Sales and advertising: What does success cost? – Starting your own business #7

Sales and advertising – finding partners in sales makes everything easier. Because one of the core problems at the beginning of a company foundation is always the network to sell products. For this reason, even people who already have knowledge of the industry have a strategic advantage, e.g. a sales representative who has been in the lamp wholesale trade for ten years. If he or she then sells a similar product, under his or her own brand, he or she directly has the right contacts for the sale. More importantly, for purchasing! From material to production to sales, everything is solved. Getting into existing structures, e.g. wholesalers or sales networks, accelerates the entire process of expansion.

Sales partners and logistics: Major customers

Convincing customers in particular who are already buying from another company is a great challenge. Especially if the customers are satisfied with the product of the competition.

• How to poach them?
• About the price?
• About the improvement of the product?
• About higher quality?

Listing in wholesale for more sales

Here to get a foot in the door, with a new, almost comparable product that is very difficult for new businesses. From the place on the supermarket shelf to the listing at the wholesaler or even the placement in the search engine. Networks help to build up reach faster and already have the right triggers to convince the customer of a new product. Through industry knowledge, experience, but also long cooperation and with the buyer or seller.

Especially interesting for many start ups are wholesalers and distribution network. Wholesalers are the link between producers and the retail trade or the stationary trade. Getting a listing here immediately brings you close to many dealers who shop at the wholesale market. The second clever way is via distributors, who take care of the import into systems. From the classic PR agency to online distributors, e.g. for music or even large networks such as Amazon, you can also register yourself as a dealer.

Digital distribution of products

A practical example here is music marketing. Overnight a song must be online on 20, 30 different platforms from different countries. To accomplish this alone is a great task. Therefore, there are distributors who take over the entire list of products, in this case pieces of music. Wholesalers and distributors therefore take a lot of work off their hands, which you as the founder can put profitably into your core business.

Fulfillment for logistics

Tip! Not only sales can be outsourced, but also inventory management. So-called fulfillment companies (logisticians or Amazon) take care of storage, shipping and return. In fact, you can outsource all your logistics today. The magic word in Google search is: “Fulfillment”. If you even want to go one step further and unite the wholesaler with logistics or fulfillment, then you should google to “Amazon FBA”. This service combines the structure of a wholesaler with the services of a fulfillment logistics provider. Two unbeatable advantages that come together. On the one hand, the complete distribution is almost automatically taken over by Amazon, with millions of visitors every day, in this country alone. On the other hand, the entire logistics, from shipping to return, is also handled by Amazon.

Through intelligent logistics and distribution channels, many hours of personnel work can be saved. The time saved can be put profitably into other areas, e.g. advertising, online and offline.

Advertising: Online and offline channels

Which media concept and which media mix is most profitable for you or your business idea? Between flyer marketing, phone consulting, poster campaigns, TV advertising, guerilla marketing and Facebook advertising counter worlds. Who can afford everything, congratulations! As a rule, however, you have to decide on a few of the marketing or media channels. In particular, the question of offline or online plays a central role in strategy development. For some companies it is absolutely worthwhile to advertise locally, e.g. for a fast food chain. Of course, the umbrella brand also becomes cross-media, but the individual franchisee usually remains within a radius of 500 metres. Choosing the right advertising channel can save a lot of money. Those who do not pay attention to the right media mix in advance will lose money. Especially in the initial phase, the loss of capital is of course very tricky. A single City Light campaign, you probably know the illuminated columns in every city centre, costs 25,000 Euros for a week in the big city. Is the campaign well placed or should you have used Facebook Advertising? Anyone who founds with 50,000 euros or 100,000 euros of equity capital quickly reaches his limits when making the wrong decision.

Nevertheless, there is no way around it, you need attention from people to win customers.

Press release – is it worth it at all?

I will only describe this point very briefly, because very few people will benefit in any way from press releases. More than 99% of the press release sent is not taken over by a single renowned medium.

Press releases are worthwhile in two cases: You’re planning something spectacular! You have a world-famous artist who will walk between Cologne Cathedral with a tightrope? You bake the world’s largest pizza with a total diameter of 20 meters? You managed to get a former number one artist as a funny advertising figure for your TV commercial? All of this will most likely be spectacular enough to be recorded by the media, anything else is not. Over 99% of all press releases from Start Ups are completely useless. Why is that? Media placements are extremely rare and accordingly expensive. Either the story is incredibly spectacular or the advertising space is incredibly well paid. If you want to bring it as an exclusive brand into one of the TV formats or into one of the renowned magazines, you will encounter an extremely limited broadcasting time and limited editorial offices. For example, anyone who makes a new jewellery collection and has really won an A-Celebrity for it has no guarantee of placement for a long time. Because there are usually certainly larger and more well-known brands that have also committed the Creme de la Creme to celebrities and also have their own relevance and top will be a well-funded event with other A-Celebrities put. What does brand XY do with person XY right now? If you’re gonna make it into the press as a start-up, it’s gonna be hard.

Tip! Contact trade magazines from your industry, especially online. As a rule, these magazines are not as high in reach as the magazines known from kiosks, supermarkets or search engines, but they reach a very special specialist audience. For food there are e.g. special B2B branch magazines. If you have an IT startup, you could get placements in startup online magazines. Another possibility is to buy paid articles, online or in print. Online magazines also have the great advantage that, unlike print magazines, they are not subject to capacity limits in publication. There is no regulation, 20 pages per day for Ressour XY. Online magazines could publish once a day, four times or every hour.