Originally published November 2024. Updated September 2026 with what AI changed, and what it didn’t.
I began my career as a B2B marketer in the summer of the London Olympics, when a university project in cruise ship refurbishment turned into a job, and a good one at that. Since then I’ve worked in and with maritime companies on a wide spectrum, from shipbuilding to cargo handling to fuel systems.
Drawing from these experiences, I aim to help you understand how digital marketing can benefit your business in this massive niche, and address some of the opposing viewpoints you might encounter within your organization.
The maritime industry and its value chains encompass hundreds of company types, making it impractical to cover every possible scenario. However, we’ll explore some of the peculiarities I’ve encountered along the way.
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Digital marketing maturity in the maritime industry
You might think that companies in long-established “heavy” industries are slow to adopt digital marketing, and you’d be right. The B2B digital marketing scene in the maritime industry hasn’t kept pace with many other sectors. While some companies are up-to-date with the latest trends, the industry as a whole lags behind.
Terrible, right? Not at all! The low bar presents an opportunity. With today’s tools and knowledge, you can enter a digital realm where the maturity level often reflects the early 2010s.
That’s fantastic. Why compete when you can dominate?
In the two years between the first version of this text and now, that gap has not closed. If anything it has widened, because the tools available to a competent team improved faster than the industry’s willingness to use them.
What makes the maritime industry unique in digital marketing
I sometimes encounter pushback from industry professionals for the same reasons that make it an excellent field for digital marketing. Here are the top 5 objections I hear about why digital marketing doesn’t work in this industry:
- “We know all potential clients worldwide”
- “Our clients aren’t technologically savvy”
- “It’s a challenging business for digital marketing”
- “There’s no budget or buy-in from the company”
- “The industry is too traditional for digital approaches”
These are often all true. Interestingly, these objections often present great opportunities. Let’s dig in!
Objection: “We know all potential clients worldwide”
It’s true that you might have only a handful or a few dozen potential clients globally, and you might know these companies well. That’s perfect. It means your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and targeting will be straightforward, allowing you to focus on impacting key people in the company.
Remember, a business card in a Rolodex doesn’t guarantee a deal. Use every possible channel to convince and stay top of mind.
Objections: “Our clients aren’t technologically savvy” and “The industry is too traditional for digital approaches”
While some people in the industry might not be tech-savvy, our data suggests that, at minimum, they use email; many use social media, and the majority are more than capable of using a search engine. That’s all you need!
Since 2024 you can add one more: a growing share of them now start their research in an AI assistant rather than a search box, which raises the stakes on being findable rather than lowering them.
Objection: “It’s a challenging business for digital marketing”
A challenging business environment means you need to be skillful, not that digital marketing is impossible. I’ll take a hard-to-succeed business environment to market any day rather than one that anyone can do.
Objection: “There’s no budget or buy-in from the company”
Often, the problem lies in getting leadership buy-in. The money is there—just look at the budget for any convention or trade show you attend.
Based on my experience, if you get a chance to prove the effectiveness of digital marketing, you can make a strong case for it to continue. But if the answer is an absolute “no” without any room to even try it out, there’s often little to do at that time.
The role of digital marketing in maritime industry
The maritime industry is unique in that despite being global, it’s very tight-knit, and you’re often aware of potential customers. Digital marketing’s job is to help ensure they’re buying from you rather than your competition in the future and to help you recognize new opportunities.
When I see companies in the industry partner up with an agency to get their digital marketing going, there’s often simply a focus of trying to create new inbound leads or RFQs. Not because it would make sense but because that’s usually the role given to digital marketing operations in B2B.
We know this niche is different. We’re talking about projects and goods going from thousands to millions of dollars all the way to billions. So, no, you shouldn’t be trying to make your digital marketing function try to pull everything in your commercial development like a jetski pulling a ship.
The role of digital marketing consists most often of one or more of the following:
Strengthening relationships with clients
Strengthen relationships with existing clients to secure new orders or RFQs. This is achieved through frequent digital touchpoints. While quarterly in-person meetings are valuable, maintaining a consistent digital presence keeps you top of mind in their day-to-day operations.
