Wholesale Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Having a solid wholesale marketing strategy is crucial to the success of your wholesale business. This is key to expanding your reach, fostering better relationships with your clients, and boosting your revenue!

We’re here to help out. In this expert guide, we present actionable wholesale marketing strategies that drive results for your business. Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll discover in this complete guide:

• What Is Wholesale Marketing?
• Why Having A Solid Wholesale Marketing Strategy Matters
• Part 1: Formulating Your Wholesale Marketing Strategy
• Part 2: Wholesale Marketing Ideas You Can Use To Attract New Customers
• Part 3: Wholesale Promotion Ideas For Encouraging Orders
• Part 4: How To Increase Wholesale Sales
• Part 5: Putting Your Wholesale Marketing Strategy Together
• Part 6: Frequently Asked Questions
• Part 7: Related Resources

So, let’s dive in!

The mix of wholesale marketing strategies you can implement may depend on your overarching business goals (we provide a ton in this guide, based on your goal). However, a well-rounded wholesale marketing strategy typically includes:

• Market research: Taking the time to learn about your market and craft a wholesale buyer profile ensures you craft marketing campaigns and promotions that resonate with your audience.
• Product positioning tactics: These are strategies that highlight what makes your products stand out in the market. For instance, highlighting features, key benefits, and unique value propositions.
• Pricing strategies: Bulk buyers expect competitive pricing. This can include offering volume-based discounts, implementing tiered pricing, or providing special deals to long-term wholesale buyers.
• Promotional activities: Targeted marketing campaigns can also help engage potential and existing wholesale buyers. This can include investing in online advertising and content marketing, posting on social media, or even attending events like trade shows and networking.

Why Having A Solid Wholesale Marketing Strategy Matters 

Before diving into how to create your wholesale marketing plan, let’s take a moment to understand why it’s important in today’s competitive marketplace. 

Your wholesale marketing strategy serves as a roadmap, outlining the key strategies to help you attract customers, increase sales, and grow your wholesale business. With a well-crafted plan, you can effectively showcase your products’ unique value and establish a foothold in your market. 

Let’s explore the top benefits of having a solid wholesale marketing strategy. 

Attracts your ideal clients

A solid wholesale marketing plan provides the tools to define and connect with your ideal customers. Instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach, understanding your customers allows you to tailor your efforts to their unique needs and pain points. In turn, this enhances the overall effectiveness and impact of your marketing campaigns. 

By clearly identifying the ideal clients that align with your offerings, you ensure that your products are reaching the right market. Overall, this helps optimize your customer acquisition process and foster better business relationships, saving your company valuable time and effort while boosting sales. 

Sets your business apart

A solid wholesale marketing strategy is also key to gaining a significant competitive advantage in a crowded market. It enables you to communicate your value proposition to gain the trust and confidence of wholesale customers. 

Why should potential customers choose you over other distributors? What sets your products apart? Whether it’s superior quality, exceptional customer support, or exclusive features, your wholesale strategy can help highlight these strengths to relate to your target market. 

Communicating these differentiators using different marketing strategies will give your market compelling reasons to choose you over competitors. 

Ensures sustainable growth

Having a wholesale marketing strategy in place also enables you to respond to market shifts and spot new opportunities. 

As you implement marketing strategies in your plan, monitor their performance and analyze results. These metrics are invaluable tools in assessing what works best for your target market and what needs to be improved. By staying attuned to your market’s evolving needs, you make well-informed decisions to sustain your growth long-term. 

Moreover, having a comprehensive wholesale marketing strategy encourages a culture of continuous improvement in your business. By embracing new marketing channels and experimenting with new customer engagement strategies, you create room for innovation.

Now, let’s dive into crafting your wholesale marketing strategy and exploring the best techniques to achieve remarkable results!

Part 1: How To Formulate Your Wholesale Marketing Strategy

Marketing plans don’t have to be stuffy complicated documents. In fact, the best ones are those you can write down on a single page or two. If it’s easy to explain, it’s generally going to be easier to execute.

The sad truth is that most people try a bunch of random things and then throw their arms up in the air and declare that “marketing” their business doesn’t work.

This is exactly where we don’t want to end up.

