Your Logistics Marketing & Sales Playbook from 2025

Episode Transcript
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(00:37):
Blythe, welcome into anotherBest of episode of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers and freight. We are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics, and I am your host,
Blythe Milligan, and in thisedition of our best of series,
we're going to be talking aboutour favorite, or really your

(00:59):
favorite, marketing and salesthemed episodes over the course
of the last year. Now, a coupleof these episodes are from
November of 2024 but becausethey were released a little too
late in the game to be includedin last year's topics, we ran
the numbers and decided to makethe editorial decision to
include them in this episode,and so we've got five, actually

(01:23):
best of episodes that areappearing in this one, so you
can binge it over the holidaysand maybe take some inspiration
and some ideas of what'sworking, what's not working, and
how you can adjust yourmessaging in order to earn new
business and earn betterbusiness. And so those five
episodes are the first one isthe supply chain. Is the

(01:45):
product. Now, this was a soloepisode that I did, really
focusing in on how you can lookat every aspect of your supply
chain, or really the supplychain of the products that
you're selling, or the supplychain of the products, of the
logistics of that product thatyou're selling to your
customers, and understanding thesupply chain journey that it

(02:05):
takes over the course of itslifespan, so that you can sell
that the management of the orthe shipment of that freight
better. So the supply chain isthe product is the first one,
the next episode, we have theTMSA so the transportation
marketing and sales Associationthey have in a study that they
release every two years thattalks about the freight or asks

(02:28):
its membership, what sales andmarketing strategies are they
using? This is another one ofthose episodes that was released
in November of 2024 and you guysjust really, really loved it on
both podcasts and YouTubeplatforms. And so we included
that in this episode as well.
And we go through all of thedifferent data points on who's
using what software, what kindof marketing or sales issues are

(02:51):
they deploying or exploring. Andso we include that episode in
this mix. And Grace Sharkey,friend of the show, she's going
to be appearing in a lot in thisparticular episode, because we
go through that TMSA studytogether, and we go highlight
all of the different data pointsthat we thought were interesting
in the report. Next up, we aregoing to cover the best Reddit

(03:15):
freight sales tips. And that's,you know exactly how it sounds.
I am a regular browser of thefreight broker subreddit,
logistics subreddit, and I saveall of the posts that I think
that are interesting, especiallyones that are around sales and
marketing. And so I saved all ofthose tips up over the course of

(03:35):
really years, and then I madethis episode of the Best freight
or best Reddit freight salestips. So that's number three on
the list. Number four on thelist is how marketers are
actually using AI. And this is aanother show that we did, or
another snippet or a segment ofa freight Friends episode with
gray Sharkey, where we go overthe new data and smart tools

(03:58):
that actually work when you putthem into practice, none of this
fluff or fakery or what's comingdown the pipeline. What are the
tools that people are usingright now that they're seeing an
impact from so we cover that inthe fourth episode. And then
finally, for all of this SEO orSearch Engine Optimization nerds

(04:20):
out there, we got a good one foryou at the end, because Grace
Sharkey is she was newer at thetime that we recorded this
episode, she was newer at herjob at orderful, which is an EDI
company, and she was having somequestions about SEO and what she
how she needs to think about it,what she needs to do, especially
in the age of AI, where there'slots of questions around these

(04:43):
fake phrases of AEO and GEO, andit basically, it all comes down
to the same principles that welearned from an SEO perspective.
So I've done SEO for years, andI've been quite successful at it
in my own personal websites. Andso this is basically this last
segment is me teaching aboutSEO, and then also explaining

(05:06):
how AI kind of plays a role inthat process. And then any of
the common questions that folkshave about how to, you know,
find those low hanging fruitopportunities and find those,
those winners in this modernsort of digital age, and how you
should think about, you know,even, should you even be

(05:28):
blogging in today's digitalmedia age? So that is, it's a
highly useful episode foranyone. Who's looking for
inspiration, whether it's from afundamental standpoint, because
we, I mean, we talk abouteverything from the digital age
and SEO and AI and that side ofthe spectrum, but then also on
the flip side of that spectrum,from some of the best marketing

(05:50):
that we have seen in logistics,and some of that comes from
direct mail. And so we cover allsort of coins, or all sides of
the coin in this one. And I'verambled long enough, so let's
get right into it, and let'stalk about how the supply chain
is the product. Hope you allenjoy. Welcome into another

(06:11):
episode of everything. Islogistics, a podcast for the
thinkers and afraid. I am yourhost by the Milligan and we are
proudly presented by SPIlogistics. And in this episode,
I want to talk about a recentappearance that I had on the BBC
called a show called What in theworld. Now this is an audio
based podcast that theysometimes turn into video

(06:31):
format, but it's available overon YouTube. I will list it in
the show notes, in case you wantto check out the full episode,
but it was about 30 minutediscussion. Discussion centered
around how the global supplychain kind of works. I think for
a lot of folks, obviously not inour industry, but for a lot of
outsiders, there are a fewmoments over the last, say,

(06:53):
handful of years, that thesupply chain becomes top of news
for them, the ever given gettingstuck in the Suez Canal was one
of the bigger pivotal moments.
This whole tariff conversationwas another pivotal moment. And
then there was also, wheneverthe tariff conversation

(07:15):
happened, there were a lot ofChinese manufacturers and a lot
of Chinese sellers that weretaking it directly to Tiktok to
go direct to consumer and tobasically tell and inform the
American people and really theworld on where the overwhelming
majority of stuff ismanufactured. How much is the

(07:36):
cost for each of these things,and then it trying to
essentially get you to buydirect from these Chinese
manufacturers, or to take it astep further, and just from what
I understand and from some ofthe videos that I that I watched
and that I gathered is that theyno longer wanted to be seen as a

(07:57):
country that manufactures the,the cheapest goods they wanted,
their their manufacturers andtheir artisans to be known as
people who do very quality work.
And that, I think there's,there's definitely a hint of
truth on, on that end, and thenthere's definitely a hint of
truth on just, you know, a bunchof, frankly, you know, plastic
junk that's, you know, beenmanufactured because China is

(08:17):
the center of the world when itcomes to manufacturing
processes. So they manufacture avariety of different goods from
the lower end, sort of the cheapcrap that you know is maybe
they're trying to get aroundthat image and get around that
perception and shine a light onwhere they're really their

(08:40):
craftsmanship is really taken afoothold, and that's in the
designer bag market. So a lot ofthese videos went viral. They
started out on Tiktok, showingexactly how the processes is
made from all kinds of differentproducts, but I was mainly
talking about the videos thatwere on designer hand handbags
for this particular episode, itbasically it formed a new thesis

(09:02):
for myself, that the supplychain is really the product,
because for the first time inhuman civilization, we are
seeing the global trade re bereorganized right in front of
our eyes. You know that overhundreds, sometimes 1000s of
years, you know global trade andports and shipping, and you know

(09:24):
where those goods are shippedand who buys them and why, you
know has all been decided by avery small amount of people in
all over the world, and in thisparticular case, in 2025 we are
able to see these discussionstake place in a public format,

(09:45):
which I think is just like as aside note, is so fascinating.
But then on the flip side, weare now able to see the hows and
the whys of these discussionsbeing made. And I want to bring
it back to a quote that I heardyears ago where Elon Musk talks
about how the factory is theproduct and that you can't have

(10:07):
and basically what he was sayingis that you can't have a good
product that's affordable andtrustworthy and dependable, and
you know, all the things thatyou want out of a product that's
being made, you can't have thatunless you have the factory. I
would take it a step further andsay the supply chain is the
factory. Because the thesis ofwhat and the the point I wanted

(10:30):
to really hammer home duringthis BBC appearance is that you
have to. Think about, it's notjust, let's use the designer
handbag example for a second,because you can't just think
about where the leather is.
Maybe the leather is brought in,or the threads that is sewing

(10:51):
the leather together, the metalthat's on the bag. Where is that
metal sourced? It's notnecessarily the factory that
puts it all together. It's thesource of the source of the
products, of where you'regetting all over the world, and
then how you're bringing thoseall under in house, or whether
you're using differentmanufacturing partners or

(11:11):
assembly partners or packagingpartners. There's lots of
different structures for manydifferent kinds of businesses
all over the globe, but mythesis is that the supply chain
is the product. And so it'sbasically talking about, you
know, the machinery that also isinvolved, and not just the human
craftsmanship, but themachinery. And so this

(11:33):
discussion really led to sort ofa larger these viral videos,
rather, led to a largerdiscussion around where our
stuff comes from, how we, youknow, think about national
security, and also realizing, Ithink, some larger trends that
are going on in the world. And Ithink, you know, the point of a

(11:56):
lot of those viral videos thatwe saw, which have since been
deleted. You know, a lot ofthose videos have been deleted
for what reasons I do not know.
I can only assume, but there isa message behind some of those
videos, and that is in, youknow, there's, there's only
really one country in the worldthat knows the buying habits of,
you know, American consumers,and that's the Chinese they want

(12:21):
you to buy more from them. Acontent creator, James Lee over
on YouTube, he's done somefantastic investigative
journalism, and one of thetopics that he covered was this
exact point was being thesevideos are having the goal of,
even though there's this momentof time where everybody is

(12:44):
talking about, you know,switching their manufacturing,
is it near shoring is itoffshoring? Is it trying to
build it in America? Is ittrying to build it in a friendly
country? Maybe a friendly rightnow country, but the Chinese are
trying to get you to still buyfrom them over the long haul. So
I think it's important for and Iwant to read off some of these

(13:06):
numbers that I put together forthis BBC appearance. And it's
essentially China's dominanceand control over a very large
portion of a lot of things thatare made in the world. Listen to
this, that 30 to 40% of globalelectronics come from China. 40
to 50% of pharmaceuticals. Sidenote that is not included in my

(13:27):
notes, but a side note is frommap, human intent over on x. He
essentially said, he says thatfor the overwhelming majority of
our livestock in the UnitedStates, they depend on a vital
supplement that comes fromChina. And I think over 90% of
our livestock in the UnitedStates is so is reliant on this

(13:49):
one supplement that if these ifthis livestock, does not have
access to that supplement, thenthey will die. And it's
something like they have to haveit every, every single day. But
then if they go for a few dayswithout it, then they are at
risk of not living, of notsurviving. So that's a very
scary statistic to know thatindividually, 40% 40 to 50% of

(14:13):
pharmaceuticals are controlledby China. But the fact that the
our, you know, entire livestockpopulation, damn near an entire
livestock population, isdependent on a supplement that
comes from China as well. Over40% of textiles come from China.
50% of robotics, the refining ofrare earths, machinery to make

(14:37):
the machine, etc. All of thesethings are part of the supply
chain process, and they'remostly being done in China. So
another larger trend that Iwanted to bring up, so that's
that's one sort of larger, largetrend that has been trending,
frankly, for the last couple ofdecades, another trend that I
think that these videos arereally that have really hinted

(15:00):
at, is the morality dilemma, andthat for many of us this, this
tariff conversation, theseglobal trade conversations, this
could be a much needed wake upCall on our own consumerism
habits. Few more stats thatJames Lee had in his video, and
he said US household debt hastripled over the last three over

(15:23):
the years. Per Forbes, less than1% of urban Chinese citizens use
consumer loans to purchaseconsumer goods, while 47% of all
US families have. Installmentloans and 46% carry a credit
card balance. Remember what mypoint about? You know, nobody
knows the consumer. Nobody knowsthe US consumer, like China

(15:45):
does, and they know that we arebig spenders. They know that we
are willing to go into debt oversome of these consumerism
practices. And so the moralitydilemma comes into play whenever
you think about, you know, someof the, I guess, over the last
handful of years, the lack oftrust in institutions,

(16:07):
especially elite high fashionones. There's a lot of, you
know, a growing concern aboutwhere products are made, where,
you know, fabrics are sourced.
It's sort of a, I think, alifting of the veil moment for
some viewers over on Tik Tok,whenever these videos were
released. And, I mean, I hadknown that, you know, China has

(16:31):
manufactured, you know, a goodmajority of our products, but I
didn't know it was to thatextent. And I think it's aI you
even work in this industry. AndI didn't know it was that many
industries to that level ofextent. And I think that this is
sort of lifting of the veil andof our morality of like, what we

(16:51):
should be doing, what we shouldbe buying, maybe what we should
not be buying. It really isshocking how much of the world
China controls throughcontrolling the their supply
chain and treating the supplychain as a product. Now, on the
flip side, I do think that for alot of these designer bags, you
know, a good move or a good Iwould say not not a good

(17:13):
response, but it was a responsefor many folks, is that they're
just going to go buy directinstead of, you know, going into
a Hermes store and hoping thatyou can get put on a waiting
list to be able to have thehonor, I guess, of spending
1000s of dollars for a designerpurse. You know, maybe you would

(17:34):
be able to do something elsewith that money and be able to,
you know, buy direct from aChinese manufacturer instead of
going directly into the theHermes shop. I do think, though,
that there is a certain level ofpeople that for the rest of
their lives, they're always infor really future generations,

(17:55):
they're always going to look fora way to signal wealth. And I
think designer handbags anddesigner clothes and things like
that, some of the quality canstill be questioned, the
quality, plus the price couldabsolutely be questioned. And
then some of the standardsaround what some of these
companies, their, I guess, theirown morality as well, is that

(18:17):
something that you would want tosupport with your own money? And
I think what we're seeing is agreater rise in in different
consumerism paths. And there's afew trends that I kind of want
to pull on here. So if you'renot part of that wealth group
that wants to signal that you'rewealthy, and a designer handbag

(18:39):
is a perfect way to do that.
There are lots of many otherways. Cars are one of them.
Houses are one of them. There isa few different trends that are
happening in the United Statesin particular, and I think that
this will help resonate, ormaybe it might, you might
resonate with some of thesedifferent stats, and the one of
the points is that rise invintage shops, in flea markets,

(19:01):
and one of the stats was,consumer behavior is a key
driver. 70% of global consumersare planning to buy used goods
this year, and 86% having boughtor sold pre loved items in the
last 12 months, this trend isparticularly strong among
millennials and Gen Z, who valuesustainability, with over 1

(19:22):
million Instagram posts taggedsustainable fashion in 2023 now
there's another aspect to thistrend, and that is the thrill of
the hunt. So think about it,from the vintage flea market or
vintage vintage flea markets,kind of an oxymoron, but the
vintage markets a flea market,these are placed and even to the

(19:43):
point of like home goods or TJMaxx. These are side note
retailers that are surviving andthriving in an era where, you
know, online shopping has, youknow, sort of dominated the
landscape over the last, say,five years. But then you think
about it from the in person,people searching for community

(20:04):
type angle, and that's wherethrift stores come into play,
and that's where you know beingable to find something that no
one else has is very key. It'svery pivotal. And sometimes
people use this as acommunication method. You know,
fashion is very much acommunication style of who you
can communicate to and why, ofyour own personal interests. And

(20:28):
so it just kind of naturallymakes sense that in a world
where things are so especiallyclothing. Especially fast
fashion, is so copy paste thatpeople are looking to stand out
a little bit more, and findingsomething that is a little bit
older, it's probably madebetter. It's better quality. You
can get it for much cheaper. Andthen you can also have that sort

(20:52):
of feel good vibe that you'regoing to wear, something that
probably no one else has, noneof your friend group, or, you
know, people out are going to bewearing and then you can also
have the, I guess, the moralcompass of, you know, you're
recycling something, instead ofgoing and buying a t shirt from
Sheehan that's going to last,you know, five seconds, and
you're, you're going to wash it,and it's going to fall apart. So

(21:14):
there's a little bit of thatmorality at play, too. Now, if
we switch gears a little bit,wait first, I did want to
mention this stat, becausethere's also the popularity of
online resale platforms. Andthat's where I kind of wanted to
switch gears a little bit, is togo into the online aspect of
some of these different, youknow, vintage style or resale

(21:35):
type markets, but the popularityof online resale platforms,
while not directly vintage shopsor flea markets, they also
support the broader market witheBay's pre loved apparel sales
growing over 400% globally fromMarch 2023 to march 2024 That's
an insane stat, 400% globallyfrom March 2023 to march 2024

(22:01):
now, what does that look likeonline? It's what you know, kind
of the going back to the viralvideos. It's also a level of
information war, where if youcan win the PR in the
information battle, then you youhave a chance to sort of change
the trajectory of how some ofthese policies are being made,

(22:25):
what the conversation stemsfrom, who's having the
conversations. And so I thinkthat that is the information war
is, is a very key part of thistrade war as well, or hopefully
the trade war is ending. Wedon't know it's depending on
when you're listening to this.
Who knows I'm recording this onMay 14? We do tentatively have a

(22:49):
trade deal with China right now,so it's not essentially a trade
war anymore. Will that change inthe future? Nobody knows I'm
recording this at night on May14, just in case it changes
within the next hour or so,which is sometimes has happened
when I've been recording overthe last few weeks during all of
this T word drama, and that is atariff drama. Okay, so what does

(23:12):
that look like online? Now, whatthis looks like online, and
where we've covered in someprevious episodes, is how
companies are starting to bemore forward with how they talk
about their supply chain online.
There are some websites thatcan't that give out that list
out their entire supply chain,where your supply chain can
become your competitiveadvantage. And so one, okay, one

(23:36):
of the stats that this onecompany, and I'll mention the
company here in just a minute,but they talk about one of those
competitive advantages in thatone dump truck of clothing is
burned every minute of everyday, and the average person buys
a new piece of clothing everyfive days. Now these are all the
all of these numbers are before,sort of the the tariff drama,

(24:00):
which we've seen purchasingfault off of a cliff for sites
like temu and Shein, becausethat, you know, you're only
really buying these productsbecause you can get them quick
and you can get them cheap. Youdon't really care about sort of
the quality, because you're kindof rolling the dice anyways. And
so that that's kind of stemsback to the morality dilemma

(24:21):
that I think for a lot of folks,we are kind of starting to alter
how we spend money. I mean, atleast I know for myself, like I
had zero problem ordering, youknow, 100 bucks worth of sheen
clothing, getting 30 outfits andsending 20 of them back. And I
would do this probably once ortwice a year, just in order to
have maybe, like, a summer hallor like a winter haul of

(24:42):
outfits. A Floridian, I don'treally have, you know, a lot of,
like, winter clothes. So Ibought a ton of winter clothes.
Wasn't sure which ones I wasgoing to wear, but then I just
ended up shipping and returningback the rest of them. Now, not
so much. I'm not going to dothat now, and that is a morality
thing that I should haverecognized before, but it took

(25:03):
all of this sort of global tradedrama to really break myself of
just instantly, like buyingthings and just because it's on
my phone, you know, social mediaads have got me pretty good,
especially on Tiktok, those atthe way that they can target
content and ads is, unlike noother Instagram is also very

(25:23):
good when it comes to targetingas well. But Tiktok will get me
so much more than any otherplatform and but since all of
this drama has started, it hasreally, I would say. I cut my
spending on social media, Ithink, has been cut by 80% and
that is a dramatic amount ofsavings. So I don't know if

(25:44):
that's happening for a lot ofother people, but based on the
sales at Sheehan and Timu, Iwould be confident in saying
that that definitely has beenhappening. And we're, you know,
before all of this tariff drama,we were living in a world where
we were just buying more andmore and more and not really
caring about the environment.

