How to Generate Leads, Build Trust, and Win Customers Easily

Are you having trouble breaking through the noise to get your message out?

Does your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) resonate with your prospects?

Are you missing opportunities to showcase your strengths?

Marketing Strategy

Logistics companies that excel at risk management build trusting relationships through mutual benefit. As logistics companies prosper, so will their clients.

As a marketing manager, you have a stake in building relationships. You have a tough job. On the surface, logistics is complex. It’s full of technical jargon. And some say, it’s boring.

I beg to differ. Let’s look at a recent current event that splashed on the pages of newspapers and social media sites.

Massive Explosion Rocks Tianjin, China

On August 12, 2015, a massive, chemical explosion – equal to 21 tons of TNT – rocked the Port of Tianjin, China.

One hundred thirty-nine people were killed, over 700 were injured, 1,500 cars were burned, and hundreds of houses were destroyed.

How did this happen? It looks like bribery and corruption.

Now Ruihai Logistics is under investigation for its storage and handling of hazardous chemicals.

The destruction of this shocking incident emphasizes the fragility of supply chains. They are global, complex, and potentially dangerous. 

Your Shortcut to Building Your Brand: Promote Your Strengths

Risk management and logistics go hand-in-hand. It’s all about Murphy’s Law: “If anything can go wrong it will.”

Then it makes sense to market your company’s risk management as a core competency.

How do you do that?

You can develop an entire marketing campaign around this theme. But for now, let’s focus on white papers that feature risk management as your USP.

Market Industry Thought Leadership with White Papers: Focus on Your Unique Experience and Expertise

You can stand out from the competition with white papers written on all aspects of risk management. Here are four examples.

Risk Management as a USP

Reveal your Experience and Expertise in Identifying Risk

You can write a white paper that discusses how to identify risk. Explain your specific processes in detail. 

Supply chains come loaded with many types of risks: internal, external, operational, financial, social and political. Simply lay out your process for identifying and categorizing risk.

More important, explain how your process leads to viable mitigation strategies and tactics. Inform and impress prospects with your detailed analysis and careful planning. 

This helps build loyalty with customers who value risk management. Leverage white papers to reveal your depth of awareness, experience, and expertise in dealing with uncertainty.

Feature Your Proven Risk Mitigation Process

Another white paper can focus exclusively on your time-tested risk mitigation process. Describe how your company reduces, avoids, or eliminates risk. List the preventive steps to mitigate avoid, or eliminate risk. 

Then highlight your ability to respond to a risk that has occurred. And discuss your preparedness to handle the foreseen and unforeseen. As you underscore your experience and expertise, you’ll foster trust.

Also, prospects want to know the costs related to your response. Do the benefits exceed the cost of your plan? Show the built-in due diligence of your business practices. A white paper helps you cost and prioritize risks with a best-cost analysis. Highlighting your financial implications and your prospects’, promotes transparency and builds trust.

Detail Your Distinctive Risk Response Planning

The two examples above take a micro view of your risk management processes. Taking another approach you can publish a macro white paper. Since contingency planning is broader, a discussion of your overall process would be useful.

Describe how your business benchmarks its business practices against ISO 31000 for risk management. Do this in detail. You’ll attract prospects because they’ll see an effective, efficient, standards-based process. And that saves clients time and money. That’s not boring.

In an InboundLogistics article (July 2015), Ann Christopher, vice president and corporate counsel of 3PL company, Kenco, stated it is important to understand liabilities and obligations upfront. She suggests developing a program template to lay out all the scenarios in dealing with unexpected events. That sets the stage for collaboration with your client.

From a marketing view, a white paper on holistic risk management strategies helps as a starting point in relationship building. Take your prospect behind the scenes. Map out your proven strategies and techniques. Explain your operational and financial controls. Stress your rigorous standards and commitment to quality. A methodical and collaborative approach engenders trust.

Shamelessly Promote Your Record

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

If you’re fairly accomplished at risk management, you’ve likely been in business for a while. 
More important, you’re not a fly-by-night operation. You know that, but you need to prove that to future customers.

Then it makes sense to tell your customers your risk management story. Reinforce past success stories with compelling facts and figures. 

Show prospects your record in property losses averted. Show them the total dollar value saved. Make the benefits crystal clear.

Feature your record of compliance with import and export laws and regulations. And show prospects your history in preventing losses from lawsuits. A white paper focused on past results resonates with prospects and customers alike.

When your white papers are relevant, you’ll engage prospects and build relationships.

Conclusion

Risk and logistics are – and always will be – intertwined. The recent Tianjin explosion serves as a stark reminder. Disruptions can occur anytime, anywhere, without warning.

White papers allow you to differentiate your business. So sell your risk management capabilities as your USP. And further build your brand and establish your thought leader credentials.

You’ll build lasting relationships based on mutual trust and understanding gained from collaboration, transparency, and a win-win business model.

When you tell your story with in-depth white papers, you’ll break through the noise. 

Don’t overlook the opportunity to showcase your strengths.

If you have any questions, contact me by phone or email. I’d like to know what you think.

Alex Milo

B2B Copywriter and Consultant

“Helping Transportation and Logistics Companies Generate Leads with Compelling Content” 

Phone: 256-886-4684
Email: amilo@b2bcopywriting-alexmilo.com

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