How to evaluate the marketing value of distribution channels

Network distribution can't replace direct sales.

In today's Internet age, there is a misunderstanding that goods that sell well offline will also sell well online. In fact, this understanding is wrong. Online and offline are actually two completely different markets. As a brand, you can't understand online retailing, and you can't just give your business to e-commerce or throw it to dealers. In fact, the brand itself is the most powerful and typical channel. So how should brands develop distributors? In my opinion, the premise of brand development dealers is that they must complete the complete closed-loop sales themselves, and then copy the successful experience to dealers, instead of counting on dealers to help you change the war situation. Because people are arrogant, they naturally despise you and are unwilling to put all their resources into your side.

I have contacted foreign trade customers before and found that their thinking has not changed. These customers will feel that in the past, their products were exported overseas casually, all of which were hundreds of millions. It should not be bad to sell or distribute them online. But the result is often that the online sales performance is terrible. Why? Because the products previously exported overseas only need to be connected with the companies of foreign buyers, and people have demand, the factories here are only responsible for part of the whole market operation: production, while foreign customers cover consumer behavior analysis, marketing and other aspects. When these factories want to transform into e-commerce, they find that nothing can be done except production, and setbacks and losses in e-commerce are inevitable. If these factories don't practice their own e-commerce, how can they develop online distribution?

Another important reason why online distribution can't replace direct sales is that e-commerce is now a flooded market with a very single traffic entrance. The serious Matthew effect makes the dealer's life extremely sad. Simple distribution and distribution as before can't solve the problem that products are not easy to sell.

The second question: e-commerce is flat direct sales, and the distribution channel is going to die, right?

Channels will not disappear.

There are several main reasons:

1, a single store of brand flagship store type can't meet the diverse needs of users. Customers will appear in different places or different consumption scenes and find what they want through different keywords. Different consumers have different segmentation needs. If you want to cover these different consumers, a single store is far from it. Therefore, even a well-known brand like Xiaomi Apple still needs multiple channels to cover consumers.

2. The participation of dealers can make better use of resources outside the brand, help the brand grow, and at the same time establish more contact points with customers to bring better services to customers. Because communication between people is irreplaceable in brand service, it is unrealistic for brands to reach every consumer who needs service, so it is a good solution to involve dealers, provided that dealers can also share profits.

3. From the perspective of e-commerce platform, they are very motivated to limit the scale of single stores, encourage sellers to put a lot of advertisements on the platform, and improve their performance by controlling traffic portals. In this case, network distributors are needed to expand the traffic sources of brand products, so as to reduce the concentration risk of brand flagship stores relying too much on platforms.

Small brands need distribution more.

Although the world is flat now, the flow of information is accelerating, and consumers can connect with any brand only through the internet, but all kinds of messy information are also full of consumers' minds. Consumers are surrounded by endless information every day, and there is almost no time to find brand information, and the demand for active search is gradually declining. The advantage of distribution is that it can be presented to customers in the first time. For brands with well-known advantages, such as Xiaomi and tall buildings on the ground, everyone can see them, so their dependence on dealers is relatively weak. However, once this brand fails to maintain its leading position in the market, its avalanche risk is even greater. For small brands with low visibility, distribution is a low-cost, high-efficiency and accurate mode of communication.

The third question: how can we do online distribution well?

Maximize diversification.

Maximizing diversification is mainly divided into the following aspects: first, the more non-standard products, the more suitable for distribution, because this can not only ensure the exclusivity of distributors' products, but also disrupt the price comparison system in consumers' minds and realize the coverage of products to more consumer groups. Second, the diversification of consumer contact methods such as consumer demand, consumer scenes and consumer groups; Third, make full use of the background, resources and diversification of sales methods of dealers. Fourth, the diversification of operating methods. Only by arranging and combining the above four categories in different ways can we form different sales methods for different distribution channels and cover every potential consumer.

E-commerce iron triangle: product * channel * operation (note that this is multiplication)

The product is a reservoir with potential energy, and the channel is a water pipe. The official flagship store is just one of the self-operated water pipes, operating pumps with different horsepower. The better the product sells, the higher the potential energy of the reservoir. The more channels there are, the more water pipes there are. The more powerful the product distribution operation, the greater the pressure on the water pump. Network distribution is around these three pieces of content. The combination of these three elements is the three components of e-commerce distribution.

Distribution products: the fluidity of product description

This is the core of today's sharing: product description is different from product, and product description is separated from product!

How to understand this? In the past, consumers generally bought things online in physical stores. Because physical products can be contacted, it directly affects consumers' purchase decisions. Now consumers are all online shopping, and it is the product description, not the product itself, that directly affects consumers' purchasing decisions. Therefore, in view of this, brands should formulate product description schemes of different channels for the same product according to the store consumption scenarios of different dealers. That is, the same product corresponds to n kinds of consumption scenarios, n kinds of consumer groups and n kinds of consumption channels. For example, the same electric pressure cooker can be sold in special distribution channels of electrical appliances stores, or in special distribution channels of household products, and even product descriptions can be designed according to the purchase scenes of baby mothers in maternal and child series stores. The advantage of this is that it does not need to involve major changes in the product side, but it can cover different consumer groups through product descriptions in different scenarios. I think people who have the ability to define products from the description of products that sell well (people who know both consumers and product supply chains) will become sought-after e-commerce talents in the future.

Distribution recruitment: roughly accurate, as fine as possible.

It is understandable to find the most suitable dealer, not the best dealer. Finding Bai is a tragedy. So what is the most appropriate? I think the most suitable dealer needs to have the following three characteristics: knowing the industry, being capable and willing.

How to choose a dealer? This can be considered from the complementarity and substitution of products. For example, the distributor selection of electric pressure cookers for small household appliances in the kitchen is to operate according to product substitution (forming a substitution relationship with other products in the store). If the electric pressure cookers are sold in maternal and infant stores with the necessary product descriptions of the mother's family, they are operated according to the complementary types of products (not conflicting with other products in maternal and infant categories, forming a complementary relationship).

The main way to choose distributors is to mine public data for screening and analysis, and then screen out roughly accurate distributors that meet their own requirements. The number of recruits needs to be within the acceptable range of their own costs, and as many dealers as possible should come in for horse racing. As a brand, we need to balance the quantity, quality and cost of dealers.

Distribution operation: horse racing first, then relationship marketing.

Distribution recruitment needs to treat probability events calmly. The general recruitment information reaches 10000 online stores, and the final recruitment success rate may be 100 and 1%. I suggest that it is a process of casting a wide net from the beginning, determine your own requirements and rules, and let many dealers come in first and start racing around. The operation at this stage is not to follow up (clear rules are enough). When a dealer is doing well, we will start to follow up with this dealer at 1 to 1, and make the online recruitment transition to the business itself, communicate with him as much as possible, and occupy his resources as much as possible, not just Taobao and Want Want, qq, mobile phone, WeChat, etc. Even offline dinner communication may be necessary. At this time, it is not the customer service that follows the dealer, but the channel salesman who really understands the dealer's needs and can establish a trust relationship with the dealer, which is often ignored by the brand.

Six elements of Taobao distribution operation

The first factor, market characteristics: product life cycle, current situation of competitors, market share and product profit rate.

The second factor is whether the product is competitive: brand awareness, offline coverage, product definition, and what are the characteristics of the product? Rigid demand, right? What is the cost performance? Is it easy for consumers to buy?

The third factor, single store operation: how familiar the brand is with the brand itself, and whether the product description can attract consumers? What is the speed of logistics distribution and the level of customer service? How about after-sales service? Is the promotion technology mature? Is the control of supply chain perfect?

The fourth factor, distribution recruitment: how to position the channel strategy, how to screen sellers, and what kind of accuracy and activity are needed? How much coverage is needed? How to write the recruitment letter? Wait a minute. This piece is mainly the service provided by my current company to customers.

The fifth factor, distribution operation: this piece belongs to the category of how to manage distributors after recruitment, including distribution policy formulation, product training, market subsidies, activity organization, price control, horse racing mechanism, activity maintenance, product diversified supply and so on.

The sixth factor, cooperation with major customers: In the whole dealer management system, more resources need to be invested in the management of cooperation with major customers, including the following aspects: deeply maintaining customer relationships, tapping the resources behind customers, focusing on supporting potential major customers, establishing separate circles to deepen relationships, formulating more personalized cooperation plans, and deeply bundling interests with major customers.