(26:04):
But an average person buys a newpiece of clothing every five
days, and one dump truck ofclothing is burned every minute
of every day. That is insanewith how much we're purchasing.
Remember, a lot of this stuff.
It doesn't last. And so that'swhere you see the trends and
sort of the rising of thevintage marts and the flea
markets and things like and theonline resellers and things like
that. So my my thesis around thesupply chain being the product

(26:27):
evolves into brands need toreally own their supply chain
and really use it as a marketingcompetitive advantage, because
people are becoming more awarealso of greenwashing. Creators
have also made this theirmarketing strategy. If you've
checked out the tanner leatherStein, he tests leather goods

(26:50):
and highlights the small brandsdoing it right. He is a creator
over on Tiktok, and you mighthave seen him taking like these
designer bags and destroyingthem and testing them. He'll cut
them up, he'll, he'll, you know,rub the the leather. He'll do
all these different qualitytests to see if it's actually
worth it to to purchase thesehigh, expensive brands. He was

(27:15):
doing all of the storytelling asa hobby, and then when all of
the tariff drama and globalsupply chain drama starts
dropping, it was kind of a coolmoment to watch him know exactly
where all of these materialscome from. He's he's been
shining a light on the brandsthat have been doing it right,
even smaller brands that areless famous and also less

(27:36):
expensive, but have betterquality and better artisans that
are putting together thesedifferent bags. He's been
shining a light on them. Now,because of all this drama, he
has now been able to take hisstorytelling to another level,
where he's building his ownproducts. He's building his own
quality, designer looking bags,and he's doing it all himself.
His name is Tanner leathersteinover on Tiktok. So if you have a

(28:00):
chance to follow him, highly,highly recommend it, because
he's he's one of those creatorsthat I felt, that I feel, has
been doing things the right wayand building an audience and
building great storytelling inorder to help his audience
become more educated, and then,in the process, now he has a,
you know, he's able to develop aproduct of his own. So I just

(28:22):
think that's super cool, andit's super interesting. And
really, you want to, I want tosupport people like that, so
check them out. I'll list themin the show notes. Let me make a
note to myself. Now, there'sanother aspect of this where
consumers are also becoming moreknowledgeable about the fibers
in the products that they'rebuying. And so for a lot of
folks, I never knew to look atlike, thread counts. I never

(28:45):
knew to look at the differentmaterials of what, how stuff is
made. I would look at it too. Iwould see like, you know,
polyester, for example. Ifrankly like the way polyester
feels. It's soft, it'scomfortable. It's in a lot of my
workout clothes, but it's alsotrying to kill me as well. And
so knowing that fact, I adjustmy purchasing habits

(29:09):
accordingly, and then alsoknowing that fact, I can better
investigate things that maybe Iwant to spend a little bit extra
money on, but I also don't wantto spend a little bit of extra
money just for the sake of aname. So being able to look at,
you know, really, I weddingseason is upon us, and so
looking for dresses online. If adress is $200 and it's made out

(29:33):
of polyester, I don't think so.
But if it's a workout shirt,it's $20 and it's polyester, I
might think so and so just know,having that different
educational awareness that isreally sort of stirred up over
the last couple of years, Iwould say now it's in really in
the mainstream of where yourstuff comes from and the types

(29:56):
of products that are being used.
That's an educational gap thatwe are filling. Now, there's
another company that I did wantto mention that, I think, and
I've mentioned on a previousshow with gray Sharkey freight
Friends episode, but fibers likecotton and wool having the
longest shelf life. Like, Imean, I knew about like cotton
and I knew like wool. Like, I'ma Floridian, so I don't have

(30:16):
much wool stuff. I don'tnecessarily need it all that
much, but there was one companycalled sheep Inc, where they
have transparency andtraceability on all of their
clothing that they sell. And theway that they do this is that
with their they talk aboutsheep. Sheep ink DNA, and the

(30:36):
transparency and traceabilityare the pieces of that DNA, and
they complete the picture of aresponsible label. Now, how do
they do this? Every piece of ofclothing or maybe a coat or
something that you buy fromsheep Inc, it comes with a tag
that's on the code itself, andyou can scan that that tag has a

(30:58):
QR code on it. You can scan it.
And then you can go to theirsite, and you can see the exact
sheep that it came from that'sstill alive. It's it's still a
live sheep, but you can seewhere the wool was taken from
that sheep to make your product.
And I think that that is socool. It's obviously

(31:19):
sustainability, and being anenvironmentally friendly brand,
and all of those good things,you can say all of those things.
And a lot of companies try tosay those things, but this
sheep, Inc, takes it a stepfurther, where you can actually
see the sheep that your productwas coming from, and you can do
it, and it's built right intothe label, and it's built right

(31:40):
into the ethos of the company.
So they not only are practicingwhat they preach, but they're
teaching their consumers in theprocess of where their product
is coming from, the supply chainis the product. And that's the
point I really want to hammerhome, is that this can be a
competitive advantage. I don'tthink that sheep Inc is going to

(32:01):
be the last company that everdoes this. I think that the
companies who are moreforthcoming with their supply
chain and how their products getto you, how they they charge
money and each step of thatprocess. I think that
transparency is what people arecraving, because they want to

(32:22):
know how stuff works. They wantto know where their stuff is
coming from, and they also wantto know that you're not scamming
them. And that's another side ofthe coin where you have a lot of
brands who are a little fakeabout their environmentalism,
their little fake about theirsustainability goals. They talk

(32:44):
a good game, but they don'texactly live up to it. And so if
you are curious about, you knowany company, there are a couple
different sites that can orthere's one site in particular.
It's called Good on you dot eco.
So Good on you dot eco, whereyou can see companies that are
true or kind of fibbing abouttheir supply chain and how

(33:06):
environmentally friendly theyare. So you can use use that
site is kind of like a crossreference in order to make sure
that you know you or not, tomake sure, but to maybe support
a brand with your money that aredoing things the right way. So
check out that site. Thenthere's another site called
trashy.io where, if you're goingthrough, you know, this sort of

(33:28):
springtime right now, you I dothis in the fall as well, but
you're cleaning out your entirecloset and you're making room
for new stuff to go buy, ormaybe, you know, not buy as
much. Yeah, it's neither herenor there. But if you're looking
to get rid of some items,there's a company called
trashy.io where you pay for abag. So you pay for, like, a

(33:48):
giant bad shipping bag.
Essentially, they send it toyou. You're typically are paying
like, 10 bucks for a fewdifferent bags. They do this for
electronics as well. And so theysend it back to you, you fill it
up, you send it back, and thenthey tell they give you a
certain amount of money inpartner money that you could

(34:10):
spend on their partner sites. Solet's use different retailers.
For example, we'll partner withtrashy to say that, hey, if
you're going to clean out roomin your closet by donating a
bunch of goods, then you'regoing to get a little bit of
cash back, and then you can useit to spend at our different
retail partners. I love thatthey do it with consumer
electronics as well. I can'ttell you how many damn USB cords

(34:32):
I have just everywhere. The factthat a USB cord is shipped with
every single product when we allhave more than enough of what we
need. As far as USB cords areconcerned, I sustainability idea
is give people the option toship with or without the USB
cord so we don't have to keepgoing through this constantly. I

(34:54):
cannot imagine how much waste isbeing created every single day
based on USB cords that no oneis going to use. So trashy does
that as well, where they have anelectronics component bag that
you can send in all of yourspare electronic components, so
you don't have to, you know,throw them in the nearest
landfill or littered orwhatever, or maybe they just sit

(35:15):
in a drawer somewhere. So putthem to good use. So I'll put
both of those links in the shownotes, just to make it easy. But
just the last few points I wantto wrap up here based on that
BBC appearance, is that thesupply chain is now the product.
You can use this as yourmarketing advantage, and then
you can also just use it as amorality advantage. It. So

(35:37):
transparency, open. I think thatthat will lead to greater gains
in the future for both brandsand just the planet in general.
So the supply chain is now theproduct. Every business owner
should be aware of it, but youcan only focus on what you can
control. So prioritizingdiversity of sources income and

(35:57):
maintaining optionality is keyto a lot of phases in life, but
especially your supply chain. SoI will also link to that BBC
interview in case you wanted totake a listen. We'll put all of
those links in the show notes,just to make things easy. But I
just kind of wanted to spreadthis thesis far and wide, that
your supply chain is now theproduct, and you could benefit

(36:21):
massively by showcasing ifyou're doing things the right
way and if you're not doingthings the right way, or you
want to support companies thatare doing things the right way,
there are also additionalresources as well. So hope you
guys enjoyed this episode.
Thanks for tuning in, and we'llsee in the next one.
But let's go ahead and move intoour next topic. Grace Sharkey

(36:41):
and Blythe Milligan here withyou. For everything is
logistics, presented by SPIlogistics. We're going to talk
about freight marketing, andthere was this TMSA benchmarking
study that was released. TMSA isa transportation marketing and
sales Association. I'm a boardmember on that association,
just, I guess, full disclosure,but they, every couple of years,
they release a benchmarkingstudy, and this year's

(37:04):
benchmarking study, I think, isthe best one since I've been a
part of the TMSA. It's the beenthe best one that I've seen. So
I was really surprised goingthrough some of these numbers.
Now, this study is onlyavailable in for TMSA members.
So that's a membership perk.
It's a membership benefit. Butwe're going to talk about some
of our favorite stats from ortakeaways from this study.

(37:24):
First, I wanted to sort of getit out of the way of like the
respondents sort ofdemographics. So let me see if I
can go ahead and bring up thedemographics of this study. I
always think it's important toshow who is answering and why.
So here are a couple of thedemographics from the study. And
so basically the respondentsthat we had where the majority

(37:45):
of participating companies arebusinesses with less than 500
employees and with more than 5million in annual revenue. Full
breakdown is about 39% of theserespondents for this are working
for companies that have at least100 employees. So 100 to 500
which is kind of crazy that it'scalled a small business, when

(38:05):
you have 100 employees, I feellike that's such a large
business. But then they the verynext demographic is micro
enterprises, which is less than50 employees, and that's about
19% of the sample ofrespondents. And then for
revenue purposes, there are thetop number of respondents. It
was about 25% of therespondents. Make more than 5

(38:28):
million, but less than 100million. Again, quote, unquote,
small businesses here, just soyou can get additional
breakdowns of it the type oforganization that the
respondents were part of. 57%were a three PL freight
forwarder, truck broker,carrier, well, actually not a
carrier. The next percentage is13% were motor carriers. Then

(38:48):
the percentage after that wasconsultants sitting at 10% and
so on and so forth. So those arejust some different
demographics, in case you arecurious about some of the I
guess the specific roles of thepeople who are participated in
this study. Time in currentposition was two to five years,
and so 41% of the respondentshave been working in their

(39:10):
marketing or sales role betweenthat timeframe and 36% of the
sample has five to 10 yearsexperience in the industry,

(40:13):
which I thought was was verygood. And so I I don't know why
I assumed a lot of marketers inthis industry just come in for
like, one or two years and thenbolt and go to another industry.
But that was cool to see that36% of the respondents were at
least. What is that? And my mathis right, 66% of the respondents
have at least two years ofindustry experience, which is

(40:36):
good to see. Okay, so first, soI just did a lot of talking.
What is your what is your firsttakeaway that stood out to you?
I've got a lot. Let me see.
Where should I start here, alsothe one place I thought was
interesting. So start as thetenure numbers. Let me pull
those up too, because I thinkthat's the very beginning of

(40:59):
tell me what, what page it was.
I'll, yes, I'll scroll to thatpage.
I've, I've got you page rightthrough giving page four. Good
old. Great.
Resignation. Perfect. Okay, sowe're on page four, the
resignation. Oh, there we go.
Page five, actually, yeah.
So I thought this wasinteresting, just because I

(41:21):
think it also follows a lot oflike, what we've seen in regards
to just what we're reporting atfreightwaves as well. Like,
that's, I was like, Oh, well, Iwish I could. I. Add this or
some articles that we've touchedon, but to see that there has
been for the medium, right? Thislike two to five, five to 10
year span, to see that the 10Year has has grown, I think is

(41:44):
awesome, right? I think thatwe'll get into a little bit
later. I think that goes alittle bit into the training
data that we got back andimprovements that we can make on
that. But a big part of thisstudy too, and we'll, we'll
touch on, I'm sure, during thischat, is the technology aspect
of things. So when I see theselike 10 to 2020, plus years

(42:05):
falling off, I think that'sreally interesting, is it
showcases right, how much ourindustry, I think, is changing,
and how maybe some of theseagain, I'm just speaking on I'm
numbers. I'm seeing, but there'sa chance that a lot of these
older generations, those havebeen a part of the industry for
that long, just don't know howto process the new automated

(42:28):
views actuallywatching this. We're going to
fix this. Keep talking. I'msorry.
Um, but like, for instance,like, there's been talks a lot
about, like, how companies likech Robinson have locked let go.
A lot of their more tenuredemployees have been there for
years and years and years. And Ithink that points to, like, a
different way that we're movingfreight right, like, the more

(42:51):
technological focus, more AIautomation, and who's going to
thrive during those changes, Ithink, are those who've only
been a part of the industry fora couple years, who are younger,
right? And are looking to applythat more to their job, who
aren't afraid of chat GPT andand see it as a tool instead of

(43:12):
something that could take theirjob. And then potentially, a lot
of these organizations, rightare looking to to grow their
footprint in this industry andcontinue on that technological
drive. And if the 1020, plusyear individuals can't figure
out those pivots, can't, youknow, understand that training,
well, let's have you retire,let's get you out of of the

(43:33):
situation and spend more timeeducating training. Are more
less tenured individuals. So yousee that across the board, if
there's if there are layoffs, alot of times recently, it's been
those who are in senior levelpositions. Because again, I
think a lot of our industry hasbeen used to doing things the

(43:54):
old fashioned way, and theyounger generations are coming
in and saying, Why, my God, arewe not doing this through
automation? I you know, like,why are we calling carriers
constantly when there's appsthat could easily do this, or
text messaging features, etc,and their TMS is and that

(44:15):
innovation is starting toshowcase, and the 10 year
overalls as well. So I justthought that was interesting,
because we've seen that when wehear about a lot of the layoffs,
we hear about it being more ofthose who have been at these
locate these companies longer,and happy to see that those who
haven't are at least stayingstaying loyal at companies,

(44:38):
staying there for a longerperiod of time, which probably
leads to better success when itcomes to adopting more tech over
time as well.
Yeah, cuz it one, as you weretalking, a couple of these stats
that that stood out to me is alot of these people, especially
the where we've seen growth, asfar as time and current position
was pre covid, and so rightbefore covid hit, and then after

(45:01):
covid, they've chosen to stay atthat position. Whereas, if you
have less than two yearsexperience, we're in 2024 you
probably started in 2022 whenthe freight market was booming,
and then things get a littletight, and things get rough,
cuts start getting made, andmaybe you decide this isn't the
industry for me, but for a lotof these folks that started
right before covid, or maybe acouple of years before covid,

(45:24):
are sticking around, and they'rechoosing to solve some of these
technology, I Think, problems,or maybe workflow problems, and
just the greater adoption of newsolutions, new technology, where
it's almost like we're movingaway from these, I guess, large,
bloated systems, into more likeniche focuses where you have

(45:45):
some like TMS is, for example,that have been around for
forever, and they launch A CRM,and the CRM is a glorified email
list, and it sucks, and amarketing or sales person can't
really use it, right? Whereasyou have somebody like a Thai
software which shout out tothem, sponsor the show, they
have a lot of these automationand workflows already built into

(46:07):
the system, so you don'tnecessarily have to rehaul your
entire software that maybe hasbeen around for a couple
decades, you can instead, youknow, jump right into getting
sort of modernized very quicklyand reducing the amount of
clicks that it takes to do asimple task. And so I thought
that that was, that was a goodnugget to bring up. So thank you

(46:29):
for that. Another one. These keyinsights that I wanted to bring
up was the sales goals, or justsales in general, is that fewer
companies are reaching theirsales goals. And I think that
it's kind of let me go ahead andbring up one of these pages that
talks about it says in 2022 92%of organizations were were able

(46:52):
to achieve more than science 75%of their sales quota. However,
this figure has significantlydeclined in 2024 and with only
45% of organizations reachingthe same threshold. So in just
two years, it's dropped from 92%achieving their sales 75% of
their sales quota to 45% I thinkthat probably has a lot to do

(47:14):
with the market, but I think itmaybe is a little reassuring to
folks in sales out there thatyou're not alone, that everybody
is struggling in this regard.
But there's something reallyinteresting going on with sales
folks too, and let me see if Ican bring this up from a sales
perspective, but their budgetsare also dropping, and they're

(47:37):
also not focusing on theircurrent customers because
there's a lot of revenue. Let mesee, budgets are on the rise.
Probably shouldn't be searchingfor this stat right now, but
it's it's one of those thingswhere they are. Companies are
hiring for a focus on newcustomers, but most of the ROI

(47:58):
is coming from a demo theyrarely target, and that's their
current customers. And so what'shappening with hiring is that
you're probably hiring a lot oflike young, cheap talent to go
after new customers, wheninstead, you should be focusing
on the customers that youcurrently have, because that is
your greatest chance for ROI,according to the study. So I

(48:21):
thought that that wasinteresting from a sales
perspective, andthat backs it up. It goes into
on page nine, right? Themarketing objectives and you're
right, if you're looking youwould, you would think, based
off of what you just said, thatyour marketing objective would
be focused on more of a customerretention or customer

(48:43):
experience, right? But those areactually have decreased in
market objectives and thebiggest, I guess all of them
have decreased, except for brandawareness, has gone up just a
little bit, but it's nowherenear if anything more of that
objective is still going towardscustomer acquisition. Then, I

(49:06):
always found that crazy, thatit's always like bringing,
especially this industrybrokerage side, it's always like
new customers. What's in yourfeed, right? What do you have
coming up? Where I was like,definitely more of a How can I
expand this really greatrelationship I've already built
and start taking over more oftheir their pie? Because that's

(49:29):
where you start to flush out thecompetition. It comes less about
price and more just aboutoverall experience. So I think
that has been, I don't know, Idon't know what I really want to
point that to, because part ofme all almost wants to say, you
know, I think they're hoping fora revenue drive with that, like,

(49:54):
how many times I can't tell you,how many times I've talked to
investors or things like that.
And they want to know how manylogos, right, have been signed
on? How many new customer newwhat new logos? How, where are
they? What are they? You know,it's like for for me, it's like,
well, you know, how much are youconcentrating right on, on the

(50:15):
companies you already have on Ithink a little bit goes into the
investor side of things. Maybethat's because we've seen that
happen more in the industry. ButI don't hate that marketing
objectives are focused on brandawareness, because I do think
that's something that peopleneed to focus on. But when you
mentioned the stats you just didon kind of the the customer

(50:38):
loyalty and the focusing oncustomer churn to see customer
experience was that 15 two yearsand 15% down to 7% is like,
yeah, and as a journalist, like,I, I'm about to go on like, a
tad bit of a rant, like, I, andI'm, you get this too clear.

(50:59):
This is like, your life. It'slike so many people will reach
out to me on articles or evenjust like, their own marketing
initiatives. And my favoritething, even as a journalist, is,
like, case studies, like, andyou're not going to do a case
study at a new customer. It's acustomer that you've had for a
long time. So to like, see that,I just think those two things,

(51:20):
brand awareness and customerexperience are like so close to
each other in terms of like, Iwant to stick with you because
of your or. Think of it like, asan Apple user, like, because of
the apple experience, it's tiedto the Apple brand. So, like,

(51:41):
how are, how is this industry sooff on understanding that?
Well, there, there. I love thatyou brought that up because
there was another factor of,yes, business factors have
shifted, and what are the topthree factors primarily
responsible for yourorganization losing business
from its customer base? And it'sthe inability to grow or expand

(52:03):
as the customer needs dictate orand that that sits at 45% and
that's up by, like, I don'tknow, 23% from 22 or 2022 and
the next one sitting at 41% for2024 is the inability to meet
comprehensive needs. It rarelyhas been price related. So
customer, they're not losingbusiness really because of

(52:25):
price. That may have happened to2022 but shipper needs have
probably shifted in that in thattime frame as well, where maybe
they were looking to cut costs.
In 2022 they're always going tobe looking to cut transportation
costs. But this year, the studyis kind of hinting that shippers
just want their stuff moved in areliable way, and they need
companies that can be able tofulfill that for them, as their

(52:47):
business needs change, and for alot of this lost business, the
drivers have been that thesecarriers, these brokers, are not
able to grow with them, not ableto solve problems with them. And
so I think that that's also areally key insight from this
study, is that by 2024 thelandscape has dramatically

(53:08):
shifted. The biggest contributecontributions to lost business
are now the inability to growwith customer needs 45% and the
inability to meet those needs at41% and they have surged by 23%
and 26% respectively,highlighting a major change and
what drives customer retentionand satisfaction that comes
directly from the study,which, again, is, like, kind of

(53:32):
so crazy to think about in thisday and age, because there's so
many different ways that aprovider can grow with customer
needs, right? Like, there's somany ways to partner with here's
a great example, like howcargado Right? Like, now it's
helping so many differentbrokerages offer a Mexico a very

(53:54):
good Mexico experience. And,like, I see that more and more
happening, or think of maybepartnering with someone like pop
capacity, who helps you findwarehousing capacity on demand,
right? Like, there's just maybeI'm like, more mad because

(54:14):
people aren't reading myarticles and, like, realizing,
like, these partners are outthere and exist, like, like, I
maybe they're just like, that'snot hitting them. But like,
these companies are, are thereto offer logistics companies a
chance to have warehousingcapability without having to buy
a warehouse in an environmentwhere probably your interest

(54:37):
rates aren't in favor ofpurchasing a large asset like
that, right? And so I that's,it's, it's mind boggling. Some
of this, these results becausethey're like pushing against
each other, and again, like tosay inability to expand or grow
like I can't. If you told me anytype of like industry operation

(54:57):
or service that you needed, lastmile service, you're me last
mile pickup. There's so manydifferent last mile providers
that you could reach out to it.
Just it kind of makes me laughthat like, you're not able to
find your customer need becauseI there's, I can't think of
something a customer to callabout, and I would have to tell

(55:20):
them, there's no way we couldfulfill that. I mean, LTL
services, my carrier, like,there's so many different ways
to go about itnow, and that's a that's a great
point, because, like, are thesecompanies, are these brokers,
and are these sales reps,account reps? Are they even
talking to their customers,like, are they knowing where the
customers are trying to go? Andthat was in the

(55:41):
survey, wasn't it? Or somethingabout going to drive me nuts
now, oh, yes, I think the verynext one, right? Does your
organization have a formalcustomer experience or customer
service review strategy inplace. And yes, a lot too, 39%
is a lot, but that's not goingto win you an election. Most of

(56:01):
them don't. And yes, an informalstrategy exists,
business and an election. Yeah,probably the same. 39% sounds
large, right?
Compared to like, but it'sreally not. It's like,
especially when you add and eventhe second one is like, Yes, an
informal strategy exists, butit's not sophisticated. Okay,
that's a no,that's a very nobody's aligned,

(56:22):
no one's communicating. Andyou're talking about that 55% of
companies like a formal processto understand customer. Needs.
And if we can put two and twotogether, where, if your current
customers are giving you thelargest ROI, and yet you're
hiring practices and yourprocess practices are not
aligning with those customers,they're going to leave you and

(56:44):
so let's do the math people aswe're figuring out our 2025
budgets, especially when itcomes to marketing and sales, we
got a lot more for got a lotmore for you. We're going to go
through a lot more stats, but Iwould start there. I would start
with my current customers. Iwould interview them. I would
get their top takeaways. Whereare they trying to go in 2025
and then you have yourpartnerships manager or your

(57:05):
partnerships director that couldstart to make some of those
cargado or, you know, carry yourpartnerships, you know, things
like that, LTL partnerships, youcan start making those moves so
that you don't lose thesecustomers, and you can continue
to generate ROI from thecustomer base and so they don't
leave you. And then thatprobably changes your hiring

(57:26):
practices, where you're nothiring kids that are fresh out
of college and have no ideaabout the industry, because
we've already shown you the statthat they're leaving within two
years anyways. And so put moreemphasis on your people and the
people who have already chosento do business with you.
And this is like a perfectexample of when I talk I know

(57:48):
Ryan Schreiber talks about thisa lot, like hidden data within
your organization, like in orderto answer that question
correctly that Blythe isbringing up right like these
lost opportunities, what'spotentially a customer can do
like that also means being ableto capture right your every

(58:10):
email that comes with a anoffering like I can guarantee
that your sales reps are puttingin every especially when they
get, like a long list of oflanes and quotes, they're
probably not putting that into asystem. So maybe looking at some
of these email providers likevuma, or some of these like

