How can a shipbroker get more clients?

Shipbroking is the clearest case in this library of a business that does not run on leads. A charterer with a cargo to move does not search Google for a broker. It calls the two or three brokers whose numbers it trusts, who sent it accurate positions this morning, and who did what they said on the last fixture. An owner with an open ship does the same. If you are looking for a lead source to switch on, this page will disappoint you. If you want to know what actually grows a broking desk, read on.

Mostly through people they already know. Chartering desks, operators and owners deal with a small set of brokers in each segment (dry bulk, tankers, gas, containers, sale and purchase), and new brokers usually come in through a colleague’s move, a referral or a broker who proved useful on a difficult cargo.

Search data confirms that clients do not find brokers through search. In the Strive analysis of Google Keyword Planner data from September 2025 to August 2026, the measured demand in this category is almost entirely vessel tracking: searches like “marine traffic”, “marine finder”, “marine ship traffic” and “marine trackers”, each nationally in the 100,000 to 1 million monthly range¹. Across 291 distinct terms, the median top-of-page bid estimate (high range) was $1.83¹. Searches for brokers or chartering services did not appear among the top terms in any of the 32 state reports¹. Those are people checking where a ship is, most likely a mix of shipping staff, port workers and the curious, not charterers looking for a broker. Bidding on them buys the wrong audience.

So the question is not “how do I get found?” It is “how do I become one of the few names a principal calls?”

Principals pay brokers for four things. None of them is a lead.

• Market information. Who has tonnage open where and when, what the last fixtures paid, and which way the market is moving. In practice that means daily position lists and market reports that are accurate and short.
• Reach. The ability to show a cargo to the right owners, or a ship to the right charterers, quickly and discreetly.
• Negotiation and paperwork. Working the terms and the charter party. Most fixtures use standard forms. BIMCO’s GENCON 2022 is a general-purpose voyage charter party⁴, and ASBA and BIMCO jointly published ASBATANKVOY 2025 for oil tankers⁶.
• Trust. Brokers carry offers and counteroffers that bind their principals. A broker who misstates a position or leaks a cargo loses the desk.

Position lists and AIS data

Position lists are the daily product most clients judge you by: ships open, where and when, with key details. Good lists come from owners’ circulars, calls with operators and licensed data, then get checked against each other.

AIS feeds help confirm where ships are. IMO rules require AIS on all ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards not on international voyages, and all passenger ships¹⁰. Commercial AIS platforms sell that data under terms. VesselFinder’s terms, for example, bar extracting content with bots, scrapers or crawlers except through authorized APIs, and say public use of derived data must not disclose the underlying AIS data unless your plan permits it¹¹. Do not scrape tracking sites. License the data under a plan that covers your use, and read the redistribution terms before you put AIS-derived positions in a circular that goes to hundreds of people.

Brokerage is usually a percentage of freight or hire, written into the charter party. The rate is negotiated and varies by segment and by how many brokers share the deal, so no single public figure applies. The example below shows the method.

Worked example: the value of one new charterer relationship

Illustrative inputs, not sourced benchmarks.

• Cargo: 55,000 tonnes of grain at $30 a tonne freight
• Freight: 55,000 × $30 = $1,650,000
• Brokerage: 1.25% of freight, shared with no other broker
• Commission on one fixture: $1,650,000 × 0.0125 = $20,625

If the charterer fixes four cargoes a year through you, that is $82,500 a year in commission. If the relationship lasts five years, the gross value is about $412,500 before desk costs and before any rate changes. A time charter works the same way: a ship at $15,000 a day for 60 days is $900,000 of hire, and 1.25% of that is $11,250.

Now compare that with the cost of earning the relationship. A trip to a major shipping event might cost $6,000 in travel and fees, and a broker might spend 50 hours over six months sending positions and market notes before the first fixture. If one in five of those efforts turns into a regular client, you are spending perhaps $30,000 in travel and time to win a relationship worth hundreds of thousands. That is the math that makes this business relationship-driven. It also shows why a $50 “lead” is meaningless here: the cost of a contact is trivial next to the cost of earning trust.

Ranked for a small desk or a broker building a book. Order shifts by segment.

Daily market coverage

This is the core channel. A short, accurate daily position list or market note, sent at the same time each day to principals who asked for it, keeps your name on their desk. Many brokers find that a principal reads the lists of four or five brokers and calls the one whose list was right last week. Accuracy beats volume.

Speed also matters. HBR’s analysis of 1.25 million leads at 42 U.S. companies found that firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited even an hour longer²¹. That study was not about shipping, but the lesson carries: a cargo order answered in ten minutes is worth more than the same answer tomorrow.

Credentials and associations

The Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers, founded in 1911 and a Royal Charter organisation by 1920, describes itself as a professional body with 27 international branches and 4,000 members⁸. Its qualifications are a recognized signal of competence when you are new to a principal.

BIMCO has 2,100 members in 120 countries, says its members cover two-thirds of the world’s tonnage², and offers a membership category for shipbrokers and chartering agents³. It writes many of the standard contracts brokers work with every day⁴.

