It’s hard to understand the ins and outs of distribution without first having a good grasp of the entire marketing mix. To help you out, we’re going to break it down for you in this article. We'll discuss what it is, how it works, and why it can be so powerful for your business in reaching out to new customers.
1. What is the distribution network?
The distribution network comprises a set of points of presence (POPs) and carrier-neutral colocation facilities interconnected by a network of digital highways to provide service to the customers. Distribution network is the system you use to get your product into the hands of your customers. It’s how you take something that’s made in your factory and get it to the people who want to buy it.
2. How does the distribution network work for marketing?
The distribution network is the collection of people, places, and methods you use to get your product into the hands of your customers. The goal of your distribution network is to make it as easy as possible for people to find, buy, and use your product.
Let’s explore what exactly distribution can mean.
Generally, distribution in marketing isn’t one single point like getting a large amount of people to use or buy your product. In the end, distribution is a far more nuanced approach to working with your sales team and strategic partners.
Rather than just talking about the sales channel, it’s also important to understand the other teams and people that you’ve brought on along the way along the product life-cycle.
We know consisting of sales team, marketing and sales is critical to getting your product to market. Although it may seem like being in the business of sales and marketing should be pretty straightforward once you’ve figured out the timing, it isn’t.
For one, you have people that collect information to discover your product/brand. These people would include people reading reviews, searching social media, and going through scientific studies to gather information that supports or refutes your product’s existence.
We’ll discuss how these people work and some of the data they pull from throughout the entire life-cycle. This also includes your sales team as well. They’re collecting data and information on your potential customers and their needs to help you craft your messaging and website.
What direct sales teams focus on more compared to how your and your sales team might be connected is your product knowledge. With product knowledge, you are able to craft stories that make these stories resonate with people.
3. Why does the distribution network matter to you?
Distribution channels are vital for your business to succeed. The most common distribution channels are online, retail, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer. If you want to sell a product online, you have to get it into the hands of stores. For example, if you want to be on Amazon, then you need to get it into Amazon’s warehouses. In addition, if you’re going to distribute through Amazon, then you’ll want to have a shipping department. If you’re going to handle offline sales, you need to have stores close by your target market, places where people can go to pick up what you’ve got.
Let’s take a look at the elements of a perfect distribution mix.
The inclusion of marketing into the mix means you’re better able to understand what your customers want and how to use that information to elevate your chances of success. And ultimately, marketing helps your business to reach more people: consumers, prospects, or potential customers.
Outdoor marketing is going to be at the heart of a perfect distribution mix. With an online distribution channel, it’s almost impossible to outsource a task like this to a regional or nationwide marketing team.
However, it can be very difficult to outsource online marketing or online customer service. If you have someone on staff who’s good at handling online inquiries, you may have to do the manual work for them. With a retail or wholesale channel, it’s very difficult to send product to a store location. With direct-to-consumer, you can almost always outsource this task to a company that will transport the product for you.
Generally, all online distribution channels involve two key elements: product (what you’re selling), and information about the product (what you’re selling, where you’re selling it, how much of it you’re selling, and if you’re selling online, how can I find out more about the product I bought). In addition to this, there’s typically a physical address of where the product is stored. Some online distribution channels involve electronic details of the products; others don’t.
Which type of distribution channel appeals to you depends on your audience.
4. How can you use the distribution network in your business?
If you’ve built a product that people love, how can you use your distribution network to create an income stream for yourself? You can use the distribution network to increase your sales and build your brand. If you’re a consultant or an expert in your field, you can use your network to promote yourself and your product.
Let’s start by taking a look at the distribution system that most businesses use today and understand how you can use it to grow your business.
The distribution network is an entire collection of people that have a direct line to each other. An example of a distribution network is Amazon. You will see people selling clothes on Amazon, or they may be selling mortgage loans in your neighborhood. Sometimes, it may just be the person next to you at the register at that local grocery store that’s selling you groceries. You don’t have to be part of the network to be part of the sales, you just need to have sold something through the network in the past.
You might see that a business is having a hard time connecting with consumers. Why? Because there are so many channels for your product that the distribution network covered is no longer large from what the new customer may think. This points to one of the most powerful concepts of marketing, customer segmentation.
Before we dig into segmentation, we need to first talk about the distribution of products. Your buy today, pay later (BNPL) model only works if lots of people want your product from all channels.
Let’s first look at distribution of products. Suppose I run a websites that sells picture frames. I have tons of customers on one site, and tons of places where people buy my product from. In fact, if I put all of your favorite stores in a picture, it would be a very large picture. When you visit one site, you can constantly see a large variety of products.