(58:31):
different capabilities that aredifferent technologies that,
like, help manage your emailinboxes and actually store that
data. So then you can actuallypull and see, oh, wow. Like,
this is a good I love this. Thisis, like, where my I, like,
really love operations, becausethen you're able to take that

(58:53):
customer, and maybe you're onlydoing like 10 loads of them a
week, but they're good riploads. They're easy to manage.
They pay on time. That's anotherthing too, right? You have these
customers, right? That do thatare like, beautiful on the
surface. They're like ice. Talkabout breaking ice. They're
like, icebergs right where,like, the top, you might just

(59:15):
think, okay, they're a goodcustomer, but underneath is
like, I can't tell you how manytimes you start to dive into
these people and you realize,oh, well, who's handling your
inbound, who's handling youroutbound, who's handling your
vendors that are coming intoyour systems? How many times a
new warehouse pops up. I mean,if this economy does start to
turn around here in the nextyear, people are going to be

(59:36):
looking at, you know, buildingmore infrastructure and
expanding the the theiroperations as well. So that's
your shippers, right? So, yeah,I again, this is like, in order
to to answer that question, itgoes back to, I think technology
too, is like, do you even havethe systems in place to capture
what's being lost, not just tosee a lot of times I see, like,

(59:57):
CRMs, it'll be like, Oh, here.
Fill this field out of like,what their yearly spend is,
yeah, for sure. But like, do youactually have the lane data and
things of that nature to say,Oh, wow, this is, like, clearly
a customer that we're missingout on, potentially missing out
on more freight from.
So I think the iceberg analogyis very fitting for this

(01:00:19):
episode, because you have noidea what kind of opportunities
or chaos just sit right belowthe water and you are missing
them. And so Alright, any lastbecause I want to move into a
little bit on the marketingside.
Thank you. I think you hit mostof them the other one, and that
kind of actually just goes backto my last statement was there

(01:00:43):
was one on data government.
Governance is becoming a biggerfocus. What is data governance?
Yeah, so data governance is likethe ability to know it's the
culture behind collecting andmanaging your data. So for

(01:01:05):
instance, let's say that you,you have a TMS system, and your
I'll actually kind of bring upan example from my old position.
So we would pull data often, andthere's two ways for our reps to
put in a load. Let's say it wasa load. They got a dedicated
load to them, right? They're notfighting anyone for it. I. There

(01:01:28):
was a way to enter that in askind of like a sale,
potentially, you could say. Butthere was also another way, a
faster way, to get loads on theload board that should be used
for spot freight, freight thatyou technically haven't won yet,
but you're trying to win it,right? So those are two
different situations. Now, atthe time, we had a problem with

(01:01:52):
reps only using the spot. Evenif they know they had the load,
they would use the Spot functionbecause it would post to the
load board faster, like that wasjust in their mind, how do I get
my freight to the low boardfaster? But not realizing by
doing that, I don't know whatair dedicated freight numbers
are, right, because you'reentering them into so data
governance is like being able towatch over an operation and say,

(01:02:15):
Okay, now that data is wrongbecause it's not being put in
right, or maybe the way thatwe're pulling it or entering
field numbers isn't correct.
Like another problem could belike, for instance, let's say
that you an expected deliverydate is just the 30th, and it

(01:02:37):
delivered on the 31st you, as adispatcher, didn't hear from the
driver, though, until the firstof the next month, so you just
don't really care about it. Youjust put in like the first.
Well, now if I was your pulldata on that lane, it looks like
it takes an extra day to deliveron that lane, right? And so it's
like building a culture thatunderstands, like, how data is

(01:03:01):
being entered into the rippleeffects of it, yes, exactly,
knowing, like, what you canpull, what you can't pull, and
how all the systems worktogether, and building a lot of
times that, like, integrationthat you're into, like, Tableau,
right? And pulling into knowing,like, what those fields should
come back as. So it's kind oflike that overall operations of

(01:03:22):
things thatmakes sense, yeah, and I think
that that's, that's probablysomething that happens so much
at organizations all theyprobably pull something and go,
this cannot be right. And itcan't it probably, you're right.
It cannot be right, but it'sbecause, you know, you put it
under a different, let's say, alot of times, right? You'll have

(01:03:43):
a customer who you invoice theirparent company, right? So it's
like, you might pull that and itsays, Oh, we've never done loads
for Kroger, but, like, Krogerwants has you Bill, like some
other third party. So it's like,okay, well, that's not Kroger's
numbers. It's this one's right?
So it's like, I'm sure ithappens a lot, and that's where

(01:04:05):
people, a lot of times, getnervous about, like, data
initiatives, because they pullthings having very little, I
think, chattels. And actually, Iposted this on LinkedIn today.
Like, if you're, like, if youthink you're a data company,
and, like, you don't have, oh,and your data analyst doesn't
know Sq, Scq is, or whatever,which slow, yes, QL, yes, then

(01:04:29):
you don't have a data analyst,like, that kind of stuff, right?
It's like the data governanceand building that culture and
building the infrastructure toactually be able to set up
integrations appropriately pullinformation so that a CEO is
getting the right report everytime.
Yeah, and I think that this islike the perfect time of year to
start thinking about theseinitiatives and how you want to

(01:04:50):
clean up some of these acts andstreamline some of your
processes and why, and make sureyou communicate that to your
entire team. Because I imagineyou probably have a lot of
brokers out there that just wantto do things the fastest and the
easiest way possible, notthinking about the all of those
ripple effects that you justlisted. So I think that that's

(01:05:11):
that's a good place to end on.
Well, not end but to shift the,I guess, the conversation from
like the sales focus to themarketing focus of this study.
Because I know you're going tolike this next chart I bring up,
and it's talking about how manytools are being utilized for
marketing automation. And one ofyour favorites is at the top of
the list, I know near the top ofthe list. So we got chat GPT

(01:05:34):
sitting at 64% of adoption ratesand canvas,
which I don't know if you saw,but they aren't going to be
raising prices as much as theytold everyone. So thank you,
Canva.
We love especially a female CEOthat listens to their customers

(01:05:57):
and they make an announcementand it goes terribly, and she
reverses it all. So we, we loveto see it. So what rounds out? I
guess so that I'll talk aboutthe I guess the top four, the
top five of this list, becausechat GPT is far and away, the
most favorite when it comes totools being used. Canva is
second at 46 or 42% HubSpot isat 33% Zapier is at 24% and then

(01:06:21):
Adobe Photoshop rounds out thetop five with 24% but the very
next one after that is Gemini,which is very shocking to see.
Gemini, so new and so kind ofquestionable, but I think
that's just because it's anoffering within the Google
business suite. True, yeah. Sothat's, it's like, it's, you

(01:06:44):
know, I'm, I have the poorversion of Chachi. PT, so when I
saw, like, 3.5 Yeah? So sorry,you reached your max, and Gemini
is my backup. So, yeah,goodness gracious. I just gotta
use this opportunity to tellpeople to pay the $20 for check.
Do it? It is. It's cheaper thanCanva. That's for sure.

(01:07:09):
You know, I will say I got into,like, a really interesting
conversation, I won't say, withwho we say, I want to expose
people, but I did get into avery interesting conversation
about AI and some of thesetools. And, like, I think,
listen to Blythe pay the $20whatever. But I am very excited
to see because the fact that,right, I can, like, be like,
Okay, it's true you. I'll justhead to Gemini as more of these

(01:07:31):
tools come out. I mean, thisstuff's just going to get
cheaper, too. Get cheaper andcheaper. Yep, and it's going to
get cheap fast. And so we'regoing to, we're going to
investment point. Maybe thinkabout that investors, for all of
you invested in AI stuff, thefact that you're just fighting
for the who's going to have thelowest price over time. But on
the opposite side of it, for allof us purchasing it over time,
this stuff is going to becomejust even more, even better of

(01:07:55):
an ROI thing than than we seeright now.
So I'm working on a new productright now that I'm going to be
publicly launching in the earlypart of 2025, and the amount of
time that using chat GPT, theversion like for.io which is
like the latest version thatthey have for the paid plans. It

(01:08:15):
is lightning fast. The responsesthat I'm getting are so
incredibly helpful. I had plansto hire sort of a VA, like
virtual assistant for myself in2025 or maybe even just like an
additional marketing or salesperson to help out with the
variety of tasks that I feellike I'm starting to get to a

(01:08:37):
point where I just don't havetime in my day to do them, or
some of them, a desire in my dayto do them. But chat GPT has
helped tremendously with a lotof just really that second pair
of eyes, that second, you know,piece of information that I'm
looking to bounce ideas off of,you know, at 11pm at night, when
no one else is really up, andI'm thinking about different

(01:09:00):
ideas, and I just grandma,Yeah, true. Ralph, just go to
chat. GBT, too, when you ask meabout it.
But I will bring up one stat,especially because, as we're
talking about AI that going backto the study, which, again,
thank you to transportation,marketing and sales associate
TMSA, you can go over to TMSAtoday.org sign up, become a
member, and you can get accessto this same report as well. But

(01:09:22):
when we're talking about AI,there's no really rules around
AI usage, which is a securityconcern and a privacy concern
for a lot speaking of datagovernance, because 44% of
companies that are already usingAI do not have formalized rules
in place to govern its use. Thislack of regulation exposes these

(01:09:43):
businesses to significant risk,including potential legal
disputes, data breaches andethical challenges. Formal AI
governance frameworks can helpprotect an organization while
maximizing the benefits that AIcan offer. So that is crazy. 44%
have no rules around itwhatsoever.

(01:10:04):
So I think I told you about thistoo at the TIA tech conference
whenever I'm gonna throw namesout there, sorry to expose you.
Said it on stage, whatever happyrobot got asked that right?
Happy robot? For everyone outthere is a really cool system.
It's a really great job of,like, replicating a a brokerage

(01:10:26):
phone call, back down to, like,the verbiage it uses the
background noise. How it I wasgonna say manipulates. But
what's kind of getting mythought, how it like barters
between the carrier and the thecompany on load rates, etc. It's

(01:10:47):
really intelligent. But even oneof the questions I was asked at
the conference for the SharkTank thing was, well, at some
point, well, you have to tellpeople that this is a robot, and
even they said, probably withinthe next year. So like, is that?
What's that going to look like?
And I mean, I even had questionslike, Is it always going to be a

(01:11:08):
man that answers the phone isthere. There's at some point
where it's like, let me go askmy boss if that rate will work.
Like, that's a lie. You're notasking your boss, you know,
like, and to your point, like, Ikind of want to know that. Like,
I that makes me feel like, kindof Ick. No. Knowing, like you're

(01:11:29):
making up a negotiation thatisn't real. You know, in an
industry that thrives off ofnegotiation, and so I think
there will be a lot of theethics side of especially the
communication tools and back andforth. And I mean, even Amazon,
like, I'm trying to think, ifthey tell you it's a robot, it's
some I want to say that they do.

(01:11:51):
But we should have Mike on thisshow and ask him, actually about
this stuff. Now, I think aboutit, yes, like what they're doing
at codiff, andMike, over at codiff former yes
to the show as well. I think weactually just is speaking as
weird. You said that, because Iwe have been going back through
some of our content that we'verecorded in the last or in 2024
and just starting to add it toif, especially if it's

(01:12:12):
evergreen, add it to, like aRepublican schedule, just to
remind folks, you know, a lot ofthe people that been on the
show, but we literally sent outa tweet today about codiff. So
I'd be curious to know ifthey're still focused on the
logistics industry, because Iknow that they had a couple
different industry focuses.
They're more focused on theretail and E commerce
experience, right? So like,where's my product at? When can

(01:12:36):
that more of that situation, butstill like it? What? What's the
value of that product? And howdo you develop that product? If
there is a law that comes up andsays, hey, you need to tell
people like, this is a robot.
Like, I think, I definitelythink that will happen,
especially how quickly the happyrow, I think it was Juan was
like, yeah, like, that's gonnahappen, for sure.

(01:12:59):
So sorry, fruit fly, he's beenbugging me, if you've been
watching the video version ofthis show, he's been buzzing in
front of my face the entiretime, but he's buzzing no more,
because nowhe's it's better than a cat
sitting outside your door rightnow, just whining. So if you've
noticed me muting my voice thereonce when I was because this
thing wants to have yowling.

(01:13:21):
But okay, let's move on to acouple more of these stats, as
we are running up against theclock here, and we got a couple
more topics to get to. So on oneof these, there was another stat
I wanted to bring up. And Ithought budgets are on the rise,
but outsourcing is increasingversus hiring in house. So that

(01:13:41):
was another one fromyou know what? And I will say, I
understand the bias of of ustoo, right now telling you to
outsource. Outsourcing is away.
Yes, I understand that, but Itotally think that, and
especially in this industry, ifwe're talking marketing in

(01:14:02):
particular too, like outsourceit like you're I love the
marketing people out there, andmaybe you have someone in house
that's like, helping a littlebit with it, but like, in terms
of how you're selling the brandawareness you guys are all
obsessed with, apparently, thecustomer service you're not
obsessed with, like people likeBlythe would be telling you to

(01:14:25):
become more obsessed with thatbecause of their experience.
So that's where the money comesfrom. Think, yes,
outsource it, at least partnerwith someone. There will be some
value of it, especially even ifit's done guiding your own team
and somewhat like get theexpertise.
But also marketing is is sosusceptible to this as well, you

(01:14:45):
have to document your processes.
And I know that that's difficultfor creative folks to do, but
document your processes so youknow what you want to focus on,
what you want to do, and thenyou can do the monotonous stuff
and you can outsource that.
Because according to the study,it says one of the key reasons
for this balance between inhouse and outsource marketing is

(01:15:08):
the staffing structure withinmany organizations, with 51% of
the companies reporting thatthey only have one full time
response or employee responsiblefor multiple marketing
functions, the demand forexternal support is becoming
increasingly apparent.
Outsourcing offers a way tobridge that gap and enabling
organizations to handleessential tasks like content

(01:15:29):
creation, SEO, digitaladvertising, things like that.
However, the continued relianceon in house team highlights the
importance of internal expertiseand the trust of organizations
that people place, or that thebusinesses place in their own
people to steer that brandstrategy, customer engagement
and overall marketing direction.

(01:15:52):
So it sounds like you have for amajority of, well, 51% of
companies that have one fulltime employee that's managing
multiple marketing activities,which for a lot of these
executives that may or may notbe listening to the show, like
graphic designer is one job. Anillustrator is another job.
Those two jobs are not the same.
A photographer is not the sameas a video photographer. A

(01:16:14):
copywriter is not the same as adigital ads expert. Just because
someone knows how to set updigital ads doesn't mean they
know how to run those adsefficiently. Creating content is
just a whole other beast. Areyou doing video are you doing
case studies? Are. You justdoing texts? Are you doing
blogs? Why the hell are youdoing blogs? Are you focused on
SEO? All of these are individualroles that a lot of

(01:16:37):
organizations have placed on theshoulders, and it's happened to
me that you place it on the backof one person, usually somebody
that's an administrativereceptionist or an executive
assistant role that they have todo all of those other
functionalities, and in additionto run entire marketing
department that should havepositions for each one of those

(01:16:58):
skill sets that I just laid outfor you. So this is where AI is
really going to come into playto help a lot of these folks.
And then if you document yourprocesses, this is where
outsourcing can also help aswell. I also think that there's
a lot of unrealisticexpectations that are put on
these folks to be everywhere andall of the things all at once,
to be on seven different socialmedia channels and manage them

(01:17:20):
all effectively, and build awebsite and do all of these.
Stop putting so much pressure onyour one employee, which does
look like they're getting morebudget, but I hope that they're
not pulling their hair out inthe process, because anytime you
get more budget, then you'reprobably expected to do more
with with less people. And whenyou get to a certain level,

(01:17:42):
especially, you know it's notabnormal for $100 million
company to have one person thatdoes marketing like it is not
abnormal. And if you have $100million in revenue, just think
about your poor marketingperson's, you know, just job
responsibilities. And the nexttime you ask them, that's
probably why they're obsessedwith brand awareness and less

(01:18:03):
obsessed with customer they haveno damn time.
So true theythere's no time to do the
customer interviews when you'reasking them to be the SEO and
the content specialists and thesocial media specialists and all
of these. Oh, and let's start apodcast too, while we're at it.
Yeah.

(01:18:24):
Oh, that's like, because youknow how this, you know what? I
think we should start a podcast.
What are your thoughts on that?
After, after just cutting yourbudget on, like, a white paper.
Oh, but none of the executiveswant to be on the podcast, by
the way, yeah. Oh, good luck.
Oh, just the one executive who'slike, blatantly, like big hits

(01:18:44):
and like, likes to walk aroundand and make sure, like, the
women feel comfortable. Like,that's
which you might have more thingsto worry about, if that's
if it's always like the oneperson in your organization you
like. Don't want to have astage. Who wants the stage? You
know, I love it.
We feel for you. We feel foryou. Solo marketers in

(01:19:05):
logistics. Now, there are a fewmore stats here that I thought
were interesting. Which a coupleof these. I think we could
really go down a rabbit hole onwhich one of them is, LinkedIn
drops from 100% participation in2022 to 77% it was still far and
away the the number one usedsocial media. Oh, page 29 so on

(01:19:29):
page 29 of the study. SoLinkedIn usage drops. All of the
social media channels alsodropped adoption, with the
exception of Tiktok, which grewa little over the same time
period from 2022 is 23% adoptionrate to present day, it's 28% so
Tiktok is a lot more difficultto create content for which, I

(01:19:51):
think is why you're seeing usjust kind of a small rise in
adoption for that platform. Butevery when every other platform
is is seen dropping another statfirst, I guess, any, any, any
thoughts on the social mediausage, which I'm starting to
hear more complaints aboutLinkedIn. Like, it's just

(01:20:13):
annoying, which, I guess it'salways has been a little
annoying. But it does feel likewe, we passed the peak of
LinkedIn.
I have noticed, like, LinkedInis also, like, changing some of
their algorithm stuff. Like,I've, like, recently noticed
I've been getting, like, morebackdated things in my timeline.
It used to be like Saturdays andSundays. It'd be like anything

(01:20:34):
random from the past, like 10days. But now I've noticed that
even more so. So it kind ofreminds me, remember, on
Instagram went from like, we'reshowing you everything in
chronological order to like,trust us. Yeah, trust us. We
know what you want to see. And IIt feels a little like that. So
maybe that's the drop off. Ikeep telling. I mean, I I think

(01:20:59):
Instagram, here we go. I thinkInstagram is underused. It
should be.
It's so cringe. It'snot cringing, you know, it's
the things that make it toInstagram weeks and months

(01:21:19):
later, after Tiktok,it wouldn't be a problem
anymore. Oh, butTiktok actually makes me happy,
like I just it's because I laughor I cry, like happy. Stories,
and then eventually, a monthlater, like, I start getting DMS
from people who are like, youwould like this, because it
finally made its way over toInstagram, and they sent it to
me, and I'm like, thanks. I sawthis.

(01:21:41):
Like, I think because we broughtup the Tiktok part, I think the
problem is, like, Tiktok islike, truly video, right? The
least that these are we allowedto swear the least that these
motherfuckers can do is take apicture, you know, and make a
caption and get it up. So that'swhat that's more of. My thing

(01:22:02):
is, like, if you are, like,posting images on LinkedIn and
Twitter, like, at least, get anInstagram account and start
doing that too.
Like, unless Instagram justchooses to change their
algorithm. For the seventh timethis month, they also just said
that they the Instagram AdamMorrissey, I think is the
Instagram lead, or Instagramhead of Instagram, he just said

(01:22:25):
that they're going, if forvideos that don't get good
interactions, they're going togive them lower quality. So your
Instagram videos is, you don'tget a lot of love, then they're
just going to drop the qualityrate from maybe like 720 to like
380 pixels. And so, yeah,they're
just going to be like blurry.
And they said it'sjust they're so I feel like I

(01:22:49):
got to do a tap dance every timeI get on Instagram, and it's
just become a platform. One ofthe bigger reasons I love Tiktok
is because I don't follow any ofmy friends or family like I it's
just the content that Iselfishly want to see on
Facebook, on Instagram. It justfeels like it's my entire family
and friends on there, and I haveto, like, mentally prepare

(01:23:13):
myself to go on there to justwhat are they doing today that I
don't care about like,for sure. I guess I'm looking at
it from a perspective of like,because you're right. I think
Tik Tok and just the videoaspect might be underwhelming,
but it is also like crazy to seehow high Tiktok is and how low

(01:23:33):
YouTube is. Like, just, yeah,both of those posts should go
on. Both of those like, YouTubewas way down on the list, for
folks who may not know, and theydidn't actually capture this
information in 2022 so we don'thave really have a barometer of,
like, using it more or less, butif you're trying stuff, so yeah,

(01:23:55):
yeah, they and they should,because YouTube just announced
that, because used to be thatshorts had to be 59 seconds or
less in order to be categorizedas a short and show up in the
shorts feed, and YouTube Nowit's three minutes or less, and
so I think that that's a reallygreat switch, personally for me,
because a lot of our clips arevery good when they're like a

(01:24:19):
minute and a half, but they'renot so good if they're less than
a minute. So selfishly, I'mhappy about this, but for folks
who are looking for an if you'restarting a marketing role at a
three PL or a carrier, and youare just focused on, like Google
SEO tactics from like 10 yearsago, you are going to fail. If

(01:24:40):
you took that same strategy andapplied it to YouTube, you will
succeed like it is, I guess Ishould obviously caveats
depending on the type of contentyou're making. Does it suck?
Like is it actually helpful foryou? There's a lot of caveats
there, but largely thatstatement is true that YouTube
is the second largest searchengine on the planet. They're

(01:25:03):
showing it with higher priorityas far as search results are
concerned. So if you are tryingto initiate a content marketing
plan. Look at YouTube like theYouTube search algorithm is very
good. Unless you're Joe Roganand Trump, then that's not going
to show up. But anything else,yeah, which had to make me we
are recording this a few daysbefore, you know, no, I

(01:25:26):
think, I think YouTube is, like,one of the biggest platforms out
there. I mean, how many of I, interms of just fighting cable in
general, our generation is likeYouTube forward.
YouTube TV is such a goodexperience, like I am. I'm a
YouTube household, like I watchregular YouTube I pay for, like,

(01:25:47):
the premium version a month orsomething. I do not have cable,
but I do have YouTube TV,having cable, or, yeah, I do,
for sure, have cable. It'spartly because there was an
internet speed I needed forSirius XM, so it kind of came
with a package. But, yeah, Ijust love my cable.

