You’ve worked hard to build your brand to where it is now.
Creating a company is not easy, much less maintaining and growing it—thousands of hours of strategy, development, marketing, blood, sweat, and tears. All to build your brand. But it all paid off. Your vision sparked a fire within your customer that made them purchase your product. That spark spread, and now hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people are connected with your brand and its messaging.
What’s next?
You’ve reached the point where you can no longer keep up with your demand. Do you invest millions of dollars in a warehouse? Hire dozens of workers? What equipment and machines do you need? Do you hire consultants? The list of questions goes on and on.
Or do you outsource to a 3PL? But what does that mean for your brand? Are you condemned to having your products delivered in generic boxes? Or even worse, packaging with someone else’s branding on it? The answer is no; using a 3PL should help build your brand.
The Top Five Ways a 3PL Can Help Build Your Brand
#1: Packaging and Inserts
In a world where everything comes in a brown cardboard box, how do you stand out from the rest? Custom packaging and inserts. There is a wide variety of custom packaging materials available, from simply putting a logo on a mailer, printed wrapping paper, a sticker sheet, a printed cardstock insertable, or creating an entire unboxing experience with a 360° printed box. When a customer receives their package, they physically connect with your brand, some even for the first time, creating an impression that impacts the perceived value of the item(s) inside. You’ve worked hard to earn this customer, and brand experience will keep them coming back.
#2: Customer Service
Top-tier customer service is a crucial way to build your brand. Working with a 3PL equips your customer service with great insight into the order fulfillment process. Sometimes, things happen, and customers accidentally put an old address in or want to see when an item will be in stock next. 3PLs are equipped with Warehouse Management Service (WMS) that allows an employee to see the status of a given order, the total inventory available, and a wide variety of other metrics and reports. The WMS, combined with the communication with an assigned representative, can ensure you can address your customers’ concerns.
#3: Savings
There are a variety of ways working with a 3PL can create savings that can be passed on to the customer, decreasing price and building your brand’s value perception. When using a 3PL’s account through various shipping providers, you can utilize their discounts. Since 3PLs are shipping thousands of packages a day, suddenly, your operation can use the discounts that would not be available to you unless you were shipping multiple times your current order volume. Another savings avenue relates to the previously mentioned significant initial investments and labor. 3PLs have already invested in their facilities, processes, and workforce. Taking advantage of proven strategies allows a company to skip costly and timely investments and continue to grow with their demand.
#4: Location and Speed
The belief that “good things come to those who wait” has been crushed by consumers’ want to receive their goods in the shortest amount of time possible. Working with a 3PL with strategically located fulfillment centers throughout the country to minimize shipping times can be critical to building your brand. If your customer places an order, then it gets lost in the fulfillment process, only to eventually be shipped out of a remote warehouse, chances are, that will be their last order. Be sure to know where the majority of your customer base lives, and be sure to be able to reach them quickly. The less time between the moments they order and when they get their products in their hand, the less time the excitement has to fade.
#5: Scalability and Attention to Detail
Whether you are shipping 500 orders a day or 5000 orders a day, you want to ensure your customers’ experience contains no uncontrollable variables. Working with a 3PL means that growing pains are minimalized due to past experiences and proven processes. Initial customers impressed with the turnaround and shipping times should not be punished for being early adopters. Instead, every customer should feel like their order received the same attention to detail as the first. Consistency ensures your customers that you maintain a steady order execution, eliminating the feeling of taking a risk by ordering. And when the time comes that you want to change, let your 3PL know, and they should be happy to accommodate.
There you have it! As the eCommerce industry continues to grow, each company should seek to differentiate itself from its competitors. Branding is essential, and it should continue from the digital world into the physical world.