Tapping into commercial interest signals
Gain insights from subtle indicators of sales potential. These behavioral data points, gathered from platforms like LinkedIn and your website, can be attributed to specific companies, roles, and job titles.
This is the role that has grown most since 2024, and it now extends well beyond behavioural data on your own channels. More on that below.
Supercharge your commercial efforts’ output
Amplify traditional marketing and sales initiatives by integrating digital strategies. For example, enhance convention visits with targeted digital campaigns for your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) or leverage PR successes to boost the impact of your digital outreach.
Generate leads and nurture them
Obtain concrete leads and commercial interest indicators by acquiring Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and nurturing them into Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
While this process is standard across industries, it requires a nuanced approach in maritime, where the same company may be both an existing client and a prospect.
The goal remains consistent: guide leads through the sales funnel more efficiently while tracking and increasing their interest.
Also read: Automation Assisting Marketing and Sales Processes
Understand your customer
Discover what resonates with your customers across various messaging angles and solutions. Use these insights to make data-driven business decisions that align with customer preferences and needs.
Related: A/B Testing in Marketing Using the Lean Loop
What AI changed in maritime marketing, and what it didn’t
Where I’m coming from on AI
I’m harder to impress on this than most. In the mid-2010s I also gained experience marketing machine-learning technology to Fortune 500 brands, for social media moderation sold into enterprise, a decade before everyone discovered AI.
So when the current wave arrived, my reaction wasn’t excitement. It was recognition, followed by the only question worth asking: which parts of this change the work, and which parts are a demo?
What AI doesn’t do for a maritime supplier
AI doesn’t create demand. A shipowner still doesn’t wake up and search for a hatch cover. The buying moment is set by the vessel, the newbuild programme, and the drydock calendar, and no amount of generated content moves it a day earlier.
AI doesn’t shorten the sales cycle. Good marketing can help a decision get made faster, and I’ve seen that happen. What it can’t do is move the schedule that decision sits inside. A newbuild programme, a yard slot, and a drydock window run on a calendar that was set long before anyone called you, and AI hasn’t changed that. What marketing decides is who’s on the shortlist when the moment arrives.
AI won’t hand you your positioning. It will draft you something, and the draft is often perfectly decent. The catch is that it’s assembled from what everyone else in your category has already published, so what comes out is the industry’s average way of describing the problem. That’s a useful starting point and a risky finishing point.
What AI does do, part one: efficiency
This is the answer most companies have already found, and it’s a real one.
Well-trained models, and systems customised around your own material and your own way of working, make the everyday work faster. Stronger first drafts, better production, and processes that can be run rather than done by hand.
That’s worth having. It’s also not the part that changes your commercial position, which is why it’s only half the answer.
What AI does do, part two: a forward look at your accounts
The second answer is what happens when you point the same capability at the market instead of at your own content.
AI can search, gather, and pull together enormous amounts of information at a speed and scale no team can match, and then analyse it with your guidance. What you end up with is closer to having a team of analysts than to having a writing tool. Give it publicly available information, plus whatever proprietary data you hold, and you can start answering questions that used to be unanswerable at any sensible cost:
- When is this owner’s buying window likely to open?
- What fleet changes are coming?
- What will our target segment look like in six months, in a year, in two years?
- What’s driving those changes?
- What shifted last month?
Build that into something repeatable and you get what this industry has never really had at a working level: a forward look.
It used to be either too hard or far too expensive to do properly. The organisations that did manage it consistently had to keep it very general, because that was as far as the effort could stretch. Now you can do it company by company. Pick one account, or pick ten, and get a specific forward view on each of them.
Measuring ROI in maritime industry digital marketing
Of course, we want to know that our efforts are contributing to the bottom line. The more we can attribute deals to our digital marketing efforts, the better. However, in this industry, attribution and cost-benefit analysis often don’t work in the traditional sense.
