Building a 12-Month Market Visibility Plan
As pallet companies begin planning for 2027, most of the conversation will naturally focus on the numbers. Revenue targets, equipment investments, hiring, margins, production capacity and where the next opportunities for growth might come from.
Those things absolutely matter, but there is another part of strategic planning that I believe smaller pallet businesses need to spend more time thinking about: market visibility.
Put simply, when someone in your market needs pallets, transportation, recycling services or another solution you provide, do they know who you are? When a potential employee is looking for work, have they heard of your company? When an existing customer is considering expanding their relationship with you, are you reminding them of everything you can do?
For many small and family-run pallet businesses, visibility has historically been built through relationships, reputation and word of mouth. Those are still incredibly powerful advantages, but the way people discover businesses, research potential partners and form opinions about companies has changed dramatically.
The good news is that building visibility doesn't require a massive marketing budget or a complicated strategy. It requires consistency.
If I were sitting down with a pallet business owner to build a 12-month visibility plan, I would start by asking one simple question: What do you want your market to know about you by this time next year?
Maybe you want to be known as the best recycler in your region. Maybe you have invested heavily in automation and want customers to understand your capabilities. Maybe you're trying to expand into new markets, recruit better people, showcase your sustainability efforts or prepare the next generation of your family to take a larger role in the business.
Whatever it is, start there. Visibility without a clear message quickly becomes noise.
From there, identify three or four stories that reinforce that message throughout the year. Your people should probably be one of them. Your operation and capabilities might be another. Customer success, community involvement, technology, sustainability, safety or your company's history could round out the list. Then build a simple calendar around those stories.
This doesn't mean posting on social media every day. I think many businesses make marketing harder than it needs to be because they believe they constantly need something new to say. They don't. A great customer story can become a website article, LinkedIn post, sales email and conversation at an industry event. A new piece of equipment can become an opportunity to explain how you're investing in quality, capacity or your employees. A 30-year employee anniversary isn't simply a photo; it's a story about culture, loyalty and the kind of company you've built.
One good story can travel a long way when you're intentional about telling it.
I would also look at the industry's calendar and plan around it. Which association meetings will you attend? Which plant tours, conferences and customer events matter? When are your busiest hiring periods or seasonal changes in demand? Instead of realizing two weeks before an event that you should probably "do some marketing," decide now what you want to accomplish before, during and after it.
That same thinking should extend to sales. If you're trying to grow a particular service or geography in the second quarter, the stories you're sharing in the first quarter should help create familiarity before your sales team ever makes the call. I've seen firsthand how much easier a conversation becomes when someone already recognizes your company, your people or what you stand for.
Most importantly, don't measure visibility entirely through likes and followers. For a pallet company, those numbers can be misleading. Pay attention to what actually matters: inbound opportunities, referrals, conversations at industry events, recruiting interest, customer engagement and how often prospects tell you, "I've been seeing you guys everywhere."
That is where consistency starts to compound.
I've spent a lot of time travelling throughout this industry, meeting owners and walking through operations, and one thing continues to stand out: there are incredible businesses doing incredible work that very few people outside their immediate circles know about. There are multi-generational companies investing in technology, developing people, supporting their communities, expanding into new areas like lumber mills, acquiring other businesses, and quietly building remarkable businesses.
The opportunity isn't to manufacture a story. The story already exists. The opportunity for 2027 is to get better at telling it.
So, while you're building budgets, setting sales targets and planning investments for next year, put market visibility on the agenda too. Decide what you want to be known for, identify the stories that prove it, map those stories across the next 12 months and commit to showing up consistently.
Because being great at what you do will always matter most, but in an increasingly competitive market, making sure people know you're great at it matters too.
20 WESTERN PALLET