This is part 2 – Marketing Strategies for Wholesale Buyers and Sellers – of our Search Marketing Series.

See part 1 at Search Marketing 1: How Top Sellers Acquire Ready-to-Buy Customers.

Search Marketing 2 > Marketing Strategies for Wholesale Buyers/Sellers: Branding, Product Sourcing, Advertising ROI

Manufacturers, Wholesalers, Distributors and Retailers carve out distinct stages of the buying and selling chain. Simply copying and reformatting marketing strategies that work in the world of direct-to-consumer sales does not meet wholesale industry needs. In fact, marketing activities that focus off-target, on the final retail stages of the merchandise chain, are not cost-effective or performance-based. Not in an economy that demands results from every unit of marketing money invested.

Here are strategies that work taken directly from the experience of wholesale buyers and sellers.

Follow The Money & Results: Ad Channels That Perform

1. Online Media. In December 2008, eMarketer released an analysis of ad spending trends: Spending slowed down rapidly in offline media (TV, cable, radio, print) and continued shifting to online advertising channels. This marketing budget shift has shut down offline print newspapers, when their ad revenues dried up before they found other ways to finance content.

2. Online marketing is far more measurable and results-based. For example: An online PPC (pay-per-click) ad – where a wholesaler is charged only when a potential buyer clicks on the ad and not every time she sees it – can be measured down to the exact mouse click and tracked back to the ad-serving network or search results page that referred a buyer.

Reports from pay-per-click ads also build other ad performance statistics, like how long a click-through customer looked at your product catalog, what other products she searched for, the percentage of all potential buyers who saw your ad and were motivated to click for more info, what time of day most interested buyers cyber-walked into your shop, etc.

Online retail outperformed store sales for Holiday 2008. According to retail sales tracked by the MasterCard payments network from November 1 through December 24, 2008, total retail sales declined almost 8% compared to 2007. But, online shoppers reduced their purchasing by only 2.3%.

3. Online Search Ads Perform Best. A research analyst at eMarketer also cited a current shift among online advertising formats: Online display ads (such as clickable banners and images) were showing lower customer conversion rates than search ads (such as clickable ads appearing on a Search Results Page). Result: Online advertisers are shifting tighter marketing budgets to the most cost-effective formats, search ads:

“When budgets are tight, companies look to make the most cost-effective purchases they can. That’s one reason why display advertising will be far flatter than search.”
(D.Hallerman, eMarketer)

Vertical Search Sites Target Industry Buyers/Sellers & Meet Product Sourcing Needs

4. Marketing Results – and Budgets — Increase for Vertical Search Ads. Vertical Search Engines serve a specialized industry or professional market and offer search marketing opportunities to targeted business users. Examples of specialized vertical search engines:

Manufacturer.com Global Supplier

Click here for a Profile from Manufacturer.com or check on Advertising with Manufacturer.com .

TopTenWholesale Network

To learn more about advertising, directory listing and marketing on a network that serves more than 20,000 wholesale product searchers a day, click here for Advertise with Top Ten Wholesale Network.

Better B2B Conversions. Vertical (industry-focused) search engines are seeing more of advertiser budgets because vertical SE’s deliver better results than ads served by general search sites targeted to consumers. Conversion rates (click-through prospects that become buyers; leads that convert to wholesale buyer) for ads at vertical search sites are 8-to-15 times higher than business-to-business conversions from ads served on Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live and consumer search networks.

(VSE search results data compiled from industry researchers: Piper-Jaffray, Convera, Forrester Research, Slash-Harshberger Vertical Study, and comScore)

Performance and ROI Advertising are bottom-line criteria for online marketing. Advertisers surveyed by e-Consultancy and Convera responded that they are re-directing their advertising budgets to measurable, results-based search advertising:

· 78% will increase spending on CPA (cost-per-action/acquired customer) ad formats;
· 67% plan increased spending on cost-per-lead (CPL) ads
· Nearly 50% will increase marketing budgets for cost-per-click (CPC) ads
· But only 29% will increase spending for online display ads (CPM or cost-per-1000 or views of clickable image display ads, rather than search results ads).

(The Vertical Search – B2B – Report 2009)

5. Manufacturers Use Vertical Search For Branding
Gian Fulgoni, CEO of online market trackers comScore, told a conference room full of Search Marketing professionals that the biggest benefit of search engine marketing (from 84-to-95% of ad benefits) was not even being used: To brand a company as a leader in its market or segment.

Reinforcing search ads as a branding vehicle, comScore’s chief cited these conclusions:

· Only 1/3 of online ad spending went to building the brand (versus 2/3 of ad budgets invested in branding on offline, traditional advertising media);

· As few as 5% of search ads on Google actually deliver a click-through (potential customer) to the advertiser’s site … failing to capture or measure the search ads’ branding effects.

In fact, those comScore revelations talked to consumer-level search ads, which are focused on immediate sale as direct-response marketing. (Obsessively focused on “the last click,” as comScore’s chairman Fulgoni would say.)

Manufacturers, however, are more likely to direct marketing budget to brand themselves as quality leaders in their business, professional or industry marketplaces. Manufacturers are not targeting consumer-retail level customers, but instead seek to establish themselves among an insider industry group further up the product supply chain. Vertical/Industry Search Engines are the right specialized media channels to reach such a pre-qualified insider audience.

Furniture Manufacturer Example. A domestically based specialized furniture manufacturer in the northeastern U.S. had a good reputation for its history of unique designs and quality craftsmanship … but was not well known outside its region. Since showroom sales to retail customers and word-of-mouth marketing would only spread its furniture line so far, the manufacturer turned to online marketing at specialized industry and professional sites.

Manufacturer marketing goals:

· To establish the company brand as a source of quality craftsmanship and contemporary, heirloom and legacy designs;

· To build its brand and profile among professional buyers: architects, home décor consultants, residential construction firms, renovation/rehab specialists, and upscale home publications.

(1) By directing its search advertising budget to refined vertical search sites that talk to the company’s primary targets – architects, décor consultants, home publications – and …

(2) By developing branding ad campaigns with the right key words (handcrafted furniture, mmodernist and heirloom furniture, mission-style tables and sideboards, contemporary Adirondack chairs, furniture suites blend with any style) …

… this domestic furniture manufacturer successfully established itself internationally as a quality
wholesale furniture design-build firm. Branding to the right vertical search targets.