(01:26:09):
You know, one of the biggerthings I've talked about is that
cable has missed the mark intheir own marketing of just the
ease of turning on the TV andhaving a bunch of things to
instantly flip to. Withstreaming, you have to be so
dedicated to what you'rewatching. There's no flipping.
There's no, you know, just sortof browsing. Um, so I think

(01:26:32):
cable has really missed thatopportunity of a lifetime to
just market the simplicity ofcable versus having six
different streaming platforms.
Though, I do think that YouTube,while we're on this discussion,
is in the best position tosucceed, versus like a Netflix
or Amazon Prime or Hulu, becausethey don't have to pay for their

(01:26:52):
creators. YouTube doesn't. Yeah,Netflix and Hulu and Disney,
plus, they all have to paymassive fees for content that is
uploaded to their platforms. Nowthere's a certain danger with
that, because you can'tnecessarily control all the all
of the content that's beinguploaded, but I think that
that's where easily, likeYouTube is winning. So the last
one here, as we round out thatthis TMSA benchmarking study,

(01:27:14):
which I think both of us willwill find this interesting, but
the drop in trade show events,as far as a budget is concerned,
2022 19% were budgeting fortrade show and events. That is
down to 7% in 2024 and I thinkit kind of goes back. I don't
know if we discussed this theorylike on air, but the we had

(01:27:36):
talked about, maybe people areburnt out from too many events
after covid, and that's whatwe're seeing in this massive
drop off from 19% to 7%well, and there is so I love the
survey. This, this, I want to, Iwant to make sure I'm reading

(01:27:58):
this chart right, because itkind of it tried to say that
trader shows were showing a 46%still showcasing 46% of
respondents said that tradeshows did provide a significant
ROI, but the chart is, thequestion in the chart is, which

(01:28:18):
of the following areas, doesyour marketing organization
track results or ROI?
Yes, and that is key. Do yousee what I'm saying? It's like I
have a different question, so Idon't know about that. 46% of
ROI is accurate, but it isinteresting to see that it is
something that's being watchedclosely, and then the statement

(01:28:42):
you just made as well, thatwe're seeing less of it. So for
trade show providers out there,those of us join events clearly,
even going back to the brandawareness, like being really,
really focused on what peopleare going to get out of it, and
maybe even as a selling point,like providing a true ROI for in

(01:29:02):
some way for people ahead oftime, on like what they could do
and what That could mean for thebusiness might help, because
they are watching their budgetsin that area, which I think that
chart is trying to say. Butclearly, if the results are
people are spending less. Theymight not feel like they're
getting the true value out ofit then. And this might be

(01:29:24):
slightly related to this partabout the the trade shows,
because in another part of thisbenchmarking study, they say
sales travel and entertainmentbudgets are also shown to be cut
from 15 to 8% although overallsales budgets increase during
the same time period, just lessis being allocated to travel and
entertainment. And so I thinkthat that's interesting from a

(01:29:47):
sales versus marketingperspective, because for a lot
of marketers, and you can kindof see in this next page that,
you know, I don't necessarilywant to go through all of it,
that's the incentive of goingand becoming a TSA member. So
you can see the rest of this,the rest of these data points,
but marketers tend to only trackfrom a marketing perspective,

(01:30:09):
the things that they do or thethings that they're going to do
on if they can track it. Sotrade shows are very easily
tracked, like you can count thenumber of people that come up to
your booth, the number of salesdemos you go on, or that you are
participating in at the booth.
How many dinners did you havewith potential customers? Like

(01:30:33):
those are easily like you canwrite those down and give that
as a report to an executive. Youcan kind of see on the next
page, search ads stand out anddigital marketing metrics,
search ads, for folks who don'tknow, are the least likely to
indicate overall performance ofthe company, and the reason why

(01:30:56):
is we've talked about thisenough on everything is
logistics and various differentepisodes, but the way that
marketing is measured assuccessful is how many people
come to the website, convert andthen turn into a lead, or see an
advertisement on social media,and then they go, what do they
do? They they don't want toclick on the ad because they

(01:31:17):
privacy, you know, things likethat. They don't want to click
on the ad. So what do they do?
They open up Google, they do asearch for your company, then
they go to your website, thenthey make a conversion, they
fill out a lead form, they signup for a demo. And then what
does Google Analytics? Tell you,Oh, hey, they found you through
search. And so what do you whatis it? Quote, unquote,
responsible marketer. You seethese data points and you're

(01:31:39):
like, I'm going to go spend waymore money on search, not
knowing that the people werejust why they searched. The
beginning, they're just Googlingyour company and then coming
back to the site and making aconversion that way, that does
not mean that the search ad orGoogle search was the reason you
got that customer. And so for alot of marketers out there, like

(01:32:01):
I It says it in this study thatsearch ads stand out and digital
marketing metrics, and that isjust a philosophical issue that
I have for marketingdepartments, how they measure
ROI, how they're reporting thisto their executive team. And I
would implore everyone to lookinto this, that what would

(01:32:21):
happen if you just shut off thesearch ads? Everybody's looking
to save a little money,everybody's looking to save some
time, save some budget, shut offyour search ads and see if your
conversion metrics change. And Iwould promise you that if you're
doing the right things in all ofyour content marketing and you
just shut off the search ads,then you're still going to see

(01:32:42):
the same amount of people, thesame amount of folks that are
coming to your site and making aconversion. Because what are
they doing? They're Googlingyour company, they're not
clicking on your social media adon LinkedIn that you're probably
playing paying a premium for tobegin with. And then you're
going to also do Google searchads that just make your brand
names show up at the top when,if you have decent organic SEO,

(01:33:03):
which you do one time, you don'thave to do this long sort of
$5,000 a month on SEO. You do itwell one time, you optimize your
static pages on your site, andthen from that lens, you can cut
off the search ads, and you canhave a real indication of how
people are finding you online,how they're hearing about you.
And then that helps to formulatethe rest of your marketing

(01:33:26):
budget on where you should bespending more time. If I doubt
this is happening, but like x,if you're get, if your CEO is on
x and he is, you know, talking alot about your company and
promoting it and things likethat, wouldn't you want to know
that in a marketing report? Yes,of course you wouldn't want to
know because, I mean, we couldtell your executive, hey, go do

(01:33:46):
more storytelling on thatplatform, because we are getting
a ton of leads from thatinitiative. So it just helps
overall. I know, search ads areso easy to track and it's so
easy to justify. Oh, look, wejust did a brand new website
rebuild, and it's sending us,you know, 20 leads a month, when
in reality, it's, you know,maybe two or three folks that

(01:34:08):
are on LinkedIn consistentlytalking about your company and
someone, your potentialcustomers, just go and google
your company, and instead that'sshowing up as a credit to Google
search so that that's my rant.
Sorry, it was a little longwinded.
No, it's fair. I mean, I can't,like even my favorite
restaurants, like, clearly Iknow, like, it's probably blah,
blah, blah.com but I stillgoogle it like, every time to go

(01:34:31):
order, because I'm it's justlike second nature at this
point. So you clearly,freightwaves.com
is@freightways.com but evenmyself, I'll google Grace
Sharkey Freightways to find myarticle.
Yes, exactly. So it's just, it'sjust helping to try to make my
goal and my endless mission inlife is just to help marketers

(01:34:53):
understand this data better. Andwhen you play, when I see search
ads as being like the top ROI,it just drives me crazy, because
I know we have so much work leftto still do if you're looking
for any kind of I guess, podcaston more information on how to
track like real ROI, and what,what your expectations should

(01:35:15):
even be around ROI, I would lookup the revenue vitals podcast.
It's by the marketing agency.
The founder is called ChrisWalker. I've been listening to
him since 2020 and it hascompletely changed my marketing
initiatives, my marketing life,like how I think about ROI and
what is reasonable and whatisn't, and what you can track

(01:35:36):
and what you really can't track,and just trying to get those
valuable, what he calls signalsof where your marketing is
working the best. And you're notgoing to get that from like a
LinkedIn ads report or a Googlesearch ads report, their goal is
to get you to spend more moneywith them, so they are going to

(01:35:59):
over inflate their importance toyour marketing budget. So I just
want, just want everybody to besmarter about these kind of
things, like just smarter. Allright, that. I think that's
about it for this one for theTMSA benchmarking study. So
let's go ahead and I guess capoff any, any, any last, I guess,
final takeaways from from thatdiscussion.

(01:36:26):
No, I think actually looking atmy list, we hit everything. So
yeah, that's the. A goodRoundup, yeah,
well, I will say one thing thatI did want to as much as you
know, when we're talking aboutROI, 10% of folks do not
attribute ROI, or think thatdirect mail doesn't have great
ROI benefits. Lot of folks,you're sleeping on direct mail.

(01:36:50):
How exciting is it to getsomething in the mail that is
not sort of spammy or spamrelated? Someone sends you a
gift package? Someone, oh, yes,okay, yes, yes, okay. I see. I'm
like, Are you about to send me apostcard about your freight tag?
Because I do not want thatpostcard.
But the My point is that youwould read it. You would read

(01:37:10):
it.
Have company that recently justsent me a hat out of nowhere,
and it made me look them up andsee what they're about. I also
wonder how to get my homeaddress. Not going to ask that
question. I'm afraid of theanswer, but it did make me look
them up. So don't, if you'rewatching this, don't send me
stuff in the mail like that's sounless it's like I've been, no,

(01:37:32):
I'll take, I'll take, you know,I've recently gotten rid of some
yadis, so I room for more yadis.
So, God no. But if you'rethinking about direct mail, I
did pull up, I'm going to linkto it in the show notes, in
case, case you want to check outsome more stats. But the direct
mail industry is not dead. It'sprojected to reach a market
value of 73 billion by 2026 andit just I mean the response

(01:37:57):
rates are insane. So direct mailhas an average engagement rate
of 95% direct mail responserates are five to nine times
higher than any otheradvertising channel. Direct Mail
also has a higher open rate of80 to 90% compared to emails,
which is around 20 to 30% so Ithink a lot of folks are

(01:38:17):
sleeping on direct mail becausethey're worried it's a bill. I
would apologize. I owe anapology to my father. Those
stats are credible, and he islike on the mail every single I
check my mail once a week, whichfor me currently on call for
jury duty, got real close, butI'm going to make sure I'm

(01:38:38):
writing a note right now to makesure I include that in the show
notes. So y'all can I think it'sa justice for direct mail,
because I That's hilarious.
Just we need justice.
Alright, well, let's so we haveabout 15 minutes left. I'm

(01:38:59):
gonna, I'm gonna call an audiblehere. Yeah, do we want to skip
our favorite freight businesses?
Or do you have something youwant to you want to mention how?
Well, I'll do a favorite freightbusiness and then you do the
source support. Because, okay,perfect. Yeah, that works,
great. So the only reason I wantto bring this up is because I
think it's just a reallyinteresting technology in

(01:39:21):
particular. It's not I will tiea business to it that I think I
brought up before, but it'srecently come out, I want to say
at the end of August, the andsomething sounds like was a big
deal and chatted about at thebroker carrier summit as well,
which shout out to that teamover there to get a chance to go
to but hopefully in the future.
But the FMCSA right is changingthe way that they are going to

(01:39:44):
be, of course, keeping track ofcarriers, etc. So one of the big
steps though, that I think isreally interesting. Just like,
again, I always like to look atthe technology we use in our
everyday lives, the security ofthat, and why aren't we using it
right in this industry, and thatis facial recognition. So part
of what the FMC is CSA is goingto be adding to verification is

(01:40:10):
over time facial recognitionsoftware as well. So being able
to tie drivers to the companiesthat they're actually working
for and owners right to thecompanies that they're starting
as well, along with one of thebig ones, is going to have on
site locations that you have togo to, so like, you have to be
the human that you'rerepresenting, like the human

(01:40:33):
that runs the company, and thehuman right that's on the other
side of facial recognition. AndI think maybe our generation
knows this a lot more. It'ssomething I've been like,
pushing my mom to add on herphone because she doesn't get
it. But there's a lot of we talkabout fraud in this industry.
Facial recognition does a lot toavoid some of the big problems

(01:40:53):
that we have. It's one of thebiggest reasons our biggest
proponents behind moving to amore digital type of payment
system across the globe, becauseyou actually do have a much,
much, much lower chance ofhaving your identity stolen when
your banking systems, etc, arebacked up by a facial
recognition software as well. Ofcourse, the data breaches is

(01:41:17):
another one that you're going toable to avoid. A lot more.
There's a lot of, of course workI think the FMCSA is going to
have to do, and a lot ofprobably investment in
technology. There is a company,I think they're. Working with
that's going to be contractingthat piece of verification with
them, but it made me think abouta company I think I might have

(01:41:39):
brought up last time, but justwhen we're talking about fraud,
you know, there's a different, aton of different fraud
companies, fraud preventioncompanies out there. Highway is
a great one. Carrier sure isanother one. We're starting to
see companies like even clearlyprobably working with highway
triumph, of course, is watchingthat too, and the list goes on.

(01:42:02):
But there is one in particular,verified carrier that does use
facial recognition for andoffers this to brokers and
carriers alike to vet carriers,right? So being able to say,
Listen, these based off racialrecognitions, based off the
driver's licenses that we haveon file, this driver does drive

(01:42:22):
for this this carrier, and Ijust think it's one of the
easiest ways that we canprevent, clearly, fraud in this
industry is something of thattechnology at that level. So
that was, that's basically justmy freight business for today. I
thought, I thought it was reallycool to read about that. Which
company is it? So the companythat they're working with

(01:42:47):
actually, let me see, because Ithink
it's, oh, you're speaking ofit's more like an initiative,
rather than like a specificcompany that's doing it.
Oh, so the FMCSA, so verifiedcarrier, is doing it already,
but the FMCSA is going to beworking with. Let me see, I
swear to God that I took a photoof it, but they're going to be

(01:43:13):
working with a special companyto offer that, to provide that
offering as well.
I guess the obvious sort ofelephant in the room is drivers
are already inundated with allof the tech and all of the in
cab cameras and tracking toolsand big government. They're
already all you know, furiousabout that. How does this? I

(01:43:36):
would be interested to know howthey plan to approach that. I
guess stereotype or concernagree with that, I mean. And I
think that goes back to again,and I I think, I think drivers
are becoming more open to someof these standards, especially
if it's going to help themprovide like legitimacy, right

(01:43:57):
in this industry. But how manyof us use facial recognitions on
our phone? Like, why is atechnology okay for you
personally to use, but bad forsomething that pays your bills?
You know, every week, like, Ithink, over time, that that
argument will start to die down,especially in a situation where
it's like, companies are goingto want to know who's behind

(01:44:20):
that wheel and who's driving.
Insurance companies are going towant to know who's behind that
wheel and who's driving. That'sthe only way you're going to get
your insurance rates down overtime. It's the only way we can
fight for insurance rates, Ithink, to go down over over time
too. So for me, it's more oflike, I wanted to bring this up
in this podcast, because I wantpeople listening, especially

(01:44:41):
carriers out there listening,like, start looking at this
technology now as your friendand see down the line how far it
gets your company overall,right? Cuz there are going to be
people that fight against it,but those are going to be the
people that also lose the lanefrom Walmart. You know, it's,
there's going to berepercussions at once the

(01:45:01):
federal government, the agencythat says you can even drive
here and or set up a carrierauthority in this industry,
starts using it too. It's, it'sgoing to trickle into other
pieces of this industry as well.
So I've always been the type ofperson it kind of reminds me of,
like, you know, Britney over atrailer transport, right? Like
she's always been, instead ofsaying, like, no, let's avoid

(01:45:25):
that. Instead the opposite,like, let's lead with
innovation. Do that. Like, youknow how talk about brand
awareness, like building a careyour carrier entity up and
saying, listen and we, we hirereally great drivers, so much so
that we use even to providelegitimacy facial recognition,
so that you know that driver forsure is behind that wheel. Like,

(01:45:49):
that's a really great sell,compared to, you know, having to
say, No, we don't want to do itjust because of of fear. That's,
you know, in in my eyes, as youactually start to research
facial recognition, is it can beone of the best ways for you to
provide that legitimacy, tolegitimacy and avoid your

(01:46:11):
identity being stolen at thesame time. So I just think again
a new wave of technology thatcarriers might have to get used
to seeing, and why not own itnow and connect with the
companies that are using itinstead of avoiding it and
waiting? Of the day that youhave to to show your face,
right?

(01:46:33):
And sometimes, a lot there areeconomic benefits. Is more money
in your pocket, if you would.
Yes, that's, that's kind of mypoint. It's like, you know, when
a market drivers are like,things aren't going great, like,
I would hate for you to lose abig lane that's run your
business just because you were,on top of this, like technology
that's going to that's comingdown the, you know, eventually,

(01:46:55):
by regulators soand if Walmart's going to do it,
that means Target's going to doit. That means Amazon's likely
going to do it, Costco, youknow, all of these major
retailers. It's just a trickleeffect. And if you want to
choose sort of a line in thesand as far as privacy is
concerned, or just, I guess,your personal ethics or your
personal morals of what you'rewilling to accept or what you're

(01:47:16):
willing to give up, then that'sthat. That's your own choice. I
commend anybody who is going tostand up for, you know, a
certain thing that they feelpassionate about, especially if
they stand to lose money fromit. But there is that other side
of the coin where there's somecoin to be made from adopting
some of this new technology.

(01:47:37):
And I do to kind of take yourargument. I do see it because,
for example, right? You see itin the airports now, right? They
do use facial recognition. Now,when you are going through TSA,
you can tell them, No, theycan't use that software, and
they have to let, they stillhave to let you through, they'll
probably pat you down a littlebit more. But the other side of

(01:47:59):
that coin is like, well, it'sthere to stop terrorists. It's
there to to find bad people. So,you know, it's, it just goes
into, like, the good old like,kind of group thought of it is,
like, as long as enough peopledo put into the system, it
should help save, save lives orsave businesses in this example.

(01:48:20):
But I wouldn't be surprised tooif there is an additional step,
if that's something that you'renot used doing, but I do think
it will help protect yourbusinesses as well.
Yeah, I mean, and that's it'sfor a lot of businesses, it's
about survival right now, atleast until the market picks up,
especially after the election,we'll have a more clear, you

(01:48:40):
know, idea of what the economyis going to look like for the
next handful of years. And so ifyou can get while the getting is
good, like, you know, chooseyour choose your battles. I
guess, is probably the best wayto put it welcome into another
episode of everything islogistics, a podcast for the
thinkers in freight. I am BlytheMilligan, and this show is

(01:49:01):
presented by SPI logistics. Andthis episode, I want to do
something a little bitdifferent. It's a solo episode,
but I want to go through someprevious Reddit threads and
bring you the best sales tipsthat I have seen from the
freight broker subreddit over onReddit. Now, if you're not
familiar with what Reddit is,it's basically an online forum

(01:49:23):
that has been around for, God,more than a decade, definitely
more than a decade, probablyclose to, like, 15, maybe 17
years. But it's an online forumfor niche communities, so a few
of them, off the top of my head,that I belong to is like beach
combing or sea glass or truckercats or for relevant to this

(01:49:45):
particular episode, is thefreight broker subreddit, which,
at the time of recording this,has about 33,000 members, and
topics are posted all of thetime. And so, as you can
imagine, over the last year orso, there's been a lot of
conversation around, how do Iget new customers? How do I get
more business? How do I do coldcalling, you know, things like

(01:50:08):
that. And there's so muchvaluable information that is
inside of those threads, andI've been saving them over this
period of time in preparationfor this episode, because I knew
that I eventually wanted to makethis episode, so wanted to bring
you some of my favorites, sohopefully it can help you and

(01:50:28):
your sales efforts, especiallyas you know, the the holidays
are here. We're planning for,you know, new budgets, new
initiatives, things like that.
But a lot of times, you justkind of got to use the holidays
as a way to reevaluate whatmethods are working for you.
What methods are a little you'renot exactly sure if they're
working for you anymore, andit's a good time to sort of test

(01:50:51):
out of what you want to try todo in the new year. And so let's
break it down from a coupledifferent angles. Because number
one, I have it kind of segmentedout from a cold strategy and a
social strategy. So the socialstrategy is going to be a little
bit later on, but for the coldstrategy I want to talk about in
person, via phone and via email.