In the U.S., the Association of Ship Brokers and Agents, established in 1934, brings together dry cargo, tanker and sale and purchase brokers, plus affiliate owners, operators and charterers⁵. Its membership is itself a network of principals.

The Baltic Exchange in London is a membership organisation for the maritime industry and a provider of freight market information used to trade and settle chartering and derivative contracts, and its members commit to a code of business conduct; it is owned by Singapore Exchange⁹. The source here is secondary, because the Exchange’s site blocked automated access; check details directly with the Exchange. For a broker, the Baltic matters in two ways: its published assessments are the shared reference for rates, and membership signals that you accept its conduct standards.

Industry events

Events are where relationships start and get renewed. Examples, all from organizers’ own sites:

• ASBA. The ASBA Cargo Conference was held in Miami Beach on September 23 to 25, 2026, and ASBA also runs smaller events such as a Dry Cargo Lunch in Houston⁷.
• Posidonia. The next Posidonia runs 5 to 9 June 2028 at the Metropolitan Expo in Athens¹².
• Marine Money. Ship finance forums in Greece, Korea, China, New York, New Orleans and London, including a Ship Finance Forum in New York on November 19, 2026 and a London Ship Finance Forum on January 28, 2027¹³. Finance events put you in a room with owners’ senior teams.

A common rule of thumb: decide which ten principals you want to meet before you book travel, and set the meetings in advance. Use the receptions for everyone else.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn lets advertisers target by job title, company name, industry and seniority¹⁴, so a small budget can put a market note in front of chartering managers at named companies. Organic posting works the same way at no cost. Post sparingly and only when you have something specific to say: a rate move, a route change, a new regulation. Never post client names or fixture details your principals have not cleared.

Email

Distribution emails for positions and reports are routine, but they are still commercial email. In the U.S., CAN-SPAM makes no exception for business-to-business email: you need honest headers and subject lines, an ad disclosure, a valid postal address and an opt-out you honor within 10 business days, and each violating email can draw up to $53,088 in penalties¹⁵. Whether a message counts as commercial depends on its primary purpose¹⁶. In the UK, PECR’s email consent rule does not apply to corporate subscribers such as companies and LLPs, but sole traders and some partnerships count as individuals, and UK GDPR still applies to personal data used for marketing, even in a business context¹⁷. Send lists only to people who asked for them or who plainly work in the segment, and remove anyone who opts out.

Why buying leads rarely fits

Per-lead buying works when a stranger is ready to hire a provider today, like a homeowner with a broken water heater. Shipping principals are not strangers looking for a provider. They already have brokers, and they add one when that broker shows them something the others did not. A purchased list of “charterers” gives you names, not trust. Many brokers also find that unsolicited mass emails to a principal’s chartering desk get their domain filtered, which hurts their legitimate distribution.

If you spend on outside help, spend it on licensed data, market research, a good CRM, or a junior who can keep your lists accurate.

This is not legal advice. Talk to maritime counsel for your situation.

• FMC licensing. No person in the United States may advertise, hold out or act as an ocean transportation intermediary without an FMC license²⁰. The Shipping Act defines an ocean transportation intermediary as an ocean freight forwarder or a non-vessel-operating common carrier¹⁸, and the FMC’s definition of common carrier excludes ocean tramp transportation¹⁹. A pure chartering broker may fall outside these definitions, but if you also book liner cargo or forward freight, check before you advertise those services.
• Data terms. AIS platform terms limit scraping and redistribution¹¹.
• Email. CAN-SPAM in the U.S.¹⁵¹⁶; PECR and UK GDPR in the UK¹⁷.
• Confidentiality. Cargo orders and fixture terms belong to your principals. Do not use them in marketing without consent.

Demand follows freight markets, trade flows, harvests and geopolitics, not a calendar a marketing plan can rely on. This review found no public source that gives a reliable seasonal curve for broking business, so treat seasonality as unknown for your segment. Track your own fixtures and inquiries by month for two years, and plan travel and coverage around your segment’s known cycles, such as grain harvest windows in dry bulk.

• Chasing inbound leads. Search demand is for ship tracking, not brokers¹. Ads on those terms buy the wrong audience.
• Inaccurate position lists. One wrong ship costs more credibility than ten good lists earn.
• Scraping AIS sites. It breaks terms¹¹ and puts your data supply at risk.
• Mass, unconsented email. It can break CAN-SPAM or UK rules¹⁵¹⁷ and gets you filtered.
• Covering too much. A broker who knows every ship in one segment beats one who knows a little about all of them.
• Events without meetings. Travel is expensive. Book the meetings first.

• Shipbroking runs on relationships and market information; clients do not find brokers through search, and the measured search demand is for ship tracking.
• Daily, accurate position lists and fast answers are the best marketing a broker has.
• Credentials and associations (ICS, BIMCO, ASBA, the Baltic Exchange) signal competence and conduct to principals who do not know you yet.
• License AIS data under terms that cover your use; do not scrape tracking sites.
• Per-lead buying rarely fits, because the value is in trust that a purchased contact does not carry.