Blythe Brumleve:
0:00
Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve. And I just got done with a live session on freight waves now talking about the art of warm selling, and I'm going to try to cut in a clip from that episode, but it hasn't been uploaded yet to YouTube. So I'm just waiting on that process. But the overall gist of that, with the topic that we were talking about comes from the last podcast that was released. And it talked about, you know, some of the takeaways from the freightwaves sales and marketing Summit. And one of the central takeaways was the art of warm selling, you know, this idea that you are using social media in order to garner attention and for your not just your your products and services, but also for, you know, charitable aspects and, you know, company initiatives and green initiatives and things like that, and how, you know, one particular use case of free Vana, which, if you're on LinkedIn, and you're involved in the freight community at all, you've probably seen a lot of their social media posts, their team, their staff has been all over freight lot, or all over LinkedIn. And it should actually be called maybe freight mon by now, because of how often they are publishing their entire team is on it every single day, multiple times per day. And that kind of is a testament because we just had the freeway sales and marketing Summit. So because of all of that sort of, you know, coming together that conversation coming together, there was a central point that, you know, because of the presence on social on social media, that attending conferences has been so much more beneficial for folks like freight Vana. I know, personally, you know, posting on social media helps me whenever I do go to conferences, and that's exactly what you know, the team at freight, Vaughn has said, is that, that when now when they go to conferences, they have leads that are coming up to them, customers that are coming up to them, because they need to make, you know, a more environmentally friendly shift. And because of that shift, they know of their freight VANOS, you know, sort of campaign that every load that they ship, a tree is planted. So because they've been so vocal on social media, with those efforts, now, whenever they go to different conferences, they have customers coming up to them. And that is a warm sell. And so using social media as sort of that digital handshake to let folks know, over time, that who you are what you do, what you believe in your company initiatives, will eventually lead to those moments that maybe you're at a tradeshow or a conference, and someone has seen those posts, and they finally come up to you and shake your hand, want to book a meeting, go to your website, things like that. So that is sort of the the central discussion of the you know, the art around the warmth cell and focusing on you know, there was another takeaway, that Tim dooner host of what the truck had also said, it's the who's not the views. And that phrase sort of signals back to, you know, this, this idea that we need to be more concerned about with the type of people that are viewing our content, not necessarily the amount of people that are viewing our content. So it kind of goes back to that old adage that do you want 12,000 people viewing your content that are never going to buy from you? Or do you want 12 people that are going to view your content, and 10 of them are very interested in buying from you? I think we probably know the answer to that question. So that was the overall sort of crux of the situation. But then, you know, we kind of got we got cut off a little early because there was some some live video footage feed or whatever was the problem with the the freightwaves. Now, appearance this morning. So hopefully we can try to get a little bit of that conversation cut in because I think it's always really fascinating to be able to not only sort of have these ideas, but to also have somebody else to talk to about those ideas and kind of bounce off of Caylee Anthony by now.
Unknown:
3:57
We're gonna welcome in our next guest, and we've got Blythe Brumleve with us host of everything is logistics, by Thank you for joining us today and we're going to talk a little bit about the art of the war cell. I think that everybody knows cold calling is a thing called selling is a thing, of course. But what about warm sales? And is it nicer when it's warmer?
Blythe Brumleve:
4:17
Absolutely. I'm a Florida girl at heart so everything is better when it's warmer temperatures are for I guess a variety of things. And so the art of warm selling really was a central theme around the recent freightwaves sales and marketing Summit. I watched all of it I took notes. I did a podcast on it. And now I would love to talk to you people about the art of warm selling.
Unknown:
4:37
That's amazing. And Blythe Of course I'm sorry about the Jacksonville Jaguars. But when we get into the art of warm selling, how do we approach warm selling what is a warm sell?
