By Jim Bierfeldt, is president of Logistics Marketing Advisors, a marketing agency focused exclusively on logistics businesses. Jim recently surveyed buyers of logistics services on how to best get and keep their attention. Read that survey report here. 

As logistics marketers, the greatest gift we can bring to our work is empathy – a genuine understanding of the buyer’s needs, wants and feelings. This empathy informs our strategy and messaging work like nothing else.

By Jennifer Karpus-Romain, Director of Marketing Services and Industry Outreach, FayeBSG

Being a small marketing team is challenging. You want to do it all –and often times are expected to – but that’s not possible. What’s the next step? Hiring new team members? What if that’s not in the budget? Then what?

Rachel Steinberg specializes in helping companies connect with hard to reach prospects in challenging fields like oil & gas, manufacturing, supply chain and logistics management on LinkedIn.

During the COVID crisis, marketing professionals in the transportation and logistics industry have dramatically shifted the focus of their marketing dollars. Before the COVID crisis began having a significant impact on the North American economy in February of this year, a significant portion of marketing budgets in transportation and logistics were focused on customer acquisition and lead generation. In fact, according to the 2020 TMSA Marketing & Sales Metrics Study, approximately 33% of marketing budgets were focused predominantly on customer acquisition and lead gen. Another 24% of marketing budgets were focused on brand awareness, according to the study.

More and more, video is being used strategically by marketing professionals in North American freight transportation to strengthen its brand, emphasize key messages, and engage prospects, customers, and key stakeholders. This is becoming even more commonplace as brands are brought to life in the virtual ecosystem of websites, social media, and now virtual meetings because of COVID-19.

Case in point: Purolator Inc., Canada’s leading integrated freight, parcel and logistics solutions provider. Purolator introduced a powerful video the emphasized key talking points by John Ferguson, the company's President and CEO (A sidenote: Ferguson previously served on the TMSA Board of Directors and also served as President and Chairman from 2005-2008 when he was in sales and marketing leadership roles with PBB Global and Schneider.) 

By Conrad Winter, a freelance copywriter specializing in content and copywriting for transportation and logistics

For a lot of marketing heads, the pandemic has moved their workload from bad to way worse. For years I’ve been seeing the rise of a phenomenon—marketing leads who are expected to execute an increasing number of projects. On top of steering the juggernaut of their brands, they’re also performing an array of design, production, optimization and analytical tasks. But the place I’m seeing it the most is in the amount of writing that falls on their shoulders—everything from social posts, newsletters and blog posts to campaigns, white papers, and web copy.  

By Jim Bierfeldt, President, Logistics Marketing Advisors

Every two years, my firm surveys 100 buyers of logistics products and services to better understand how to get and keep their attention.  Recently, we followed up with some of those surveyed to learn how COVID-19 has impacted the purchasing of logistics solutions.

By Jennifer Karpus-Romain, Director of Marketing Services and Industry Outreach, FayeBSG

It’s challenging for any marketer to get the perfect messaging out to his or her customers, prospects, partners, and team members under normal circumstances. So this task is even more difficult during a time of crisis. It’s a bit chaotic, and no one knows what the right step forward is. 

Marketing budgets in transportation and logistics continue to demonstrate a strong presence of digital marketing activities, said Brian Everett, TMSA’s CEO at the TMSA Digital Transformation Conference this last Tuesday. In fact, according to preliminary results of the annual report published by TMSA, digital advertising now makes up 14.5% of the annual marketing budget, website/SEO comprises 12.2% of budgets, content creation and marketing constitutes 12.2%, and Email marketing comprises approximately 5.3% of the marketing budget.

By Laura Patterson, president of VisionEdge Marketing, a recognized pioneer in the Marketing Performance Management (MPM) space. She is a past presenter and thought leader at the TMSA Logistics Marketing & Sales Conference and specializes in marketing accountability, marketing analytics, and marketing operations.

Quite a few years ago we had an intense debate over my insistence on capitalizing the word “Marketing.” You’re probably laughing right now thinking what a waste of energy and effort. Maybe you’re thinking what’s in the water in Texas? In looking back however, this turned out to be an extremely important conversation for us. I hope it will spark a similar conversation around your table. Let me share a bit more about our discussion.

By Jason Ickert of Energy Transportation Group where he is involved in integrating logistics solutions across the organization and their commercial partners. Ickert is also Co-Chair of the TMSA Membership Committee and serves on the TMSA Board of Directors.

By Asher Fredricks, MBA, Marketing Manager for FLS Transportation Services. Article 1 of a 3-part series.

Written by Asher Fredricks, Marketing Manager for FLS Transportation Services. Article 2 of a 3-part series.

Believing in bogus platitudes. Clustering into cliques. Trying too hard to be interesting. These and four other things could stop your marketing career in its tracks, as author Becki Saltzman wrote about in her recent book, Living Curiously: How to Use Curiosity to Be Remarkable and Do Good Stuff. Each mistake is very common in the world of marketing today, and likely noticeable by anyone who has worked in an office setting. And there’s no question that each can stop a high-potential career in its tracks.

By Mark Derks, Partner and Chief Marketing Officer for Words At Work, a full-service integrated marketing communications agency. Derks also is former Director of Global Marketing for C.H. Robinson, and currently serves on the TMSA Board of Directors as Director of Finance & Strategy.

Reflections from facilitating an interactive roundtable discussion at the 2018 TMSA annual conference.

By Ian Addison, LinkedIn ABM. If you find this article interesting, Addison will be presenting a live TMSA webinar, "Real Account-Based Marketing Using LinkedIn," on June 1 at 11am Central. > Register Now

Before taking an Account Based Sales & Marketing approach, Schneider Logistics was seeing maybe 1 out of 5 leads engage successfully. In speaking with many other complex solution-sales companies, I am finding that has become a growing trend.

Video is rapidly gaining popularity as the most effective way to drive your marketing strategy. But it's important to know how you're wanting to use video in your overall strategy - and integrate it into your marketing in a thoughtful, relevant way. Many TMSA members are doing so, and we recognize them for their intelligent use of video.

There are several ways that video can be used in your marketing. Let's take a look at how a few transportation and logistics marketing companies (and TMSA members) are using video:

This is the final installment of a 3-Part Series: Recap of the TMSA Connections Seminar in early October in Chicago.

More and more, driver recruiting and engagement is becoming a priority for marketing and communications professionals in transportation and logistics – particularly with the every-challenging driver shortage. More than 40 marketing and sales professionals in transportation and logistics pre-registered for the TMSA Connections Seminar recently held in Chicago. The group learned about some of the best practices in driver recruiting from Lionel Johnston, Corporate Marketing Manager with Bison Transport, one of the largest carriers in Canada. Johnston also is Chair of TMSA’s Communications Committee.