The 10 Commandmants of Distributor Marketing

© 2018 by Modern Distribution Management and Gale Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

The median tenure for CMOs at U.S. consumer brand companies was 27 months, according to a March 2017 report from executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart.

I believe the tenure for distribution marketing leaders may be even shorter. After 30 years of working in distribution and marketing – and recently completing a seven-year run as a marketing VP for a large distributor – I’ve compiled my “10 Commandments of Distributor Marketing.” Ignore them at your peril! -Ian Heller

Strive to make marketing a profit center. This sounds obvious but it’s difficult and requires a steadfast devo-tion to strong analytics. Based on the available resourc-es, data and the business you work in, you may never be able to demonstrate a specific return on marketing, but you should never stop trying. Even sample measure-ments and the overall performance of the customer life cycle can offer great insights into whether or not mar-keting is earning its keep. No matter how difficult it may seem, do your best to prove your worth. If your com-pany thinks of marketing as yet another expense item on the P&L, you’d better hope there’s not an economic downturn. If there is, update your resume because you look like part of the problem instead of part of the solu-tion.

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2Become quantitatively literate. Many people go into marketing because they don’t like math. Except for some niche jobs for creative professionals, marketers today need great analytical skills to develop good plans, measure outcomes and compete for budget dollars. You can’t be a marketing leader without (at the very least) a good grasp of financial accounting and a basic under-standing of statistics.

The 10 Commandmants of Distributor Marketing

© 2018 by Modern Distribution Management and Gale Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Fuel your marketing campaigns with customer and product data. Distributors build strong marketing cam-paigns and websites by combining customer and prod-uct data. If either of these data sets are incomplete or poorly managed, your campaigns will crumble. Figure out what state-of-the-art product and customer data looks like and get yours in great shape.

3Institute campaign management and marketing auto-mation. Great marketing is highly relevant to custom-ers and prospects. Ideally, you want to customize your communications with customers based on their actions (e.g., purchase history) and what you know about them (demographics like job function, etc.) It takes large data sets and good technology tools to monitor customer data and extend relevant offers before your competitors do.If you proactively reach out to the customer and say, “Hey, we’ve had a miss, here’s what’s going on, and here’s how we’re solving it,” that builds tremendous confidence in your relationship.

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5Make sales an ally, not a rival. When marketing fights with sales, sales almost always wins – regardless of who is right. Too many marketing conferences offer sessions with titles like, “What to Do When Marketing Does the Work and Sales Gets the Credit.” That’s nonsense. Sales-people live with scoreboards for their performance (i.e., sales versus goal or prior year) and they lose their jobs if they lose the game too often. If you aren’t at risk of being fired for a bad quarter then don’t complain about salespeople; they live with that possibility every day. Also, salespeople are closer to the customer and have “street cred” the marketers don’t, particularly if your team isn’t in the field regularly.

The 10 Commandmants of Distributor Marketing

© 2018 by Modern Distribution Management and Gale Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

6Learn constantly. Your competitors are working hard to beat you, and if you aren’t subscribed to marketing re-sources, studying the subject regularly, attending confer-ences and going to training, you’re falling behind. Mar-keting has never been more dynamic – you have to keep up because someone you compete with is working hard to be better than you at this fast-changing discipline.

7Develop great online marketing skills. The term “online marketing” is becoming redundant: very little marketing happens without some online component. If you don’t understand website technology, SEO, email marketing, etc., you cannot be a marketing expert anymore. Wheth-er or not you actually sell online, you absolutely must market online.

8Actively manage customer life cycle from prospects to “win back.” You must understand the customer com-position and behaviors underlying your financial perfor-mance. Marketing should take the lead in prospecting, winning back defected customers and understanding how many customers are growing versus declining, etc. This is data the finance department usually doesn’t track but is fundamental to understanding how to grow prof-its and identify risks for future results. You can dramati-cally improve the company’s performance by developing the ability to develop and grow more profitable custom-ers with marketing initiatives – and you must.

The 10 Commandmants of Distributor Marketing

© 2018 by Modern Distribution Management and Gale Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Be like Ike. To paraphrase Dwight D. Eisenhower, mar-keting plans are useless but marketing planning is price-less. If you are not developing strong marketing plans in conjunction with your suppliers, you are losing co-op dollars to competitors and you are very unlikely to come up with strong, data-driven campaigns that drive sales and profits. Yes, circumstances will change and require you to revise your plan throughout the year. If you start out with a thoughtful plan that is developed in con-junction with your company’s budget process, you will find it relatively easy to make the right changes quickly throughout the year.

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Adopt the Golden Rule of Marketing. “The more fre-quently you put relevant offers in front of targeted cus-tomers, the more frequently they will buy from you.” Your customers do not know what you sell, they do not understand your value proposition and they do not al-ways think of you first when they need something. If you regularly put relevant products and services in front of prospects and customers, they will be more likely to make first-time and ongoing purchases. Almost nothing builds enterprise value more quickly than expanding your customer base and increasing purchase frequency. The best way to do this is to be in front of your custom-ers more frequently than your competitors.

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Top 5 MDM Premium Articles of 2017

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2. Commentary: Is an Amazon-Grainger Deal Next?“Is Grainger the next acquisition target for Amazon?,” writes MDM CEO & publisher Tom Gale. If it can’t dominate an industry digitally, Amazon will buy the bricks and mortar to get there.

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4. Special Issue: 2017 Wholesale Distribution TrendsThis year, MDM released the eighth edition of the Distribution Trends Special Issue. This overview of the most important issues facing distribution is based on interviews with dozens of distributors, industry experts and manufacturers, as well as a survey of readers.

5. Grainger’s Pricing Initiative, pt 1: A ‘Suboptimal’ Solution?Lee Nyari analyzes Grainger’s pricing strategy, which was launched to reverse unfavorable market share trends Grainger experienced in certain market segments in recent years.

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