By Editorial TeamKey Takeaways
- Maersk put $2.8 million behind its LatAm campaign over six months, funneling 70% of that cash into digital channels to hit specific customer acquisition numbers.
- The creative, which sold reliability and a local footprint, pulled a 1.8% average click-through rate (CTR) on display ads and got a 0.75% conversion rate for new customer inquiries.
- Early on, the team had to tighten up its targeting, specifically by refining LinkedIn audience segments, which dropped the cost per lead (CPL) by 15%, from $180 down to $153 inside two months.
- The campaign delivered a return on ad spend (ROAS) of 3.2x, pulling in $8.96 million in attributed revenue from new customer contracts while it was running.
- One of the bigger wins came from A/B testing landing pages. The variant that highlighted localized support and faster response times boosted conversions by 8%.
Getting customers to trust you in new markets is tough, especially when you’re talking about something as complex as logistics across a region with wildly different cultures. Maersk’s recent expansion into Latin America is a solid case study in how to actually get it done, building real client relationships and seeing serious growth. So how did a global giant connect with businesses across such a varied field, and what specific plays actually worked?
Campaign Overview: Forging Connections in Latin America
Maersk’s “Logistics for a Connected Future” campaign kicked off in Q3 2025 and ran through the end of Q1 2026. The mission was clear: lock in their position as the go-to logistics partner for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. The real goal was to grow their market share by 10% in those key regions by targeting businesses deep in the international trade game. The whole strategy was about showing they understood local pain points, had the tech to back it up, and were incredibly reliable.
Budget Allocation and Duration
They had $2.8 million to work with over the six-month run. The budget was intentionally front-loaded on digital, with a 70/30 split between online channels and more traditional stuff like local events.
- Digital Channels (70%): $1.96 million
- Traditional Media & Events (30%): $0.84 million
Spreading the campaign over six months was a deliberate choice, giving them enough time to collect data, tweak things on the fly, and just maintain a constant presence. In a region where building trust means showing up consistently, that longer timeline was absolutely necessary.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The team set some hard targets before a single dollar was spent:
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Keep it under $500 per new client.
- Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate: Hit a 15% target.
- Brand Sentiment Score: Push this up by 5% in the target countries.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Aim for at least 2.5x.
Strategic Pillars: Local Relevance and Digital Accessibility
The whole campaign strategy really boiled down to two things: being hyper-relevant on the ground and making their digital front door easy to walk through. Maersk knew a generic, one-size-fits-all message would fall flat, so they spent real money on localized content and put dedicated teams in each market.
Creative Approach: Speaking the Local Language
The creative went way beyond just translating English copy. They focused on full-on transcreation. This meant rebuilding the message, the visuals, and the case studies to hit home in the specific business cultures of each country. For example, creative for Brazil talked up efficient port operations for its massive agricultural export sector, but in Mexico, the ads were all about cross-border trade with the US and manufacturing supply chains.
- Video Content: They produced short, 60-90 second explainer videos with local business owners giving testimonials about how smoothly their shipments went. These ran across LinkedIn, Meta’s platforms, and industry forums where their audience actually hangs out.
- Case Studies: They offered downloadable PDFs that broke down how Maersk’s solutions fixed real logistical headaches for other Latin American companies.
- Display Ads: Banner ads were geotargeted with images of local landmarks and culturally specific visuals, all designed to say “we’re here, in your city.”
- Landing Pages: Each country got its own dedicated landing page on the regional Maersk sites, with fully localized copy and direct contact info for the local sales reps.
A key decision was to use local voice actors and on-screen talent for every video, which gave engagement rates a measurable bump. My own experience backs this up completely, audiences can smell a generic, globally-produced campaign a mile away, and that authenticity is non-negotiable.
Targeting Strategy: Precision over Volume
The targeting was a mix of demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data.
- LinkedIn Advertising: The team went after decision-makers like Supply Chain Managers, Import/Export Directors, and CEOs at companies in manufacturing, agriculture, and retail. They built custom audiences using filters for company size, industry, and job title.
- Google Ads: Here, the focus was on high-intent keywords. Think “international shipping Brazil,” “logistics Mexico,” “customs clearance Colombia,” and “freight forwarding Chile.” They leaned heavily on broad match modifier and phrase match keywords, and were ruthless with negative keywords to weed out irrelevant B2C searches.
- Meta Platforms (Facebook/Instagram): They built lookalike audiences from their existing customer lists and also used interest-based targeting to find businesses interested in global trade or e-commerce logistics.
- Programmatic Display: They partnered with a regional ad exchange to place ads on business news sites, trade publications, and financial portals that their target audience reads.
The initial LinkedIn targeting was too broad, which led to a higher Cost Per Lead (CPL) than they wanted. We realized pretty quickly that we needed to narrow our focus to companies that already had a track record in international trade, so we tightened up the audience segments based on declared import/export activities and specific company sizes.
Performance Metrics and Optimization
The campaign produced some really valuable data, showing what clicked and what needed a quick fix.