Blythe Brumleve:
4:49
So the really central part of it is using social media as a way to get your audience and even your leads to know about you before you ever shake their hand and so using social media as source Have that digital handshake. And one perfect example was Lars Ward from freight vata, which if you're on LinkedIn, you probably have seen a variety of posts from not only him, but also the freight vana team. And they are essentially all over LinkedIn. And that was a very conscious choice, whenever they launched their company a couple years ago, is that they were going to dominate on LinkedIn and just let people know about the type of company that they have, the type of culture that they have. And they really went above and beyond for a lot of their different social media posts. And so when they were at the freightwaves, the conference that we just had back in November, and they were talking about how people were coming up to them, leads that they wanted to speak to, but just hadn't gotten around to reaching out to we're coming up to them live at the conference in order to meet them in person making that warm sale a lot easier. And eventually, some of those people became customers of theirs. And so they attribute it all back to at LinkedIn. And that was one of the big talking points from the freightwaves sales and marketing Summit is that they use social media to sort of introduce their company culture, their their green initiatives, how there's a lot of shippers out there who are looking, they have their bosses sort of kind of breathing down their neck about getting more environmentally friendly. And so knowing that, you know, free vana has posted about they're there, they plant one tree for every load that they move. So because of that initiative, now they're getting customers coming up to them, and potentially doing business with them because of social media. So warm selling,
Unknown:
6:28
I think it's so fascinating because social media is so algorithm driven, that it gives you a chance to get in front of people who aren't your audience for free, right? Like, I'll take this from example, I just posted an Instagram photo yesterday, right? And my engagements on it, like 300 of my followers were engagements, over 1400 engagements from people who are non followers, that warm sell, right, just because the algorithm decided to push that type of content, especially on a platform like LinkedIn that is very, very algorithm heavy and algorithm dependent and dependent on those interactions, can you talk a little bit about the value of kind of the free marketing that you get, because it makes that warm sell possible without having to do a lot of work or spend any money really,
Blythe Brumleve:
7:09
exactly it, it makes your your paid efforts down the line so much easier, because you are posting organically mean, you're only investing really time into creating those posts. So you're investing that time, and you're getting that reach. And you're also seeing a shift for a lot of these social media platforms where you know, before it was Facebook, Instagram, they're showing you people that you know, people that you choose to follow your friends, your family, things like that. But now because of Tik Tok and the influence that Tiktok has had over all of these different platforms, they are really showing you content that you like that you've already expressed interest in, not necessarily folks that you already know, you the engagement level for, you know, an ants picture of your cousin's third baby, or whatever kind of situation is probably not going to resonate with you as much as maybe it will, I don't know. But it might not resonate as much as say, like a new yoga pose, or you know, a new workout that you really want to get into. And so that's where a lot of the shift is happening at Twitter, the other day just kind of made a lot of their users a little upset, and you know, a bunch over the last few months, but they changed their page, or they're following page to a following, or a for you page, and that is a direct ripoff of Tik Tok kind of proving that, you know, it's really about the content itself, not necessarily who you know anymore.
Unknown:
8:31
And Blythe is that really kind of make it so that it's almost a level playing field for small creators really have a lot of exposure? Or really does that kind of devalue someone's brand if they're trying to really build out their following? Well, I think
Blythe Brumleve:
8:48
there's also there's always power in you know, the riches are in the niches and so there's an ability to start out with a certain guest customer profile and ICP that you have in mind that you really want to appeal to like for me, I really want to appeal to the one person marketer because that's who I am. And so that's what I want to create content for. And so if you create content with that niche in mind, you can always go bigger, it's very difficult to start big, and then try to go niche. So it's always advised to sort of start with what interests you the most, especially when it you know, if you're a broker or you're somebody trying to to get more business in the next year, who is that target audience that you are trying to speak to and using your content to speak specifically to that audience. And when you really feel like you've dialed it in and it takes at least a year to feel like you've really dialed it in, then you can start to expand out and start to reach those bigger audiences.
Unknown:
9:42
Because I want to get your thoughts on the idea that warmth is conductive heat is conductive, right? If you warm sell to someone who's your direct counterpart, I'm selling to Anthony, and then he bumps over into his friend. My warm sell then could potentially transfer through Anthony and into his friend right. Can you touch a little bit about on and how valuable that is for a marketer to because then you got, you have not only not having to spend a whole lot of money or really even time and effort for that initial warm sell, then you it gets passed on down the line without you having to do a lot of work either.
