What on earth is trade marketing? Unboxing B2B2C.

This article was first published in the downloadable first issue of markonmag. The article has since been updated and expanded upon by Nicole Rachel Kwan.

My keen interest in marketing spurred me to undertake various internships, each a different vertical of marketing. 

Having had experience on both sides (client and agency), I gained valuable insights on how the nature of the work varies. Through these two internships, I discovered the joy of working with different clients and brands. 

However, I had an inkling that I prefer being on the client-side because I would get the satisfaction of watching the brand grow and value-add to the company. Ultimately, my trade marketing internship role at Unilever International was the best of both worlds – I was able to work on multiple brands and still remain on the client-side. 

So what exactly is trade marketing you ask? Well, let’s delve right into it. Shall we?

Trade marketing definition

Trade marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategy that involves marketing to stakeholders along the supply chain, such as wholesalers or retailers. It aims to increase demand from various distribution channels, to ultimately bring the products in front of consumers.

Trade marketing is used mainly by manufacturers, who develop marketing strategies to sell more products to retailers, distributors, and retailers. The FMCG industry is one where Trade marketing is commonly used. 

Trader marketers aim to make their products stand out, especially when products are similar across the product category. 

Examples of trade marketing activities

Without being aware of it, you probably would already have seen trade marketing in action! Here are some examples of trade marketing activities 😉

1) Free gifts

Quite simply, a complimentary item is given to the customer upon spending a certain amount or buying a certain quantity of product.

Brands work with retailers to allow their products to be offered as free gifts for shoppers who’ve spent a set amount in the store.

This is actually a great way to get your brand name out there!

Want more households to own your brand’s dinnerware? Offer them for free to shoppers who’ve spent over $200 in one sitting 🤑

2) In-store sampling or testing

What better way to get your target consumers to taste your products than to let them try or test your product directly? 

You can often see people at booths in supermarkets handing out free samples to shoppers. That’s trade marketing at work.

In this case, brands work with local retailers to have a representative stationed in the store to get people to try their products while selling them at the same time.

3) Product placement in retail stores

As I mentioned in the beginning, players in the FMCG industry are some of the most frequent users of trade marketing tactics. 

Unsurprisingly the specific types and varieties of products you see on the shelves of supermarkets and retail stores are the results of trade marketing campaigns. 

Ever wondered why a particular brand of snacks always shows up at the most visible section of the shelf? 👀

Why is trade marketing important?

Trade marketing is important for two main reasons ✌️

First, it builds relationships between the manufacturer and members of their supply chain. 

Having a good relationship turns a purely transactional exchange into something closer to collaboration. 

Products are supplied to distributors and retailers, and these partners provide information to the manufacturer, who can develop it further to suit the end consumer. 

In a more pragmatic sense, these relationships also enable the manufacturer to distribute their product to consumers.

Secondly, trade marketing helps a brand stand out from its competitors. Particularly in the FMCG where many different brands sell homogeneous products, trade marketing campaigns help a brand influence customers to choose their product. 

This is done through campaigns launched at the consumer level through supply chain partners. Such campaigns may include price promotions, posters, and displays, or salesperson incentives. 

What does a trade marketer do?

My summer stint with Unilever was a trade marketing internship. Unlike most marketing roles which are business-to-consumer (B2C), trade marketing roles in nature are business-to-business (B2B). 

Although most products produced by Unilever are targeted at consumers like you and me, the main stakeholders I liaised with during my internship were other business merchants, such as wholesalers and retailers. 

My project at Unilever was the development of a new product and my role was to persuade other businesses to stock this new product on their shelves.

This was done through a product sell-in deck, which is a comprehensive deck that encompasses the 4Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. 

The purpose of the deck was two-fold. 

Firstly, it aims to demonstrate the viability of a new product in terms of potential profits for the businesses. 

Secondly, it serves as a guideline for how localized brand teams can execute the new product launch in their markets. 

Having an effective sell-in deck is important for businesses to assess the suitability of a product for its customers. For both retailers and manufacturers, the bottom line is to have the product sell and maximize its profits.

Hence, a clear deck helps both manufacturer and supply chain partners to ensure the marketing mix is optimized to generate sales.

What are some essential skills a trade marketer needs?

Through the short three months that I spent working with my mentor, I observed that there are two crucial skills. 

On the technical aspect, analytical skills play an important role in understanding market data, and translating that to insights will optimize the marketing mix. This would make for a more convincing product sell-in deck for businesses. 

However, trade marketing isn’t just about product sell-in decks. On a daily basis, we also have to manage a network of key business partners.

Project management skills helped facilitate my interactions with them and created an effective working relationship for us, allowing me to complete key project milestones on time.

As with many other internships, I find that a lot of my learning happened on the job itself. However, I believe that having a good grasp of how retail marketing works prior would be extremely useful in the initial uptake of the job. 

While on the job, I often turned to Passport (Euromonitor’s market research database) to read up on their analyst reports on retailing or e-commerce. Passport also provides useful insights on various industries and case studies detailing the strategies that different brands adopt. 

These are very useful for crafting a marketing mix from scratch. All in all, I believe that many of the skills for trade marketing can be honed along the way but gaining industry knowledge through reading or research would kick you off to a great start. 

Rounding off this discussion about trade marketing

Trade marketing is an interesting field that might not be at the forefront of your mind when you think of marketing. 

Nevertheless, it is a key part of a manufacturer’s marketing function that helps get products to consumers and influence them to choose their brand.

That said, trade marketing is but one of the many different fields of marketing out there. If you want to learn more about them, check out other pieces of content published in this online marketing magazine.