Marketing for freight and logistics operators
A handful of contracts carry the P&L, so marketing exists to get you onto the shortlist before the tender is drafted and to grow the lanes you already run.
Where the money moves.
By the time an RFP reaches your inbox, the shortlist is largely formed. A procurement lead and a supply chain manager have spent the preceding year noticing operators, hearing names in the trade press, meeting people at conferences and quietly reading capability pages. That is the window marketing actually works in. A named account programme against the shippers you can genuinely service, sustained visibility for your safety and compliance record, and content that reaches the person writing the scope while they are still deciding what to ask for.
Procurement scorecards have changed. Chain of Responsibility duties under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, NHVAS accreditation, incident record, insurance and audit documentation have always been weighted. Mandatory climate reporting added another line, because a shipper preparing a scope 3 disclosure now needs consignment level emissions data from its carriers. An operator who can produce that cleanly holds a commercial asset. Most are still treating it as a compliance headache rather than publishing it where a sustainability team and a bid evaluator will both find it.
The larger growth is usually already inside the building. A shipper running two lanes with you has eight more sitting with somebody else, and the path to those is evidence rather than pitching: lane level case studies, on time performance a customer can quote internally, a quarterly business review that reads like a commercial argument, and a site your account manager can send after the meeting. Marketing for share of wallet looks nothing like marketing for new logos, and it usually pays faster.
Reporting is written against the commercial reality, not the dashboard. Tender invitations received, shortlist rate, lanes added inside existing accounts, revenue by account, and the cost of acquiring a contract against its contracted term. Ad accounts, analytics, the domain, the CRM data and every asset sit in your name from day one. One in-house team handles the strategy, the site, the search, the paid media, the trade PR and the bid content, so the story a shipper reads in the press matches the one in the response.
What we run.
Tender evidence library
Capability statements, lane case studies, Chain of Responsibility and NHVAS documentation, insurance certificates, referee sites and standard response content held in one maintained library, so a bid is assembled from current material rather than rebuilt from scratch at two in the morning.
Named account programme
A target list built with your commercial team, then LinkedIn, email and content aimed only at those companies and the roles inside them that influence freight decisions. Nothing is spent reaching businesses whose volumes you could not service anyway.
Lane, mode and service search
A logistics manager under pressure searches the lane and the problem, not your company name. Coverage across the specific routes, modes and cargo types you run, with paid support on the terms that carry buying intent and enquiry routing straight to the right sales lead.
Emissions and compliance positioning
Your climate data, safety record and accreditations published where a procurement team and a sustainability team both look, and packaged so a shipper preparing a scope 3 disclosure can point at you as the straightforward answer.
Trade media and executive profile
Commentary in the freight and supply chain press, speaking positions at the conferences your buyers attend, and visible commercial leadership, so the name is familiar long before the RFP is drafted.
Questions we get asked.
In front of the tender. Procurement builds a shortlist from operators it already recognises, and that recognition forms across the year before the RFP is written. Marketing runs against a named list of shippers, keeps your safety and compliance evidence visible, and makes sure the person drafting the scope has already read something of yours.
Yes. Capability statements, response libraries, lane case studies, Chain of Responsibility evidence packs and the site pages an evaluator checks before scoring. Your bid team keeps pricing and operational commitments. We handle narrative, structure and proof, so each response starts from maintained material instead of a blank document.
It matters more. When the trailer carries someone else's livery, the only place your reputation lives is with the commercial buyers who award contracts. That is a small, named audience, which suits account based marketing, trade press and executive profile far better than broad advertising ever would.
It became one when mandatory climate reporting pushed carrier emissions into a shipper's scope 3 disclosure. If you can produce consignment level data and a sustainability team can discover that easily, it is a commercial advantage. We publish it, put it in the tender library, and brief the sales team on how to lead with it.
Also in transport and logistics
Talk to us.
9 services under one team, run against the numbers your business already reports on.
Contact the Ignis Team
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