Logistics Market Segments – The Niches Have Riches

One of the best ways to grow your sales is by specializing in a specific logistics market segment. Ideally, you already have some customers in a specific logistics market segment that you would like to develop – so picking is easy.

When you pick a segment, it enables you and your company to customize both your service offering and your marketing to your preferred market segment. To illustrate this point, see the example below.

Logistics Marketing Segment – Food and Beverage

Let us assume that you specialize in the food and beverage vertical. From experience and conversations with customers, you learn food safety is a big concern, so you study the Food Safety Modernization Act and find carriers that specialize in sanitary transportation of food. Perhaps, you also learn that many of your customers are members of Food Shippers of America so you join the association, attend the conferences, and become even more expert in food and beverage transportation. Based on your experience and expertise in food and beverage transport, you begin modifying your services to better serve your food shippers.

As you grow your food and beverage customer list and customize your service offering to be a better service provider, your marketing team goes to work developing content marketing (podcasts, webinars, articles, and white papers) targeted at food shippers.

As you learn more about shipping food and beverage, your experience and expertise help you get found by food shippers. When you talk to food shippers, you understand their industry, their challenges, and your confidence shows. Shippers want to work with experts – not salespeople so become that expert they are looking for.

Below are some typical logistics market segments along with some of the bigger companies in each space.

Logistics Market Segments

Automotive

  • General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Magna, TRW, Continental, Denso, Johnson Controls

Chemical and Plastics

  • DowDupont, BASF, ExxonMobil Chemical, LG Chem, Bayer, Sumitomo Chemical, Hanwool Corporation, Lyondellbasell, Ihne & Tesch GmbH, Matsui Technologies India, SABIC

Industrial and Manufacturing

  • Siemens, General Electric, Bosch, Hitachi, Boeing, ArcelorMittal, Airbus, United Technologies Caterpillar, Samsung Electronics

Government & Defense

  • Department of Defense, General Services Administration, Federal Emergency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, state, county, and local government

Energy and Petrochemicals

  • Aramco, Holly Frontier Corporation, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Phillips, Formosa Plastics Corporation, Siemens AG, Vestas

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

  • Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Unilever, AB InBev, L’Oréal, The Coca-Cola Company, Mondelez International, Kraft Heinz, Heineken

Furniture

  • Ashley Furniture Industries, IKEA, Williams-Sonoma, Berkshire Hathaway Furniture, Steelcase, Rooms To Go, TJX, HNI, Herman Miller

Food and Beverage

  • Conagra, PepsiCo, Kellogg, The Coca-Cola Company, Campbell Soup, Kroger, General Mills, Hershey, Starbucks, Kraft Heinz, Tyson, Cargill

Appliances

  • GE, Oreck, Whirlpool, LG, Samsung, Frigidaire, Bosch, KitchenAid, Miele

Electronics

  • Samsung Electronics, Foxconn, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, Panasonic, Microsoft, Motorola

Health, Pharma, Life Sciences

  • Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Biogen, Abbott Laboratories, Stryker, Regeneron, Ascension Health, Community Health Systems, Catholic Health, Puritan’s Pride, Sanofi, Novartis

Retail and e-Commerce

  • Amazon, Walmart, The Kroger Co, Amazon, Costco, The Home Depot, Walgreens, CVS Health Corporation, Target, Lowe’s Companies, Albertsons Companies, Apple Stores, Best Buy, McDonald’s

Pick Your Niche

There is no one right way to develop your logistics marketing segments. It can be difficult to determine which categories to include and where to place a company, but that’s not where the value is added. The real value is added when you become an expert in a specific niche. For an example of how to create and develop logistics market segments, check out C.H. Robinson’s approach: Industries

If you want to learn more, check out the podcast below.

The Niches Have Riches with Kevin Hill

Kevin Hill and Joe Lynch discuss why the niches have riches, which refers to the advantage of specializing and owning a niche. In the logistics and transportation business, competition is intense and increasingly the best 3PLs are developing marketing segments, so they can customize their services to a specific niche (market segment). Click the link to see the original post, The Niches Have Riches with Kevin Hill.