One of the greatest insights into marketing strategy I have come across was from entrepreneur Noah Kagan (founder of AppSumo.com) who recently wrote about lessons he learned growing an 8-figure business:

“When something works do more of it.

At the same, you need to aggressively cut the things that aren’t working.

There’s nothing wrong with experimenting and trying new channels. But you need to know when to stop. Be ruthless.”

– Noah Kagan, Founder of AppSumo.com & Youtuber

So when reading the below tactics, please commit to trying the ones that resonate with you but focus on what is actually working, because it will be different for each business. Don’t be afraid to try something, then cut it if you find it doesn’t work for you.

In other words, plan to test lots of things, but as soon as you find something that is working, double down on it.

Focus your wholesale marketing strategy on three areas

A focused wholesale marketing strategy with just a few key tactics that actually work is far more powerful than having an unfocused marketing strategy.

We can break down all wholesale marketing into three core areas:

1. Attracting new wholesale customers
2. Getting more orders from your existing wholesale customers
3. Increasing the sales revenue (order size) from your wholesalers.

I will be giving you a big handful of tactics in each area to test but there might be one particular question burning in your mind right now, so let’s cut to the chase:

Q. How do I promote my wholesale business?

At a high level, promoting your wholesale business can be done by:

1. Creating a marketing plan
2. Making a list of 100 ideal businesses
3. Cold calling
4. Direct mail
5. Cold Emails
6. Sending Samples
7. Identifying potential wholesalers in your customer list
8. Attending tradeshows
9. Profiling your best wholesale customers
10. Listing in industry/trade directories
11. Optimizing your wholesale recruitment landing page
12. Linkedin prospecting

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Creating a wholesale marketing plan

Firstly, you’re going to want a way to manage this. The easiest way is a simple document. So, I want you to open up a fresh Google Doc or a Word document and write down three headings:

1. ATTRACT CUSTOMERS

2. GET ORDERS

3. INCREASE ORDER SIZE

These headings will represent our areas of focus. You will jot down notes under each heading about which tactics you are going to try first in each of these areas.

Ideally, you should start with 2 tactics in each area to start your process of testing and iterating.

This amount is small enough to be measurable but big enough that you can get through the list of tactics quicker to determine what works best.

When you first start wholesaling the biggest challenge is going to be finding and attracting customers.

Let’s look at the first area of focus and really the pre-cursor to all of the marketing ideas outlined in Part 2…

Making a list of 100 ideal businesses

Firstly, make a list of 100 ideal businesses that you would like to become wholesale customers.

Why 100? Because finding the first 20 for your list will be easy. But finding the other 80 is going to be a challenge and that’s where the rubber meets the road.

Also, 100 is just the beginning. But let’s work with 100, for now, to make it easy to conceptualize and to give you something to work towards.

Create a new Google Spreadsheet (or Excel document) and title it “Wholesale Leads”.

You will need to add a few columns to this spreadsheet to give you the information you need to contact them later.

At a minimum I recommend the following collecting the following information:

• Company Name
• Website
• Contact Person
• Phone Number
• Email or Contact Link
• Mailing address
• Estimated Size (1 = small, 5 = huge)
• Revenue Potential (1 = low volume, 5 = high volume)
• Score (the average of the previous two columns)
• Contacted Yet? (Yes/No)
• Notes

The Estimated Size and Revenue Potential columns give you a way to rate the leads. Not all customers are created equal so we want you to focus on the biggest potential winners first, though the aim is to get through them all eventually.

Once you have your 100 leads listed, sort the list by the Score column in descending order which is the average of the Estimated Size and Revenue Potential ratings. This will give you a priority order.

Part 2: Wholesale Marketing Strategies To Attract New Customers

The following group of ideas covers a lot of ground and I don’t expect you to use them all at once. The idea is to provide you with the tools and options, but have you execute them one at a time to find what works for your business.

Remember, every business is different. Pay attention to what the data is telling you and adjust the course as necessary.

1. Cold calling

A tried and true method of guerrilla sales is the cold call. It involves *gasp* picking up the phone and talking to the people you just put on your list.

Can it be so easy?

Well truthfully, cold calling can be a bit of an art form to get right. There is a right way and a wrong way to approach it.

