Sales channels to reach your customers
Selling through retailers, wholesalers and other distributors
Selling through an intermediary may be a more cost-effective way of reaching your end-customers than selling to them directly.
If you are targeting business customers who prefer to deal with large suppliers, selling directly to them may not be a realistic option. Instead, you might aim to supply wholesalers who have existing relationships with those businesses.
If individual consumers buy low value quantities of your products, the best option might be to target retailers that sell similar products. Or you might choose to focus your efforts on a relatively small number of wholesalers who can in turn supply your products to many retailers.
Other distribution channels may also reach your end-customers. For example, technology suppliers often sell to resellers who can configure and install the technology to suit end-users’ particular needs.
Managing your distributors
You need distributors who will value your product. If they sell competing products, what will make them push yours?
Corn Flakes onground marketing Strategy
Think about how you set your prices. Distributors will be more enthusiastic if they can make a large profit – but setting too low a price will eat into your own margins.
Effective advertising and promotions can be vital. As well as marketing to the distributor, you can promote your products directly to end-customers. Distributors will be keener to stock and sell products that their customers are asking for.
The key terms of the supply relationship should be covered in a written contract. Key issues might include:
Corn Flakes onground marketing Strategy
how much stock the distributor will hold
what the distributor will do to promote your products
how quickly you can resupply and minimum order levels
whether the distributor has exclusive rights to your product (for example, in a particular territory)
what happens if either you or the distributor want to end the relationship
Business ideas, Marketing and sales , promotions and advertising ideas , articles
How to Use Content Marketing the ACD way.
How to Use Content Marketing the ACD way.
brianoconn
Social Media Marketing
April 7, 2016April 27, 2016
4 Minutes
Many companies struggle in how to use content marketing to drive their sales or business upwards. No big surprise as todays buyer is more educated and savvy than ever. Smart marketing leaders know that traditional marketing methods are becoming less and less effective by the day, so turning to social media and content marketing as a means to drive traffic and leads makes sense . In fact social media/online advertising will overtake traditional advertising this year, posing opportunities and challenges for many companies.
But social media and content marketing is not the same thing. Yes they do operate hand in glove with each other however one is focused on consumption while the other is based on participation. The goal of content is audience consumption, while social media is all about audience participation.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 80% of decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus advertisements.
So think of content as a beautifully prepared meal that people want to consume, social media as the room where they sit talking about the lovely meal they just have eaten and social networking is how you make people aware of your food in the first place. They key to using content marketing is to create different meals aka content themes (chicken dinners become boring after a while) to keep people coming back for more. The same way we create different meals for different times of the day or weather, we also need to vary our content according to the different stages our prospective buyers are at.
I call this
ACD Content Marketing
I believe your content tactics should mirror both your company stage of development and your sales pipeline. ACD content marketing focuses the type of content created to match the three stages in customer acquisition. These are Awareness, Consideration and Decision.
Awareness Content
Awareness content is heavily SEO focused, a new business or one targeting a set of keywords for Google traffic will create allot of this type of content. It is aimed at potential buyers whom have no previous awareness or interaction with your business. The goal here is using keyworded content to get searched and seen by as many people as possible. Themes for awareness content include such titles as how to, tips on, a guide to etc.
Awareness Content is served up on:
Social Media Sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube etc.
Posted on Blogs Medium, WordPress, LinkedIn Pulse and Blogger.
Published to your own Website and Landing Pages
As presentations on Slideshare or Learnist.
Visuals (including Infographics) on Visual.ly or Imgur.
SEO link building to places like Scoop.it, Quora, Pearltrees.
This type of content is usually on-going as a business targets new keywords or sets of customers. It is important to capture their interest via newsletter or update sign-ups. Then you can now move to creating consideration content or content that is focused on getting customers to select you as a vendor.
Consideration Content
As you build traffic, repeat visitors, newsletter subscriptions and social network connections a business should start to blend in consideration type content into their content strategy. This is where you use content to nurture (lead nurturing) prospective customers.
The goal is to create content that will nurturing the customer meaning informing them on why/how your product or solutions will solve their problems. At the beginning consideration and awareness content can often be have similar traits as in keyword focused, but try to leave the SEO to aside as you progress, switching the focus on going deeper with informative and insightful content. The content is still served up on all the channels lists in the previous section plus emailed to your subscriber base.
Consideration Content should include:
Whitepapers
Research articles
Success Stories
Case Studies
Valid and Verifiable Customer Testimonials
Interviews (text and video)
Webinars
Sharing other forms of proof (reviews/awards/wins)
Decision Content
Decision content is offered to your qualified leads (sales and marketing working together) from lead nurturing them during the consideration phase. This content should be personalised, specific and introduced at the right time in the sales process. I suggest business splits decision content into pre-close and post-close. Pre-close content can be vital to closing a sale so should be planned out carefully.
Types of Pre-close Content may include:
Onsite or Virtual Product Demonstrations
Existing customer reference with detailed implementation
Personalised Proposal
Pricing Documents
ROI Presentations using existing customer cases
Lastly, there is the post-close content, this can include surveys, up-selling and cross selling content and referral requests.
Ensure you create content to welcome new customers and solicit feedback as part of your content arsenal. Also make sure to produce content templates that thank them for their purchase. Also post-close content should include sharing information on your newest products and upgrades.
Wrapping it All
The ACD marketing method has other benefits, used correctly it can be a superb way to gather valuable insights. Content marketing is the marketing of the here and now plus the future. It will only develop in its sophistication and personalisation as the social media networks become central to sales and customer interactions. Content is the always on, 24/7 plug-in to the internet world, always there guiding your potential customers even when you are asleep. The key to to create attractive and appealing content that will be consumed by the reader that matches where they are in your sales pipeline.
The Bitter Business can help create or work with your social media marketing or content marketing strategy, helping you to understand what type of content works and which aspect of your content creation needs to be improved to deliver more traffic, more leads and more customers.
Share this:TwitterFacebookPocketLinkedInRedditTumblrPinterestLike this:Like Loading…
Related
Create a Social Media StrategyIn “Social Media Marketing”Inbound Marketing StrategyIn “Business Strategy”Content Marketing Done RightIn “Social Media Marketing”
Taggedcontent marketingcontent marketing plancontent marketing strategysocial mediasocial media strategy
Published by brianoconn
Online Sales training programs and online sales training courses via The Digital Sales Institute. Passion for helping salespeople succeed in their sales career.
View all posts by brianoconn
Published
April 7, 2016April 27, 2016
Post navigation
Previous Post The Sales ProcessNext Post Social Selling Training
Sales Training Articles and Tips
Business Strategy (47)
Business Tips (43)
Free Business Tools (4)
Sales Training (19)
Social Media Marketing (42)
Social Selling (44)
Category CloudBusiness Strategy Business Tips Free Business Tools Sales Training Social Media Marketing Social Selling
Blog at WordPress.com.