Blythe Brumleve:
10:14
100%, there was another line that really stuck out to me is that that's what dooner said. And he said, It's the, it's the who's not the views. And so whoever is, you know, looking at your content, and word of mouth still reigns King, and always has, it probably always will. And so having that positive interaction of who's looking at your content and who is introducing, you know, somewhat to your content, because, you know, not all content is going to be relevant to the audience that you're trying to reach at that particular moment. But they might know somebody who is. And so we're referring that piece of content, sharing that piece of content, you can really tell this by looking at the amount of saves on your content, or the amount of shares, which a lot of social media platforms will do now. And that's also a trigger to their algorithms to let them know that people are finding that, that content, very valuable enough to share it with someone else. And then to also save it in case they want to reference it in the future. That's sort of the Holy Grail, when it comes to social media marketing is how many saves? Can you get on a post? Or how many shares can you get on that post? Because they like it that much, that they're going to share it out with their friends. And it's not just, you know, in a digital environment. But But absolutely word of mouth is still I mean, for me personally, and anecdotally, for a lot of my clients, it is word of mouth is the number one reason that people are listing How did you hear about us, and it's typically a referral. The reason it's sort of the overall focus of why I wanted to bring that into this discussion is because if you're going to be posting to social media, if you're going to be sending out email campaigns, you're probably asking yourself, well, what's eventually the point? What eventually should I see from this, and eventually, what you should see is what happens after the warm sale, if someone sees your content and wants to actually talk to you, or they typically hit up your website. And that's the main topic that I want to get into more about the quick wins for your website to help the sales and marketing team because especially when it comes to our website, we really have a tendency to overcomplicate things. But in reality, adding these really quick wins to your site doesn't have to involve an entire website redesign. It doesn't have to involve, you know, several different key executives, I mean, maybe a couple key executives, because you don't want to do this without you know, the leadership team, at least knowing what you have in mind and why what's the motivation behind it. But when people come to your site, you don't have to go through this whole just reorganization process, you can add in these quick wins in order to it's expedient is that that's not even a word in order to speed up the process of you're posting to your team or your staff is or you maybe yourself you're all posting to social media, eventually those people are going to become in or get into a buying cycle, the overwhelming majority of people said 95 to five rule 95% of people are not in an active buying cycle. But 5% are and you never know when that 5% is going to be you know seeing your content or how often they've seen your content. So the idea is setting up your social media as sort of that intro that digital handshake, and then when they are ready to buy then or they're ready to book a meeting with you, then they come to your site, that's when they're booking the meeting. That's when they're requesting a quote, that's when they're requesting more information. This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics the premier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight brokerages book a business and feel that your capabilities are being eliminated due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics, we have the technology, the systems and the back office support to help you succeed. If you're looking to take control of your financial future and build your own business, with the backing of one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, visit SPI three pl.com to learn more. And so what are those quick wins? Well, let's go through a few of them. One of them is it sounds super easy. And it sounds super simple, but having your social media accounts linked on your site. So there could be an instance where say, for example, someone is a very high powered LinkedIn user. But maybe some people on the on the rest of the team, the executive team are not high powered LinkedIn users. But when they come to your site, because they've heard about you through somebody else in the office, you know, maybe somebody else has recommended them a colleague or a competitor has talked about them. So maybe what happens is they come to your site and they see that you're active on another social media platform. You need to make sure that you have those accounts linked on your site. I can't tell you how many times that I've seen users or I've seen accounts brand accounts that are active on Tik Tok. Specifically, they're active on that platform and then they don't link to it. it on their website. Now me is an avid tic toc user, if I see the TIC tock logo on a logistics company website, I'm following them immediately, because I want to see what kind of content they're creating, especially in the world of logistics, where tick tock is a newer platform, the content there that's being created is very much fresh, original, or just fun and entertainment. I know there's the all the privacy concerns, and that's a topic for another day. But for the sake of just getting creative inspiration, tick tock really is bar none the best out of all the social media platforms. So knowing that you should absolutely have all of your platforms at least linked in the footer of your site on your team page on your about us page. And then that way, when folks are just casually browsing your