Here are my top 3 tips for making cold calling work:

1. Make your calls in the morning

More people are at their freshest in the morning. This includes you and the person who you’re calling.

Morning calls before opening time can also help you get past gatekeepers (receptionists and personal assistants).

2. Have a list of talking points, don’t use a script

When you write out exactly what you are going to say word for word you’re going to sound like a robot.

I suggest using a list of talking points instead. This will give you the freedom to talk more freely and actually respond to what the person is saying while still steering the conversation where you need it to go.

3. Make it habitual and reward yourself

In his book “The Power Of Habit” by Charles Duhig, he suggests that the key to forming a new habit is to add a reward to the habit-creation cycle.

You do the desired activity at the same time each day, then reward yourself to reinforce the habit.

Sam Ovens knew this too. When he was starting his consulting business he used cold contact to bring a rush of new leads to his business.

He did so by making it a daily habit.

Creating 5-10 cold direct mail pieces immediately followed by conducting follow-up cold calls for previously sent pieces -> Goto the post office to post the mail -> Cross the street to the fancy cafe over the road for a cappuccino and 30-minute break.

The reward at the end of the process reinforces the former activity and over time it becomes a habit. It was through this habitual effort that he started growing his company consistently.

2. Direct mail

Does direct mail still work in in today’s digital age? The short answer is yes. Only when done correctly. In fact, direct mail works in a very similar way to cold calling.

The basic principles are the same: you make a list of prospects, send them some direct mail and watch for the response rate.

Because of its easy nature, the temptation with direct mail is to send a generic mailout to thousands of people at once.

This shotgun approach used to work well. But in today’s sophisticated market you need to do put more consideration into how you are going to stand out. I personally believe the future of direct mail is personalization.

Personalization is great for increasing the response rate on direct mail pieces.

If you can go beyond just the “Hi [First_Name]” type of personalization, your prospects will appreciate that you’re taking the time to really get to know them.

It shows you have put some serious thought behind why you are contacting them in particular.

3. Cold emails

Cold email is a relatively new wholesale marketing strategy. It works in a similar way to other cold contact methods such as calling or direct mail with a couple of added benefits.

The first benefit of using cold email over other cold contact techniques is that there are many systems out there that will help you automate the process.

For example, systems like Ninja Outreach or Woodpecker are great for making the first contact. They can also send automatic follow-ups to prospects when they don’t respond to the first email.

Using a system like this also allows you to easily monitor the response rate to your campaign.

The second benefit of using cold email is the live feedback loop. What makes direct response marketing so effective is the ability to monitor the response to your campaign. This lets you tweak your campaign and try again for improved performance.

Cold email is particularly effective because the feedback loop can be near-instantaneous.

4. Sending samples

Another common technique of manufacturers all over the world is to send samples out (and a lot of them).

As a wholesale distributor, you can use a similar technique quite effectively. Sending samples can give your direct mail pieces a great means of standing out.

As with many of these tactics, the key to making it work lies with the work you put into researching your target.

Remember, for each sample you send you’ll need to recoup that cost in sales somehow. Sending your sample to a prospect of unknown worthiness is a waste of those resources.

Along with your sample, you should also include information about your company, details about the sample itself, a list of other products that you offer, and an invitation for them to register as a wholesale customer. It might also help to include an incentive for them to register.

Send your package via registered post or a reputable courier with a signature required on receipt of the parcel. That way you know exactly when they have received it.

Finally, schedule a phone call a few days later to check they received the sample and to ask if they would like to place an order.

5. Identify wholesale customers in your current list

Another great way to kick-start your wholesale distribution will be to see if you have any existing customers that might qualify for wholesale status.

If you’re able, export the orders from your store into a CSV file, then open it up in Excel or Google Spreadsheets to inspect the list.

There are a number of red flags that you want to look out for:

• Customers that have provided a company name while ordering
• Clients that have ordered larger quantities
• Customers that have ordered multiple times over the last 12 months

If you find any matches, do some research on them and, if it makes sense, reach out with a friendly email to clarify their situation.

6. Attend relevant tradeshows & meetups

While tradeshows are not relevant for all industries, you’d be surprised how many niche tradeshows there are. Beyond that, there are also hundreds of smaller meetups that your prospective customers might attend.

