Marketing is an essential part of any business, helping sellers to promote their products and increase their sales.
For the wholesale sector, marketing can be quite different as wholesalers mainly deal with merchant customers and pay less attention to advertising, location and stores’ environment.
It is all about promoting products to retailers or institutional buyers for wholesale orders. Therefore, in order to increase wholesale sales, a good marketing strategy is required.
Sending samples
Similar to manufacturers, one of the most common ways to market wholesale products is sending samples out. Sampling offers buyers the advantage to experience the product first and have an opportunity to try before deciding whether to purchase or not.
However, it can be a double-edged sword, unless the wholesaler is absolutely confident about the product. There is more to think about than simply just handing the products to retailers.
During sampling, focus on the experience that receivers will gain, not just their simple enjoyment of getting something for free. When sending samples, remember to include detailed information about the company and the products itself, and an invitation to register as a wholesale customer.
Contact via email or phone call a few days later to ensure they received the sample. By this way, retailers are reminded about the products, giving them another time to consider it.
Trade sales promotions
Trade sales promotions, which target retailers and wholesalers, is a common way to attract customers. The strategy involves a series communications activities that attempt to offer added value or incentives to retailers to stimulate immediate sales.
Here are some trade sales promotion techniques that wholesalers should apply to their marketing plans:
- Point-of-purchase displays: Existing separately from traditional aisle shelves in order to provide extra facings and more exposure for a product, POP displays are used to prompt an urge to "impulse" buy to sell products on the spot.
- Trade contest: A way to reward retailers that sell the most product.
- Trade discounts (also called functional discounts): A manufacturer reduces the retail price of a product when it sells to a reseller, rather than to the end customer. These are payments to distribution channel members for performing some function.
Other techniques include coupons, samples, rebates, and sweepstakes.
Online marketing
A study finds that B2B buyers on average conduct at least 12 Google searches before they decide to buy wholesale. Therefore, online marketing plays a crucial role in developing your business. Wholesalers should build a proper website for a start. Make the website easy to access and remove all barriers that may stop customers from making purchases.
Wholesalers can also look to promote via B2B magazines and commercial websites. Despite the downturn of B2B magazine publications in recent years, digital versions have been thriving, because the information these journals provide is trusted by more people than any other source.
Besides product details, wholesalers can also feature case studies, interviews or insights to help retailers further understand their business. When using these channels to market to retailers, it’s recommended to create experience for users, for example interactive videos or virtual reality technology.
Participating in trade shows
Trade shows can be a productive way for wholesalers to market products to retailers - but for now, they’re largely on hold until the pandemic passes. Traditionally, trade shows have been a place where wholesalers and retailers can meet and build partnerships.
When the shows return, wholesalers should always consider them as part of a broader marketing strategy, because they allow face-to-face meetings and the opportunity for prospective customers to see products on display and learn more about them and the company. But a presence at a trade show is not enough in itself to guarantee continuing sales and growth, usually because they are held periodically even in times without a pandemic.
The magic of marketplaces
The newest channel for wholesalers to reach prospective customers is B2B marketplaces. Australia’s largest wholesale marketplace is TradeSquare which allows buyers to search for and source goods 24-seven.
The beauty of a marketplace is that it never closes, with stock and prices updated constantly. In TradeSquare’s case, buyers can view more than 100,000 products from several hundred brands. It is only open to companies within Australia and buyers must be registered with an ABN. Pricing details are only available to registered visitors to the site.
A key benefit of TradeSquare is that wholesalers can sell to anyone registered on the platform without the need for credit checks and a time consuming onboarding process - TradeSquare takes care of all that with every registered buyer leaving them free to trade with whoever they like online.
With a range of promotional features available to vendors on the website, not to mention just being on the site with products there to be searched by prospective buyers, a marketplace in this day and age has become an essential marketing tool - with instant results if a buyer likes what they see.
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