9 Ways to Attract New Customers on Freight Platforms

The freight industry is like a piece of cake. The cake will not get bigger over time. Currently, a large number of freight platforms disguised as Internet companies are eyeing the cake in the mouths of traditional players. If they do not achieve incremental growth, they will be in danger of falling behind. So, how can freight platforms attract new customers? The author of this article has analyzed this and shared it with you.

01 Introduction

Recently, I have talked with many friends about some popular business models, and especially about how freight platforms can attract new customers. So this article on how to attract new customers was born.

Nowadays, most traditional industries are in the initial stage of digital infrastructure construction. As the earliest sector in the logistics industry to use the dividends of Internet technology for business innovation, online freight platforms have attracted much attention.

For example, the same-city freight platforms include Huolala, Kuaigou Taxi, Yunmanman, and Didi Freight; and the long-distance trunk lines include Manbang Group, Fuyou Truck, Shunlu, Jingyi Truck, and Lujing.

Different companies rely on their own resources to enter different segments and compete with each other. After early development and the gradual increase in the cost of Internet traffic, growth on the user side has become a pressing task for all companies today.

02 Why attract new customers

At present, the relatively fixed growth routines are some commonly said Internet terms: attract new customers -> activation -> repeat purchases -> increase frequency -> retention .

For freight platforms, attracting new users means converting potential users with cargo transportation needs into platform users.

Why is attracting new customers so important?

The freight industry is like a piece of cake. The cake will not get bigger over time. Currently, a large number of freight platforms disguised as the Internet are eyeing the cake in the mouths of traditional players.

This is an internal circulation of existing stocks, and if there is no growth, there is a risk of falling behind .

And gradually everyone realized that the supply in this industry is sufficient, and tapping into demand is the key, and supply always follows demand.

03 How to attract new customers

Attracting new customers is a money-spending game, and pursuing high ROI is the basic principle. To achieve efficient new customer acquisition, it is necessary to be clear about: who to attract, where to attract, and how to attract .

Here we break down the new customer acquisition problem into 3 dimensions/9 new customer acquisition methods, as shown below:

04 9 ways to attract new customers

1. Labeling tools

The premise of attracting someone is to determine the target users. Common target user types are:

• Wholesale market users
• Professional market users
• Small and medium-sized factory users
• Medium and large manufacturing users
• Fresh food users
• Logistics and express delivery users
• …

Identify target users through user tags, such as industry attributes/product preferences. Online freight platforms can use labels to attract new customers and find new delivery opportunities outside of conventional delivery channels. The idea is: label and classify existing users on the platform -> extract the common characteristics or channel sources of different types of users -> find corresponding channels for pilot delivery based on the common characteristics or sources.

This is a question that goes from one thing to another. The essence is to innovate in the delivery to achieve an improvement in the ROI of the delivery. The difficulty lies in the identification of common features, which requires a lot of analytical work. ByteDance should have a very mature methodology for its investment in this area, and you can do more research and learn from it.

2. Relationship chain

No man is an island, I'm sure we've all heard this saying at some point. Whether it is an interpersonal relationship or a business relationship, there will be interactions between people, and some clues will be left behind.

1) Interpersonal relationship chain

It means using each person’s relationship chain to attract new customers, and using possible relationship chains to find potential new users.

Some ways to try are:

• Old new marketing activities, similar to Pinduoduo’s “Kan Yi Dao”
• Let drivers attract new users and recommend familiar customers to the platform
• Encourage internal employees to attract new members, referred to as the referral ambassador strategy

2) Business relationship chain

China is currently the country with the most complete industrial categories, and countless companies are in a long chain, which we call the industrial chain. When conducting business activities, relevant information will be left behind.

From the user shipping the goods, the driver picking up the goods, unloading the goods, the warehouse management taking care of the goods, to the final recipient confirmation. Every role in this long chain has user resources or is a user itself. It is particularly important to note that the recipient is the real demander.

If the various business relationships in the entire chain can be mapped, the imagination of attracting new customers will become extremely huge, but the difficulty of accomplishing such a thing is also very great, and different adjustments can be made based on one's own abilities.

3. Location Mining

We have solved the problem of "who to pull". Now we will move on to where to pull. There are two dimensions: offline geographical distribution and online data distribution.

1) Geographical distribution

Usually users are concentrated in geographical locations, such as industrial parks, logistics parks, building materials markets, etc. After finding out where the users are, attract new customers through door-to-door marketing, cold calling, or promotion within the park.

You can select some relatively large parks, divide them into different groups, test different strategies for attracting new customers, and thus control the cost of attracting new customers.

• Main publicity. Such as vehicle entry barrier material publicity, park publicity column, property notice, leaflet distribution
• Focus on sales follow-up. Visit directly and find potential users

The above is a single-point attack. A comprehensive attack depends on map tools, which can show on the map where users are concentrated, how many there are, how much the platform has tapped, and how much more can be tapped.

2) Network distribution

Users are also concentrated on the Internet. Generally, telephone information is kept on Qichacha/Tianyancha/Yellow Pages. High-seas users can be converted into new platform users through telephone marketing or WeChat marketing.