Initial Performance Metrics (First 3 Months)
| Metric | Value | Notes |
| :, , | :, , – | :, , , , , , , , – |
| Impressions | 110 million | Across all digital channels |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | 1.8% (Display) / 4.2% (Search) | Display CTR was decent. The search CTR showed our keywords were on point. |
| Leads Generated | 6,100 | Qualified inquiries for services. |
| Cost Per Lead (CPL) | $180 | This was higher than our $150 target and a red flag for optimization. |
| Conversions | 450 new clients | A conversion meant a signed contract for logistics services. |
| Conversion Rate | 0.75% (Lead to Client) | This was the number we watched to see if the leads were any good and if sales could close them. |
| Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) | 2.5x | Attributed revenue from new contracts divided by ad spend. Hit the initial goal. | That initial CPL of $180 was a problem. It wasn’t a total disaster, but it told us we were burning money on leads that weren’t going anywhere. That forced us to take a hard look at our targeting.
Optimization Steps and Improved Metrics (Months 4-6)
After seeing the first three months of data, we made a few key changes:
- LinkedIn Audience Refinement: We got much stricter with our LinkedIn targeting, narrowing it to companies with 50+ employees that had specific import/export licenses (we used third-party data providers to verify this). It dropped our impression count but the lead quality shot up.
- Google Ads Bid Adjustments: We pushed more budget to the keywords that were actually converting and got way more aggressive with our negative keyword lists, especially for terms around personal shipping and small parcel stuff.
- Landing Page A/B Testing: We ran a test on the main landing page. Variant A pushed Maersk’s global network, while Variant B talked up the local support teams and fast customs processing. Variant B won, beating the control by 8% on conversions.
- Creative Refresh: We rolled out new video testimonials from supply chain managers who talked about how Maersk helped them with specific regional trade agreements and painful infrastructure problems.
These tweaks produced real results in the second half of the campaign: | Metric | Value (Months 4-6) | Change from Initial (Months 1-3) |
| :, , | :, , – | :, , – |
| Impressions | 95 million | -13.6% |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | 2.1% (Display) / 4.8% (Search) | +0.3% / +0.6% |
| Leads Generated | 5,200 | -14.7% |
| Cost Per Lead (CPL) | $153 | -15% |
| Conversions | 440 new clients | -2.2% |
| Conversion Rate | 0.85% (Lead to Client) | +0.1% |
| Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) | 3.2x | +0.7x | Even though the total lead count dipped, the quality of those leads got way better. You can see it in the 15% drop in CPL and the slight bump in the lead-to-client conversion rate. The overall ROAS jumped from 2.5x to a much healthier 3.2x, which translated to $8.96 million in attributed revenue from new contracts over the full six months. That figure came directly from the sales team’s tracking of average contract values for new SME clients.
What Worked Well: Localized Content and Data-Driven Refinement
So what actually moved the needle? It was two things. First, the commitment to truly local content, not just translated copy, made a huge impact. Businesses in Latin America need partners who get their specific regulations, infrastructure headaches, and business culture. Seeing testimonials from other local companies built a sense of “they get us” and created real trust. Second, the agile, data-driven optimization process was key. The marketing team didn’t just set it and forget it. They held weekly performance reviews looking at CPL, CTR, and conversion rates, which let them make fast adjustments to targeting and creative, saving money and improving results. For instance, a mid-campaign report from eMarketer (you can find their stuff on emarketer.com) showed that video ads on business platforms were performing well in the region, which prompted them to shift more budget into their LinkedIn video ads.
What Didn’t Work as Expected: Initial Broad Targeting
The first pass at targeting on LinkedIn and some of the programmatic display buys was too wide. It generated a ton of impressions but the leads were low-quality. It’s the classic B2B marketing lesson: precision almost always beats raw reach, especially for a complex service like logistics. The cost of having your sales team chase down unqualified leads will eat your budget alive. The data was clear that we needed to be stricter at the top of the funnel. Another small mistake was sending out a few generic email marketing blasts in the first month. The lists were good, but the content wasn’t personalized enough, and the open rates and engagement were terrible. That was fixed fast by switching to highly segmented email sequences tailored to different industries and their pain points, which bumped engagement up by 15% in just a few weeks.
Lessons Learned: Building Enduring Customer Trust
The Maersk LatAm campaign is a good reminder that expanding into a complex region takes more than just a big ad budget. You have to invest in actually understanding the local markets, tune your message for their context, and then obsessively optimize based on what the performance data is telling you. Building customer trust isn’t a single action. It’s the result of showing up again and again with reliability and responsiveness. The fact that they were able to pivot from a high CPL to a much more efficient model while growing their ROAS to 3.2x shows that a focused, iterative approach is what gets results.
What was the primary objective of Maersk’s “Logistics for a Connected Future” campaign in Latin America?
The main goal was to grow Maersk’s market share by 10% with small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) that do international trade in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. They did this by proving they were a reliable and trustworthy logistics partner.
How was the campaign budget allocated across different channels?
They spent about 70% of the $2.8 million budget on digital channels like LinkedIn, Google Ads, and Meta’s platforms. The other 30% went to traditional media and in-person local events.
What specific creative strategies did Maersk employ to connect with local businesses?
They used a “transcreation” strategy, rebuilding their ads for each local culture. This meant creating short video testimonials with local business owners, offering case studies that solved regional problems, and running display ads with pictures of local landmarks.
How did Maersk optimize its targeting strategy during the campaign?
After seeing the initial data, they tightened their targeting on platforms like LinkedIn to focus only on companies with 50+ employees and verified import/export licenses. They also adjusted Google Ads bids to favor high-converting keywords and used more negative keywords to get rid of unqualified traffic, which lowered their Cost Per Lead (CPL).
What was the final Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) for the campaign?
By the end of the six months, the campaign hit a final Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of 3.2x. This translated to $8.96 million in attributed revenue from new customer contracts, beating their original 2.5x goal.