Tradeshows are also great for spreading awareness of your company and your products. Be proactive in attracting people into your booth by using games, free samples, and inviting them to try your products. Then, make sure you collect contact information for as many attendees as you can.

Because the cost of having a booth at a tradeshow is so high, it’s super important to follow up on every single lead.

Finally, the other indirect benefit of attending tradeshows is that you can also get to meet other business owners.

You never know where things might lead – often little conversations can turn into referrals, business ideas, and other positive results.

7. Profile your existing (and best) wholesale customers

Do you already have a few existing wholesale customers? Profiling them to find more just like them is an excellent place to start.

What is it about your existing customers that make them good wholesale customers?

• How big is their business?
• What is their industry vertical?
• What geographical area do they serve?
• What other products do they sell?
• Do they have a physical store? Is it in a complex, strip mall, a department store?

Getting specific about the characteristics of your existing wholesale customers can help you narrow down and identify others who match the same profile.

8. Add yourself to industry directories as a supplier

Industry directories can be another great way to allow customers to find you.

Here are a few of the larger more popular business supplier directories you can be listed in:

• ThomasNet
• Kompass
• MasterSeek

The easiest way to find relevant directories is by Googling the phrase “industry directory [your niche here]”.

I encourage you to list yourself in the smaller, more niche directories for your industry as the larger ones can make you a small drop in a big ocean of companies.

You can also ask to be listed on the websites of any manufacturers that you utilize too.

9. Optimize your wholesaler recruitment landing page

Do you have a dedicated page on your website to introduce yourself to new wholesale customers and recruit them?

We recently wrote up a killer guide on how to create the perfect wholesale landing page. Creating a page like this on your website gives you the ability to:

1. Dispense general information about your wholesale program
2. Set expectations and terms
3. Provide a rosy picture of what it’s like being a wholesale customer
4. Encourage people to register for a wholesale account

It’s worth investing your time to create a brilliant recruitment page for your wholesale customers. Your potential customers can’t read your mind, so give them everything they need to make a decision about whether to register with you or not.

10. LinkedIn prospecting

If you aren’t on LinkedIn as a business owner/professional, then you should be!

It’s the social network for business and it can be used for more than just displaying your work history and resume. Moreover, you can actually use it as a sales tool.

LinkedIn Premium is a fantastic way to open up business searching tools to get accurate data. It costs around $60 a month (current as of 2024) and is well worth the investment for the time savings it provides.

But if you are unsure about LinkedIn as a customer recruiting tool, and you are currently sitting on a standard account, all is not lost.

There are two LinkedIn browser extension scrapers that you might want to look at using:

• Linked Helper – helps you automate the visiting of profiles and even messaging potential targets
• Dux Soup – also automates profile visiting to help your profile get exposure plus has a neat Google searching feature

As with any prospecting method, the whole premise of LinkedIn prospecting is to make a list, check their worthiness for your program (see if they are a good fit), and set up meetings to try to recruit them. It’s a numbers game. If you can make the numbers work then try it out but don’t go into it expecting a 20% conversion rate, you’re more likely to only get 1-3%.

LinkedIn is good for the first part because there are options for automating and making this process quicker than manually searching for companies. Just keep in mind though that this is only the first part of the puzzle.

Part 3: Wholesale Marketing Ideas For Encouraging Orders

It’s one thing to get a wholesale customer to register, but getting them to place their first order is a whole different ball-game.

There are a number of wholesale promotion tactics that you can use to encourage people to make their first order as fast as possible.

1. Remove all barriers to ordering and make it easy
2. Manual outreach

The focus here should be on removing barriers. Barriers stop people from ordering. For example:

• Not knowing enough about your products
• Surprise shipping charges
• Order minimums
• The ordering process itself
• Not being sure about returns terms & conditions
• Lack of sales support

Have you thought about how your new wholesale customers are perceiving the experience?

If you put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment it can help you visualize where the gaps are. Try to imagine that you know nothing about your business and the way it works.

Q. Do you provide enough information about your products and how to go about selling them?

Give them sales brochures, product information & specs, step-by-step guides on how to display your goods for maximum effect, videos on how to use your products, plus anything else you think might be useful.