We can, of course, see whether we’ve had an effect, but not how much. The ROI calculation needs to be done as part of the larger commercial ROI calculation your company performs, rather than aiming to attribute a certain part of the return on efforts to a specific channel or campaign.
Additional resources: Measuring B2B Marketing Results and ROI: Key Insights and Tips
Where maritime industry digital marketing thrives
The selection of digital marketing channels in the maritime industry has shown less variation compared to other sectors. Let’s examine the current landscape and how it has evolved:
Twitter/X: gone from the picture
Twitter/X was a significant platform in the maritime industry for as long as I could remember, largely through the efforts of organizations and industry influencers within the niche. When I wrote this in 2024 it was declining. It’s now safe to say the maritime conversation has moved to LinkedIn and hasn’t looked back. If you still have a maintained X presence, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t build anything on it.
LinkedIn: a robust choice
LinkedIn has proven to be a powerful channel for reaching your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) through both paid ads and organic reach, from company posts to expanding your professional network. The platform’s relevance within the industry continues to grow, and its data solutions, particularly in advertising, offer deep insights into your customers and deliver tangible results.
Discover related content: 5 Examples of LinkedIn Advertising Strategies for B2B
Search: an essential strategy
Both paid and organic search are potent yet often underutilized channels for acquiring quality traffic. People in this industry actively search for information online, and you might be surprised by the results you can achieve with well-executed search engine optimization efforts.
The search category also ties itself to the powerful synergies that come to Google’s search from YouTube, so mind your videos when optimizing.
AI assistants: the new reference check
A growing share of buyer research now happens inside AI assistants before anyone opens a browser. For a maritime supplier this matters in a specific way: when a buyer asks an assistant who supplies a given system, your company is either in that answer or it isn’t, and there’s no second page to be on.
What gets you cited is roughly what got you ranked, done properly: clear, specific, technically accurate pages that answer a real question, on a site that’s crawlable. The suppliers with thin product pages and a brochure PDF are the ones who disappear.
Media and PR: complementary approaches
Media and PR efforts effectively support your marketing strategies, lending an air of legitimacy to your campaigns. While print material still exists, the industry has been steadily moving towards digital for years.
It’s worth noting that in this sector, you may encounter “pay-to-play” scenarios with media outlets, where purchasing ads in their publications can improve the chances of your stories being featured. This isn’t universal, but it’s common enough to be a useful strategy.
Non-programmatic display: underperforming
Non-programmatically bought banner placements and ads on websites remain prevalent in the industry. Many media publications and similar platforms require display banner spots to be purchased directly from their sales team rather than through Google Ads or programmatic platforms.
In fourteen years of working in the industry, I still haven’t been able to prove any ROI or observe good performance from this approach. While I’m not saying it definitively doesn’t work, I’ve never seen it deliver results that justify the investment. Make your own decisions based on this information.
WeChat: the gateway to China
WeChat is the go-to platform for relevance in the Chinese marketplace, whether in B2B or B2C. Due to government restrictions on many global, Western-originating platforms, you’ll need to engage with regional alternatives. These range from the super-app WeChat to the Baidu search engine and everything in between.
Other platforms
Additional channels and platforms exist, from ShipServ to XING, depending on your specific target audience and location. However, when considering the global industry, the platforms mentioned above will likely cover 80% or more of your digital marketing needs.
Where do companies go wrong?
In such a specific, albeit large niche, the biggest fumble I see companies make is approaching digital marketing with very generic strategies that often work for other industries. These approaches are far from relevant in the maritime industry. Your plans and your partnering agency’s understanding of the industry should reflect its unique characteristics.
In the two years since, the same mistake has taken on a new costume. Generic strategy delivered faster, with AI doing the producing, is still generic strategy. The industry knowledge is the part that can’t be generated.
If you want to avoid common and often costly mistakes when developing your digital marketing approach in the maritime industry, I’d be happy to help. My team and I can put our knowledge to good use in guiding you through the next steps.
Just book a time from the calendar below.