13 content marketing mistakes that can hurt a Logistics brand

Many logistics organizations have found Linkedin and other social platforms recently. In fact, many logistics businesses are starting to invest more funds into marketing, public relationships, and employers branding. Earlier, many companies looked at such investments as not essential investments. I do not blame logistics business owners for that. I know how challenging this business is, how many crises this sector has withstood, and how many issues logistics businesses face and solve every day. And when you are operating in a challenging environment for a long time, you start looking at each investment with suspicion. When talking about marketing and branding activities, those are hard to measure; therefore, many CEOs took the easier way of expansion, where ROI is measurable. Or just were satisfied with low growth and become comfortable with the status quo (you can find more on this topic?here). But this, of course, builds other issues like low profitability, commoditization, increased competition, decreased business importance and reputation, and issues with employing new generation staff.

It's is over already, and today, we are witnessing logistics businesses quickly deploy content marketing and other initiatives. Therefore, we would like to share some mistakes in the content creation field to understand what is good and wrong.

1.????Greenwashing, Digital washing, Employers Branding Washing and Service Washing.

It seems that today every Logistics company is working on sustainability, digitization, service improvement, and employer attraction initiatives. And this is, of course, a great thing to do. And then some companies that have just started working on these initiatives (started implementing automated ERP and planning solutions or bought a few LNG trucks) right away start to declare themselves as "digital Freight forwarder "or a "Green Logistics company. " Or for instance, companies start communicating that they are the best place to work; nevertheless, 50% of employees are thinking of leaving the company. Or declaring excellent services experience but doesn't have any customer-related KPIs. All this is not a good thing looking from a communications perspective. You are just becoming a digital or sustainable or good place to work for or start paying attention to customers, but this is still an action, not the destination. Therefore, it's equally important not to overreact with your communication to avoid attracting some green movements or competitors that declare that you are lying.

2. Too much talking about themselves.

Adam Lewith once said you need to sell the whole, not the drill, and it's so true when building your content strategy. But unfortunately, companies talking only about themselves are going the opposite way of building a community around their brand.

Of course, marketing and branding strategies have different tasks and goals. Still, if you would look at the best content online, you would notice that it has a great mix of attributes. However, the critical difference between good and lousy content is that the latter is putting their customer or employer (in the case of employers branding) as a key hero of the story. In other words, you need to build your content to talk about your customer's goals or your employee's needs and goals, not about your company,

3.????Sharing too much promotional content.

The other often seen mistake you see is never-ending promotions of their services. In such a way, eventually, the fight or flight mechanism kicks in, and your audience stops reading your content.

We recommend using the Pareto principle here (the 80/20 rule). In other word's only 20 % of your content should be promotional.

4.????Using the same strategies as for consumer goods or transactional services.

Promoting or branding consumer goods or transactional services is different, with different goals and strategies. If you are implementing pieces of advice from consumer goods marketing (the biggest bunch of marketing books is for consumer goods), you are risking becoming silly in the face of your partners.

It would be best not to forget that logistics is a serious business, where the decision-makers often sit in the C suite. Therefore you will not catch their attention with consumer good's content tactics.

You can find more about the differences between B2B and B2C marketing?here.

5.????No consistency

Imagine arriving at your barbershop (or hair salon), and you get a different experience every time. I bet many of us wouldn't be happy.

To reach your company's marketing and branding goals, you need to be consistent and constantly provide the same level of experience.

6.????Talking about controversial topics

Writing about politics, religion, and other risky topics is terrible for your companies brand. Moreover, it's terrible if employees talk about controversial topics on social media.

Therefore it's crucial to have social policies in your organization and have someone doing social listening.

7.????Same content on all platforms

Each social media has a distinct style and voice. For example, Linkedin is a formal, text-heavy, strictly business network, whereas Instagram is visually heavy and Twitter is for short, nail-hitting information.

?Therefore, if your organization shares the same information on all channels, your organization is burning funds, and your brand is suffering audience losses.

8.????No consistency with the overall strategy

In many cases, organizations start doing something without realizing that this function can't be left standalone. Content strategy it's most effective when it works in tandem with the overall marketing or branding strategy.

It's a big mistake to start from tactics without thinking about the strategy.

9.????Using out too few channels

With minor tweaks, your organization could adopt more channels and create a combined experience on Social, email, and website. However, not doing you are losing a valuable touchpoint with your audience, which now prefers to be reached in many different ways.

It is, of course, not related to our topic, but I thought to share this because if you are not using out all the channels, and your competitors are good at all of them, then your brand may be losing importance.

10.?Sharing of Unaccredited content

Using someone else content without accreditation is not a good thing for your brand. It's entirely okay to share industries content, but you need to correctly caption and provide your own opinion, guidelines, or summary.

11.?Sharing of unproven content

When someone at an organization shares content or creates content, it's essential to ensure that it's correct and without mistakes. If you can't prove it, do not share or clarify that this is your opinion or your employer's opinion.

To minimize such risk, you need to have someone check the content before publishing.

12.?Leaving outdated content in the feed

Often situations happen when you share something to find out that your opinion was wrong or that the information is outdated.

Mistakes aren't a problem here, but you need to delete the incorrect or outdated information right away.

13.?Sharing information that doesn't connect with your brand or services

When organizations are out of ideas about what to share, they often start sharing anything that comes to mind or is looking for trendy information.

Using informational hooks is not always bad, but we recommend not overusing them and sticking with the information that relates to your brand.

Start improving your communication.

Now that you know what types of content hurt your brands, make sure you avoid these common mistakes when creating content for your own company's blog or social media pages. And if you are still hesitating with creating content for your organization, or do not know where to start, drop us an email at: [email protected] and arrange a free consulting session, during which you will get all the needed answers.

About the author:

@Tomas Ananjevas is a supply chain professional with 15 years of experience purchasing and selling Logistic's services and building a supply chain from scratch. He founded a consulting, training, and staffing company that works exclusively with the logistics industry. Tomas is currently helping logistics companies implement the necessary changes that ensure business growth and continuity. You can arrange a time to talk with tomas by clicking?here.