(01:51:16):
Some of these responses. I haveabout six responses here that
can help all of those differentsituations, highly upvoted. When
I say upvoted, that means it'svery popular on a particular
Reddit thread, for folks who maynot. Be aware. But yeah, 33,000
people. So you can imagine thatthis group is, you know, anytime

(01:51:37):
a question like this is postedin a question, meaning, like,
how can I get better at mysales, there's a lot of joking
going on in the threads wherepeople are, you know, they're
kind of gonna, they're gonnapoke fun at each other. They're
not exactly going to, somepeople are not exactly going to
be forthcoming with you know howto be better at sales in freight
brokerage, as you can imagine,it's very competitive industry,

(01:51:59):
and so people don't want toshare their good stuff, which is
why it's probably taken a yearto save up some good comments.
But let's go ahead and get intosome of the better ones. Now,
the the first thing I want totalk about is an in person, cold
strategy. And one of the firstquestions that was answered is,

(01:52:20):
So can someone direct me to theright sub, meaning subreddit?
And so this question comes inand it says, I've been doing,
I've been doing this almost saiddigital dispatch there. I've
been doing dispatch for fivemonths now for a very small
logistics company, our mainaccount has cut their production
by 50% where we normally see 200bids a day, we are now seeing

(01:52:42):
maybe 30. Last night, I workedmy eight hour shift and saw one.
Needless to say, it's hard toyour company. My boss asked us
to reach out to see if we canfind contacts and shipping
departments to try and land newclients. Would someone be able
to put me in the right sub, ifit exists? Also new to this
industry? Is this the bestapproach for finding new

(01:53:02):
clients? Any help will begreatly appreciated. Now I have
to go back to that remark wherehe says the main account has cut
their production by 50%50% is a huge loss, if that's
your major client. Now, the wayI kind of like to think about
marketing and sales, especiallyfrom a sales pipeline,

(01:53:23):
especially from a revenuestandpoint, you never want one
customer to fill up more than, Iwould say, 30% of your overall
revenue coming from onecustomer, and 30% still feels
too high. I've heard otherpeople say that, you know, it
could be as low as a 5% for eachand every customer, but we're

(01:53:44):
dealing with, you know, freightbrokers who maybe have a handful
of counts, or maybe freightagents who have a handful of
counts. And sometimes it'sunreal. It's sometimes you have
to work up to, you know, gettingmore than 30 accounts so you can
have that really good balance.
But 30 accounts is still a lotof people to manage. And so for

(01:54:07):
a brokerage, you'll typicallyhave a handful of accounts that
you manage, and then it allfunnels into the same business.
So what it sounds like here isthat this is a smaller company.
This person is handling dispatchfor a very small logistics
company, and so they'restruggling with that problem.
And one of the responses thatwas left was really, really

(01:54:27):
good. And or the reason I put itin the in person category is
because this person who is asmart assignment 499, I'm going
to link to all these Redditorsin the comments. So if you want
to check out these comments andsee the follow up, or see some
of the other responses in thepost, you can check it out. But
their response is, take a driveto the industrial area where you
live. Look for manufacturers.
Note types of equipment atbusiness, at the business,

(01:54:51):
loading up, also head to thelocal truck stop, check out
flats and step decks, coming in,see what they're loaded with.
Usually the manufacturing nameis no located on the product
that is loaded. In my earlydays, I just did dry van rates,
and rates were poor. But from myexperience, dark deck of
freight, not dark freight. Deckfreight pays well as for reefer.

(01:55:13):
I've never quoted on it, butanother user says, I'll second
this and add on to it being ashipper. If someone knocks on my
door as a true blue localcarrier and tells me how they're
going to make my life easier byhaving capacity that shows up
and delivers on time, game on,spot on with the equipment types
too. The more you can fit aniche, the more loyalty you're

(01:55:36):
going to get, even if it's notsomething that you currently
specialize in. So obviously,that one of those tips is from
the carrier perspective, butfrom the broker perspective.
This is something that you couldbe doing all of the not all of
the time, because you still haveto work, but on maybe that is
instead of cold calling andspending a couple hours doing
that, you're scouting thelocation in your local area for

(01:55:59):
those manufacturers, and goingto a certain zip code a certain
area of town, and drivingaround, looking at The equipment
and looking at the types ofmanufacturers, and then being
able to build up enough researchso then that you that way, you
can go back to the office and beable to connect with them more,

(01:56:20):
or if they're if there's someoneis on site, you would be able to
introduce yourself. There was anepisode I posted over the summer
with a. Woman called Rust Beltkid. He is one of the shipping
managers for a tool called Gatorbar, which is rebar, but it's
manufactured in the UnitedStates, manufactured up in

(01:56:41):
Michigan, I believe. And so hesays in that episode, I have
only done business with carriersthat have come to my office and
knocked on the door and shook myhand and introduced themselves.
And so just keeping that in mindfrom the shipper perspective,
because they know that thebroker is going to represent
their company, the carrier suresurely is going to represent

(01:57:05):
their company. That is,oftentimes, the carrier is the
person that is meeting theshippers customers, and so they
would like to meet them as well.
And so being able to form thatbond can really turn what was
something, you know, drivingaround a parking lot as cold
outreach, that could turn warmand hot, very, very quick. So

(01:57:28):
that was a big reason why Iloved to bring up that first
one. Now this second one on thelist is this question that comes
and, well, I'll link to it so Idon't have to read off these
like weird Reddit names. Theyalways have weird, weird names.
So I'll link to them in thecomments or in the show notes,
just to be sure. But they askwhat software solution partner

(01:57:48):
has been the biggest gamechanger for your brokerage,
whether it be a load board,carrier, compliance tool,
tracking, software, TMS, whathas changed your life for the
better, or perhaps changed yourlife negativity or negatively
venting is welcome. So thenthere's another comment that is
left, and it says, I'm literallywalking into a business and

(01:58:11):
brokering the loads that theyhave. Lol, sometimes it pays to
go back to the basics wheneveryone tries to gatekeep or
deter you from getting into thegame. And so basically, this
original question is asking, youknow, what kind of software
solution has helped you in yoursales effort? And this gentleman
is coming back. And I'm assumingit's a gentleman, because by the

(01:58:33):
look of their little avatarhere, but he says, I'm walking
into businesses and brokeringthose loads because, and they
say, so there's a thread thatgoes on because there's other
people that are asking, Well,how do they receive that?
Genuinely curious about how abusiness receives someone that's
going to come into their officeand promise to broker loads for

(01:58:54):
them. And he follows up withhaven't had an issue yet.
Sometimes they actually havepallets that sprinters and vans
can take that's going local,just waiting for someone to
grab. And so that is anotherarea of just or another
reinforcement of the power ofgoing in person, when so many

(01:59:16):
people's inboxes and calls arejust flooded right now, not just
from folks within the UnitedStates, but also folks that are
doing sales overseas, offshore.
There's a lot of trust andverify in this industry that is
going on, especially with withall of the fraud issues. And so
for a lot of shippers, a lot ofbrokers and carriers, fraud is
at the number one fraudprevention. Is that their number

(01:59:39):
one issue that they're trying toprevent from happening. And so
if you can separate yourself alittle bit more by doing tasks
like this, researchingmanufacturers, local in your
area, and then going and tryingto schedule a visit, or just
walking into their office canmake a lot more waves than
trying to send your 10th coldemail, or you trying to blast

(02:00:02):
out, you know, 15,000 differentemails that all said the same
thing, and they're notcustomized for the audience that
you're Trying to get and sothose were a few in person
comments that I thought werereally well received in this
group. And it feels like peopleare genuinely shocked that this
works. But anecdotally, theshippers that I have talked to,

(02:00:24):
they want somebody that's goingto personally be there, that
they can talk to, that they canpick up the phone, that they can
shake your hand. And so knowingthat, that could be a way for a
lot of sales folks in thisindustry to zig while everybody
else is zagging. Okay, so nextup in the cold strategy, even
though I just mentioned this,that everybody is doing it, but

(02:00:45):
there is a right way to do it,and there is a more successful
way to do it over the long run.
And so let's go into via phone,like, what happens? How can you
really stand out from the fray?
And so this new freight brokeris really, really struggling.
They haven't been able to landany new accounts yet, and

(02:01:06):
they've been on the job formonths. And so this one, this
response, is going to be a longone, but it's very, very good.
And so he starts off by tryingto help this, this new freight
broker, by saying, as much as Idon't want to help, to be
helping competitors, I feel yourpain. So here you go. Okay,
number one in his response is,do your homework before you

(02:01:27):
call. Know the person. And youneed, and the products they
need. He mentions a tool thatsays apollo.io is free and will
get you that content, contactinformation. Number two is, take
away the sales pressure. Tellthem, Hey, John, I know you get
a lot of these damn phone calls.
Can I have 30 seconds to tellyou why I'm calling, and then

(02:01:49):
you and then if you can hang upon me if you want. So that's his
opening line that he usesanytime he calls. Number three,
do not send emails or leavevoicemails. Just keep calling
unless there is a legit no wayto get them on the phone, or if
the company is a good fit, andyou're told to kick rocks, email
the CEO or the owner of a smallto medium sized company. Number

(02:02:12):
four, you're going to get smokedon truckload by TQL, by CHG, CH
she, CH Robinson. You will neverget truckload unless you already
have a relationship with themand they like you. And if they
get screwed by either of thosetwo companies, you need to go
after LTL, specifically volume,LTL, where you can compete

(02:02:33):
against the major LTL carriers.
How do you do this? He goes onto mention and number five, if
you are targeting a region forcustomers, you must locate small
to medium sized truckingcompanies in that region that
offer LTL service. You have tointroduce to them and tell them
that you are a broker trying tobreak into accounts and service
in their area. These companieswill eat up two to eight skid

(02:02:56):
shipments all day if it fallsinto their lanes of service. For
example, I have a carrier in PA.
They will pick up in PA, NewJersey, Connecticut, Maryland
and Rhode Island, and they allgo to the 48 states. I have
other carriers that will only goas far as the Midwest. I have

(02:03:16):
Texas guys that come to thenortheast. It will take anything
going back down to Texas. Thisis your in go after freight that
doesn't hold up to regular LTL,known steel, commodities, paper,
low margin shit. Go aftermachinery, expensive
manufactured, good, high classfreight. These trucking
companies don't care aboutclass. They care about price by

(02:03:37):
the pallet and major LTLcarriers will not be price
competitive for things that havemore than two skids. These local
trucking companies will be thennumber six, he says, when you
talk to the shippers, let themknow that you have a niche and
you are worth your salt. Showthem that you didn't pick out
their name out of a hat beforeyou called them. You know your
shit and you know what you excelin. Get your foot in the door.

(02:04:00):
Provide good communication andservice, grow the relationship
over time and expand into moreopportunities. That last one, I
think, just hits, or that lastcouple of them just hit the nail
on the head, as far as beingsuper strategic on who you're
contacting and why, and thenalso your carrier relationships
and who you're contacting andwhy, he closes out this

(02:04:22):
statement with I've had my fairshare of being put into a broker
email list of 100 other people,and after a two minute phone
call, fuck that garbage I'mReading from this guy, everyone
is beating the piss out of eachother. No thanks. Your only way
to get in somewhere is to bedifferent. Maybe you're an
expert in flatbed LTL and have aton of flatbed carriers that you

(02:04:43):
can offer LTL with. Not everyonecan do that well, but please do
not be like every other broker.
Have a niche something you dobetter than any anyone else
will. If you just copy and pastedat rates and use LTL carriers
with $50 as your margin, you aregoing to get smoked and will
have no shot. Good luck. And sohe ends it with that piece of

(02:05:04):
advice. And there's so manyreplies that it's really, really
an insightful conversation,especially for someone like me,
who was really on the marketingside of freight brokering for so
long, and then to be able to seethe strategicness of what this
person does, this would havehelped me so much at marketing

(02:05:25):
campaigns. So if you're inmarketing and you're looking for
specific things that you'retrying to target, I would be
going right to the salespersonand being and asking, what kind
of collateral Can I help youcreate? What kind of landing
page can I help you create thatwill help you track the success
of some of these differentcampaigns and see once you start

(02:05:45):
to get something working, likethe niche of what he's talking
about, then maybe you can helpyour sales team, you know, be
able to replicate those effortsfor other members of the sales
team, at least the structure ofa campaign, just to help them,
get them you know, just get themgoing. Because this poor, poor
bastard, you know, started inprobably the worst Freight

(02:06:06):
Economy in a decade, and hecan't get any new accounts?
Well, that is six steps that Ijust laid out of how you can get
new accounts. It's going to takea little bit of work. It's not a
spray and pray method. Maybesome brokerages are not going to
be fans of a method like this,but if it's about getting long
term business, then that isgoing to be a much smarter

(02:06:28):
company than some. Who's justgoing to tell you to what do you
say? You know, add $50 in marginfrom a load board. That is, to
me, a lot of those tactics willalways exist, but it's also not
where the best rate never makesit to a load board. And so by
establishing relationships withcarriers and with your shippers,

(02:06:48):
and you can find those happymediums for both parties
involved, and obviously have abetter career for yourself.
Okay, last couple here, the nextone, this is under the email
category. So we kind of keeptalking about ways to, like, not
do cold outreach, and email hasbeen in first of these two
sections, but I think there's away to do email right? And so

(02:07:10):
the the next response on in thatsame in that thread that we
mentioned earlier, what softwaresolution partner has been the
biggest game changer for yourbrokerage, and we mentioned this
tool earlier, but apollo.ioand this commenter goes on to
say, before we were just usingGoogle Maps and calling the
businesses and trying to findout contact info from the

(02:07:30):
decision maker, etc, or lookingon LinkedIn, I found Apollo and
taught my co workers how to useit, and we've had so much of an
easier time of booking meetings.
And so really, the process lookslike you can either drive around
town and find those differentmanufacturers and see what kind
of equipment that they're usingto move their freight, and

(02:07:51):
that's one way to get into thedoor with them, because
apparently searching on Googleand LinkedIn really aren't
having the impact that they oncehad. Another way is that you can
just do your damn research andjust ask for referrals, pick a
niche, and then lastly, ifyou're doing all of those things
using apollo.io because this wasmentioned several times as I was

(02:08:12):
going back through to make thenotes for the show apollo.io was
mentioned several times. Ipersonally have not used it, but
there, there were several peoplein here that spoke very highly
of this solution. So it could bea tool that you maybe want to
give a try after you've done allof the other necessary research
in order to make sure that it'sthat your cold call or your cold

(02:08:35):
email is is going to actually beread or be actually answered.
Okay, last one that I did wantto bring up is for better broker
carrier relationships, becauseit also helps your customers.
But this one commenter, it comesfrom this thread, and the
original poster says, as acarrier, after providing good

(02:08:55):
service with great communicationon multiple loads, I'm still
having trouble hearing back frombrokers on the same loads. What
do I say to keep therelationship going? Obviously,
pricing is a huge factor here,but a couple of brokers keep
having shitty experiences withother carriers, but still don't
want to pay. What can I say ordo so they don't go out looking

(02:09:15):
for another carrier? And thenumber one comment on this
thread was always shoot them anemail of where you'll be and
when you'll be there. Make itpersonal, or at least like
you're not sending it to dozensof other brokers. I know that I
and this is a broker speaking, Iknow that I always keep a list
going of where carriers are andhow I can match them up with

(02:09:36):
what I've got. I'll go to thesecarriers before sending out any
available load list I might haveand before posting them to load
boards. Now follow up. Commentalso says I've ran into the same
predicament and emailed onlygoing to the new MC speech, that
no one mentions having a majorhurdle with a truck your
insurance Hold on. This complexis kind of all over the place,

(02:10:00):
but they says that one thingthat I do know is that in this
business, you can't give up,just like in life, when it gets
good, it'll it'll be great. AndI think for a lot of folks,
you're kind of expecting thatnow that the presidential
election has been determined,and we can kind of all move
forward with our lives. Sohopefully business is going to
get a lot better for a lot offolks in our industry. But I did

(02:10:21):
really like the fact that, Hey,be proactive with your
relationships, whether it'scarriers or whether it's
brokers. And this sounds so Ithink entry level, but a lot of
folks just don't know this. Alot of folks are fresh out of
college. They sit down at adesk, they're handed a bunch of
cold leads, and they're told todo something with it. A lot of

(02:10:43):
them don't have the opportunityto even breathe and sit back and
say, maybe there's a better wayto do this. And so I think that
this is a really good example ofbeing a better carrier and being
a better broker and activelywanting to have a better
relationship together, which iswhat I'm starting to see more in
this industry. Broker carrierSummit is a perfect example of

(02:11:06):
that. It's a recent conferencethat just took place in Dallas
or Fort Worth Texas, and it'sabout bringing brokers and
carriers together so they canfind out the issues, get those
issues resolved, find new waysto work together. Network.
Networking is one of the biggerpieces of that summit, and so
being able to establish theserelationships from the jump or

(02:11:28):
as or not from the jump, but asan owner. Ongoing basis, then
that will lead to greaterpartnerships in the future.
Because, like the othercommenter had said, if, as a
shipper, if I know that you weregoing to have a truck in a
certain area, you're not goingto give me grief. I don't mind
paying a little bit extra forit. I mean, obviously I'm
paraphrasing there, but theydon't mind paying a little bit

(02:11:49):
extra than the cheapest freighton the load board, because they
know they have the peace of mindthat the freight is actually
going to make it there. So Ithought that those were really,
really good insights into howmaybe you can start rethinking
how you approach the salesprocess. From the cold email,
the cold calling, cold in personperspective, there's so many

(02:12:11):
different tools out there thatcan help expand upon business
and help you manage thatbusiness, but from getting your
foot in the door, it stillremains a very delicate dance
that you have to make in boththe digital world and the in
person world. So it has reallysounded like the most people

(02:12:32):
that have had success are theones that those they can use the
the research that they've builtup online, visiting the
facility, knowing their problemsbefore you ever talk to them on
the phone, and so having thosethings already lined up for
those prospects can help youdevelop those relationships that

(02:12:52):
evolve in the future into morebusiness, and not only more
business, but can help you moveup in the company as well. Next
little area that I did want totalk about is from your social
strategy. Now, none of thisreally comes from Reddit. This
is more like just my my personalanecdotalness of what I see that
works, especially from a salesperspective, and especially

(02:13:14):
online. This episode is reallygeared around Reddit, but I also
see a lot of folks doing reallygood job over on LinkedIn, and I
say not a lot of folks, if I'mbeing honest, there's a handful
of folks that are doing a reallygood job that I think more
people could be replicating whatthey do on social media and

(02:13:35):
replicating it for their ownbusiness. Now, a few people that
come to mind, well, I guess Ishould back it up a little bit.
The reason that this isimportant, I mean, I say yes,
it's easy to say, Go onLinkedIn, go on Twitter, go on
X, go on Instagram. You know,post what you do, post about
yourself, you know, makeyourself relatable. All that's

(02:13:55):
fine and well, but at the end ofthe day, like when you're doing
business with someone,ultimately you have to be
providing value to them. Ithelps as a bonus, if they like
you, that is where you'rebuilding. Your personal brand
awareness comes into play, andthat's where people should be
more focused on how they portraythemselves on social media, so

(02:14:16):
people can like you, or theright people can like you is
probably is a better way that Iwant to say that there are a few
people and I know that there, Ican just say, like, Go. Just go
on social media and post, Go,check out the profiles of
someone named Lars ward. Heworks over Shima logistics. He
posts lots of a variety ofdifferent sales content. He

(02:14:39):
really hones into on the KLTmethod, which, if you don't know
what the KLT method is, it's aframework for thinking about how
to post to social media. It'sone thing to think about, Okay,
I'm going to start posting. Andthen it's like, well, what the
hell do I put hell do I postabout having a certain kind of
framework will help you out aton. I know that this helps me
out a ton, because then itprovides a little bit of

(02:15:02):
balance. And what the KLT methodis, is knowledge like and trust,
and so knowledge is 70% of theposts that you make on, say,
LinkedIn, for example, should bewhat you know, what you're
knowledgeable about? What areyou knowledgeable about on a
certain niche, on a certaincommodity, on a certain lane, on

(02:15:24):
a certain type of equipment?
Name your niche, or maybe youwant to hide your niche. I don't
know. There's ways to talk aboutit, but show how you're
knowledgeable, so that that wayother people who need those
problems solved can, over time,recognize those messages, and
over time, get to know you. Andthat's where the other two parts

(02:15:48):
of the framework come into play,because it's one thing to sort
of spout off a sales message in,you know, a variety of different
ways. You know, you gotta getused to saying the same thing
100 different ways. But that'swhere the knowledge part comes
into the framework. The next twoparts are your likability and
your trust. So likability iswhat you like, who's your

(02:16:10):
favorite sports team? What typeof software do you like? Is such
a lame question, but apollo.io,is a good example here. I really
like this software because ithelps me do XYZ, whatever else
you like. Maybe you like Disney,or, you know, maybe you like a
certain sports team. It, youknow, whatever. It doesn't

(02:16:31):
matter. You get the point. So20% should be devoted to that,
and then 10% should be devotedto trust. And so trust, trust
pose, thinking of I screwed upwith a customer. Here's how I
rectified it. I, you know, gotthis new customer. I got this
prospect on the phone. It turnsout we weren't a good fit, and I

(02:16:52):
let them know, you know, severalother people who might be a
better fit. There is one personthat does a really good job, and
she had a really great post. Hername is Christina Booker, and so
she is, I'm assuming, a broker.
I'm assuming that that's hertitle, but she actually had a

(02:17:12):
post about this recently, andshe started off with, I'm just
not a good fit. I said this to ashipper in the middle of our
discovery call this morning.
Why? Because I believe that partthat being part of a good
freight broker is knowing whento say no. After explaining what
I could bring to the table.
Here's what the shipper offered,net, 20 no exceptions, competing
with other 30 brokerages, lowestrate will always win. Wait

(02:17:35):
times, wait times at pick up sixplus hours. And she goes on to
say, as a smaller brokerage thatfocuses on service, saying yes,
would compromise my standards,my time, my carrier partnerships
and my value, I've been with abrokerage that pushed every sale
fit or not, over time, you erodeand blur understanding of your
true worth and what you're ableto bring to the table. You start

(02:17:58):
building on promises, notvalues. Yes, the market is
competitive, but I've alsolearned that guarding your time,
energy and value is priceless.
Not every shipper will be a goodfit, and the more wrong doors
you can close, and the quickeryou can close them, the more
room you have to open the rightones. And we just what a great
post, because I apply all ofyou. I'm not a freight broker,

(02:18:22):
but I apply all of those things,all of those sort of sentiments,
into my own, into my ownbusiness. I'm not a good fit for
everyone, but I've learned thehard way that protecting your
peace and sometimes firing acustomer, firing a shipper, can
actually lead to more businessin the future. And so just
having that mindset, knowingyour values, I love this post.
I'm going to link to her in thecomments so you can follow she.