site, because they've heard of you from somewhere else, then that ideal progression is to obviously book a meeting. But if they're not ready to book a meeting, yet, having those icons in the footer, or in the about us page, the team page, anywhere where it's easy for the visitor whenever they're coming to your site to see that you have an account on those platforms, then that can keep the relationship sort of going because they're they're completing a secondary CTA, not your primary CTA CTA, meaning call to action, which is ideally what you want the visitor to do on your site. Most 99% of people want them to book a meeting or to request more information whenever they come to your site. But those secondary conversions, those secondary CTAs, are very, very important as well, because it keeps the conversation going, it doesn't just stop people dead in their tracks. So get your social media accounts linked on your website, it sounds super simple, but it's something that is easily overlooked. And it makes a difference. Another thing that makes a difference is giving a glimpse of what kind of posts that you have on your different social media accounts. And one tool that can do that, that can kind of bring them all together. And sort of you know, one feed to rule them all, I think is actually what their tagline is a company called juicer.io, where you create an account with them, I think it's about $19 a month, and you can connect all of your social media accounts to juicer. And then what they do is they give you a feed, a feed that you can embed on your own site. And the way we use it is we use it as sort of a best of Roundup, because you can also filter that feed into your most high performing posts, from LinkedIn, from Twitter, from Instagram, from Facebook, you can pull in all of your social media accounts into one page. And then you have that one page that you can embed on your website. And so that can be like a best of social page that you create, and you add it to your site. And then you only include the social media accounts that you want to include. But then you're also showing off the best of your social media post. So then that way, when a user has discovered your site, they come to your site and they see maybe like a best of social page in your navigation bar, then they're more likely to check that out to get sort of that EagleEye, high level view of the kind of content that you're creating. Because the kind of content you're creating can signal what kind of company you are, what kind of services you offer, what kind of initiatives that you believe in. And so using that as sort of a catch all, for your social media is a home run for your website. So juicer.io is that website, again, I'm sure there's other companies out there that, you know, create the same thing. But they are the ones that in my experience with adding, you know, different social media accounts to different websites, they have the one that works the best, because what happens with a lot of these different, you know, especially if you work in WordPress, or you know, some of these other sites, they have, you know, like an Instagram plugin that you can add to your site and get that feed of all of your photos directly on the site. The problem is, is that Instagram does not have an open API. And when you don't have an open API, you do not have that constant data streaming in. And so what happens 99% of the time is that within a few months, Instagram shuts off that access to that third party app. And then your website, if you're not checking it regularly just looks blank, all those photos kind of appear as an error or they don't appear at all so it looks like missing, you know, sort of white space on your website. So that's something to keep in mind. If you have a plugin that is specifically for a tool. Plus, you also want to keep in mind that you don't want a ton of plugins on your site, you don't want it especially a lot of social plugins. And so if you're looking for sort of that all in one, you know, encompassing feature of getting all of your social media sites and if one goes down, then juicer can kind of work on it in the background and it's not going to affect the overall you know, I guess, usability of your website and just the, the how it looks because if you if you have one plugin that handles one platform, and that plugin fails, well, your your website is going to take an nerfed as negative hit on that, because of the user experience, they're going to see that they're going to look at I mean, I can only speak from personal experience that when I see that happen on a website, I think immediately, they must not check their website that often. And if they're not checking their website that often, why should I even, you know, submit something to hear back for them. It's kind of a crapshoot. So juicer.io, highly, highly recommend them, not an affiliate or anything with them. So maybe I should actually become an affiliate with them, because I do like their product that much. Like I said, Only 19 bucks a month. So let's move on to the next one that I think is really important. And also another quick win for your website to help the sales and marketing teams. And that is to actually have a team page on your site. You know, too often, it when folks are creating their website, they're very much just trying to they're either doing a lot, or they're doing the bare minimum. And the bare minimum kind of doesn't include the team page. And the team page is really where you can establish that trust and authority. So by having a team page on the site, you can kind of see the leadership of the company. And you can see the direction that they might be going in linking to someone's LinkedIn profile from the team page, having short bios, things like that can really bring home or, or really ring true, the trustworthiness of your company that hey, you know, this isn't a fly by night company, we've been around for a while. This is our leadership team, here's