Potential B2B logistics customers are constantly…
- Researching business solutions
- Seeking new partners that can help them reach more buyers, and
- Looking to work with companies that understand their unique needs
As a marketer or seller of logistics solutions, wouldn’t it be nice to know which potential customers are currently researching the marketplace?
The right tools and strategies can help you spot important signals that potential accounts are ready to buy. These signals include:
- Potential customers with strong revenue growth, and likely shipping needs
- Demand within specific territories
- Demand for LTL solutions along particular routes
Here’s how to identify a key buying team persona who perfectly fits your Ideal Customer Profile — which will lead to fuller trucks, more profitable routes, and less environmental impact.
Hidden Buying Signals You’re Missing
When a company needs logistic services, its employees start by doing what everyone does: researching on the internet.
- They click around on websites to learn about different companies and solutions
- They look to peers on social media for recommendations, and
- They compare services on third-party review websites
Here’s what they don’t do: Raise their hand and let vendors know they’re looking for a solution. Buyers remain anonymous as long as possible because they want to avoid sales pitches and emails filling their inboxes — especially when those pitches aren’t relevant to their immediate needs.
A Quick Example
Let’s say a small consumer goods company is growing its customer base and needs logistics support. Its leaders want to hire a 3PL that can help ship the company’s products to key stores and distribution points. They begin researching companies that offer what they need.
In this example, you probably won’t know that this company is ready to buy. Its buyers are unlikely to fill out a form on your site or give you a call. But the research they’re conducting shows they’d be ripe for outreach — if only you knew they were ready to become a customer.
How Intent Data Puts a Spotlight on Ready to Buy Accounts
Intent data is information that signals a company is actively in-market for a service. This data consists of the activities we mentioned above, including researching certain topics online that are related to your services.
Leveraging intent makes it easier to answer the key questions we discussed in the introduction.
Which Customers are Going to See Short-Term Demand Increase?
Your existing and potential customers have varying needs for your services. Seasonality will affect some; others might experience ebbs and flows for different factors.
The ability to spot real-time fluctuations in demand positions your business to be at the right place at the right time for customers. Intent data helps you spot increased demand by tracking the activities and research being done by your top accounts.
6sense centralizes key intent data, making it easier to recognize trends in demand around the customers you work with, or increased interest in particular products and services. With this technology you can:
- Create alerts around specific topics
- Drill into your accounts to look for increased activity
- Be prepared when customers have higher demand for your services
- And more
How Do We Fill Our Trucks with Multiple Customers?
Intent data doesn’t just provide passive information around demand or trends. It helps prioritize your activities and optimize your LTL offerings.
Once you’ve started uncovering demand across multiple accounts — based on the digital signals they’re giving off — you can formulate a plan to capture that business.
Because you know that an account is in-market and actively researching logistics services, your engagement will be more effective than a cold call to a random lead. Using intent data, you can create a campaign specifically targeting an account with an advertising campaign for LTL services personalized for their needs.
Running this campaign across multiple accounts that are actively in-market is an efficient way to optimize your LTL freights. You waste less money on customer acquisition, engage with buyers that are likely to purchase, and quickly fill your trucks.
Evaluating Routes and Maximizing Revenue
Business expansion is a tricky proposition for logistics companies. It requires a lot of upfront costs to acquire new trucks (or repurpose existing ones), and hire new employees to support additional routes.
Intent data makes the decision to expand your business with new routes much easier. Forecasting demand for a particular route or service is much simpler when you can tap into real-time demand insights.
Similarly, you can track research activity related to competitors, to understand who you’re up against and how you can win market share.
Conclusion
Whether you are looking to maximize profitability of your existing routes, or you are re-evaluating expansion, intent data can help you capture market share by improving your account acquisition and planning.