Q. Does your new customer even know how to place an order?

A quick video screencast can go a long way here. It’s surprising how you might think something is totally obvious but to a new customer could seem daunting or impossible.

Q. Do you tell them upfront about shipping charges, payment type charges, shipping lead times, and more?

This should be in your explainer on the recruitment page ideally. Or, if not, on one of the first pages they see after registering to become a wholesale customer.

I also recommend you follow up in email form with a PDF of the terms and conditions and a short highlight list of what they are. The key to avoiding surprises is good communication.

Q. Do you support your customers well enough?

If you’re not in touch with your new wholesale customers at least weekly in the beginning then there might be something wrong.

Give them multiple ways to reach you including phone, email, contact forms, live chat and any other ways you can think of. Make yourself available to them.

Answered all of the above? Great!

Now I want to show you some tactics which will elicit the one action you want from your new wholesale customer: a quick first order…

1. Pay close attention

Firstly, pay very close attention – your customer has a wealth of knowledge to give you. If you learn everything about them, their business, and their customers you will be in a position to set them up for success.

Giving your new customer extra attention in the first 1-3 months of your relationship will keep you in front of their mind for longer and show them that you really do care and appreciate their business.

Provide them with everything they need for success:

• Product information
• Marketing materials
• Sales information
• Suggestions on product promotion

If you can give them some sort of action plan to follow that is even better. Make it easy to see how they can win by being your customer.

2. Reduce or eliminate the order minimum

For their first order, another great encourager is to offer to reduce or eliminate the order minimum barrier.

Making an order up to a certain amount can feel like a limitation, and it is useful later on, but the very first order isn’t the time to be strict about enforcing it.

A smaller minimum order amount or no order minimum amount at all removes that barrier in their mind so they can focus on buying exactly what they want.

3. Free shipping for the first order

Similar to the above on removing the order minimum you can also apply the same tactic to your shipping charges.

Shipping is a sensitive topic though since not all products are the same size & weight. This tactic might be hard for you to apply if you ship bulky goods or goods with thinner margins. Therefore, I suggest you only do this if you know you can cover your costs with the profit margin on this first order.

4. Give them a sample pack

Making a “new customer” sample pack can be a great way to onboard your new customers. It gives them a chance to try all of your products for themselves at no cost.

It will also likely be a surprise since so few people do this.

Using samples to recruit customers is a well-known technique (we even mentioned it above) but not many businesses consider using it as an after-sale technique.

5. Provide a coupon discount

Another old tried and true wholesale marketing strategy to encourage sales is to use a coupon. Most commonly this is a retail technique but you can use it with wholesalers as well.

On their first order create a personalized coupon for a % off their entire order.

This tactic works hand in hand with other tactics such as the sample pack.

6. Follow-up consistently

The easiest way to get something done is to ask.

Maybe your customer registered for your wholesale program late one afternoon and forgot about it the next day? Or perhaps they’ve just been too busy to read through everything you’ve sent them.

Reach out and follow up with people who registered and then did nothing. If a week goes by, that should give you pause. Then, pick up the phone and call them to find out what is holding them back from placing their first order.

Part 4: Wholesale Marketing Ideas To Increase Sales

Now that the orders are flowing, I recommend you switch gears and think about how to increase wholesale sales.

The goal is more orders but also more large orders which is why I wrote this mammoth guide with 30 of my best growth hacks for increasing wholesale sales.

Increasing wholesale sales can be done in a number of ways. Often it’s by giving monetary incentives, and this is the go-to option for most businesses, but sometimes you can make tweaks to the way you’re doing things and see just as good results.

Definitely check out the full guide, but here are a few extra ideas you can do now.

1. Take advantage of seasonal campaigns

There are so many seasonal retail days you can take advantage of for your marketing purposes that it’s hard to even find a single list that captures them all – trust me, I Google’d for it!

A seasonal campaign can bring unique product promotion activities. For example, maybe you can tie in one of your product lines with the holiday theme. It’s just a great way to capture the attention of people at a time of heightened sales.

The trick to remember is to leave enough time to deliver the goods to your wholesale customers before the date. Adjust your promotion dates accordingly.

