Hey there, we noticed you didn't complete your Wholesale Suite purchase.

We're excited to have you join the Wholesale Suite family! Complete your checkout now & save!
If you have any questions, please reach out to our support team!

Wholesale Marketing For Distributors: A Complete Guide (2024)

Wholesale Marketing For Distributors: A Complete Guide (2024)

Having a solid wholesale marketing strategy is crucial to the success and growth of your wholesale business in 2024.

In this expert guide, we present actionable wholesale marketing strategies that drive tangible results for distributors like you. Whether you’re a seasoned wholesaler looking to refine your approach or a newcomer to the industry, you’ll get practical insights that will help you attract more customers and secure orders. 

Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll discover in this complete guide:

So, let’s dive in!

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. 

Your wholesale marketing plan provides the tools and strategies you need to define and connect with your ideal customers

By clearly identifying the ideal clients that align with your offerings as a distributor, 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 well-crafted wholesale marketing strategy is also key to gaining a significant competitive advantage in a crowded and dynamic market. It enables you to communicate your distinct 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. 

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

Ensures sustainable growth

Having a wholesale marketing plan in place also enables you to respond proactively 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 plan 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 plan and exploring the best strategies 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:

Noah Kagan

“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 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:

Wholesale Marketing Strategy Focus Areas
The three wholesale marketing 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. 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

I recommend your first tactic be making 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 on 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 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

Power Of Habit Book

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 2024? 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 technique. 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.

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 these 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

A 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.

Sending samples can help your products stand out to your target market.

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 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

A great way to kick-start your wholesale distribution would 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 where your prospective customers might attend.

Tradeshows are 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.

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 a 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:

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 you really should be.

It’s the social network for business and it can be used for more than just displaying your work history and resume.

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.

Barriers can be things like:

  • 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

Pay very close attention – your customer has a wealth of knowledge to give you. If you learn everything about them, their business, 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, a great encourager is to offer to reduce or eliminate the order minimum barrier.

Making an order up to a certain amount can feel like an imposed 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.

Offering free shipping on your customer's first order can be a helpful incentive that entices them to take action promptly.

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.

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

The old tried and true method of encouraging 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? 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. 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. Leverage 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. Maybe you can tie in one of your product lines with the holiday theme. Maybe 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. I only recommend doing free shipping promotions if you can cover the costs in your minimum order profit margins.

Advanced Coupons

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

A great wholesale marketing strategy for an ongoing incentive is to utilize quantity-based discounts. This is something we’ve worked hard to provide in our Wholesale Pricing extension for WooCommerce.

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

Quantity Based Discounts

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 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:

  • 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 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 is lots 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 essential when you want them 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.

Setting limited-time offers is an effective way to create a sense of urgency and encourage wholesale customers to take action promptly.

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 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 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 are different and will likely respond differently to offers. See what works for your company’s customers.

What should you do next?

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.

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.

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 plan, including: 

We’ve also explored how you can craft your own wholesale marketing plan and which strategies you can use to reach out to businesses in our five-part guide: 

We hope this guide has provided you with valuable ideas for your wholesale marketing endeavors. Tell us about your wholesale marketing strategies below in the comments. We’d love to hear how you’re applying the strategies we’ve shared above and what kind of effect it’s having!

author avatar
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.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

39 thoughts on “Wholesale Marketing For Distributors: A Complete Guide (2024)

  1. Wow….really grateful. My Head is boosting with ideas now. God bless u for sharing.thanks in a million fold

  2. This is a proven way I tried it and worked for me I hope to see more blog posts like this keep up the work great post about wholesale and think it would help suppliers it helped my towel business thanks

  3. Great content! I love it! Thanks for sharing this, thanks for taking time to break it down step-by-step. That got me. However, I would have loved to see some digital marketing strategies. It would have delighted me to see how social media can help in wholesale supply. Thanks anyway, great stuff!

    1. Thanks for the great comment Daps. Digital can surely work, but nothing beats actually talking to people.

      Where I’d look at for digital would be digital reachout strategies such as LinkedIn reachout and even Facebook manual reachout.

  4. Good Day,

    Very helpful,
    Thank you for sharing such detailed and simplest form for people like us who in stage of startups.
    God bless.

    Regards
    Asif

  5. That was usefull, thanks, some of ideas I’ve allready using, some i will use right now, i have a small skin and body care manufacture that offers private labeling, so time is crutial and i must use it effective.
    Thanks, looking forward to be updated.

    1. Great to hear you took some ideas away from the article Vitauts! Best of luck in growing your skin care brand!

  6. Thanks for all the great information! Do you think its ok to put my website on the back of my art and prints when I sell it to wholesale customers? I’m concerned that they will take the sticker off and then nobody will know who made them. Is there a safe amount of information that I can add so that the description of my work will remain intact?

    1. Hi Carla,

      Depends how you’re branding really. If your products are highly branded and known as a “Carla Brown” print, then definitely work it in. If it’s a stretched canvas you might even look at using a nicely designed custom-made ink stamp so it can’t be removed. Just an idea for you!

      I personally see no issues about this, but the best people to ask would be your wholesale customers :) No source of truth better than talking directly to customers!

  7. Hi,

    I am the Marketing Lead at a SaaS company. Although this article was targetted at distributors but to be honest similar approach is used by us in doing B2B sales especially cold emails work if done correctly.
    Keep up the good work.

    Regards,
    Nirav Sampat
    (www.InVideo.io helps brand in creating videos)

  8. Hello Josh!

    These are great tips! Some of it are being practiced in my wholesale business. You enumerated and explained it well! This will help a lot of businesses like mine. Thank you for this article.

    -Missy!

  9. When you suggested sending in a sample of a product to a potential client to stand out among the rest of the competition, my suggestion is to have its packaging made by an expert first. For example, if I wanted more supermarkets to sell my brand of toffee, I would ask a local manufacturer to design and wrap them in special candy boxes and send them through the mail. Doing this will increase the chances of them ordering a bulk load of it, thus increasing the company’s profit.

  10. Great contents! Also, finding a good supplier is important, Yorkn.com seems a good supplier to us, and they offer free shipping to the USA.

  11. This is a great information which will definitely enhance wholesaler growth.
    Thank you very much for sharing this booster.
    Keep up your excellent initiative.

Leave a Reply to Piggbaggy Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *