Distributor Marketing Activities

Over the past year, I have been called to assist distributors and their supply partners in developing new and innovative marketing plans. I laid out a few of these plans last year in an article for Industrial Supply Magazine called It’s time to rethink Joint Marketing Plans.

It seems at least a few others are thinking about distributor marketing as well. Rivet/MRO, a blog site sponsored by an organization providing software to track co-op funds, piggybacked my article and said this, “The fact is, most independent distributors have limited marketing expertise…” They go on to provide additional information on how and why distributors spend money on logoed promotional items and how-to better use co-op funds in general. You can read it here. 

Just as implied by my Industrial Supply article, it is time for distributor marketing to move forward - first, move into a position of strategic thinking and second, improve to become a tool whose effectiveness can be measured.

Thinking about this topic, we have prepared our list of some of the top considerations for the marketing department.

Author’s Note:

After giving the topic a day to further percolate (I had 7 hours in a plane yesterday), I decided to add this quick summary.

Marketing for distributors has three major responsibilities:1) Make it easier for salespeople to make sales.2) Find new people, a new selling audience, for salespeople.3) Nurture e-commerce and other avenues to create sales to customers not called on.

Nearly everything they do is a function of these three things.

The ability to identify and create communications tools for new contacts at existing customers.
Why? It is 5-12 times easier to sell more to existing customers than to sell to new customers. At the same time, busy salespeople often lag in their discovery of new contacts at existing customers. Thinking more, some of the people they miss are critical buying influences (like safety managers, production leaders, and others not fully engaged in their products).

I believe marketing must not only develop plans for identifying who these people are but also spend time with sales management, specialists, supply-partners and others in developing a “script” for salespeople to use in their initial meetings.

Provide leads with new customers.
Why? Facing the truth, most salespeople (even the “really good” ones) are not great when it comes to prospecting. Armed with a plan to use special offers on LinkedIn to attract qualified leads, a marketing department can move the needle on sales growth.

The ability to produce customized sales collateral for specific customer segments.
Why? Think about the power of going into a plastics plant armed with a brochure outlining the products and services your company has tailored to fit that industry. Instead of flipping out a line card that speaks only about your company, what would happen if the seller could steer the conversation to cover the specific issues of the customer?

Salespeople who talk about the customer and their problems are more successful in opening the door to new accounts and impressing existing customers with their knowledge of their specific situation.

The ability to position the distributor’s website for e-commerce business.
This one is new to my list. So, why add it? I believe e-commerce is on the move; distributors need to do more than throw up a webstore and forget about it. Instead, attention to new product promotions, search engine optimization, and accuracy of data have become mission-critical tasks.

Further, I recommend attention to detail on the products searched and customer behavior on the website be studied.

Handle logistics for inhouse and extension events.
Why? Many of our clients’ product specialists have heard the message – you need to sell your products in a wholesale fashion. What does this mean? Instead of spending two hours setting up an elaborate demo at the customer location, why not invite customers to your office (or in remote cases, a hotel meeting room). With the right coordination, the specialist does a better demonstration, the customers aren’t distracted by daily activities and, the important part, you can do multiple detailed demonstrations in a single day.

If marketing assumes the role of handling logistics, invitations and other details, that leaves the sales team to time work their magic– by selling.

Coordinate all company logos and company branding.
Why? In days of old, distributors relied on the brand recognition of their supply-partners. But with saturation distribution, big-name old-line suppliers being bought and sold on a regular basis and new trends in e-commerce, distributors need to stand for something.

This starts with a logo and tag line and ends with a careful explanation of what makes you different than the other 10,000 potential buying options.

Manage Co-op funding and joint marketing campaigns.

Why? Every year distributors lose out on the opportunity to capture what is essentially free money from supply-partners. Many of those who measure joint marketing funds often procrastinate on spending the money and end up with golf balls and shirts. While I am not criticizing golf balls or company logoed shirts, I wonder if this is the best use of the money in the age of internet prospecting via LinkedIn or other mediums.

Further, I encourage distributor marketing professionals to link their suppliers to derive special programs designed specifically for their market.


In our book, The Distributor’s Annual Planning Workbook,

we shared these thoughts on what a distributor needs to think about to move forward in the marketing department. I am posting this here as a service to the industry”

Chapter FiveBuilding a Better Marketing Plan:Let’s have a difficult discussion. The cold hard facts are most distributors do a lousy job with marketing. Over the years, distributors leaned on brand recognition developed by their supply partners. In a few instances, where the biggest supply partners use limited or exclusive distribution, this strategy may even work. With just a couple of exceptions, meaningful exclusive channel partnerships are slip-sliding away. And this leaves distributors with a need to crank up their marketing efforts.
In distribution, there are three basic components of marketing (ranked here from easiest to hardest): sales aids, sales events, and brand building. Marketing people on distributor payrolls lean more towards the keeper of the trinket closet key and event coordinator end of the spectrum. We are not bashing them. They work hard. They get a lot accomplished, but their objectives need to be expanded a couple of notches.

Let’s look at how we might move our market effort forward in the coming year. Somebody needs to invest about one hour thinking about the answers to these questions.

The Distributor Brand⦁ What makes us different from the competition?
Please don’t use the same worn-out phrases about good service, caring employees or local presence. Be realistic, everybody makes this claim.⦁ How do we want to be seen by our customers?⦁ Can the salespeople relate to our brand?⦁ How does this play into the supply partners we have aligned ourselves with?
Target Focused Questions⦁ Which of our product lines are strategic to long term growth?⦁ Which customer segments offer the easiest path to growth in sales and market share?⦁ How do our marketing plans directly impact our targets?⦁ With whom at each of our customers do we have the best relationship? Are there people we should be reaching out to?⦁ How could a marketing effort assist the sales team in connecting with targeted new customers or new contacts at existing customers?⦁ What new updates may be required for our website, newsletter, and other electronic communications tools to appeal to our target group?
Vendor Focused Questions⦁ Are there vendors who require specific market activities?Do these activities create brand awareness for the vendor or for our company? How can we use this work to tell our story instead of repeating the vendor’s message?
⦁ Who offers co-op dollars to fund certain activities?⦁ How easy is it to take advantage of the dollars available? Who is responsible for tracking these co-op dollars?⦁ Which vendors have marketing materials which could be crafted into our own materials?
Event Focused Questions⦁ What major event should be positioned on our calendar?⦁ What resources are needed for the events?⦁ What is the timeline for developing materials? (Invitations, promos, etc.)
Promotional items⦁ What promotional items did we purchase last year?
⦁ What was their purpose?⦁ Are there any which proved to be more/less effective than others? How do we know? Is the measured objective or a myth spun around something that happened in 1991?⦁ Are there any promo items that should be discontinued?⦁ How have technology trends affected the impact of our promotional items?
Only after these questions have been given serious thought can a true marketing plan be laid out for the coming year. Your company can be more effective and produce greater profits “just” by thinking about your current activities and promotional items. If you push the envelope towards the strategic and brand building – you create better sales results.

Before we leave marketing…The best distributor marketing plans leverage the power of those who supply the products we sell to create a unique and more powerful story. This is especially true with a select group of manufacturers who (actually) want to assist with our growth. In the next chapter, we look at the unique position of the distributor as a middleman.

We want to talk about Marketing, we want to talk to Marketing Professionals working in the Channel.
For the folks reading who work in a marketing-related area of the channel (which I will define as Distributor, Manufacturer’s Agency or Supply-partner), I would love to get your perspective on how you see marketing changing in the next 3-5 years.







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