2. Celebrate your anniversary

Remember when your customer first signed up? They probably don’t which means it will be a nice surprise to see that you’re celebrating the occasion with a special offer.

This works best when you just send a personal email with a “thank you” rather than make it a formal looking email.

Try out the following email template:

Hi Jane!

I was looking at your account today and noticed that it’s the anniversary of you registering as a wholesale customer with us.

Just wanted to say a quick thank you for the past year. I hope we can keep working together long into the future ;)

Also, I’ve just added a coupon so you can get free shipping on your next order, use “METARZANYOUJANE” on your way through the checkout.

Hope you have a great day!

Regards,
Tarzan

3. Offer shipping deals

If you’re having a low period of sales, a last-minute shipping incentive can give you the boost you need before the end of the month. It can be a great winner to have in your back pocket.

Again this depends on the kind of products you sell, some products are larger and therefore more expensive to ship. So, I only recommend doing free shipping promotions if you can cover the costs in your minimum order profit margins.

You can actually use this same concept but without the free shipping. Change it up with a 20% off shipping deal coupon that doesn’t give free shipping but instead gives a deal on the shipping itself. As far as I know, this is only possible with our sister plugin Advanced Coupons.

4. Lower your pricing based on quantity ordered

Another great wholesale marketing strategy for an ongoing incentive is to offer quantity-based discounts. This is something we’ve worked hard to provide in our plugin, Wholesale Prices Premium.

The way it works is by providing a discount on a sliding scale depending on how much they add to the cart.

You can see here how the wholesale price per unit is lower based on the quantity range they add to the cart. This is a great incentive for boosting your order size as well since customers will often stretch themselves just a little farther to get to the next quantity bracket.

5. Make regular contact a habit

Keeping in touch with your wholesale customers is also very important. Catch-up calls are great for this, but to mix it up, you could look at starting a regular newsletter aimed at your wholesale customers.

Your wholesale customers are your partners in reaching new audiences. There’s plenty you can tell them in a regular fortnightly newsletter. For example:

• News about your business including where you’ve been featured recently, media mentions, events, etc.
• Product-based news – do you have a new product line coming up? This is also a great place to let people know all about it.
• Case studies/highlights on specific wholesale customers and how they’re getting success selling your products.
• Industry news that is likely to affect your wholesale customers.
• Links to any articles you want them to share with their audiences.

Use your imagination – there are a lot of information that might be helpful to your wholesale customers.

Using a newsletter format is also very scalable. If you end up with hundreds of wholesale customers on your list you can contact them all at once with information that is still relevant to them.

6. Ensure seamless ordering

A dedicated ordering portal like the one our WooCommerce order form extension produces is absolutely essential once you get past your first few wholesale customers.

Wholesale customers are very different from retail customers. You can assume that they’re quite familiar with your product catalog already and just want to get in there and order.

Reducing the number of clicks it takes to navigate your product catalog can mean much less frustration for your wholesale customer when dealing with you.

7. Provide limited-time offers

Setting a time limit incentive on your offers is another golden wholesale marketing strategy. It’s effective when you want customers to take action right now.

Knowing that there is only a short window to take advantage of a special price can encourage your wholesale customers to order now rather than later.

As the order size of a typical wholesale order is much larger than a retail order you might want to ensure you still leave enough time for them to count up their stock and find out what they’re in need of. Getting organized to make an order can sometimes take wholesale customers a few extra days – try to leave a small buffer to account for that.

8. Give out free samples of new products

New products are always tricky to launch but your wholesale partners are there to help. That’s why being forthcoming with free samples is so important for your wholesale marketing strategy.

Since they are already wholesale customers the goal of the free sample this time is slightly different than when I’ve mentioned it previously. You want to give them information so that it makes sense for them to add it to their next order.

I also suggest you send your sample along with two additional items:

1. An information card/flyer – give them all the information they need to know about the new product, how to sell it, who the customers are for it, and anything else that you think would be useful if they were to add this product to their catalog.
2. An incentive for early purchasers – a limited-time offer also works great here and can help push those early adopters over the line to add them to their next order.

Part 5: Putting Your Wholesale Marketing Strategy Together

A complete wholesale marketing strategy is about putting all the pieces together over time. It’s not likely you’ll have everything going exactly how you want it from the get-go. That’s why you chip away at it gradually.