LinkedIn profiles that you can further check. I mean, typically, people are not going to check that much. But having that level of, of, I guess intricacy and detail of the inside and outside of your company, not just what we do and who we do it for. But this, these are the people, these are the face behind the company or the faces behind the company. So having a team page is very, very beneficial. So that's another quick win. Another quick one that I think is really slept on is screenshots from public statements and reviews. Now, obviously, the you want them to be good. But your Facebook reviews, your maybe somebody said something nice about you on LinkedIn, maybe it's your Google reviews. So incorporating those different reviews, taking a screenshot, as long as it's not like an email or a private message unless you specifically get permission from that person. In order to use that image of a private message. I wouldn't say to use that. But if it's done in a public setting, if it's done on social media, in a public way, take a screenshot of it get in the habit of taking a screenshot of that nice thing that someone said about you and keep an album and use that album, on your website, then that way you can send it off to a developer, you can have a testimonial section on your website, testimonials are one of the more tougher things to get from businesses because nowadays, you know, legal is involved, they don't want to, you know, say like they a lot of companies don't want to pretend as if they have a preference or a partnership or you know, something along like a legal line like that. So it makes it more challenging to get, especially for smaller companies to get that bigger company, maybe that you're hauling freight for you're working with, to get them to share a testimonial that is approved by their legal department. So it's that extra layer of like things you got to jump through in order to get that testimonial. So I've just advised, you know, tons of people that are especially clients that if somebody says something nice about you, then make sure you take a screenshot. And then that way you have a process for collecting those screenshots. Maybe it's a Google Drive folder, or you know, a folder on an iPhone that you can share with other people on your iCloud. Something that is shareable that is somebody sees something like that they get in the habit of screenshotting it and adding it to an album. It's a huge win. And it's a really, it's a it's another trustworthy aspect that you can add to your website without doing a complete redesign. And you can also have that section sprinkled throughout the site. So maybe on your book, a meeting page where you need that extra sort of boost of if someone is making that decision on if they're going to book a meeting with you or not a request to quote that extra little trust icons, those extra trust sentiments that come from real reviews that come from real people really go the extra mile to entice that user to know this is the right decision. And it's going to be a valuable spend of your time if you book this meeting is because of those those reviews, those trusted statements that come from those screenshots, which are honestly a lot more they're more trustworthy in my eyes, because they're screenshots of what people have actually said, instead of the typical, you know, text and so and so from this company said this when there's no picture, there's no sort of verifiable way to prove that that even a real person I know of other web designers who have just faked those those different reviews. And I think that that's sketchy. And so what I prefer to do instead is to use those real screenshots if you go to digital dispatch.io, right now, all of our testimonials are screenshots and their screenshots from real reviews. And so even from the podcast, to just overall services from our company, we use real screenshots from those conversations. So that is a really quick win. It might not appeal like design wise, but you can play around with it design wise to fit it into your your overall website aesthetic, you can gray the images out you can and that makes it you know a little bit more, I guess, design friendly if somebody is super particular about the look of the site, but adding that is a huge win. And like I said, it's at one final nail in the coffin to get somebody to book that meeting with you. So screenshots of public statements and reviews. Now, the next one talked about this one a bunch, but it deserves to get repeated again. But the ability to book a meeting directly on your site, without having to do a back and forth. Nothing is worse than trying to do business with someone. And there's no clear path to just get that done immediately. There's so many tools out here there's HubSpot calendar, which I know a lot of companies out here using those HubSpot calendars that you can embed that calendar link directly on your website so someone can come to your site. And if they're ready to book a meeting, why add any additional barrier between that process. You don't want them to fill out a form or you know call that maybe call the number I think calling the number still works. But what if no one picks up? What if someone's busy or you know what if things are going on, then you've lost that person, you know that that conversion for probably forever. But if you have that calendar link right on your website, then they can look at the available times they can pick a time that works best for them. And they can get that meeting booked immediately reduce the amount of friction for the things that you want your audience to do. And so HubSpot has that calendar. There's also another computer calendar or another company called Kalin D. So it's ca L e n d l y. That is another company. I personally use savvy Cal I've used HubSpot before I've use Calendly. Before I would say Calendly is probably the best one to use for large groups, because then you can create a group calendar. And then you can also