Marketing Strategy of SF Express: Detailed Overview

About SF Express 

Source – PNGitem

Chinese multinational delivery company SF Express offers both domestic and international express delivery based in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It is China’s second-largest courier.

SF Express was founded by Wang Wei. In 1993, SF Express began offering service between Hong Kong and the province of Guangdong.

The 69 cargo aircraft in SF Express’ fleet are wholly owned by its subsidiary SF Airlines, including 37 B757, 17 B737, 13 B767, and two B747 all-cargo freighters.

Quick Stats 

Marketing Strategy of SF Express –

Marketing strategy is a long-term plan to achieve the company’s goals by understanding the customer’s needs and deciding the channels to reach those customers. 

Let’s learn about the interesting marketing campaigns used by SF Express. 

Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning 

Given the opportunities of exporting China-made products to the global market as well as the huge demand of China’s domestic import market, SF had targeted the audience worldwide.

As per the founder of SF – Mr Wang Wei, SF is not targeting a market size of RMB400 billion express delivery market, but an RMB1.2trillion logistics market in China. Diversification is definitely the key strategy of SF Express.

SF Express has been able to build a good reputation worldwide as the second-largest courier company in china and created goodwill for the company.

Marketing Campaigns 

• SF Express collabs with Rakuten Global Marketing for a free shipping campaign 

Leading Japanese online shopping mall joined hands with SF Express with the campaign of free shipping of 6kg if you buy more than 15,000 JPY from their stores.

This campaign was valid from 6 December 2018 to 14 December 2018.

 SF Express is a brand that is not only famous in China but highly recognized in the overseas and international express delivery market.

It is suggested that should launch a country-wide marketing campaign and build up a reputation. 

SF builds its success on advanced technology. Currently, it has a team of 3,600+ R&D staff. Although to enhance customer satisfaction through quality services, SF invested heavily in building a powerful information system.

SF continued to improve end-to-end express delivery procedures that span monitoring, tracking, inquiry, and resource allocation.

For example, a new ERP system was fully implemented in 2016 under ―Phoenix Project‖, which integrates Accounting.

Social Media Marketing 

SF Express is not that active on social media. The top social media network directing traffic to SF-express.com is Youtube, Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Web app. 

• Youtube – 323 subscribers
• LinkedIn – 81.6K followers 
• Instagram – 3830 followers 
• Facebook – 230 followers

SEO Strategies 

Source – Ubersuggest

According to SEO Standards, organic keywords around 500 are bad, above 1000 are good and above 10000 is amazing. And as you can see SF express has 23k organic keywords which are amazing. 

SF Express has 478k monthly traffic which is great as monthly traffic of 20000+ is considered amazing.

Influencer Marketing 

SF Express has not done influencer marketing yet i.e. they have not collaborated with YouTubers, bloggers, influencers etc. They rely on their way of traditional marketing platforms.

 But it is suggested that SFExpress should start doing influencer marketing to create more brand awareness and to promote their company on a large level as influencers are the leaders with a social fan following base.

People consider them trustworthy sources of information. 

E-Commerce Strategies 

If we talk about the E-Commerce strategies of SF Express, it has launched an e-retailing platform – INTMALL, which targets to sell products directly to customers in Russia, providing a one-stop shop for logistics and delivery services.

This is the same model as SFBest, which is a platform for China customers, selling grocery, food, and childcare products online, with delivery service backed by SF. 

Mobile App

SF Express has its own app – SF International where one can track and trace their shipment and select the delivery timeslot and method on their smartphones anytime, and anywhere.

It helps the customers track their orders and get the delivery time online.

This app has 3+ ratings and 50T+ downloads on the play store.

That brings us to the end of the case study on the Marketing strategy of SF Express. Let us conclude our learning below.

Conclusion – What’s unique about the marketing strategy of SF Express?

SF Express is one of the largest delivery services companies in China. It has been able to build a good reputation worldwide. 

But still, it depends on traditional marketing. It can be developed to a great extent if they use digital marketing as their marketing strategy.

The company is quite inactive on social media platforms which serves as a major limitation. However, the company has great scope and a long way to go. 

If you would like to learn more about digital marketing and develop skills, then you should check out  IIDE’s 4 Month Digital Marketing Course. 

 We hope you find this blog on the marketing strategy of SF Express insightful and informative. 

If you like such in-depth analysis of companies just like the marketing strategy of Coolberg, check out our IIDE Knowledge portal for more case studies.

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