Freight Forwarders Guide to Freight Forum

Introduction

Why would freight forwarders, who are very busy individuals, take time out of their day to spend logged into Freight Forum? The reason is they have something they want to get from the site. These may be as follows:

How to Market Your Services

There are a number of ways to market your services as a freight forwarder on Freight Forum. The first and easiest way is to register your agency in our Shipping Directory. The shipping directory is used by many professionals to search out specialized agencies in all corners of the globe. Make sure you are in there. Being registered in the shipping directory is also necessary to use several functions of the site including posting live shipping rates and sending sea freight quotes to those shippers and importers that have requested a quotation on our various freight exchanges. Another good way to market your services and show people you are for real is to post your container sales rates in our shipping rates section. Each time you post a rate there will be a link provided back to your company's page in the shipping directory, as well as a "Contact Company" link where people can contact you directly. Your rates will never be deleted from Freight Forum and will be archived so search engines like Google will archive the page with your rates on it and your rates will also likely be able to found when people search in Google and other search engines. Once they reach the page with your rates (even if they are current anymore) they can still click the "Contact Company" link and inquire to you about that rate or to get an updated rate.

Find New Accounts

Further to the strategies just mentioned, one way to find new accounts is to visit our freight exchanges. The following freight exchanges may all be of use to international freight forwarders;

When someone requests a quote, there almost always is enough detail in the lead posted there in order to send an initial quote. Find out the cost for that person's shipment, tack on your profit, and then send your quote. Not only will that person receive your quotation to their Freight Forum Inbox, they will also be sent a notification email to their real email address. The notification email also includes the full content of the message. You are welcome to put any contact information you like in your quotation so that user may also contact you outside of Freight Forum if they so wish to do so.

Some forwarders prefer just to contact these users without the quote and ask them to contact their email directly. You are welcome to do this if you like but note that it will definitely receive a lower response rate than if you have already inquired the rate and quoted it in your initial communication with them. This shows the person requesting the quote that you are a real freight forwarder and have already gone to work on their quotation. You will very likely receive a response to your quotation.

Network

Freight Forum is a supply chain social network. At roughly 22,000 real members, it may be the biggest social network devoted only to the supply chain industry. Start by visiting your profile page and uploading your photo. I cannot emphasize how much simply uploading a profile picture will help you do business on Freight Forum. Uploading a profile picture shows people you are a real person, not a machine, and is the first important step to building trust with someone on Freight Forum.

Once you have your picture uploaded, check out our Groups and Forums sections and begin networking.I may add more to this guide in the future, but for the time being, the above are great first steps to using Freight Forum as a freight forwarding agent.