How to recruit the accurate distributor of 100 within 30 days?

First of all, I need to explain the service standard of the case I have done before: I only serve the brands that have settled in Tmall's supply and marketing platform, and the service cycle is until I urge them to be put on the shelves. After they are put on the shelves, I will hand them over to brands for follow-up, and I will not be responsible for the follow-up of subsequent customers, nor will I charge any commission. Of course, it also ensures that the dealer is qualified at the time of handover. On this premise, the work of the brand I serve includes: 1. According to the analysis of market situation and product stage, quickly understand the brand marketing strategy; Second, improve the prospectus, recruitment policy and price policy; Third, determine the scope of distribution recruitment, data mining sellers, and then screen out qualified distributors; Fourth, focus on establishing cooperation and urging dealers to put them on the shelves one by one.

How to recruit 100 precision dealers within 30 days?

The first step: data mining, such as: helping smart toilet distribution to do data mining. First of all, the data searched by the keyword "smart toilet" on Taobao was collected by the data collection tool Locomotive, which generally has 100 pages of data. The data dimensions to be collected include the number of treasures (1.2w), the number of stores (1 100), price, place of origin, number of payers, credit rating, store attributes, brand and other public data. After pouring into the excel table, we can analyze the market size of this product, where the price range is concentrated, and which stores are more suitable.

Step 2: Prepare for recruitment. After you have a clear understanding of the product market, you should be ready to recruit dealers and write a recruitment letter. Because the recruitment only has a short five-second promotion opportunity, you need to show the best selling point or distribution policy of the product. Don't spread everything at once, first arouse his interest and instantly attract potential dealers who stop opening our recruitment book.

Step 3: Take the initiative: use the group sending strategy to send the distribution plan to the selected potential distributors and establish relationships with interested potential distributors. The industry average rate of people who arrive in bulk and eventually become qualified distributors is 1%.

Step 4: repeat: repeat the simple and effective method of step 3! Simple things can be done repeatedly, and practice makes perfect. During this period, it is necessary to constantly sum up experience and continuously improve recruitment efficiency.

What value can the recruited distributors bring to the brand?

Spread the brand quickly: 100 dealers put it on the shelves, and the brand needs to be announced to 10000 stores.

Cheap display goods: 100 dealers put on shelves, and the brand is exposed with tens of thousands of free traffic every month.

Accumulate long-term partners: there are already distributors 100, among which more than a dozen long-term partners have been accumulated.

Excellent means of bare product testing: 100 dealers will know what is wrong after selling for a month. This should be a very important discovery since I engaged in Taobao distribution industry: recruitment distribution is the best test method to test whether the products sell well or not. It can measure whether this product has natural flow potential and whether it can be recognized by consumers. I have seen many brands do a lot of through trains, page optimization and other ways to measure test products. Actually, this is a misunderstanding. Through recruitment and distribution to test, we can easily know whether the product has the potential to explode products, so as to correct the investment direction of energy with less cost. Therefore, recruitment and distribution are still effective means to reduce the cost of trial and error.

Improve brand ranking: objectively improve the sales performance of flagship stores.

The cost of obtaining these values is almost zero. Among the clients I have contacted, the gross profit of most clients for three months can cover the cost of recruitment.

How to understand e-commerce operation?

One is to show it to the computer: (most people are concerned) platform rules, ranking algorithm, brushing list and so on. ; The other is for people to see: (pay more attention) selling point extraction, copywriting, pictures, advertising words, visual merchandising. In e-commerce, the two are combined. The so-called operational goal is to try to behave better than the real self. Let computer programs think we are awesome, and let second, dealers, customers, users, investors … think we are awesome.

Distribute case sharing

Case 1:

A well-known cosmetics brand started cooperation in April 20 14.

Screening and contacting cosmetics stores > 20,000 families

Recruit distributors within 4 months > 360

Distribution distributor > 260

Distribution for goods > 20

The delivery amount within 60 days is more than 500,000 yuan.

In August, the sales volume exceeded 6.5438+0 million, and in 10, it exceeded 3 million.

The above performance is achieved on the premise that the customer's special team responsible for distribution has only four people.

Case 2:

An unknown home textile brand began to recruit 20 14 14 on February 22nd.