(02:18:45):
She's always posting stuff likethis, and what does a post like
this do that tells othershippers that this is somebody
that I want to work with. Like,I'm going to keep an eye on her.
I'm going to I like the way thatshe approaches business. I like
the way that she is going to putme first, even when I don't even
know if it's if it's the rightthing for me. Because a lot of

(02:19:05):
your customers, they don't knowright from wrong. They don't
know the wrong situation they'rein until they're already in it.
And so if you're able to speakto those problems before they
even know that the shipper evenknows that those problems exist,
then you are well ahead of thegame. And so that, to me, is one
of those situations where shesays, I'm not a good fit. This,

(02:19:26):
to me, combines all three of theKLT framework, your knowledge,
your like and your trust. And sothat, to me, is like a home run
of a post, but just to kind ofkeep it, you know, at a high
level, simplified, think abouthow situations that happen in
your day, just like that andthat you could document, and

(02:19:48):
then the very next day, you wakeup in the morning and you fire
off a LinkedIn post, and thenyou get back to doing your
regular job, these types ofthings, and thinking about it in
a framework of that you canshare your knowledge. You can
share good news. It's like whatCara Brown says from lead
coverage, is that she says,says, share good news, follow

(02:20:09):
up, and she's going to kill mefor missing out on the last one,
but she has three steps. It'sbasically share good news. And
so for a lot of folks, thiscould maybe not be, I guess,
considered good news for I fearthat chipper who is going to
miss out on a great relationshipby working with her, that's
probably not great news forthem. But you can find different

(02:20:30):
ways of things that happenthroughout your day, how you're
solving those problems, and thenturn it into content that helps
you build that brand awareness.
I talk a lot on the show aboutcontent snowballs, and building
up that content snowball so thatwhen buyers become active, when
shit hits the fan for anotherbroker or another carrier, and

(02:20:52):
they're fed up. When thatshipper is fed up, and they're
looking for somebody new,they're going to remember a post
like that, and then they'regoing to come back and they're
going to pay and they're goingto reach out to her, and she's
not going to have to do the coldemail and the cold outreach,
because she's actively buildingbrand awareness for who she is
as a person, how she works, andthen brands are going to be

(02:21:15):
other companies, other shippersare going to be attracted to
that. And then they're going towant to do business with her,
and she's going to win beforethey ever open up your cold
email or pick up your cold call.
And so that's why I think socialstrategy is just as much of an
importance as you're. Holdstrategy, and so she's one of my
I think my favorite ones that Ilike to follow. Lars Ward is
another great one. He works overat Shima logistics. I think I

(02:21:37):
already mentioned that, but I'mgonna mention it again, just in
case, because he's really goodat his job, and he does the KLT
method very well. Another personI really like talking about is
Matt Dahl. He is a freight agentrecruiter, and he got started
off in brokerage. He went on theshipper side. I think I'm
getting his timeline right.
Worked on the shipper side ofthings, and so he it was a very

(02:21:58):
unique experience. And heactually documented a lot of
this, of what he wasexperiencing on social media.
And so he documented hisexperience of being on the
shipper side of things, and thebrokers that do outreach to
them, and he was just inundatedwith emails from all kinds of
people every single day, and hereally only, I think he, at one

(02:22:21):
point, he said he replaced ahandful of not out of a handful
of their carriers that they wereworking with, he replaced two of
them, and it was due toperformance from the previous
person that was handling therole. And so he brought in a
couple of, you know, his newbrokers that he knew that would
do a good job, so based onprevious relationships. And so

(02:22:42):
he's another really good one tofollow in that regard,
especially now that he's on thefreight agent side, because he
can speak from that perspective,which is more of an
entrepreneurial perspective,still speaking to the freight
broker role, but then alsospeaking from the shipper side
of things too, and knowing whatworks and knowing what doesn't.
So those are three folks that Ithink are well worth the follow.

(02:23:04):
I'll link to them in the shownotes, of course, but it just it
goes on to say, or it justfurthers my point of you have to
have a multi pronged strategy.
You don't want, just like youdon't want, you know, any one
customer taking up 30% of yourrevenue. You don't want to have
too many of your strategies inthe same bucket. And so for

(02:23:25):
that, it's a cold emailstrategy, a cold phone strategy,
a cold in person strategy, andmaybe that in person strategy
leads to a warmer emailintroduction, a warmer phone
call introduction, but then alsofrom the lens of your social
strategy. So if you're lookingfor examples on the types of
content I'm talking about, I'mgoing to link to both of those

(02:23:48):
three folks in the show notes sothat you can follow them and you
can check on what they'reposting and use it as
inspiration for your ownmessaging and building up your
own brand awareness. Now lastly,I will add that I'm going to
leave another Reddit thread inthe show notes, because I
thought it was really important,and I keep this one bookmark to

(02:24:09):
even help myself. But there'sand I'm not going to go through
and read all read all of it, butit's a thread from the sales
subreddit. And it says, whatwould what would you go back and
tell yourself, if you could goback and give your business
development rep self one pieceof advice? What would it be?
Some of the I'll read a couplehere. I just lied so, but the

(02:24:31):
first response here is,companies are not your family,
and companies that claim theyare probably you're not paying
you well enough. So that was thenumber one response. The next
one is, I used to be willing todie on the Hill of quality work
over quantity. It wasn't until Iwalked away from being an SDR
for a year and a half to startover again as an SDR at a new

(02:24:51):
company, and was being beat by atotal fucking loser who said
four times the volume that Idid, that I was forced to come
around, find a balance. But youmust be religious about volume.
Volume wins. Anyone who tellsyou that it doesn't, probably
doesn't have a job outside ofthe norm. It doesn't mean blast

(02:25:14):
200 non tailored emails, butfigure out how to blast 30 to 50
kind of tailored emails a day.
Hopefully your company gives yousomething like sales, loft or
outreach, oh, and callingcontinues to be the most
effective way to set meetings.
And so this person really, Iwanted to highlight that comment

(02:25:36):
because I have personallybelieved in quality over
quantity, but I think he finds areally good balance here with 30
to 50. So if you have the sameresearch approach, maybe you're
using AI tools like chat, GPT,maybe you're using another tool,
like Apollo. This could be asituation where you find that
really good balance once youfind out what works, and then

(02:25:56):
you combine all of that, youknow, sort of sales knowledge
that you are building in thetrenches, and you combine that
with sort of your social sellingstrategy. That is alliteration
nightmare. But if you combine itwith that, then that is going to
lead to putting yourself into aposition where you are going to
be more successful in the longrun in the short run as well,

(02:26:18):
and then give yourself theability to earn more and move
up. And I think at this point,for a lot of folks, that is
exactly what we're all thinkingabout, is, how do I make more
money? How do I afford to payfor all of this stuff, and how
can I make myself a little bitmore sane in the process? And so
hopefully, you know, a lot ofthese tips have helped you. I'm
going to link to that salessubreddit, or that sales thread

(02:26:42):
that talks about what you wouldgo back and tell your former
self, because there's a lot ofgems in there, not enough for me
to read, but I'm going to linkto it in case you want to get
just an extra boost ofmotivation. So this is going to
be a show notes heavy one for alot of good resources. But
hopefully you found this episodevaluable, because been saving
these posts like I said, for awhile now. So hopefully you guys

(02:27:05):
like it. Let me know if you wantto hear more content like this,
but until then, we'll see youreal soon. And I guess, I guess,
go jags.
All right. Well, let's move intoour next segment, and we're
gonna, at least, on my end, I'mgonna blend a couple of these
together with our freightmarketing spotlights, and then
also our favorite freightbusiness. Once again, my name is

(02:27:27):
Blythe Milligan. We arepresented by SPI logistics. This
is the everything is logisticspodcast. We are joined with
Grace Sharkey of order fullfame. And I have to get used to
not saying freight waves, fame,fame. I have to say order full
fame. Which does I mean? It hasa nice little, you know, roll of
the there too. So nice littlesegue into this next segment,

(02:27:48):
and where we like to featuresome good freight marketing,
because I think it's kind ofit's still rare in this industry
to see good freight marketing,so we'd like to highlight those,
and then also any businessesthat come across our timeline
that we think are justinteresting. So do you want to
go first? Or you want me to gofirst?
Yeah, I'll go first, becausethis was a fun one. I don't know
if you listeners out there gocheck out this video. So if you

(02:28:13):
haven't heard of the company,load, pay, it is a division of
triumph bank. It's, it'sbasically their, oh, what
I did. I did see, so I'm pullingup your commercial. I'm sorry,
like started playing. And no,no, you're good.
I was just, you were shocked,and I was, I just love micro,
yes, yeah. So they again, and wewere talking about this prior to

(02:28:34):
the show, starting right likeunderstanding who your your
client is, what they'repassionate about, what's going
to speak to them. And so low payis this new function of triumph
bank. And we'll kind of get intoit a little bit more in a
second, because it is a part ofmy cool business initiative as
well. But of course, it's a easycredit finance structure for

(02:28:57):
carriers out there to, ofcourse, get invoices paid
earlier the factoring services,but more so you do have a
physical card that you can useto pay for repairs, fuel, etc.
It gives you a centralized placeto just watch all of your
expenses. So yeah, that that'swhat their focus is. And of
course, they're talking truckdrivers. So you know, when you

(02:29:20):
think of a dirty job liketrucking, you think, well, who
is the dirtiest job guy of themall? So they just recently put
out this awesome commercial.
It's a minute line we shouldprobably can play the whole you
want me to play it? Yeah, withMike Rowe, if you want to put
that out, the dirtiest guyimmediately started coughing up
dust when you talk about micro,even though I love him so much,

(02:29:41):
I don't know it's side sidebar.
He was just on Theo Vons, no, Idon't know, just on. But I
finally listened to it, and itwas really good. So I listened
to it on a plane ride. It wasride. It was awesome. I love his
initiative. Always kind ofthought of Mike Rowe as, like,
almost like a TV dad to me,totally like him and Tim Allen

(02:30:02):
were, like, my TV dad's like,growing up. So just like they, I
think they just remind me of myown dad. So,
okay, so I wish my dad wasstrong as Mike, right?
You know, he's a bra he he'ssome on Broadway. So he's

(02:30:23):
someone Broadway, and he wasalso a QVC host for like 10
years.
He's got a great voice,fantastic.
Let's play the commercial. Hi.
I'm Mike Rowe, and today I'mstanding in an enormous parking
lot with an enormous 18 wheelerbehind me and four superheroes.
Technically, these men are truckdrivers, but make no mistake,

(02:30:43):
without them, nobody anywherewould have anything at all. I
know you love what you do, butI'd love to hear why you
love it. We get the adventure ofthe old cowboys.
It's never a dumb moment,really. I promise you, it feels
great knowing that I'm a youngtrucker helping out my

(02:31:04):
community, not just mycommunity, but the world.
It's not just the community,it's the world. Man, I think a
lot about the sacrifice that youguys make.
I watched my son grow up fromabout five or six to eight years
old on the screen.
Let me ask you the mostridiculous question I've ever
asked anybody before, justgetting paid. Important, very
important. What am I looking athere? The payday accelerator

(02:31:26):
load, pay. What's that mean foryou? Load?
Pay puts money. In the owner'spocket within minutes. Instead
of having to wait anywhere fromthree days to
45 days, we accrue so manyexpenses just from driving to
point A to point B. It's allabout cash flow.
I don't want to ask too obviousa question, but just the basic
premise of getting paid as soonas you finish your work seems

(02:31:50):
like a good thing. Oh,absolutely.
Freelance isn't getting paidwhen you finish your work, just
the best. We love micro. But youknow, I do want to point out a
couple of like, even like, deeplore positives about this
commercial, too. So I wouldhighly suggest, if you're
listening to this, to watch thecommercial, because, yeah. One,

(02:32:12):
you got a voice that you knowyour audience is going to trust,
right? So that's like, right offthe bat, awesome. Two, you'll
notice that when they talk aboutthe actual load pay tool or
application, they don't havethat coming out of the mouth of
someone at Triumph or someone atload pay, they have those

(02:32:35):
details coming out of the mouthof an actual user, a truck
driver themselves, right? WhichI think is powerful too. Having
your actual client explain theproduct like that, I think is
awesome. Three, maybe 343,diversity within that group of
different drivers, right? And Idon't mean diversity just like

(02:32:56):
in terms of like race all that,but also just ages, right?
Because like Trucking is goingto get into the different
generations, and I think it'simportant. I just feel like I
don't see enough of youngertruckers on trucker sponsored or
focused marketing campaigns, andyou're ignoring not only the

(02:33:17):
future of your business, but agreat pool of individuals who
are making their way into thisindustry. Last but not least,
you might have this is youryou're gonna have to watch it to
catch it. But they pickedinfluencers, each one, each
person they talk to, theyshowcase their Twitter handle,
they pick someone they knew wasprobably important in their

(02:33:39):
little niche space within thetrucking industry. We understand
it's fragmented, and it's withthat means you have to, you
know, find these littleaudiences. I haven't got a
chance to go check out all oftheir content, but I'm sure they
kind of focus on differentgroups and different types of
trucking and it so it's just it.
It was executed and planned, Ithink, very intelligently. And

(02:33:59):
I'm kind of, I'm excited to seehow low pay takes off. And to be
honest with you, I actually putthat down as my favorite
business segment as well. Iswhat triumph is doing with low
pay in particular, and what it'sdoing to expand its financial
services. So what really shoutout to Cody Griggs over at ch

(02:34:20):
Robinson, just because I knowthis is something that she's
been a part of as well, and wejust love a woman in STEM who's
killing it. So shout out to herover there, but they're starting
to work with Triumph to deliverthese extra services through
partnerships as well with atrusted company like triumph.
They know most drivers are setup with them. Why build our own

(02:34:43):
finance solution when we couldjust partner with one who's
figured it out, who has theinfrastructure, who's built
this, who has won over thecarrier audience, and who, I
assume, before they went intothis, already had implemented,
you know, their whether it'slike triumph pay or some type of

(02:35:05):
factoring service with a largenumber of CH Robinson carriers
to begin with, if you watch aswell, that recently had come out
that not only are they doingload pay, but triumph is going
to be basically white labelingtheir factoring services or
brokers, which is going to behuge and well, I mean, I think a

(02:35:28):
lot of factoring companies aregoing to have to really fight to
keep up. That's why you see datout go. I think that's why
you're seeing some of theseother companies buying more of
these financial firms, becausethey're realizing, hey, for us
to build this and also tofinance, that is going to be a
lot. So why aren't we workingwith someone who already has

(02:35:49):
built this. And if you read anyof Aaron graphs, like letters to
their shareholders, he toucheson this like, we've built this
already for people. And I thinkthe way that they're running the
factoring division right now,from the way that he spoke about
it in letters, sounds like it'snot you put a lot of work into
building that technology. And Idon't think it's, I don't want

(02:36:13):
to say it's not paying off, butit's how they monetized. It
isn't, isn't as positive as theyhad thought. So this is kind of
their pivot into finding a wayto make that division more
profitable. Why not white labelit? Let's ch Robinson and. Sure
we're going to see other bigplayers in that space too start
to to utilize that that serviceas well. So that's kind of my

(02:36:37):
it's maybe favorite business,but just business in general
that I'm watching, because Ithink it's causing a really
interesting ripple effect in theindustry as well.
Yeah, that's a good point,because they also triumph. Just
purchased green screens, like,one of, like, the just, I don't
want to say up and coming,because they've been established

(02:36:58):
for like, a long time, but theykind of, I think they got
started in what, 2019, 2018Yeah.
And that's been evaluation,yeah. And that's a part of what
they graph calls theirintelligence unit that they're
adding, right? It's okay, wehave all this payment data. And
the cool thing about evenpayment data too is, like,
there's a level of it that'salso showing you right, like,

(02:37:22):
where the carriers are, forinstance. Like, when we talk
about fraud, if I have threeinvoices that deliver today, and
I know that your truckingcompany only has two trucks,
like there's a red flag. I knowit's a lot more technically
detailed than that, but just tokind of layman's terms, it
right. You can use that data fora lot of really interesting

(02:37:44):
analysis in this industry, andthey're realizing that that's
what we have. And so I'm veryinterested to see how the data
plays of the next like decade goin this industry, because I
think people are starting torealize, oh, this is more
valuable than I thought, andtriumph, I think, is one of
them, and they're making movesto correct that and move forward

(02:38:06):
in a more positive direction.
So God, data is so hard, I'mtelling you, right? I just
building like I'm doing totallyyou get it with the cargo Rex. I
mean, it's just so, I mean, evenmy own building cargo Rex, and
then building like searchengines on top of it, which I
we're on our third crack of it.
Now, it third time that we arerevamping the search engine

(02:38:28):
around the data set, becauseit's not just recording the
data, but it's the dataintegrity to begin with. And
then how do you make that datasearchable plus valuable to the
intent of the person who ismaking the query? And it's just,
I have so much more respect forwhat Google has done. I mean, we
take it for granted how we couldjust pop Google open, or even

(02:38:51):
Amazon or, you know, a lot ofthese different sites, and you
can just put a couple keywordsin, and they feed you back, you
know, mostly what you want tosee. And it's so challenging. So
my hat is off to anybody thatworks in data and is trying to
filter through, you know, a lotof this different just large
amounts of information and triedto disseminate it to where it's

(02:39:12):
something that is useful tosomeone. But that's actually a
perfect segue to go into myfavorite freight marketing and,
you know, a quick BusinessSpotlight that I wanted to put
on, and that is, have you everto import?
Yeti, no, I saw it on the notes,and I was like, I almost looked
it up. I figured I'd let youso import Yeti allows you to

(02:39:34):
find suppliers for any company.
So they were at the recent TMSAtransportation marketing and
sales Association. We had ourannual elevate conference. One
of their co founders, Dave, wasgiving a session there. So
import Yeti, I they gave me thismug. I don't know if you can do

(02:39:55):
it's a cute little Yeti that'son the side of the mug. But
what's really cool about it isbecause for import Yeti, where
it's useful, it's saying, like,I'm a broker, and I want to find
out where some shippers are at,or maybe some new shippers,
maybe I've, you know,specialized in a certain kind of
commodity, and I want to findmore customers like that,
because I have a proven trackrecord. Well, you could find any

(02:40:17):
product, maybe it's yoga pantsor Yeti water bottles or
whatever, and you can go toImport Yeti, and if you have you
can sign up for free, but theyalso the paid plan is much
better. And you can search upany supplier. You can search
shipment records and importrecords and find them on so with
this mug, what they do is reallycool. So they will they have

(02:40:39):
certain target customers thatthey reach out to with, like,
these highly specified marketingcampaigns. And then when they
have someone kind of in their intheir eyesight, of like, this is
going to be a really good getfor us. So they'll send them a
little mini container, shapedbox like it. It's painted to
look like a mini container. Theyput this mug in it, and then on

(02:41:02):
the bottom of the mug, they tellyou the supplier, the supplier's
name of where the person who ismaking the mug, and the the
number, so the number that youcan put, I don't know if you can
see it all that, but you canthen the product ID number that
you can put into import Yetiwebsite to find the supplier of

(02:41:25):
the mug that they use to sendout to customers. And I just
thought that was so smart. I. Isso cool about your marketing
like that, like, kind of fullrounded, I guess, philosophy, or
well rounded philosophy, thatyou're putting the product
number on the bottom, plus thesupplier of where you're getting
the mug from. Hopefully there'ssome kind of, like, a trade deal

(02:41:45):
that they worked out there withthe supplier that, hey, you
know, your company is going tobe at the bottom of all of our
mugs, you know, give us an extracouple bucks off of the mug and
make it really cute. And so theyhave some really cute branding.
But a couple of the other thingsthat he was talking about during
his session is that they treatsales copy like a science
experiment. They said oneexample that they had a stat

(02:42:07):
about improving retention by 40%so they they're they're telling
their customers that they canhelp them improve their
retention by 40% but hisaudience, the people, weren't
believing a number that high. Sodropped the number to 19% and
once they dropped the number to19% like they're pretty much

(02:42:28):
cutting it in half of their ownsuccess rate. Suddenly, folks
kept reading, and when he saysreading like his emails, his
case studies, they said thatlevel of honesty and testing was
enough of a significantimprovement to have them close
deals on new customers, becausetheir percent the customer's

(02:42:48):
perception was, or the leadsperception was, is that that
number is not a lie. You'rebullshitting me. And so they
dropped their own success rateretention number to 19% and it
led to more customers because ofit, because it made the stat a
little bit more believable. Theyalso make cold outreach fun. So

(02:43:10):
they send out those minishipping containers. They also
will send out flip phones to HRteams, just to prove how broken
internal systems are. So it'skind of like the opposite of
spray and pray. It's specific,it's relevant, it's memorable.
They also use data to pre removeobjections. Another thing that

(02:43:32):
they do is, with all of theirmarketing is inside of HubSpot,
so even like their case studiesand things like that, if they
see readers drop off of acertain page of their case
study, they'll rework the entirePDF. So then that way they can
improve retention or improvereadability. So then that way
the consumer is reading untilthe very end of the case study.

