Many trucking firms rely solely on “load boards” to find new business opportunities. These online marketplaces allow owner-operators, freight brokers, and individual shippers to share information about available loads and transportation needs, providing one-off gigs as demand allows.
While load boards do provide a valuable service for the industry, there are other strategies to help find new business. When considering how to grow a trucking company, adding a marketing strategy to your current lineup may increase your firm’s customer pipeline, enhance its revenues, and keep it in growth mode.
7 Marketing Strategy Tips for Your Trucking Company
Operating in a highly competitive industry, small trucking companies can benefit from a dedicated and consistent marketing plan to help them attract a continued flow of new customers. In addition to using industry load boards, companies may use these seven tips on marketing for trucking companies to attract and retain more customers.
1. Keep your website up-to-date.
If you don’t already have an online “calling card” where customers may learn more about your company and its services, you can set one up and get the ball rolling. Consider including information about your services, the problems they solve for your customers, and an “About Us” section that talks about your founders, team members, and core values.
You can use your site to post company news (e.g. new routes, services, offerings, etc.) and to keep customers and prospects updated on what’s going on in the transportation industry (e.g., rates, capacity, labor issues, and so forth). Consider including your contact information so that it's easily findable and clickable regardless of the device being used. For example, try to avoid presenting your phone number or email address in a graphic file such as a .jpeg or .gif – doing so eliminates one-touch call to action (CTA) for the potential customer.
2. Demonstrate your expertise with a company blog.
One of the best ways to attract eyeballs to your new or improved website can be by posting useful content that helps solve your customers’ biggest pain points. If trucking rates are going up, for example, you might post a short blog about four tips for offsetting these increases. Or if capacity is constrained going into the holiday season, you can tell them how to circumvent the problem to get their critical loads delivered on time. These blogs may be short and to the point, but also include a CTA at the bottom, offering to help your readers work through these and other transportation-related challenges.
3. Ask current customers to provide reviews and recommendations.
Happy customers can be the best marketing tool in today’s competitive trucking environment. Try to get in the habit of asking them to post reviews about their experience on social platforms and other review sites. These sites use search engine optimization (SEO) to boost their rankings on search engines, which means your prospects may see them first when they search for your company’s name online.
"Operating in a highly competitive industry, small trucking companies can benefit from a dedicated and consistent marketing plan."
The higher the number of stars associated with your company’s name, the better. You can encourage your customers to provide reviews and recommendations liberally on these sites, knowing that most people want to help but may need a bit of a push. You might make the process smooth and easy for your customers by have a text message or email automatically sent the day after the job is completed.
4. Join trade associations and attend industry events.
Trade association memberships not only can benefit your trucking company, but can also help project a positive image of your organization to prospective and current customers. It shows you are willing to put time and energy into your industry as a whole and helps set your company apart in a field where organizations come and go. By attending industry events, you may network with other trucking firms, share best practices, and establish your company as a committed, long-term participant in the transportation industry.
5. Use social media and sponsored posts.
You can set up a presence on social media platforms and start posting content that appeals to your current and prospective customers. On them, consider linking out to the blog posts you’ve developed for your own site. You can also pay for sponsored posts to help reach a bigger audience. You can also start following potential clients, competitors, and industry leaders to help keep you in the know. Plus, most social media users tend to follow multiple accounts on the same topic, so it can potentially increase your discoverability.
6. Support your community.
Sponsoring a local youth sports team or a 5K fun run in your community are both great ways to get the word out about your company. You can hand out company flyers and swag bags filled with pens, magnets, and water bottles all decked out with your company logo. You can even get your company’s name printed on a little league team’s jerseys, for instance, and perhaps offer a coupon or promo code to the players’ families in the league. Your own community can be a terrific source of potential customers looking to make local or regional deliveries, find transportation for community events, and more.
7. Put your heads together and cross-promote.
The entire world relies on transportation to get products from point A to point B, which means most people have a stake in some aspect of the trucking business. For instance, a local third-party logistics provider may rely on independent trucking firms to handle their less-than-truckload (LTL) loads, while a small retailer may need last-mile delivery services your firm could provide. To tap into these opportunities, you can form a group of aligned, non-competitive organizations in your area and then cross-promote one another’s business. You may do this in a formal networking environment (e.g., meeting one morning a month for a couple hours of networking) or use coupons, reciprocal web links, and/or social media to put together and advertise bundled promotions that help each other grow.
Track Your Marketing Goals
Marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise to use only when your trucking company’s customer pipeline begins to run dry. You can use these and other marketing strategies on a consistent basis, tracking the results of your efforts, and then regularly tweaking your plan for the current environment. If a new opportunity surfaces and an older method is no longer producing results, try not to be afraid to swap them out and try something new.
The Takeaway
For small trucking companies looking to thrive in a competitive market, a smart marketing strategy can help pull in more business than relying solely on load boards. By taking steps such as updating your website and posting blogs, getting customer reviews, joining trade associations, and engaging in community support, your trucking company may be able to expand its customer base and revenue streams. Effective marketing strategies hinge on a company’s ability to adapt to changing market conditions, so you can plan on tweaking your plan as needed.
A version of this article was originally published on January 27, 2021.
Photo: Getty Images
