If you dream of owning a direct-to-consumer distribution business, you have to market it effectively.
Starting a direct-to-consumer distribution business is less expensive than a warehouse distribution business. Plus it's easier to manage. Still you have move a lot of products to build a profitable direct-to-consumer distribution business.
In a direct-to-consumer distribution business, you probably will not be warehousing products. so you don't earn a warehousing fee like warehouse distributors do. Your profit is dependent on your product sales. So how well you market can mean success or failure of your business.
Know Your Target Market
You first have to know who your potential customers are and the types of products that they will buy. Both are marketing decisions.
Large distributors have already cornered the market for high volume products. So your best chance of building a profitable direct-to-consumer distribution business is to go after the business that they're missing by targeting a market that they aren't serving.
Identifying your target market is just the first phase in your research. Next you have to research the needs, wants, buying power, and expectations of the people in your target market.
Marketing Through The Internet
The Internet is quickly becoming the marketing medium of choice for many direct-to-consumer distribution business owners.
Many publishers of information products distribute direct-to-consumers by immediately downloading digital products to their customers' computers. It's quick, inexpensive, and serves customers desires for immediate gratification.
Other Internet marketers work with drop shippers. They market and sell real products. The drop shippers are often the manufacturers who fulfill and ship each order. Then they send the marketer a commission check.
You can use one or both of these Internet marketing options. In both cases your main job is marketing. That requires that you use your target market research to select products that your target market members will buy and then cater your sales messages to them.
The better you know your target market, the better you will be able to get them to your site. And you need to get lots of people to your site in order to make any decent money. With conversion ranges from one to four percent, you'll need between 25 and 100 people to make one sale.
After doing your market research and setting up your web site, doing individual promotions through the Internet is the least expensive way of marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business.
Using Direct Mail To Market Your Direct-To-Consumer Distribution Business
Direct mail is another relatively inexpensive way to market your direct-to-consumer distribution business. Just follow the steps below:
Focusing on a target market that can be identified by demographics and buying behavior,
Buying a good mailing list of just the people in the target market,
Producing a good direct mail package that will appeal to your target market members, and
Process and send orders.
Sales can be lost and your business ruined in any of the above steps. Even when you implement each step effectively, sales conversions for direct mail campaigns are only about 1 percent. Thus you have to do the math and know that you can make a profit if you only sell once for every 100 packages that you mail.
To cut costs, many direct mail marketers now use postcards as the first phase of a two-phase direct mail campaign. To use this tactic, you narrow down potential customers with the postcard and then send complete packages only to those who reply to the postcard.
Direct mail is more expensive than individual Internet promotions, but cheaper than most other ways of marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business.
Summary
Besides the Internet and direct mail, other good ways of marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business include telephone sales and infomercials.
Starting a direct-to-consumer distribution business is less expensive than a warehouse distribution business. Plus it's easier to manage. Still you have move a lot of products to build a profitable direct-to-consumer distribution business.
In a direct-to-consumer distribution business, you probably will not be warehousing products. so you don't earn a warehousing fee like warehouse distributors do. Your profit is dependent on your product sales. So how well you market can mean success or failure of your business.
Know Your Target Market
You first have to know who your potential customers are and the types of products that they will buy. Both are marketing decisions.
Large distributors have already cornered the market for high volume products. So your best chance of building a profitable direct-to-consumer distribution business is to go after the business that they're missing by targeting a market that they aren't serving.
Identifying your target market is just the first phase in your research. Next you have to research the needs, wants, buying power, and expectations of the people in your target market.
Marketing Through The Internet
The Internet is quickly becoming the marketing medium of choice for many direct-to-consumer distribution business owners.
Many publishers of information products distribute direct-to-consumers by immediately downloading digital products to their customers' computers. It's quick, inexpensive, and serves customers desires for immediate gratification.
Other Internet marketers work with drop shippers. They market and sell real products. The drop shippers are often the manufacturers who fulfill and ship each order. Then they send the marketer a commission check.
You can use one or both of these Internet marketing options. In both cases your main job is marketing. That requires that you use your target market research to select products that your target market members will buy and then cater your sales messages to them.
The better you know your target market, the better you will be able to get them to your site. And you need to get lots of people to your site in order to make any decent money. With conversion ranges from one to four percent, you'll need between 25 and 100 people to make one sale.
After doing your market research and setting up your web site, doing individual promotions through the Internet is the least expensive way of marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business.
Using Direct Mail To Market Your Direct-To-Consumer Distribution Business
Direct mail is another relatively inexpensive way to market your direct-to-consumer distribution business. Just follow the steps below:
Focusing on a target market that can be identified by demographics and buying behavior,
Buying a good mailing list of just the people in the target market,
Producing a good direct mail package that will appeal to your target market members, and
Process and send orders.
Sales can be lost and your business ruined in any of the above steps. Even when you implement each step effectively, sales conversions for direct mail campaigns are only about 1 percent. Thus you have to do the math and know that you can make a profit if you only sell once for every 100 packages that you mail.
To cut costs, many direct mail marketers now use postcards as the first phase of a two-phase direct mail campaign. To use this tactic, you narrow down potential customers with the postcard and then send complete packages only to those who reply to the postcard.
Direct mail is more expensive than individual Internet promotions, but cheaper than most other ways of marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business.
Summary
Besides the Internet and direct mail, other good ways of marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business include telephone sales and infomercials.
About the Author:
Learn other tactics for your Direct To Consumer Distribution Business and link from there to related posts. Don't miss my free report: Marketing Your Small Business
No comments:
Post a Comment