Also, not every wholesale marketing idea is going to work the way you think with your wholesale customers. Every set of customers is different and will likely respond differently to offers. Therefore, see what works best for your company’s customers and move forward from there.

What should you do next?

So, how is your document coming along? Remember way back at the start of the article the very first thing I asked you to do was to set up a new Google Doc (or Word Doc) with three headings?

1. ATTRACT CUSTOMERS

2. GET ORDERS

3. INCREASE ORDER SIZE

Focusing on these three areas will help you build a strong wholesale marketing strategy.

So, your job now is to pick 2 tactics from each focus area above and apply them to your business today. Knock them off one by one and test their performance.

If something is working well, double down on it hard. If something is not working, be ruthless and cut it from your strategy.

Part 6: Frequently Asked Questions

What is a wholesale marketing strategy?

Wholesale marketing strategies are techniques used by wholesale businesses to promote and sell their products and services to bulk buyers, typically fellow businesses. This can be a mix and match of promotional activities, pricing strategies, or targeted advertising. By implementing a wholesale marketing strategy, businesses can reach potential customers, expand their customer base, and boost their sales.

How do you explain wholesale?

In wholesale, businesses sell goods in larger quantities at discounted prices to retailers. Wholesalers essentially act as intermediaries between manufacturers and retailers. Therefore, they play an important role in the supply chain, ensuring goods are distributed from producers to the market.

How to advertise as a wholesaler?

Wholesalers can use a number of strategies and tools to perform targeted marketing. The most common examples include attending trade shows and industry events, investing in online advertising (such as Google Ads and social media), creating informative content, and sending out email campaigns.

How to use digital marketing for wholesale?

Firstly, set up a professional, SEO-optimized website to increase your visibility in search engines. This is the initial step, as modern wholesale clients start their buying journey online.

Once you have a website, publish valuable content that addresses the challenges and most common pain points of your target market. Lastly, supplement your efforts with targeted email marketing and paid advertising to increase website traffic.

What is the purpose of wholesale marketing?

Wholesale marketing strategies are usually implemented by businesses to: boost revenue, reach more clients, and improve customer relationships. Ultimately, it depends on the overarching goals of a business.

When deciding which marketing strategies to use, refer to your goals and evaluate your target market. For example, if you aim to expand your reach, you may want to invest in online advertising to maximize your visibility and reach new clients.

Part 7: Related Resources

If you’re ready to learn more, we’ve prepared a list of helpful resources about implementing a wholesale marketing strategy! Dive in today:

• B2B Content Marketing: 6 Proven Strategies For Wholesalers 
• How To Promote Wholesale Products: 7 Effective B2B Marketing Tactics
• How To Use Wholesale Email Marketing To Maximize Revenue
• 6 Wholesale Marketing Materials That You Need To Provide Wholesale Customers
• Pricing Strategies For Wholesalers: A Complete Guide
• Using Discount Rules For WooCommerce To Create Irresistible Wholesale Deals

Conclusion

A well-defined wholesale marketing strategy can help you drive your business to success in 2024. In this guide, we’ve explored the numerous benefits of having a wholesale marketing strategy, including: 

• Attracting your ideal customers
• Gaining a competitive advantage
• Fostering long-term business growth

We’ve also explored how you can craft your own wholesale marketing strategy and which techniques you can use to reach out to businesses in our guide. To summarize, let’s take a look at them below:

• Part 1: Formulating Your Wholesale Marketing Strategy
• Part 2: Wholesale Marketing Ideas You Can Use To Attract New Customers
• Part 3: Wholesale Promotion Ideas For Encouraging Orders
• Part 4: How To Increase Wholesale Sales
• Part 5: Putting Your Wholesale Marketing Strategy Together
• Part 6: Frequently Asked Questions
• Part 7: Related Resources

We hope this guide has provided you with valuable ideas for your wholesale marketing endeavors. So, which is your favorite wholesale marketing strategy? Tell us below in the comments!

Josh Kohlbach CEO

Josh is the founder of Rymera Web Co, the makers of Wholesale Suite and many other plugins. He's a business marketing geek and chronic reader; you'll often find his nose buried in some obscure book.

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