What Is Vertical Selling?
No matter the nature of your business or what types of products and services you provide, having a great marketing plan is essential. Instituting a vertical marketing strategy is one way to build your brand recognition, gain market share and market your products more effectively.
In its simplest terms, vertical selling means tailoring your sales, product placement and marketing efforts to a specific industry. This specialization allows companies to focus their marketing efforts where they are likely to have the greatest impact. For instance, a seller of paper products can use a vertical marketing strategy to focus on the lucrative state and federal government markets. Tailoring the message effectively can reduce total marketing expenditures while improving results and boosting sales.
The vertical selling marketing strategy provides companies with a number of important benefits by helping them hone their sales messages more effectively. One of the advantages of vertical selling is better brand recognition. Companies can use vertical marketing to set up their companies as experts in a particular field or industry, which in turn can boost the confidence of buyers looking for a new vendor. Vertical selling also helps companies take advantage of industries where there is less competition, helping those firms boost sales and gain a strategic market share.
One of the advantages of vertical selling from the customer's point of view is that the vendors they choose have specific experience and expertise in a particular industry. For instance, a hospital administrator might have a much better confidence level dealing with a vendor who has specific experience selling supplies and providing services to the medical and hospital industry. Each industry has its specific needs and challenges, and working with a vendor who understands those issues can be a big plus in the eyes of the consumer. Firms that understand the advantages of industry specific experience tend to gain market share in the vertical selling arena.
Vertical selling is particularly well suited to the technology industry, because technology provides so many opportunities for integrated solutions and related products. With the vertical selling model, the same company could provide new computers, servers and printers to a local health insurance company. At the same time, that vendor could use vertical marketing to provide ongoing maintenance and upgrades for those products. This integrated approach puts the vendor in an especially advantageous position going forward, because it would be difficult for the firm to change vendors quickly.