have individual calendars that are linked in there. So maybe you have a group calendar where all of your sales team is notified on that calendar. And then they can book a meeting directly with somebody from your sales team. Maybe you want to treat it as like a round robin, or you know another situation where you know, seniority or whatever way you want to play it. They have those additional filtering methods with Kalindi. I'm not sure that HubSpot has the same I do not think that they haven't don't don't take my word for this. But I think that they only have individual calendars, not a group calendar where you can add several people to that that distribution list as far as you know who's going to actually be in on that meeting when that person books it. There's another one that I use is savvy cow and savvy cow is more for shows. I think more for video based meetings. This is how I record my shows is through savy cow just had to actually check to make sure that I was recording within Mike that is not muted. So if you are watching the video version of this, there was a slight panic in my eye that I've just been recording for 20 minutes. And it might have been muted, but I'm not so thank God. So okay, so HubSpot Calendly. And then savvy Cal is another good one. That is more for video based. And then I would also say that, you know, Google has also with their calendar released a calendar option that you could book there, but it's not quite there yet. I do think Google will probably make a really good version of this eventually that more people will adopt. But they I've used it with clients and it's not there yet. So I would suggest Kalindi for probably most of the people that are listening to this. But if you do more video based like podcasts, you know videos, things like that, where you would want like more of a more control over the what happens after the meeting is done, then savvy Cal is probably going to be your best bet because you can have the ability to make multiple different calendars, you can sync it to your calendar that you already have. So whether you work in Microsoft or Google it can sync to your calendar and you know basically prevent that double booking of meetings where if you already have something going on no one can book that time slot unless you specifically noted in the calendar that you're going to force allow this time slot for someone to be able to book it so it's a lot of flexibility with that system. So but it might not be right for everybody. That's why I suggest you know to check out both of those different tools. Do you wish there was a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Well, all of this should already be on your website. But too often, we hand that responsibility of building our online home off to a cousin, a neighbor's kid down the street, or a stranger across the world. Digital dispatch believes in building a better website at a fraction of the costs that those big time marketing agencies would charge. Because we've spent years on those digital front lines, our experienced team focuses on the modern web technologies to bring in all of the places you're already active online, show off those customer success stories, and measure the ROI of it all in one place. With manage website plans, starting at $90 a month, head on over to digital dispatch.io to see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. We've got explainer videos right on the website and the ability to book a demo immediately find it all over at Digital dispatch.io. Okay, let's go to the next one. And this is actually one of the last ones that I have on my list. And that's the ability to request information. So a customer packet, a carrier packet, being able to request it immediately on the website. And taking it maybe even a step further. That's another quick win for your site is just, if you're the main goal of your website is to reduce the amount of phone calls that your office is taking in. Because you're the phone calls that you want to spend your time on as generating new business or covering the business that you already have. You don't necessarily want to take a phone call and say, okay, yeah, let me get your information and I can send you over a carrier packet, if you just listed that straight on your website, you could set up an automation, that someone can request that information, and then it immediately goes to maybe someone in accounting that can verify that this is a real business that is requesting it, it's not just or maybe someone in your your customer service or your tracking department can can actually be the one to specifically send it over to that person who is requesting it, or you can take it up a notch. And you can actually just allow anybody to download it, I probably wouldn't advise that because there's typically some sensitive information in those carrier or those customer packets. So you probably just don't want to allow anyone to be able to download them. So that's why I would suggest just to have a request a carrier packet request a customer packet, have that linked on your site. And then that way, they can fill out just a quick form. And then someone can verify it on your end of things and immediately send it out now from that lens, you can that's probably as automated, quote unquote, automated as you want to take it. But it's still it's another quick win to reduce the amount of phone calls to help your sales and marketing teams in order to get those quick wins added to your site, because that's another big reason of why people are visiting your site or another big reason of why someone would visit a site predominantly is to get that information, get it quickly. And the quicker you can get that information to them and set up some of these processes, and use your website as that final sales tool. So that's where it that's where I think a lot of misses are being made right now is you've done enough to get the website up and live for the majority of companies that do have