So, you finally decided to start your own wholesale business.
You must be feeling a mix of emotions right now, and we don’t blame you! Launching a new business is always exciting. You’re overflowing with energy, eager to take the next bold step, and everything just feels possible.
But no one knows about you. At least, not yet.
You’re Still Invisible
The first problem you’ll need to overcome as a new wholesaler is to increase visibility. In the beginning, you’re in the shadows of large, established wholesale companies, and that’s okay. Everyone has to start somewhere.
Even if you’re new to the playing field, there are ways for you to promote your business and gain visibility. All it takes is a little creativity, a lot of determination, and a copy of the methods we’re about to share with you.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in!
Know Your Target Customer
Before you do any promotional work, it’s important to have a good grasp of who your buyers are. They are the lifeblood of your wholesale establishment. Knowing their needs will help you determine which products they’ll appreciate most, and they will be more likely to turn to you for your services.
If you don’t have a buyer persona yet, these guides will help you get started:
- 7 Qualities of Good Potential Wholesale Customers
- How to Identify Customers’ Pain Points to Offer Better Solutions
Offer Unbeatable Prices
For your prices to be ‘unbeatable’, you need to know what your competitors’ prices are first.
To quote an article published on Entrepreneur:
“To date, there are approximately 300,000 distributors in the United States, representing $3.2 trillion in annual revenues.”
With that amount of competition, you NEED to have an edge, even if it means your edge is to offer shockingly low prices. Does it have to be on everything? Of course not. After you’ve landed your first few deals and buyers start to notice, you can dial down on the discounts and focus on other promotional strategies.
Freebies
Many marketers cringe at the word “free”. At first glance, it sounds like you’re losing money. But experienced wholesalers will tell you it’s a strategy with limitless potential. Why is that?
FREE is an emotion-triggering word that naturally appeals to people. That effect creates an opportunity for you to get your products into their hands. If you’re new to business in general, it may be hard to imagine how free products can help you.
To understand this effect, you must enter the mind of a customer. Customers are constantly bombarded with marketing material. This makes it hard for them to believe it when a company says “Our product is amazing!” But if you proactively give them a quality product and make them see its value, they will reward you for it. It can be in the form of a wholesale deal, or by spreading the word about your business.
Reach Out to Buyers
Sometimes businesses go through a dry spell where they make zero sales for a few days. Your newly-opened wholesale business will probably start off with a dry spell from lack of visibility.
You can change this by proactively reaching out to buyers. You can email them, call their business hotline, or better yet, show up at their establishment to try and make a deal. This requires some hands-on work, but you may just land a long-term client, too!
Brainstorm for Creative Promos
Promos are what makes shopping so interesting. You can bet that this also holds true for buyers. Instead of selling your items at a boring fixed price, come up with ways to make clients feel they’re getting more for less.
Different promos have different effects on customers. Time-constrained discounts create a sense of urgency. “Buy-X-Get-X-Free” promos make them feel like they’re saving money. Bundle promos make customers happy with the variety of products they get from one purchase.
If you want ideas for promos you can offer to wholesale customers, check out these articles:
Leverage on Social Media
This is a time when almost everyone and everything is online. The good news is that ad campaign expenses are less expensive. And you get more exposure compared to physical advertising.
Social media is the new generation of marketing. It can do more for your brand than any other platform. And it does it at a fraction of the time than with conventional marketing methods. This is why every company invests in boosting their online presence, and you should too.
The top four online platforms today are:
Tying It All Together
For your new wholesale business to really kick off, it’s important to remember that strategies should go together. Focusing your efforts on only one approach will produce limited results.
Also, remember that every business is unique so take these recommendations with a grain of salt. One approach may work better than another, or it may not work at all. That’s just how business works.
What’s important is that you’re willing to experiment and are flexible to the ever-changing trends of wholesale marketing.
Great article on promoting wholesale businesses. I like the way we can leverage freebies and make it big