(02:43:55):
So I thought that that wasreally interesting. Snail mail.
Also, we have talked beforeabout how direct mail, snail
mail, or like hidden marketinggems in Port Yeti, is kind of
proving that, and they're takinga more of a creative approach to
that. So I thought that that wassuper interesting. And then they
use HubSpot, like a lab. Ialready kind of talked about

(02:44:16):
that one, but yeah, that thatwas especially, I guess, co
signing off of the the casestudy is, you kind of think,
like case studies, like nobodycares about case I personally
had this opinion walking intoTMSA this year, it's like nobody
cares about case studies. Stopmaking them like they're I don't

(02:44:37):
want to say they're BS, butnobody reads them. Nobody cares.
Nobody downloads. It's actuallythe exact opposite. I was so
totally wrong in that import.
Yeti is kind of proof to that.
We had a shippers panel as wellat the event, and all of the
shippers on the panel. I mean,it's technically anecdotal, but
three of them said, I lovegetting case studies. I want to

(02:44:58):
read case studies. And I waslike, Jesus, okay, fine.
Like, and I think it depends onthe case study that you use to,
like, I've actually, and again,I've only been doing this job
for like, a month, so take itfor granted, but I've noticed
that we actually do get biggerresponses and from the case

(02:45:18):
studies that we put out comparedto just like maybe a blog, but
the case studies that I havefocused on and have kind of put
out there are, Like, famousnames, right? So, like, the
liquid deaths of them all. Andwe, oh, like, we did a, I did a
PBR, one, pap spruing company onthe day before Fourth of July,

(02:45:43):
right? You're like, going intothat and, and that's, I mean,
even today is like, still doingreally well. And so I think
it's, I think it's how are youattacking the case study? Who is
that case study with? Is it withsomeone that people are going to
instantly be like, Oh, that's agrowing company, or that's like
a legacy in this industry.
That's someone we need to talkabout, like being just strategic

(02:46:04):
about it.
But now are you making peopledownload
them in order to get them? Butthat's something that we're
starting to look into, as wellas doing more of that kind of
stuff. So now, no, not, not fora lot of them are blogs right
now, look at us like but that'ssomething strategy because

(02:46:29):
strategy talk now.
Well, someone had asked me theother day, like, do you host
webinars at all? And I was like,No, I haven't hosted a webinar
for any of my own companies,God, since like, 2021 but I
remember them performing prettywell. And the guy was like,
well, we just really like it wasa potential podcast sponsor. And

(02:46:50):
the guy was like, well, we justreally like webinars, because we
get a copy of the email addressand, oh god, yeah, I guess I
need to think about that. I, youknow, I just always think of,
you know, my marketing mindsethas always been just like, just
put it out there, put yourmessage out there, and blast it
out to as many platforms wherepeople are hanging out as much
as possible. And get them intofollowing you get them into

(02:47:12):
subscribing to your emailnewsletter, and then when
they're ready to buy, you're thefirst one at at top of mind. But
you know, as I'm starting tobuild out a lot of these
different marketing campaignsfor these podcast advertisers
like that's what they're lookingfor. They're looking for ways to
justify their marketing spend totheir bosses. Can I provide that

(02:47:34):
to them? So case studies came tomind. I did hear of another
recently, this marketer that Ifollow on LinkedIn. She's really
good, and I'm sorry I'm blankingon her name, but she said that
she doesn't even write casestudies anymore. She takes all
of the sales notes, like thesales recordings, and she takes
the transcripts of those, andthen she turns those into case

(02:47:57):
studies. And I thought, Oh, myGod, that's that is super smart.
And how she delivers them is sherequires, you know, emails, to
be downloaded. So that makes aton of sense, and I probably
will start to do I got somecontent plans in the works for
cargo Rex. It's a little bitmore of a higher, higher level
than, like, a or a higherproduction level, I guess. And

(02:48:19):
probably will, do, you know, Idon't know yet. I'm working on
the plan, but thinking of somedifferent roundtable type
content that you know will willstart after the Labor Day
holiday, because I'm not doingit in July and August while
we're working on this damnsearch engine. But, yeah, it's
all it's a pain in my ass.
I think something that we shouldtalk about, though we'll think

(02:48:42):
for next month, is I'd love toget into the discussion with you
on how you're adjusting yourmaybe, SEO strategy based on
instead of Google. If you wereagain, just listening reminder

(02:49:05):
Blythe of a headache, sheprobably already it's just, it's
so it isfascinating to think that people
now, instead of like, I have anEDI, for example, order flow,
right? I, who do I go to for orEDI? People are going to Google,
right? Less with that question,more to chat. GPT, so how are
you popping up? And so, kind ofinteresting.

(02:49:28):
So there, I don't want to gettoo much, because I
anybody. Let's save it. Okay?
Anybody who tells you that theygot it figured out right now is
lying to you. They havesomething to sell you. Yeah. So
all of these SEO agencies thatare, God, I had one of them
reach out to one of my clients,and they're like, you're not
appearing on the top page forthis specific keyword, and we

(02:49:50):
can get you there in fourmonths. I'm like, You're effing
lying, because no one canguarantee you certain placement,
unless you're paying Google forthat placement, because Google
doesn't even have it figured outright now, and so everybody's
trying to figure out how llmsare classifying data, and should
you just follow what Google hasbeen doing for years? But then

(02:50:11):
our Google itself is kind oflike cannibalizing its own like
honey pot, because they're sosearch dominant, but that search
dominance has dropped below 90%for the first time forever, so
they have started to make slightadjustments to how they're
displaying search keywords. ButI think too many companies are
still trying to rank for wordsthat are meant for the AI

(02:50:36):
overviews, they're not meant forthe really long tail keywords
that you should be targeting.
And so there's a whole like justsnake oil salesmen that are
relying off of what you knowGoogle was four years ago, and
then you have all of these othernew consultants that are trying
to figure out how llms areplaying a role. And there's a
lot of smart people trying tofigure this out, but the truth

(02:50:59):
is, is that no one really has itfigured out just yet. And where
a lot of these llms are going tobe going is that you're going to
have you're going to have tostart changing how you measure
things, and you're going to haveto start measuring it based on
impressions, and not actuallyclick through rates of people
coming to your site and so orcoming to your brand, and how

(02:51:19):
they find out about your brand.
And it's a lot, it's a lot, butI will say there is one
gentleman that everybody shouldfollow. On LinkedIn, if you want
somebody who's Trump, he's thesmartest SEO person that I
personally know of, and that'sgiantano Nino dinardi. He is

(02:51:41):
over on LinkedIn. I'll put himin the show notes, because he
had a post just this morningtalking about, you know, the
llms overview. He said theimpact on SEO will be reduced
trafficking, click through rate.
It's already down by 35%impressions or visibility
replaces clicks, citationsreplace rankings. Brand mentions
will become backlinks to point.

(02:52:03):
Oh, which, if you don't knowwhat a backlink is, don't hire
an SEO agency. It's all. There'sso much. Gae T A, N, O, and then
his last name is denardi, but hehe's literally been on the front
lines of SEO for forever, andhe's documenting what he's

(02:52:26):
seeing and who he's talking to.
But he's one of the real ones.
He's like, one of the ones thatlike he will tell he had a
newsletter that went out theother day of telling a customer,
no, like you're not a good fitfor me, because you don't have
at least, like, 100,000 visitorsto your website, yet you don't
have at least 250 organicbacklinks to your site, which a

(02:52:49):
backlink, for those who don'tknow, is when another website of
high authority links to yourwebsite, and then they have to
have that link as a do follow. Alot of times. Lot of media
companies will do this, thatthey will mention your company,
they will link to you, but youhave a no follow link, and so
you're not getting that creditedback link. Because when you get

(02:53:12):
the credited backlink, then thatshows tools like SEMrush,
Google, Ahrefs, all of theseother SEO type companies that
this your brand is trustworthyenough that this other brand is
going to link to you, and thenyour domain rankings come into
play. How old is the domain, howmany companies are linking to

(02:53:33):
you? How much of your content onyour site is internal linking
into other kind of like contentwebs. There's, you know, sort of
the wheel and spoke model, whereyou have one phrase, and then
you have all of these, like spinoff phrases that you can target
that's shifting a lot fromwhat's, how do I change a tire
on this car to completelydifferent to what's the ideal

(02:53:58):
tire for this car this year andthis model, but I'm going to
replace it in two years, thatthose long tail keywords are
where you want to put yourmoney, and then you also Want to
make sure that there's intentbehind that. So we're trying to
solve a lot of those differentquestions, and what people are
answering, and how they'reanswering and how they're

(02:54:19):
finding the answers, is thebiggest one. Trying to tackle
that on on cargo wrecks, andwe're seeing some promising
signs, but it's just if Googledoesn't have it figured out,
then the llms haven't got itfigured out, yeah, and then
everybody's just just throwingspaghetti up against a wall and
seeing what's going to stick,because it's some of this stuff,

(02:54:41):
like the the shady ideally youwant the shadiness to be gone.
You want all of the AI slop tonot rank. The problem is, is
that, over the last 20 years orso of the internet, we've had a
certain level of bot activity,and now it's just on steroids,
and that AI slop is they'retrying to gain control over how

(02:55:05):
you even measure it. And soit's, it's a whole mess. It's, I
don't know if there's light atthe end of the tunnel. Is it?
That's a my my soapbox moment. Ithink I just You see what
happens when you bring up SEO,yeah, next
time we dive into it. Butthis is what I'm trying this is

(02:55:27):
what all marketers are trying todo right now. I just had a
client send me a whole SEObreakdown yesterday of, like,
the things that they want toaddress on the site. And I'm
like, you don't We don't evenknow what we're fixing and what
we're fixing for. Like, we knowwhat we're fixing, but are we
fixing it in a way that'smeasurable for the Internet of
Tomorrow? Yes, and how peopleare going to be experiencing

(02:55:49):
different the answering ofcertain questions. And I think
for a long time, the internethas survived on answering que.
That's exactly why you see likerecipe blogs where they give you
a whole spiel before they getinto the actual recipe, is
because that format is whatGoogle has rewarded for a
decade, and that format is outthe window now, and so all of

(02:56:10):
these different content creatorsare getting slammed by it, but
that's because a lot of theirwork has been so easily
replaceable. And so you contentmarketers, you're you're just
gonna have to get better, andyou're just gonna have to have,
you know, an authority on thetopic. You're gonna have to have
your executive team. Team becomfortable giving authority on

(02:56:31):
the topic. You're going to haveto have case studies and
customers giving testimonials.
You have to have them linking toyour site. You're going to have
to be everywhere on all thedifferent social media channels,
and that you'regoing to have to be on cargo
Rex, yeah, you're going to haveto be because, let me tell you,
some of y'all SEO is not verygood. If my listing for your

(02:56:53):
company,I need to finish our profile.
I'll send it to you after therecording, but
started it last week orsomething. I
just for those folks. If you'relooking for John tonos, I think
that's how you say his name.
Yeah, heard him on a podcast acouple times, so I will link to
that specific post in the shownotes in case you want to follow

(02:57:16):
him, because we're all trying tofigure this out in real time.
But at least this guy is like,showing some real data. He works
with a lot of different heavyhitters, and he's not afraid to
tell a company, no, like you'renot a good fit for me to work on
your SEO. So I really like him.
He comes from, like, definitely,like, the high impact sort of

(02:57:38):
SEO days, but now it's a newworld Wild West, and so we're
all just trying to figure it outtogether. Love it. So great.
Sharky Blythe Milligan, backeverything is logistics podcast
presented by SPI logistics, andwe're going to get into some SEO
tips for busy freight andlogistics marketers, because,

(02:57:59):
much like we talked about in ourother segment around data, and
trying to pull everything in andmake sense of that data and
where the value is, that'sexactly what's happening in the
world of SEO, and trying tofigure out, what the hell do I
do as far as content marketingis concerned, how do I market my
company better? How do I placatethe SEO gods? But then also, you

(02:58:21):
know, kind of tap dance for thelarge language models that are
out there, even though we don'thave a clear defined set of
rules for these llms, like chat,GPT and Claude and not Claude?
Well, yeah, Claude. I know it'sgood for coders. I just haven't
used it in a while for any otherI'm locked into chat, G, P, T,

(02:58:42):
now. So that is the My, my, LLMof choice, but perplexity, you
know all of these Gemini, Idon't want to, I'm not going to
go through and name all ofthese, but you want to make your
company visible in thesedifferent large language models.
You also still want to placatethe old SEO rules, because the
majority of the internet isstill searching under the old
SEO rules. I know it kind offeels like it's all new in the

(02:59:04):
world of AI, but want to kind ofgive like a high level overview
of SEO, because you in your newrole, over at orderful, you are
in charge of getting some PR fororderful, which is good for SEO.
It's great for backlinks. And sowe've kind of discussed in
previous episodes about helpingyou with your role. And so as

(02:59:28):
someone who you know buildswebsites from technical
perspective, and then also onthe front end, as far as content
and SEO is concerned, I want toknow right now what I guess your
understanding of SEO is in whatkind of strategies maybe you're
deploying right now, or are youdeploying anything right now?
So I will say this, Kate, whoruns our SEO at orderful, is a

(02:59:53):
goddess. So if I didn't haveKate here, this would be a
different discussion. You know,what's interesting, though, is
like, for example. So recently,we've been, you know, keeping
track of, like, our ourkeywords, that and how those
have moved, I think, is big, anda big part of that venture is

(03:00:15):
that we're, like, redoing a lotof our blogs on our site, for
example, like, we have a coupleof these like blogs out there
that are listing, like,different EDI providers, right?
So when people are searchinglike, who's the best person,
kind of those, like tricks, youknow, like, I say Google Search
tricks, that's, as an outsider,that's what I call them. What a

(03:00:37):
what a trick. So we've seen alot of healthy results there. I
think what's interesting,though, too, is, of course, a
little bit of this SEO. And, youknow, I saw an article today,
it's calling it Geo. I knewshe'd hate that for the SEO and
geo of things, right? And howare we showing up for each so

(03:01:00):
for instance, like now we'reworking on our Wikipedia page
because chat GPT does pull moreof that too, and we haven't,
let's be honest, it doesn'treally matter too much more of
the Google analytics side ofthings until now, so focusing
kind of on these weird areasthat we're seeing, chat, GBT
pull so when people are asking,what's the best provider for

(03:01:23):
EDI, or something along thoselines, we're behaving in a way
that they're behaving anotherbig area. Area we found is, like
updating our YouTube videos, sothey're kind of asking the
questions that people couldpotentially be asking there too.
And so I think that's what'sinteresting, is like
understanding, like, how peopleare searching for things now,

(03:01:46):
what's how that's being pulledbut of course, you know how
that's leading to, at the end ofthe day, pipeline, I think, is
the big thing. And, you know,here's a question, and we'll
start with Blythe, that I'veprepared for you as well. Look
at this so because this is kindof important to the role that I
have as well. So we're talking alittle about how a lot of my

(03:02:08):
work is a little bit more bottomof funnel, compared to think a
little bit even more of Kate anddoes is a little bit more top of
funnel. In regards from yourpoint of view to SEO, KPIs,
outside of just traffic, whatshould a company be focusing on
so that they are seeing leadquality improve, or at least a

(03:02:30):
pipeline influence from it aswell.
Question, and you might not knowthe answer to it, but do you
know if you're using GoogleSearch Console? Yes. Okay, so
inside of Google Search Console,Google Search Console is my,
personally, my favorite tool,and I use the word tool use
loosely, because there's there'shrefs, there's SEMrush, there's,

(03:02:52):
you know, all of these differentkeyword monitoring tools. You
know, these tools that will lookat the volume of a keyword and
suggest a keyword that has lowcompetition but high volume. And
the problem with those tools isthat they're relying on
guesswork, whereas Google SearchConsole is relying on Google,

(03:03:13):
and Google doesn't share thatdata with anyone except for
their own products, and so ifyou have what's called Google
Search Console, typically it's ashort little piece of code that
your web developer can add intoyour site. So it tells Google
your domain history, your domainvalue, and your domain value is

(03:03:33):
the URL that you input. Soorderful.com in this case, so if
you go into Google SearchConsole, the best reports that
you can see, you can look atyour pages and you can look at
your queries. I love to look atmy queries and then to see
because your query is notsometimes it could be a short
phrase, sometimes, sometimes itcould be one word, sometimes it

(03:03:56):
can be your brand name. But whatyou really want to see,
especially in today's world, arelong tail keywords. Long tail
keywords are, you know, at leastfive words, three to five words
that these long tail keywordsare, you know, what is the best,
or, you know, best EDIintegrator for 2025 that could

(03:04:17):
be a common phrase that folksmight be using. And then what
happens is, in your GoogleSearch Console, you can see how
many impressions you're getting.
So what that means is, you'relooking at the console and
you're saying, Okay, I havemaybe, you know, 15,000
impressions for this word. Well,right next to it, they're going
to list what the click throughrate is, and that means how many
people saw you in a searchresult and then decided to

(03:04:39):
click. If you sort those twocolumns by the least or the most
amount of impressions thatyou're getting, but the least
amount of click through rates,then you can also click on the
pages, and you can see whichpages are registering for that
query that people are ignoring.

(03:05:00):
So when they scroll throughGoogle, what they're looking at
is they're looking at what'scalled an SEO meta title, an SEO
description, and sometimes animage, sometimes a video. It
just depends on the phrase thatyou're looking for, and if you
have that properly optimized onyour website, on a blog post, on
a landing page, so you have tohave that clearly defined, but

(03:05:23):
it just it kind of shows thepoint of you have about a half a
second on someone's Googlesearch results in order to make
that impression that somebodyshould click on that link. And
so that, to me, is low hangingfruit for anybody who's out
there, you can go to GoogleSearch Console as long as your
domain is verified. You want tomake sure that verification is

(03:05:45):
added into your domain. It justtells Google that you own the
site and that you have theauthority to manage it, so they
will give you this data of allof these queries, and you can
see which ones that you'reperforming already good at, and
as far as impression wise, butif you just make slight tweaks
to the title page and thedescription, it could increase

(03:06:06):
your click through rate for aphrase that you're already
ranking, already gettingimpressions for. I don't want to
say ranking, because you don'tnecessarily know yet how you're
ranking for that word, but thenyou can also infer so whatever
the phrase is, maybe it's likeEDI integration trouble, or EDI
integration error, somethinglike that, where that is.

(03:06:30):
Something you're getting a lotof impressions for, and then
look at the page that is beingsent for that so that what that
is telling you, what thatconsole is telling you, is that
Google thinks that this page isrelevant to this query. But for
whatever reason, if it's a lowclick through rate, the audience
is not thinking that you cansolve their problem with that,

(03:06:53):
with the way that the title andthe description are set up. Does
that make sense?
Yes, and I believe that's likewhat I was talking about Kate's
update. I think that's thejourney that she's currently on.
Okay, perfect. So that's lowhanging keyword, or low hanging
fruit, for anybody that's outthere that is wondering, okay,
where do I even start? Yeah,start there get and

(03:07:15):
we've seen, like, really greatimprovements from just like the
very little re, I don't want tosay rebranding, but almost like
repurposing of like the blogsand I think those links right
that are coming through andmaking sure that that they are
clicking through more often, orwhatever showing up right?
Whatever content of ours isshowing up in that post is

(03:07:38):
relating better, so that clickthrough is happening.
And then you could, you couldhave multiple pages that are
showing up for that particularphrase. And so what you kind of
want to do is just make a likeattack first kind of priority
list, and that's what GoogleSearch Console helps you to do,
is to make that attack firstmentality. And so from Kate's

(03:07:59):
perspective, she's probablygoing through and making some
tweaks on her end, from yourpoint of view, that could signal
to you, okay, well, let me lookfor the queries that make the
most sense, for the bottom ofthe funnel, for the people who
are looking for answers to thatquestion, literally looking for,
I'll send you the recordingsomewhere. Yes, we're recording

(03:08:23):
this. Yes. Oh my god, you guysare learning with me. So what
you're going to want to want todo is you're going to want to
look at because this is the waythat SEO is evolving. And it,
I'll take it into llms in just asecond, where the volume so say,
if you went to H refs, it mighttell you that that string of

(03:08:47):
keyword, that those phrases getsno search volume. And it will,
it'll essentially tell you thisis not worth your time to solve.
That could not be further fromthe truth. First of all, they
don't have access to the firstparty data. They only have their
own, you know, first party data,to sort of judge by which I do
think that some of those toolshave their have their place,
especially maybe finding someopportunities, I personally,

(03:09:09):
especially for marketing teamsthat are strapped for time, and
your their entire agencies thatare tasked with handling SEO,
because it's a lot more thanjust let me tweak this blog post
in order to match this query,but that long tail query, if you
match it to what your buyer orwhat the position of your buyer
is, are they problem aware? Arethey solution aware? Do they

(03:09:32):
even know that they have aproblem? If they typically, they
know that they have a problem,if they're searching for that
phrase. And so what you want todo is you want to then make
content in the future aroundthose particular topics, as long
as it's relevant to youraudience, where previously in my
past life, you know, early daysof the internet, you know, I was

(03:09:54):
making, I was looking at thesetools, and I was looking at, oh
my god, like, this phrase has aridiculous amount of volume and
low competition. I'll make ablog article, and I get tons of
traffic to my site. Like it's awin, but it's not the right kind
of win. Like, I think for I usethis example before, like,
digital dispatch ranks. I thinkone two or in the top three for

(03:10:18):
how do I fill out a log book?
Digital dispatch has nothing todo with log books. Yeah, we are
a website development andmanagement company.
I see what you mean. Like, don'ttry to don't just take that
results and, like, make a bunchof content for someone who's not
your ideal customer, yes,and that historically is it is
why a lot of SEO SEOs, that'swhat we call ourselves, yeah, a

(03:10:41):
lot of the SEOs out there arefalling victim to, or have
fallen victim to this, becausethey're chasing The arbitrary,
like, vanity metrics. They'renot chasing the keyword phrases
that are going to actually bringin pipeline, that are going to
bring in leads and book meetingsor things like that, and then
it's just bogging your salesreps hate you so

(03:11:04):
exactly and so you're set,you're at marketing, you're,
that's exactly right. You're,you're, you're sending off
shitty leads to the sales team.
They're going to try their best,maybe at first, to call some of
those leads and to reach out tothem. But if it's they're
reaching out about log books andyou're a web development
company, exactly makes sense. Sothe way that this is

(03:11:24):
transitioning into the LLMworld, because Google. Has spent
the past 20 years of defininghow you rank for specific
keywords, and they give outguidance for web developers and
designers and content marketersof this is how you structure
your website. This is how youstructure your content in order
to rank better for specifickeywords, where a lot of people

(03:11:47):
messed up is that they werechasing these keyword phrases
that had nothing to do withtheir business, or it was just
very low value traffic, and itsent, you know, just unqualified
pipeline. Now, where it gets alittle bit more challenging in
the world of llms is that theydon't have that clear, defined
make sure you put your website,you know, in this technical

(03:12:10):
structure, make sure you'regetting link backs. They haven't
released any of that. So thebest assumption that SEOs can go
off of right now is the longestablished rules of what Google
has done. Now there's obviouslycompetition in this regard,
because this is llms are a brandnew way to search for
information on the internet, andGoogle has been catching up

