for your transportation business. During the past decade, mobile devices such as cell phones and smart phones have seen an exponential growth in usage, both by consumers and business users. A typical website does not view too well on the small screen of these mobile devices. Usually a user has to do some horizontal and vertical scrolling in order to get to the information they’re looking for.

This is where customized mobile websites come in. Think of a mobile site as a version of your own site without the bells and whistles. A typical mobile site will contain, at minimum, some basic information about your business such as the services that your company offers, a company profile page and basic contact information. Mobile sites should load quickly, as mobile devices do not have the required bandwidth that landline internet connections have. You can take your mobile site to the next level by integrating some interactive content. For example, if your website supports features such as shipment tracking, you can easily integrate that into your mobile site. This way the customer can quickly look up their shipment information through their mobile device. Another idea would be to have a simplified rate request form, with only basic contact details and shipment fields. The whole idea is to make things as simple as possible for the mobile user, because they’re on the go, and already limited by factors that they can’t control such as screen size and bandwidth limitations.

Most mobile sites will run in harmony with your existing site. If a user is using a mobile device, you can install code determining so they’ll be automatically redirected to your mobile site. You can also specify a sub-domain such as m.yourwebsite.com, a directory www.yoursite.com/mobile or go one step further with a .mobi domain to fully distinguish your regular website from your mobile one. For a good example of a mobile site serving the transportation industry, look to no further than UPS’ mobile site at m.ups.com.

So when analyzing your seasonal data, you’ll have to compare the statistics with a previous holiday season in order to gain a better understanding if the number of visitors to your site have increased.  If you’re using Google Analytics, you’re in luck because there’s an easy way to compare the two metrics. In your analytics dashboard, you’ll find a date range selector (Blue) which will allow you to select a range which your website statistics will be based upon. If you check the “Compare to Past” box, you’ll  be able to select a secondary comparison metric (Green), and compare both of these metrics at the same time.

By default, Google will show the amount of visitors for the past month, so you’ll want to select a different date range (ie; 01-12-2009 to 31-12-2009), and then a past date range (ie; 01-12-2008 to 31-12-2008). Now you’ll be able to see and analyze the statistics from the different holiday seasons.

Let’s say we have a company named Bicycle Courier Services (BCS) that specializes in local delivery of small packages. So an ideal simplified website navigation menu for Bicycle Courier Services, that should be common throughout all pages, would be: About BCS, Our Services, Contact Us, Home. About BCS, would list all the information about the company, any mission statements, or associations that the company is part of. The Services section would list all the services in detail that BCS provides. The Contact Us link would list basic contact information, such as telephone numbers, e-mails, faxes, etc. And last but not least, the Home section would link back to the BCS homepage. Sounds pretty simple, but you would be surprised in the amount of sites that don’t follow this format, making themselves more difficult to navigate. If you follow this simplified navigation format, the most important parts of the site are easily seen and recognized by the visitor. You can obviously add additional sections to the menu, such as a Downloads area (to access Bill of Lading’s, Credit Application Forms, etc) in the future if required, but make sure to keep it simple and clear.

It wouldn’t make any sense for example to have the Contact Us link located somewhere at the bottom of the page, or in an obscure location, which believe it or not, some company websites still do. Make sure important links such as these are in a prominent and well seen location, unless that is, you don’t want people to contact you.