Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.. What works for 3PLs

There are a lot of buzz words going around when it comes to online marketing. We are going to focus on, what works for a 3PL warehouse when it comes to marketing online. I will rate them all by how useful I think they are when it comes to online marketing.

* * * * * : Very Useful

* : Not Useful

1. Facebook

Facebook lets you create your profile which could be personal and business. It can allow you to post relevant links, photos, comments etc. And it can let you connect with other individuals. Facebook is still morphing into a useful tool for businesses. In terms of its usability for a 3PL, it is not there yet.

Rating: **

2. LinkedIn

Now this is something you cannot go wrong with. Just about everyone in your professional circle is on it. If they are not, hmmm... Great tool for networking and asking questions. Create your LinkedIn profile. Your profile and the questions you ask or answer are all indexed very favorably by the search engines. You need to be on it and fully explore this option. Infact, if you join a group where your potential customers may come from and announce what services you offer, you may just get new business. For example you may choose to be a member of the group called "Importers of Food & Beverage" and in the discussion, you could mention that you have food grade storage capacity to offer. This could lead to potential customers contacting you with actual interest.

Rating: *****

3. Twitter

Noise, Chatter, Clutter etc etc. This powerful tool has to be used properly in order to add value. Currently it is more of a ego building tool, where people measure their worth in terms of how many followers they have. Even if you have followers are they listening ? Long and short of it, subscribe to protected groups and only subscribe to twitter groups that are meaningful to your industry. SpaceSpecials has a new twitter group called http://twitter.com/warehousewanted where we plan to send out enquiries we receive on our website from potential customers who need to get in touch with multiple warehouses with their requirements.

Rating: ***

4. Blogs

Blogs are great, if you have great stuff to write about. Writing blogs just to get higher ranking on the search engines, dilutes your credibility. Keep your articles small, to the point and conserve bandwidth. Do not forget to syndicate your blog via websites such as blogcatalog.com. Use Blogger from Google, which is what I am on, it is easy to setup and use. Use blogs to talk about special services you offer, positive or negative incidents that happened in your company. Great tool, especially if you have content that is unique and people want to read about it. Such as "Challenges faced by 3PLs when working with startups" or "Finding warehouse space, where do I start ?".

Rating: ****

5. Vertical Search Engines

These are the search engines that exist to make industry specific search simpler. For example if a customer is looking for "fulfillment" and they type "fulfillment atlanta", Google or Yahoo may also show results pertaining to personal fulfillment or emotional fulfillment. With a vertical search engine catering to warehousing industry, you know for a fact that fulfillment means order fulfillment or product fulfillment.

This type of search engine also lets customers locate companies by geographic selection, services offered and many other criterion. For 3PL and warehousing industry we only have a handfull of good vertical search engines, so please make sure you sign up on these. Some of them are relatively inexpensive, and they can bring you customer enquiries from really motivated customers. In addition to that they make your own company website feature more favorably in traditional search engines due to inbound links.
They are also called online directories. SpaceSpecials.com is one such directory.

Rating: ****

6. Pay Per Click

PPC (Pay Per Click) on Google for example is quite expensive for keywords such as "fulfillment", "warehousing", "warehouse space" etc. Besides these keywords are too generic and do not really define what you are offering. For a warehouse in Allentown, Pennsylvania offering order fulfillment services, the keyword should be something like "Fulfillment Allentown Pennsylvania". This will not be as expensive as simply "fulfillment" and will give you more targeted traffic. Work with companies that specialize in search engine optimization and talk to them about PPC. Estimate a budget upto $5000 per month. You should see some good returns.

Rating: ***

7. Paid Advertising

All websites have a program where you can buy ad space. Here you can simply call the website and find out how to advertise with them. Please keep in mind, when spending your advertising dollars, do not advertise in places which is frequented mostly by your peers. You need to go where your customers are. I would put targeted ads on websites such as National Association of Wholesalers (naw.org), Practical e-Commerce (practicalecommerce.com), Alibaba - Global Trade Directory (alibaba.com) etc.

Rating: ***

There are many more ways a 3PL warehouse can get the word out and market itself online.

Please keep in mind the number of customers looking for warehouse or fulfillment services are not that many as compared to number of customers looking for shoes online. That is why to be out there in front of the few potential customers needs carefull planning.

Tweet your requirements into Cyber Space

There are a number of customers looking for warehouse space and services. Traditional way to do that is to either look up warehouses online or find a broker. Looking up online or through a webiste means sending out RFI (request for information) to many warehouses via email and then waiting for a response.

Twitter provides an alternative. That is right, the days of sending an email out so that the service providers can respond to your RFI (request for information) are fast coming to an end. One good use Twitter can be put to, is to broadcast your message onto a group of subscribers. Most important aspect to consider is that Twitter can actually put your message on the cell phones of the subscribers.

Consider this for example, your customer is looking for warehouse space in Michigan. All, she has to do for that is to go to our website (http://www.spacespecials.com/) and type in something like "Looking for 6000 sq feet of warehouse space in Michigan. Call me at 867 5309 Jenny (sound's familiar :))." All the warehouses who are subscribed to our Twitter group will then receive this message via the Twitter network on their cell phones.

Now this is what Twitter is all about. Enabling communication between the broadcaster and a host of subscriber. Twitter enables us to subscribe to a group of our choice and get important notifications on your cell phone. The key to all this is to subscribe to channels that will provide relevant and important information. There are a lot of Twitter channels where people simply type something for the sake of typing something. This adds to the clutter and defeats the purpose.

The other important thing to consider is that by keeping your twitter account strictly for business eliminates all that unnecessary noise and clutter which keeps you from seeing the important messages or tweets. I encourage you to subscribe to groups that are protected, which means that you need permission from the group owner before you can join them. The group owner ensures that you are from the industry and therefore eliminates unnecessary noise.

SpaceSpecials.com has created a new Twitter group strictly for this purpose. Go to http://twitter.com/WarehouseWanted to subscribe to the notifications. This has been created to pass on enquiries from actual customers looking for warehouse space and services in your area.