You can also join local cargo-sourcing WeChat groups, 58.com, and industrial park WeChat groups to identify and track customers through WeChat marketing.

WeChat marketing tracking also has mature methodology in the financial field, and you can use the ideas to form an SOP script tracking flow.

4. Expand product categories

Expanding product categories, as the name suggests, means adding more goods or services. Demand is always unlimited. If the current demand is not met, then increase the supply that can meet the demand.

1) Physical items

Physical categories refer to objectively existing physical items. For example, JD.com started with 3C products and then gradually expanded to home furnishings, clothing, books and other physical categories.

This has something to do with supply-side reform, which is to tap into new demands by improving or increasing supply capacity . By adding new categories of physical goods, users whose original needs were not met can be included in the scope of new customers, thereby achieving growth.

The details are as follows:

2) Value-added services

In the freight platform scenario, providing value-added services to meet the needs of niche users will also bring growth.

For example, for users who need to collect payment on behalf of others, launching a payment advance function can effectively attract potential waiting users. For example, for users who need return receipt services, we provide mailing return receipt services, which are fully online.

3) Combined services

Combination services refer to creating new categories by combining existing basic services (using reservation functions and quotation functions).

For example, providing chartered car services to meet the special needs of users at a certain time; for example, providing carpooling services for customers who are transporting goods to the same destination, helping users save the cost of sending small goods.

4) Extended services

Extended service refers to expanding the concept of cargo transportation and thus expanding the scope of services, such as container towing services. There are many domestic ports, and container towing services is a huge market with many players currently. For example, moving is also a form of transporting goods, and it is also a service that can expand the user base.

5. Content Promotion

Using short videos and public accounts to attract new users is a common method. Another method is to let seed users produce content to attract new users. Attracting new users by using content is the main battlefield for user growth at present, so you can boldly try different approaches.

6. Competitive product analysis

Research competitors, analyze their distribution channels, operating methods, new customer acquisition strategies, etc. Sometimes imitating competitors is also a form of business competition.

7. Drive sales

For users with high average order value, simply relying on online outreach is not enough, and corresponding field promotion or sales personnel are needed to follow up at each point.

Attracting new customers by motivating sales staff is a more effective way . After all, you have to get the people first before you can get things done, and it is easier to get things done if you have the people.

Here we adopt the idea of ​​B-side operation:

1) Improve internal efficiency

Provide sales with comprehensive customer management tools and marketing tools

• Map tool to see where customers are, how much they have tapped, and how much more they can tap
• Marketing tool, gift packages that distribute coupons to different users according to different scenarios
• CRM tools, customer tracking and customer management

Provide management tools for sales managers

• Effectively measure who is good and who is bad
• Work together to create an incentive system and monitor its effectiveness

Work with sales managers to standardize behavior and guide the SOP manual

• • Complete script and action chain from pre-sales to sales to after-sales
  • Script library, marketing material library, product manual
  • Project templates, project preparation specifications, successful case teaching

2) External value-added

Product packaging presents effective product value to customers

• Typical successful product case creation
• Beautiful brochure for external product promotion

It will also involve customer stratification and rights design

• High, medium and low value customer segmentation
• Design of rights and interests for customers at different levels

The above is the perspective of assisting sales. You can also consider assisting customers , which is similar to the concept of customer success. We will discuss this in detail below.

8. Cross-industry cooperation

Through resource exchange and cooperation with other industries, mutual diversion can achieve a win-win situation. For example, cooperate with the local home building materials alliance and fresh fruit alliance in each city to obtain user information.

9. Solution

The solution is placed last because it is the hardest. A solution is a way to help your clients succeed and acquire new users. The most difficult users on online freight platforms are those who own their own vehicles. Different platforms choose different target customer groups and provide different solutions.

How to attract customers who own their own vehicles? Characteristics of this group: They generally own vehicles, have their own drivers, have high frequency of freight demands, and occasionally use the platform, etc. The difficulty is that owning vehicles and paid drivers means costs, so the solution becomes how to help users solve the cost problem. Some of my personal thoughts are:

Option 1: Purchase vehicles from merchants and hire drivers, operating with heavy assets. This will not only supplement the platform's transportation capacity, but also save costs for customers, while also serving other customers.

Solution 2: Register the merchant’s drivers as platform drivers, provide designated drivers with order placement function, and provide credit term discounts, so that merchants can place orders on the platform and turn the platform into a tool for merchants to manage transactions. Merchants get cost benefits and management tools, and platforms gain new transportation capacity.

05 Conclusion

Regardless of the method, a good underlying tool support is required: stable and reliable label production, traceable channel delivery tools, complete customer management tools, leading marketing reach tools, etc. If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. This is something we must all pay attention to.

At the same time, the above content does not mention many operational details, but is just a starting point to stimulate everyone's thinking. The real business world is full of complexity. Attracting new customers is a battle with people, competitors, the past, and the future. There are no unchanging standards, only constant experimentation.

Author: Xiaohe Operation Notes

Source: Xiaohe Operation Notes