An optimized distribution strategy is vital for any businesses that sell online if they want to win more sales. The world of e-commerce is now a competitive marketplace. Therefore, having an effective retail strategy is essential to making sure your products receive the best visibility as quickly and easily as possible.
Consumers now expect to be able to interact with a brand in a variety of different ways. Therefore, there is a balancing act to be performed to incorporate in-store sales, company websites, and third-party platform sales with the desires and needs of the end users.
That is why an optimized distribution strategy is very important to businesses. It can help to pull all this together to boost your sales and make your whole business plan more cohesive.
Here, Tracy Hill from Car Mats UK, one of the UK’s leading online retailers for car mats and other vehicle accessories, provides insight into the importance of an optimized distribution strategy. He also talked about some background on the different types of strategies that you can use.
What Is a Distribution Strategy?
When you sell products online, you need to be sure that you can then get those products to the customer quickly and in a way that is convenient to them. You should be able to do all of these with a seamless purchase process thrown in for good measure.
The distribution strategy that you put together needs to incorporate all these factors and bring them together effectively. However, to put together your distribution strategy, you will need to look at the needs and demands of your customers. Consider the nature of your products and how they must be sold and used as well as any shipping considerations.
It pays to take a look at how your direct competitors do this and what the feedback of their services is. That will help you spot areas of weakness that you might be able to improve on.
You should also think about the overall customer experience that you want to offer and how your distribution options work with it. Of course, your budget will also play a large part in how you set your distribution strategy and what your priorities need to be.
#1: Distribution Channels
You should not assume that the different platforms on which you sell your products are your distribution channels. Instead, they are just a single part of it. In reality, your distribution channel is the entire journey a product might take from you to its new owner.
That might include the manufacturers of the products, the wholesalers who distribute them, the retailers that put them on the market, and the consumer who finally purchases them. You might be at one point in this channel or several of them, and so different strategies might be needed to make each journey work.
#2: Intensive Strategies
An intensive strategy is one in which as many different channels as possible are used for a particular product. This means that you can maximize the market penetration of the product, ensuring it gets put in front of as many people as possible. You can do this through third-party websites or your own website. But this obviously comes at a cost.
#3: Selective Strategies
This type of approach allows companies to pick and choose different channels for their products. You might choose to narrow this down by geographic location or simply keep the sales purely on your own website. This strategy is designed to work with consumer behavior for a more efficient and cost-effective approach.
#4: Exclusive Strategies
These are the most restrictive types of strategies as they may only use a very narrow channel for a specific line. The idea here is to make the product seem scarce and in high demand, which only then fuels more interest in it. This approach is generally used to make a product seem more desirable and, therefore, of higher end.
#5: Other Things to Consider
There are lots of factors to consider when putting your distribution strategy together, and this should be driven by the demographic of your customer. So, look at who your typical customer might be and think about their age, gender, location, and how much disposable income they have. When you have this picture in mind, it becomes easier to build a strategy that is likely to reach and impress them.
You should take the time to look at your marketing and SEO to make sure that this aligns with what you are trying to achieve. In order to fulfill your strategy, you also need to think about your business operations to make sure that you can deliver on what you promise. Look at the technology that you can bring into your business to streamline your processes and make them more effective.
You should also take a look at your logistics and make sure that it is both good enough and reliable enough to supply who you need to. Can you get a parcel to an address at the other end of the country by the next day? How long will it take you to ship a container full of goods thousands of miles away?
#6: Optimizing Your Strategy
Whilst there are different strategies to choose from, very few businesses just stick with one. Your brand and your customers are probably too unique to fit into one little box. Therefore, you need to adapt your strategy to accommodate this.
Tailor your strategy to the people that you want to reach and try to develop a genuine connection and satisfying experience for them. Once you have delivered on your promises, you have the opportunity to build customer loyalty.
Choose your channels carefully by using the customer data that you have. Think about when and where they choose to shop, how you can source your products, and what after-sales support might be needed. You also need to consider whether the same approach works for all your products or whether you need different strategies for different items.
By keeping your customer at the front and center of everything you do, it is much easier to build a distribution strategy around them. This gives it a better chance of being effective and can not only draw more sales to your business but the right kind of sales too.
