Sunday, May 25, 2008

Best Ways To Market A Direct-To-Consumer Distribution Business

By Linda P. Morton

Marketing is your most important job if you own of a direct-to-consumer distribution business.

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.

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.

Because the large warehouse and wholesale distributors already have the business of large volume products that are mass marked, the best approach for a direct-to-consumer distribution is to go after crumbs that fall from their table. In other words, find a product designed specifically for a target market, not presently being well served.

After you have identified your target market, you have to learn everything possible about the people in your target market. You need to know what they need and want, what they will buy, and what they expect in return.

Internet

You definitely want to consider the Internet as an option for marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business.

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.

You can also market real products online by working with drop shippers. These are often manufacturers of the products, but are sometimes warehouse distributors. Any way, all you have to do is sell the product and collect your commission checks. The drop shipper does the rest.

Regardless of the type of distribution, the key to success in any Internet business is offering a niche of people the products that they want. Without that focus, your business will be lost in a vast ocean of sites and Internet marketers. So if you choose to market over the Internet, you must define a narrow target market and discover the best appeals for its members.

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.

Once you have your web site up and have done your market research, Internet marketing is the cheapest way to market your direct-to-consumer distribution business.

Direct Mail

By following the steps below, you can use direct mail to market your direct-to-consumer distribution business.

Focusing on a target market that can be identified by demographics and buying behavior,

Purchase a reliable mailing list of your potential customers.

Writing and designing effective sales literature to appeal to your target market, and

Fulfilling and mailing orders.

If you implement each of the above steps well, your conversion rate will likely be only about one percent. You have to know that you can make a profit with that percentage.

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.

Synthesis

Two other good marketing tactics for marketing your direct-to-consumer distribution business include selling by telephone and through infomercials.

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