Generic advice to spend '5-10% of revenue on marketing' is not very useful for a freight forwarder, where one contract lane can be worth far more than a year of website costs, and where most of the return comes from a small number of high-value enquiries rather than volume.
Estimate the annual value of winning one mid-sized contract lane. If that is worth several lakhs a year, a budget of even ₹30,000–₹80,000 a month on website upkeep, SEO and targeted Google Ads is easily justified if it produces even one or two such wins a year, alongside the smaller spot-quote enquiries it also brings in.
A forwarder that has never tracked cost per enquiry cannot say whether its current spend is too much or far too little.
A company entering a new lane or region should expect to spend more in the first two quarters to establish visibility, then taper as organic search and referrals take over. A company only maintaining existing lanes can run a leaner, mostly organic-and-referral budget with a small always-on ads spend.
Size your budget against the value of one won lane, not against a generic percentage-of-revenue rule.
Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.
Keep reading
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