No.1 in the Marketing for Growth series | 

The freight forwarding market in 2026 is unforgiving. Margins are tight, capacity and rates are volatile, and many forwarders are competing against providers with bigger brands, larger sales teams and more visible digital marketing. 

In that environment, the cost of getting marketing wrong is no longer just wasted budget, it is missed opportunities and weaker pipelines.

The problem for many freight forwarders is not that they are doing “no marketing”. It is that activity is fragmented, reactive and disconnected from commercial objectives. A few LinkedIn posts here, an occasional email there, an updated brochure every couple of years, but none of it adds up to consistent market presence or measurable growth.

The first article in our Marketing for Growth series looks at why that happens and how to replace “random acts of marketing” with a simple, practical plan that actually supports commercial results.

The real cost of “random acts of marketing

Across the industry, you see the same pattern:

• Occasional bursts of LinkedIn activity when time allows
• Websites that don’t reflect current strengths, sectors or services
• Generic messaging that could belong to any forwarder
• One-off campaigns that start with energy and then quietly disappear

These activities are rarely harmful in themselves. The issue is that they are not tied to a clear commercial purpose. They rarely target a defined audience, rarely connect to sales activity, and rarely have any agreed measure of success.

The result is a familiar frustration:

• Leadership teams feel they are “doing marketing” but can’t see the impact.
• Sales teams don’t feel supported and default to relationship-led, reactive selling.
• Marketing – whether in-house or outsourced – is seen as a cost, not a growth lever.

In a market where customers now research providers online long before requesting a quotation, this lack of structure carries a real opportunity cost. You may be operationally strong, but if your presence in the market is inconsistent and unclear, prospective customers will not see the difference.

Start with commercial objectives, not tactics

The first step away from marketing fails is to stop thinking in tactics and start with outcomes.

Instead of asking “What should we post?” or “Do we need a new brochure?”, start by asking a different set of questions:

• What kind of growth do we need over the next 12–24 months?
• From which types of customers, sectors or trade lanes?
• In which services or solutions are we strongest and most profitable?

Those questions turn vague ambition (“grow the business”) into specific commercial objectives – for example:

• “Increase export ocean FCL volumes with UK industrial manufacturers by 15% in the next 12 months.”
• “Win three new mid-market fashion import accounts shipping from Asia into our UK distribution facility.”

Once those kinds of objectives are clear, marketing has something concrete to work with. Plans can be designed to reach the right people, with the right messages, in the right contexts, rather than simply “raising awareness” in a general sense.

Choose a realistic focus (you can’t do everything)

Many logistics providers try to talk to everyone at once: every sector, every trade lane, every service. The result is broad, generic messaging that doesn’t resonate strongly with anyone.

A growth-focused plan forces you to choose. For the next 6–12 months, you might decide to prioritise:

• Two or three key sectors where you have genuine strengths
• One or two trade lanes or solutions where you can offer something distinctive
• A small set of “hero” customer problems you are particularly good at solving

This doesn’t mean you stop serving other customers. It means your scarce marketing and business development effort is concentrated where you are most likely to win profitable, sustainable work.

As soon as you define this focus, decisions become easier:

• Which events to attend
• Which topics your content should cover
• Which case studies to develop
• Which contacts to prioritise in outreach

Instead of trying to be visible everywhere, you are deliberately visible in the places and conversations that matter most.

Creating a simple, practical plan

With commercial objectives and focus agreed, you can now design a plan that fits the reality of your business.

A useful rule of thumb: if the plan can’t be explained clearly on one page, it is probably too complicated.

On that one page, map out for each priority:

1. Target audience
   Who exactly are you trying to reach? Job titles, sectors, locations and typical challenges.
2. Key messages
   What do you want them to understand and remember about you? Not a long list of services, but 3–4 clear value points backed by proof.
3. Core activities
   The handful of things you will do consistently for at least one quarter – for example:
   • A monthly insight article or post series tailored to that audience
   • A quarterly customer or prospect webinar focused on their issues
   • Sales outreach that references that content and invites conversation
   • Website and case study updates aligned to the same themes
4. Ownership and cadence
   Who is responsible for each activity, and what is the realistic frequency? Weekly posts, monthly articles, quarterly campaigns and reviews.

By simplifying to this level, you give people in the business something they can actually execute, not a long document that sits on a shared drive.

Connect marketing and sales activity

Even the best plan will underperform if marketing and sales operate separately.

In many forwarders, marketing sits in a corner (or with an external agency), producing assets and activity that sales may or may not use. Sales, meanwhile, pursues opportunities based on relationships, referrals and tenders, often without visibility of what marketing is doing.

A growth-oriented plan pulls these together:

• Sales helps define priority sectors, accounts and themes.
• Marketing creates visibility and credibility around those themes in the market.
• Sales uses that visibility as a door-opener and proof point in conversations.
• Feedback from sales (what resonates, what questions customers ask) informs future content and campaigns.

This can be done with a simple monthly “commercial huddle” where sales, marketing and leadership spend 30 minutes reviewing pipeline, upcoming campaigns, and what needs to be adjusted.

Make it measurable and accountable

One of the main reasons marketing is perceived as “fluffy” is that success and failure are not defined in advance.

For each priority objective, agree both:

• Leading indicators – early signals that your activity is reaching the right people
• Lagging indicators – the commercial results that ultimately matter

For example:

• Leading indicators
  • Website visits from target sectors and locations
  • Engagement on LinkedIn from named accounts
  • Attendance at webinars or events
  • New conversations opened by sales citing campaign themes
• Lagging indicators
  • Opportunities created in target sectors
  • Tenders invited where your strengths are relevant
  • New accounts won and revenue/margin delivered

Growth rarely comes from doing more marketing. It comes from doing the right marketing,  consistently, clearly and strategically, aligned with the commercial realities of your business.

Article 2 – Building a modern marketing plan

In the next article in our Marketing for Growth series, we’ll take this a step further and look at how to turn those commercial objectives into a modern marketing plan for freight forwarders of all sizes. One that joins up brand, digital, content and sales activity into a single, practical roadmap your team can actually follow.