a website, you did it once, it was probably a pain in the ass I know I get it, it's it web design is a pain in the ass. But you adding these quick wins, adding these quick upgrades instead of doing a complete redesign, because what we tend to overcomplicate these things, and when we overcomplicate them, then it involves doing, let's knock it out all at once. Because when things get complicated, you end up doing nothing because you want to do everything. And so when you avoiding that, you can take a couple of these quick wins, you can add them to your site. Another one that I didn't mention that I mentioned all the time. And I it deserves to be repeated is all of your forms on your site, you know, those booking meetings, those requests for quote, even your carrier packets, or your customer packets, if you have a system in place that's set up on your website, you should have this field on all of your forms. And it's called How did you hear about us, you want to make that field required. You want to make that field free text, no drop down no checkboxes, and that way you can get, especially from a marketing and sales perspective, you can get those insights on what's working. So if you've been like we talked about earlier, if you've been heavily focused on social media, you've been heavily focused on going to conferences, wouldn't you want to know the value of those things? And if the answer is yes, obviously the answer is yes. Then having that field on your forms, it is a very simple fix that you can add to all of your forms on your site. And when people you're doing the right things you're you're talking about on social media, going to the conferences, then the person comes to your website, and they fill out that form. You want to know where they came from. You want to know what was resonating and what was very impactful to them too. They want to come to your site and want to book that meeting or request more information or to buy from you, you know, there are a lot of different pathways to conversion, to get somebody to come to your site to have more insight on how that process is taking place for that person is a homerun, and it will help shape the future of your marketing, it will help shape the future of where you spend your time posting to social media, or the conferences that you attend. Doing this adding that field, how did you hear about us is the number one way in order to gain that kind of insight, you're not going to get it from your marketing analytics reports or your attribution reports. Because it's simply the pathway to conversion is so complicated, it's all over the place, there is no you know, straight line from a Google ad to someone converting on your site. That's what Google will tell you. But that typically is not the process. They may have listened to you in this podcast than they followed you know you on this social media account. But then they signed up for your email newsletter, and then one day their their trusted carrier that they've been working with for a while has fallen off just a little too much. And now they're looking for more business. And that's the moment that they remember you. And they come to your site, and they convert. And you want to know in that moment, what was the most impactful thing that led to that conversion. And that is where you get that kind of insight. So add that field to your form add to all of your forms really on your site, well, not your email form, because you really want to only focus on the high intent leads. Now for everything else, if it's you know, stay updated on her, you know, email newsletter, things like that, you don't want to add it to there, because then that just clogs up the data. Because those aren't necessarily high intent visitors or high intent leads, you don't want to have somebody sign up for your email newsletter, and then have somebody else from the sales team reaching out to them in order to cover their freight when they don't have free to move. So only put this on your high intent lead conversion forms, because then that's that's where you're going to get the most impactful data that will shape how you you know, really hone in on your marketing in the future, hone in on your sales efforts in the future. And hopefully you can kind of, you know, massage, that process of you know, your art of the warm sale and how you're going to approach social media and how you're going to market your company and your services and your initiatives. And whether it's charitable or green initiatives, then you have that whole sort of full circle effort of, you know, promoting to social media, and then bringing it back to what's really resonating to get people to ultimately convert or not convert. So then that way you can do more of what works and do less of what doesn't, which is essentially you know, everybody's dream in this space. So that about does it for today's show. I hope you enjoyed this one. We will be back in a couple of weeks, we're actually going out to manifest for the conference, we will still have interviews that we'll be posting on the pod but we got a lot of content planned for manifests and when I say we got a lot of content plan I think we have a couple dozen interviews that are planned some long form interviews, we've got some short form interview stuff manifest is hands down one of my favorite conferences and it's because they have a giant expo floor filled with robotics and autonomous trucks and drones and you know some of the latest greatest that's going on in logistics I can't wait to you know go in there and document all the cool things and then share them with you all so until next time. Yeah, I guess it's kind of my final like go Jags of the season now that we're done with the playoffs, unfortunately but great season. So thank you guys for tuning in. And yeah, go jets. I hope you enjoy this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials in past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blythe and go Jags
