How to choose a marketing agency for a logistics company

Most agencies have never quoted a lane or sat in a transport office. Eleven questions that sort the ones who have from the ones who have not.

I am an agency owner writing about how to choose an agency, so read this with that in mind. I have also lost pitches to people who should never have won them, and picked up the pieces afterwards, which is where most of this comes from.

Logistics is an awkward sector to market. The buying cycle is long, the language is technical, and the person approving the work is usually running an operation at the same time.

These are the questions I would ask if I were on your side of the table.

First: do they know the industry

Not do they claim to. Ask three questions in the first meeting:

Explain the difference between a freight forwarder and a haulier.
What is an AEO, and why would a customer care?
Name two things that change on our lanes in Q4.

An agency that cannot answer these will spend your first three months learning on your budget, and every post will need heavy correction before it goes out. That correction time is yours, and it is the hidden cost of hiring a generalist.

Sector knowledge is not everything. It is worth about two months of ramp-up, which at most retainers is real money.

Second: look at the work, not the deck

Ask to see live client output rather than case study slides. Specifically:

Actual posts published in the last month, on the actual accounts.
Whether those posts read differently from each other, or whether four clients in the same sector are getting the same content with the logo swapped.
Whether the writing sounds like a person or a brochure.
Whether the design survives on a phone screen.

Then check one of those clients’ pages yourself, without being shown it. Look at whether the posting is consistent across the last six months, because consistency is the thing you are actually buying.

Any agency can produce a good first month. Ask to see somebody’s eleventh.

Third: settle ownership before you sign

This is where businesses get hurt, and it is entirely avoidable. Get all of it in writing:

Accounts. The LinkedIn page, ad account, Google Business Profile, analytics and domain stay in your name with you as owner. The agency gets admin access, not ownership.
Artwork files. You get the editable source files, not only exported images. Ask explicitly.
The email list. Yours, exportable at any time, on your platform account where possible.
The website. Hosting, CMS logins and code. If they build on a proprietary platform you cannot leave, that is a commercial decision you should make knowingly.
Content history. A copy of everything published, in a folder you control.

A good agency agrees to all of this without hesitating. Hesitation on any single line is the answer to the question.

Fourth: the commercial terms that matter

Length. Content needs six months to show anything, so an agency asking for three is being optimistic and one asking for twenty-four is protecting itself, not you. Six months then rolling with thirty days notice is fair to both sides.

Scope, in numbers. Posts per month, revisions included, calls included, who attends. Vague scope is where relationships fail in month four.

Who you actually deal with. The person in the pitch is often not the person doing the work. Ask directly who writes, who designs, and who you speak to when something is wrong.

Reporting. Monthly, in language you can forward to your board, showing what was published and what moved. Impression counts alone are not reporting.

Warning signs

Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed lead numbers. Nobody can promise either honestly.
A price quoted before they have asked what you do.
Twelve-month lock-in with a large upfront payment.
Refusal to name existing clients in your sector, or naming so many that yours cannot be getting attention.
Everything explained through metrics you have never heard of.
No question about your sales process. Content that ignores how you actually win work is decoration.

What you have to bring

The best agency in the country will underperform if you cannot give it three things: access to someone who knows the freight, a decision maker who approves within two working days, and twelve months of patience.

The engagements that fail rarely fail on the agency’s output. They fail because approvals took three weeks, or because the business changed its mind about the target market in month three, or because nobody was willing to say anything specific in public.

Decide those three things internally before you go looking. It changes who you need and what it costs.