(03:12:32):
pretty well as far as their owndata, their own llms, and how
they're handling search enginerankings, and who should give be
given traffic and who shouldn'tbe it's a big problem, and
Google hasn't exactly solved ityet. Then you enter in AI
content, and they don't knowwhat's being created by real
people, what's being created byreal companies. So there's all

(03:12:52):
of these different additionaltechnical side of things, which
I'm not going to bore y'allabout, that play a role as well.
But now with llms, it's gettingmore into a very long tail
phrase, I am experiencing dataissues with my invoicing from
XYZ trucking company they don'twant to pay. That is a full

(03:13:16):
paragraph. Yeah, that is what ismaking companies either show up
or not show up in llms. And sothere's, there's an argument to
be made that not only should yoube focusing on the long tail
keywords that you have, youknow, sort of low hanging fruit
in your Google Search Console,but how can you predict what

(03:13:38):
that paragraph text is aroundthat query? And so that's really
important, too. And so the waysthat you know, some of the SEOs
that I thought because I havebookmarked in order to prep for
this, in order to prep for myown like SEO plans for cargo
Rex, like, I've pulled in like20 different searches of all of

(03:13:59):
these different SEO experts thatI follow and like in depth
knowledge. And the commonalityamong those things is finding
the long tail detailedparagraphs of what your audience
is asking and make sure thatit's bottom of the funnel. Who
cares if it doesn't get anyquote, unquote search volume?
Because what the llms arelooking for is slightly

(03:14:21):
different than what Google islooking for. And so if you can
tailor that around, builtout, because people are probably
for I would assume what'shappening when you say, like the
paragraph, aspect is, instead ofsomeone saying, Who's the best,
in my situation, who's the bestEDI provider, they're saying
who's the best EDI provider forsupply chain companies who have

(03:14:45):
less than $100 million inrevenue and looking To scale in
the next five years to $200million and then more detail,
yeah, Instagram.
And then, to be honest, it's ifyou work internal at a company
that could be a little morechallenging, because you're used

(03:15:06):
to the jargon. You're used tothese market conditions. So
that's where customers callslike recording your calls,
meeting notes, things like,that's where those can play a
pivotal role in this, becausethen you can find out the jargon
that your customers are usingand then match it up with those
long tail keywords. Because whatthe llms are doing is that

(03:15:29):
they're they're adding morenuance. They're adding more
detail, but the llms have tohave something to go off of. So
what do you do as a marketer?
Well, you want to make sure thatyou have an FAQ page that is
very detailed, an FAQ and yougotta, you gotta have your
questions that are, you know, ina certain format from a
technical perspective, like bygoing to some very

(03:15:54):
light physically watching thisright now, what you're watching
me experience is she broughtthis up before we started
recording, and I'm not gonnalie, kind of went in one ear,
not the other, but now it'sclicking. So continue. Okay.
So FAQ pages are going to bereally important. There is also
a debate around creating aseparate Markdown file just for

(03:16:18):
llms, and now, a markdown fileis basically a data repository
of all of your website'scontent. But that's what Google
wants to see. That's what therobots are crawling. Calling and
checking now, on the flip side,if you make one specifically for
llms, and you include a bunch ofinformation about your company

(03:16:40):
FAQs that are being asked, andyou just it's a plain text file
that allows the llms to have oneresource document that they can
scan. And so there is a lot of,I don't want to say debate, but
tips around, add a markdownlanguage doc to your website
that includes an FAQ section,information about your company,

(03:17:01):
customers. You help and add thatnuance to that document, and
then that way, you can alsoformat an FAQ landing page,
because you don't want visitors,you know, finding that in an
LLM, and then go clicking on thesource page you want them
clicking on, like, the nice pagethat's built around, you know,
easy readability, you know, yougot proper like, h1 h2

(03:17:24):
formatting on, you know, thequestion title, and then you
have a full description, ormaybe even better, you Have a
YouTube explainer video thatgoes into that as well, because
YouTube is the second, secondlargest search engine on the
planet, and there are manypeople who would much rather go
to a YouTube video and watchthat versus reading pages and

(03:17:44):
pages of FAQs. So if I were you,I would figure out what those
FAQ questions are. I would pullin all of the meeting notes from
the sales team. I would pullthem in from current customers,
especially if they're recordingonboarding conversations,
because those are the questionsthat people want answered to
before they ever pick up thephone and book a meeting with

(03:18:05):
you. So having thatprioritization, I would start
with Google Search Console, Iwould start with editing or
auditing, not auditing, butpulling in all of the customer
onboarding conversations. Andthen that, to me, are the two
biggest gold mines for how youcan make like a Venn diagram of
your first kind of initialattack plan for placating not

(03:18:28):
only the Google gods, becauseGoogle still controls, you know,
I think it's 88% of the searchmarket that has dropped a little
because of the LLM adoption. Butwe're so new to LLM adoption
that it's, I think, especiallyfor the logistics audience and
for a lot of folks making thesebuying decisions. They're not

(03:18:50):
using chat, GPT and perplexityand Claude yet. So for a large
portion of that internet,they're always going to stay on
Google. It's what they'refamiliar with. They're not
changing, and they're sometimesthey don't want to even
entertain the idea of using AI,which is a whole other, you
know, bucket of worms. So Iwould target those two areas,

(03:19:11):
and then I would make the FAQpages. I would make some
markdown language from atechnical perspective. And then
I would also make sure that yourwebsite is discoverable. And
you're discoverable not only inmeaning you have a site map that
Google is regularly crawling,but you also want to add Bing in
there too, because guess what?
Bing and open AI, they've had arelationship for years. If you

(03:19:32):
want to be included in Bing'sversion of chat GPT, then you
want to make sure that your sitemap is also added to Bing, so
that they know to crawl yoursite for these different
markdown languages, for thesedifferent FAQs. These are easy
winners ahead of time. So thatis, I would, I would, I said a

(03:19:54):
lot. I don't know if, like,it's, it's resonating, hopefully
it is. I'm just taking notes,and actually, everyone should
stop watching a video right now.
No, don't stop.
I'll share the transcript withyou, and then you can Okay, so
there are a couple of the notesthat I was

(03:20:16):
very helpful. That wasexcellent. No, that was very
helpful. I love that. And Ilike, honestly, I can use it,
but I bet you a lot of salesteams haven't even thought of
that aspect. And I mean, I don'tknow about you, but pretty much
any conversation I have businessrelated, any conversation I have

(03:20:37):
at this point, I'm recording,yeah, so it's like, and I would
assume most sales teams aredoing that in some form. So
instead of just, like, usingthat to monitor how good your
sales reps are, why aren't youusing that to also improve your
search. You know, that's agreat point you brought because
I was just listening to apodcast the other day that
mentioned that they store all oftheir customer conversation,
recorded conversations in acertain database, and then

(03:21:00):
they'll have one of their like,admin assistants go in and find
you know something about thatcustomer, like, what their
favorite sports team is, ortheir favorite like vodka brand
or something like that, and theywill use the customer
conversations in order to send apersonalized gift to that
customer. And I thought that wassuch a brilliant use of using

(03:21:23):
your meeting notes and making adeeper connection with your
customers. In your potentialleads by using these recorded
conversations. Now, of course,you can't, you want to be a
little careful. You don't wantto, you know, mention specific
companies, but you can profilethem into different, you know,
ICP buckets, and then that way,that's a it's a better resource

(03:21:44):
for you to have where you have,you know, different customer
segments that you can classifyeach of these different meeting
notes into the onboarding calls.
Are I all in every like freighttech interview that I do for for
this show, I always ask aboutonboarding because I know that's
what people they want to knowwhat the experience is going to

(03:22:06):
be like before they ever book ameeting with you. And so if you
can give that information, asmuch of that information upfront
as possible, without ruining,you know, any kind of
competitive advantage, or, youknow, disclosing any, like,
sensitive customer data. That isa huge win I briefly mentioned
on the technology side ofthings, or, like, on the, I

(03:22:27):
guess, the SEO tech side ofthings that that is very
important too. Like, you want tomake sure you also have an
interlinking strategy. You wantto bucket your customers into
certain ICPs, but you also wantto bucket your topics into into
different content buckets aswell that match up to those
ICPs. And so these aredifferent, like, sort of like,

(03:22:48):
102103 levels. Like, once youget the technical aspect right
with your website, then youdon't necessarily have to worry
about that in the future. So getit right from the jump. Make
sure that these search enginesare crawling your site, and then
start with Google SearchConsole, and then work with your
meeting notes. And then that isa perfect place to get started,

(03:23:11):
and then you can start to, youknow, expand from there. The cat
has an opinion for thoseshe's, look at your tail. She's
like, yes, she wantsto hear more about SEO and LLM
more.
That's awesome. No, I love that.
I think that's super helpful.
And I would assume like it, itsounds like it's not only just

(03:23:35):
helping the llms, but also justthe SEO side of it as well.
So that's the thing is, like youGoogle has a set of defined
rules and strategies, and so mytheory is, is that a lot of
these llms are not going toreinvent the wheel like Google
has spent 20 years perfectingwho should show up and why. And

(03:23:57):
you could argue, you know,around the merits of some of
there's lots of arguing aboutwhat they should do and what
they shouldn't do, but what theyhave right now is probably going
to be followed by these othercompanies. And so you might
also, I had a client recentlythat they don't want any of
their content scraped by llms.
They don't want anything. Theywant to actually block them. And

(03:24:17):
so it was cloudinary, which is ahosting like DDoS platform. We
host some of our our sites withtheir with their platform, but
they allow you to now block theLLM bots from scraping your site
and using it as an informationalresource. I don't recommend
that, yeah, but there are, like,with cargo wrecks, for example,

(03:24:40):
I'm not letting it all. I'mletting a little bit, but I'm
not letting it all. I'm notgoing to have
like, strategic advantage is,like, giving that info. You want
people come to the site for theinformation, right?
Yeah, exactly. So I don't wantto give it all out, yeah. Why
would they want to do businesswith me? I want to prove value
in the LLM first. And so we havesome different ways that I'm

(03:25:03):
going to be experimenting withthat. But everything that I just
told you like that is exactly myplan for cargo Rex. And so it's
making these blog post guides,you know, getting real world
testimonials, not just, oh, Ineed an article about
associations and logistics.
Well, guess what? Like, if you Idid those research reports, and
at best, you're going to findmaybe 10 solutions or 10

(03:25:26):
associations. Not all of themwere relevant to what I was
looking for. But you know theyyou want to be able to use these
llms to your advantage withinreason, but just know that
they're working off a verylimited data set, because they
don't even, they haven't evenlet like webmasters know what
that what they're looking for tobegin with. So we have to rely

(03:25:48):
on what Google has told us foryears, what the results kind of
are hinting at, and then whatsome you know, early adopters,
early experimenters, are findingsuccess with, and that's
creating those FAQ pages, andthat's creating the markdown
page for specifically for llms.

(03:26:10):
So both of those things weredeploying on cargo wrecks. So
I'll report back if they're, youknow, successful or not. But,
gosh, I cannot believe I'mblanking on her name right now,
but she works over at Avril TMS.
I love her too. Oh, it's kindof. Sorry. I can't believe I'm

(03:26:30):
blanking on her name. Whatcompany I think you have? Um, is
it not Avril, yeah, and that'savrl. Alice, no, Alvis. Elvis,
yes, yes.
Elvis. God, damn, God. What isher name? She's gonna be so mad
at us.
I'm sorry, and I love her, so wewere going to find out right

(03:26:54):
now, hold on, I alwaysspell Elvis wrong too. I always
put the Y and I spot, yeah, it'sgoing to drive me nuts, because
we love her. We do love you. Andwhy aren't you popping up for
me?
I spelled it wrong. I guessmaybe I'm on LinkedIn and I'm
seeing like other TMS providers.
Hold on, she'sall over right here I can see
her face.

(03:27:15):
I yeah, I see her face becauseshe's gorgeous. Ava, sorry,
loving you, I swear. But shejust posted a video the other
day on on LinkedIn about how youknow, she's been experimenting
with chat GPT five and how she'susing FAQ pages on, you know,

(03:27:36):
the the Alvis, you know, landingpages there, and so, you know,
we're all, I think that's thebeauty of this space right now,
is that there's a tremendousamount of opportunity if you can
have these LLM bots scrape yoursite and source you in the right
way that it leads qualifiedtraffic to you. It's going to

(03:27:57):
take some figuring out. And Ithink that you know that that's
what Ava is, is proving. That'swhat other you know marketers in
this space and just you knowindustry wide, are trying to
figure out. We're all trying tokind of figure this out
together. There is no realstructure into how to win yet,
but I think that's part of thefun is like trying to figure out

(03:28:17):
where to, you know, place yourflag. And maybe it's not one
flag, maybe it's a bunch ofdifferent flags. And so if I had
any sort of like, lasting adviceis just make sure, from a
technical perspective, that yoursite is discoverable in both
Google and Bing, because thenyou know that the llms can also
access your site. Add an FAQpage to your website that's

(03:28:41):
pretty simple, pretty easy. Add,for God's sakes, like Team
photos who works for yourcompany to your about us page
that gives a little extra, youknow, sort of trust as creating,
like a trust moment on yoursite, because, frankly, no one's
going to book a meeting with youif you have no team member
photos on your site, or any kindof just hints that you're a

(03:29:02):
legitimate company, fraud isrampant. I don't have to tell
anybody else that. But if youcan nail those two things, then
it makes going into GoogleSearch Console, pulling meeting
notes and making those FAQ pagesa lot easier. So I think that's
that was a lot.
I hope everyone on watch itlearn something I definitely

(03:29:23):
did, for sure. I guess if Icould ask, Do I have time to
ask? Oh, please go. So we'redoing, we're starting to deploy
some more of our contentsyndication strategies. For
example, what are I don't evenwant to say, what are some of

(03:29:44):
your like Best Tips For ContentSyndication? And I almost want
to flip that question. Where doyou see people maybe execute
content syndication poorly.
What do you mean by contentsyndication,
in terms of like doing webinarswith different sites, or doing
white paper, gated white papers,sponsored articles, things of

(03:30:10):
that nature. Where do you seepeople maybe not getting the
pipeline that they would hopefrom that from just mistakes
that they've made?
Well, I would, so I was at theTMSA, and then we might have
talked about this in the lastepisode, but at the recent TMSA
conference, we had a shipperspanel, and every single part it
was for people on the panel, butevery single one of them said

(03:30:32):
that they liked getting casestudies. And I would have never
guessed that as a marketer, alittle bit, because I think I
brought up the fact that, like,I always see our engagement pop
up with case studies, especiallyif it's like brands that people
know,and typically a case study so
that that buyer journey isyou're gonna probably, you know,
create the content with acustomer. It's really tough to

(03:30:54):
get customers on record for forsome of these things, and so
when they they do get thecustomer on record, typically,
they'll post it out to LinkedIn.
They'll make a LinkedIn ad.
Somebody sees it on their feed.
They click on it, they go to thepage, they enter their email
address, they download theeBook. The problem is, is that

(03:31:14):
for a lot of ebooks, not a lotof them are read. And so even
though you've done the hard workof like creating it and getting
awareness around it and gettingthe folks to come and download
it, that it's it's one of thosethings where people, once they
download it, they know that theyhave it. There. It's just, oh, I
can go back and read that later.
They're not actually, you know,digesting it to the point where

(03:31:35):
they're going to read it in fulland then call and book a meeting
with you. Yeah. So from thatlens, I would say they're still
worth it. You should stillcreate them, but you should have
a greater distribution strategyaround that white paper, I would
actually first get the customeron a video interview. I would

(03:31:56):
ask them a lot of thosedifferent questions, send the
questions in advance so they cankind of think about, you know,
for some of these customers, itmight have been a while since
they went through the onboardingphase and, you know, questions
that they asked and things likethat. So if you could do this on
new customers, this is that,that this is what I would do, is
I, as soon as their onboardingis finished, I would schedule an

(03:32:17):
interview with them, and then Ihopefully you can get it
recorded and they havepermission in order for you to
share it out. But I would putthat video out. I would make a
written white paper slash casestudy from that video, because
then you have the video of themtalking about it, you have the
the transcript of them talkingabout it on your YouTube

(03:32:37):
channel, which will help from anSEO perspective as well. And
then it helps the creepers, thecreepers who are not going to
fill out, you know, their emailaddress, they're going to make a
fake email in order to get thatwhite paper, because they don't
want nobody calling them orreaching out to them and
bombarding them like people are,have wisened up to this flow.
But if you just put theinformation out there and then

(03:33:00):
you make white paper casestudies based on that interview,
I would use that as like acombination package, because
then your sales team can takethat YouTube interview and send
it out to their leads, or theycan send it out to, you know,
specific questions, especiallyif you have that interview
tailored around differentquestions, you can isolate those

(03:33:21):
clips for all of those differentquestions, and your sales team
can have a content library tosend to their leads if they're
on the fence or if they have aquestion about onboarding? Well,
guess what? I have the sevenminute video where this customer
was talking about theironboarding experience, yeah, and
are these specific questions.
And so then you have almost likean entire library that the sales

(03:33:45):
team can use. You're gettingmore qualified leads because
they're digesting your content,they're reading it, and then
they book a meeting, and thenthey're more qualified to close
because of that initialstrategy. So hopefully all of
that makes sense.
No, I think that I mean, andhonestly, for small teams too,
that makes sense, because you'renot only gathering, you're not

(03:34:08):
only fulfilling maybe that thatgated asset, but you're
collecting a large amount of, Imean, YouTube shorts and I mean
to talk about what we talkedabout right beforehand. I mean,
in my head, I'm thinking, Well,you take all the onboarding
questions, you do a you record apodcast with some a customer who

(03:34:28):
is open to talk about theonboarding experience. You touch
on those questions that pop upmore most frequently, and then,
not only do you now have contentfor blogs or whatever to kind of
bring in that the SEO strategy,but at the same time, now you
have all the videos that you canpost out. It's like you've
created content that's helpingin so many different ways. Yeah.

(03:34:50):
I mean, it's really like you, ifyou start with the video
interviews, or even, you know,pulling in some of your your
customer onboarding calls oreven lead calls, because that
can that's a whole other can ofworms that you could target from
a customer perspective too, isis answering those questions,
because people use your websiteas sort of like the last line of
do I want to invest time intotalking to these people. And so

(03:35:12):
what you can use your website asas the the sales closer that
works. You know, 24/7 for you.
So then that way, you'reanswering as many questions as
possible so that they know whenthey book a meeting they're not
going to waste their time. Andif you position it that way,
with these different resources,I would be surprised if you
didn't see an overall lift ofpeople who are dealing with you

(03:35:36):
know, those common issues, andthen focus on your distribution.
Get it out on email, share itout on social. Share it several
times on social. It doesn'tmatter if it's the same clip and
you're going to post it once aweek for the next six months.
People, nobody remembers yourcontent like you remember your
content. And the fact is, isthat if you're posting a clip

(03:35:57):
out on social media, chances areno especially if it's organic,
and you don't put any like paidads behind it, hardly anybody's
gonna see it, and a fraction ofthe people are gonna interact
with it. And then, you know,we've talked earlier, you know
about like views and what countsas a view, and you know who? Who
knows how many people saw thatvideo and didn't actually listen
to it, or maybe they saw thevideo and never unmuted it, but

(03:36:20):
read the text in the post. Soall of these different instances
exist. And so you can createthat. You can create your own
content supply chain based onthose. Customer interviews that
hopefully leads to morecustomers that are just like the
ideal ICP that you're goingafter, and you're playing in the
world of great content. So greatoriginal content that can't be

(03:36:41):
replicated by llms, but they canuse you as a source to people
who are looking for thoseanswers. So totally, that's a
lot. I'm worn out. This is,like, I forgot what we're going
to cover the rest of the show,damn

(03:37:02):
is less talking about how ourpersonal lives are going to be,
asking Blythe how to do my job.
I like, literally, I I was like,I'm just gonna, I'm gonna buy
your classes. Look at me. Let'sgo.
I don't have any actually SEOclasses on on the site. I have
been, I've been readjusting howI approach SEO, because I feel

(03:37:27):
uncomfortable selling that as aservice if I don't know the
answers, and I don't know thatanybody knows the answers right
now, and so I but I am worried,I I feel like I need to test it
on my own brands first, yeah,and then come up with a solution
that I can advise other othercompanies, so that that is just

(03:37:49):
sort of everything that I Know,and the experiments that I'm
going to take based on theexperts that I follow and just
some of the data I've seen. Buthopefully you know that this
will be something that we canadd on, you know, like a LLM
technical package to, you know,websites for folks who need it.
If you don't have a lot ofcontent in your site, you don't

(03:38:10):
need it, just make sure thatyour page add an FAQ page is
probably the easiest thing thatI would suggest, no matter if
you have blog content or not,because the FAQ page will help a
ton. But if you don't have blogcontent, you don't need to, and
if you don't have the energy orthe budget or the staff to do
blog and video con, I wouldfocus on video first, I would

(03:38:31):
not focus on blog content,because blog content, it can
just be replaceable. But with AIand so you have to, you have to
both protect yourself fromgetting cannibalized by these
llms, but also position yourcompany as as a resource for the
llms, which is a fine line towalk. Yeah. Interesting. Okay,

(03:38:53):
well, that does it for thissegment. I hope you know,
freight marketers out there, youknow, found some value in this,
maybe some companies, or theydid, God, I hope so, because I
feel out of breath and we stillhave the rest of the show to do.
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything is
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain. For the

(03:39:15):
thinkers in freight, if you likethis episode, there's plenty
more where that came from. Besure to follow or subscribe on
your favorite podcast app so younever miss a conversation. The
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
searching. Everything islogistics. And if you're working
in freight logistics or supplychain marketing. Check out my
company, digital dispatch, wehelp you build smarter websites

(03:39:37):
and marketing systems thatactually drive results, not just
vanity metrics. Additionally, ifyou're trying to find the right
freight tech tools or partnerswithout getting buried in buzz
words, head on over tocargorex.io where we're building
the largest database oflogistics services and
solutions. All the links youneed are in the show notes. I'll
catch you in the Next episode,in go Jags you you.

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