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How to improve the B2B marketing of your warehouse
Jesse Lawrence
Whether you run a warehouse that's rented out by many smaller businesses or you provide short-term rentals to one client at a time, it's vital that your B2B marketing strategy is effective for ongoing success. Here, Jonathan Birch, Creative Director at digital marketing agency Glass Digital, takes a closer look at some of the ways you can improve the marketing of your warehouse.
Over the past decade, warehouses have had an increasingly important role to play in the UK's supply chain. One of the key reasons for this has been the rapid growth in the country's retail sector, which occupies over 150 million square feet of storage space (Savills). And, with online sales expected to continue driving high levels of growth, warehouses will certainly be in demand in the next few years.
But, if you are really going to take advantage of this fantastic outlook for the industry, you need to ensure your warehouse is able to attract the best clients possible. Thankfully, you can accomplish a lot of this by improving your B2B marketing strategy so you connect with the right businesses. This is something I'm aiming to help you accomplish by sharing my top tips below.
Make sure your communications are clear at your end
Before you start to seriously market your facility, you need to take stock and make sure you're ready that you are promising exactly what you can deliver to your customers. It's a good idea to evaluate what you can offer at this stage, as it will help you to create clear communications and ensure that you attract clients who are the right fit for your storage space.
I'd recommend sitting down and deciding on five to ten essential USPs that your facility can offer. For instance, maybe there's room to include refrigerated storage that might attract food retail clients or perhaps you have an incredibly spacious loading bay that would appeal to businesses that move a high volume of stock. Then, you can use these to inform any marketing communications you send out to potential customers.
Decide what types of business you would like to target
Once you have a good idea of what you can offer your clients, you can begin to think about what types of businesses you should target with your marketing. While this will be partly informed by the services you can provide — there may be some requirements you can or can't meet — you should also put some thought into what sectors you would like to target.
There are a few factors that may influence what type of customer you choose to market to. For example, if your warehouse is fairly compact, you may be better off looking towards a single mid-sized business or multiple small or micro-businesses to share the space. Another example would be if you want to find a client that you can work with in the long-term, you may wish to look for someone who is trying to scale up their operation and will "grow into" your space.
When you have a good idea of the types of businesses you are going to target, as well as what you can offer them, you can move forward with your strategy with a clear path in mind.
Back up your B2B marketing with tangible statistics
In any industry, being able to point to statistics about your services as evidence of your past success is always going to impress clients. Therefore, if you've been running a warehouse for a while, it's a good idea to compile any stats that show your business in a positive light.
Perhaps you've helped previous clients move record levels of stock over the past year, or you might be able to offer services at a certain percentage lower than other facilities in the area. Whatever you come up with, be sure that you include it in any marketing communications you send out.
Create an SEO-friendly website and get it ranking
Any business that wants to succeed in this ever more digital world needs a solid website, and this definitely applies to your warehouse. Not only can your site act as a calling card for your services, but it can bring in potential clients on its own, as long as it's ranking on Google. With a search engine optimised website, you can attract organic search that will lead to other businesses finding you naturally without ever being targeted by your campaign.
Your main aim when creating an SEO-friendly website should be creating content that is focused on the user, with clear, concise wording and lots of internal links to help them get to the right place. You should ensure that it looks professional, isn't too complex in its layout, and that it's streamlined enough to load quickly. Google likes sites that prioritise the user and, if you do so, you'll rank better.
With the basics in place you can start to worry about the more complex issues, such as getting the right keywords for your pages, adding content marketing to build expertise, and building some links to your website from others. While you can tackle these yourself, you may wish to hire the services of a digital marketing agency, who will have a team of professionals to do the hard work.
Engage with potential clients through social media
Social media can be a very powerful tool for B2B marketing, especially if you use professional platforms like LinkedIn. If your warehouse business maintains a presence on these networks, you'll be able to speak directly to clients about your service, while engaging with any questions they may have about what you can offer or how your operation works.
Though setting up a presence for your business is a great start, I also recommend joining yourself in a professional capacity so that you can network with others in your sector and get involved in any important conversations about industry issues. If you're out there and visible to others, you'll find it much easier to prospect for new business through social media.
Follow these five tips for improving your warehouse's B2B marketing and you'll find it much easier to get your name out there and attract clients that match your specifications.
Do you need the software to help?
Whether it is through improved warehousing software, CRM tools or utilising AI and automation, Dynamics Consultants can help to provide an integrated software solution to manage your business better. So why not talk to one of our team?
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