Digital Distributor Essentials
Digital Distributor Essentials builds the sales-focused marketing function your distribution company has been competing without.
90 days. Built specifically for how distribution works. And built to run without us when we’re done.
The Problem in Plain Language
Your best customers still call your reps. For now. But they’re also researching online, and if they’re finding competitors who look more dialed-in, eventually you’re not on the shortlist anymore. By the time you notice, it could be too late.
Most solutions out there were built for other industries and adapted for distribution as an afterthought. There’s a difference between adapted and built correctly the first time.
We know it. It’s the only thing we do.
“Susan captured what our best guys just knew how to do well and turned it into something the whole team can use. She created enablement tools, sales training guides, and AI agents, all based on how our best guys sell and build relationships in the field. Now every rep has a way to sell that based on a system and best practices, and we can already point to branches where it’s working.”
~ CEO, Building Supplies Distributor
What Distributors Tell Us Keeps Them Up at Night
We hear the same concerns from every distributor we talk to. Not because they’re all the same, but because the industry has the same structural challenges, and those challenges show up the same way every time.
“Our digital tools don’t integrate with our ERP.”
Every marketing platform demo looks great until someone asks about the integration. Then it’s custom work, middleware, workarounds, and six months of IT headaches. We’ve been in those rooms. We show you how to build with and around your existing systems, not against them.
“My sales team is going to see this as a waste of time.”
That’s the wrong fear. The right concern is what happens when sales and marketing never sit in the same room. Most distributors run them as two separate tracks: marketing builds what it thinks sales needs, sales ignores it, and the gap shows up as wasted spend on one side and wasted time on the other. Digital Distributor Essentials starts by putting both teams in the room to define what a real lead looks like and how to move it toward a purchase based on how your team actually sells.
“I can’t measure the ROI.”
Most marketing programs treat measurement as an afterthought. We build it in from the start. Lead scoring, pipeline attribution, and sales-and-marketing alignment are part of the foundation, not added later when someone asks for a report. Your CFO can follow the logic because the logic was built to be followed. We measure what moves revenue, not what looks good in a dashboard.
“We’re competing against Amazon and big-box distributors with real marketing budgets.”
You’re not going to outspend them. You don’t have to. Mid-size distributors win on expertise, relationships, and speed, not volume. The right infrastructure makes those advantages visible to buyers who are researching before they call.
“What happens when our best people leave?”
Your top rep retires and takes 30 years of customer relationships with him. It’s happening everywhere. That knowledge doesn’t have to walk out the door with them. It gets captured, organized, and made accessible to everyone on your team, so the expertise stays even when the person doesn’t.
What You Have in 90 Days
In 90 days, you’ll have marketing infrastructure, automation, content strategy, and sales alignment working together as a system, integrated with the tools you already run, supporting your reps instead of bypassing them, and built by a team that has worked exclusively inside distribution for over a decade.
Your reps won’t see this as a threat. They’ll have content that answers buyer questions before the meeting, lead intelligence that tells them who’s engaged, and a system that works between touchpoints instead of going quiet until the next call.
You’ll see the difference between MarCom and a real marketing function. For a distribution company competing against better-funded competitors, that difference shows up on the revenue line.
The AI Advantage, and Why It Matters for Your Team
We build custom AI content systems trained on your business, your verticals, your customers, and your competitive position. This is not generic AI output. These are systems that know your business well enough to role-play with your salespeople and generate content with your marketing team, whether they need a first draft blog post, a LinkedIn update, or a customer-facing sales piece that sounds like it came from your best rep on their best day.
In your voice. In your language. Without starting from scratch every time.
This is how you go from a blank page to vertical-specific content on demand. It’s how a company with no marketing staff suddenly has a content engine anyone on the team can use. And it’s one of the reasons Digital Distributor Essentials delivers more in 90 days than most agencies build in a year.
“Susan built a content engine trained on how our team talks, how our buyers think, and what our products do. She developed detailed profiles for each of our customer segments so the content speaks directly to each one. Now our team can generate case studies, social posts, articles, landing page copy, product descriptions, lead magnets, customer tools, etc., all in our voice, for any of our verticals.”
~ Murl Landman, CEO, National Chemicals, Inc.
What Gets Built in 90 Days
This is not a strategy deck, a road map, or a plan for what you should do eventually. At the end of 90 days, you have a working system.
Marketing and Sales Alignment
We start by getting your sales and marketing teams working from the same definition of what a lead is and what to do with it. This alone eliminates more friction than most distributors expect.
Your Customers, Defined
Buyer personas built from your actual customers, your field reps’ intelligence, and your competitive landscape, not templates. Who they are, what they care about, what objections they raise, and what content moves them forward.
Lead Scoring and Routing
Lead scoring is put in place so your sales team knows who’s worth calling now and who needs more nurturing. No more flat contact lists. No more guessing at who’s engaged.
Marketing Automation
Automated sequences, notifications, and follow-up workflows built around your sales process. Leads don’t go cold between rep touchpoints, and your team isn’t manually managing every follow-up.
Sales Enablement
We capture how your best reps sell and build relationships, then turn it into sales training guides, enablement tools, and AI agents the whole team can use.
AI Content Systems
Custom AI content engines trained on your business, your voice, and your industry. Your team uses them to generate on-brand content on demand: first drafts in minutes, no agency dependency, no blank page. This includes a Knowledge Vault for your sales team, with your product details, talking points, and objection-handling guidance captured and accessible to every rep.
Value Proposition and Differentiation
Clear language for what makes you the right choice. Not “we provide superior service and broad selection,” but a specific, defensible position your sales team can actually use in a conversation.
CRM and Platform Alignment
If your current systems can support the build, we work within them. If they can’t, we tell you early and help you make the right decisions, not the most expensive ones.
Content Strategy and 90-Day Map
A content plan mapped to your sales funnel, answering your buyers’ questions at each stage. Every piece, from top-of-funnel education to bottom-of-funnel sales support, has a job to do and a place in the sequence. Your team gets a 90-day map they can follow and keep using long after we’re done.
“Susan led our weekly marketing meetings and put a project management system in place, so the whole team has visibility into what’s happening and when. She structured everything to be owned and operated by our team, so that we can run it completely on our own.”
~ Mike Tuohy, Owner, AOP Technologies
Who This Is For
Digital Distributor Essentials is built for wholesale distributors in the $10M to $500M range who have a strong sales culture but haven’t had the bandwidth to build marketing into a real support function.
You’re the right fit if:
✓
Marketing is currently a side responsibility, owned by someone in sales or ops who’s doing their best but doesn’t have the time or the tools to do it right
✓
You know you need to compete digitally but don’t have the internal expertise to build it
✓
You’re watching competitors gain ground online and aren’t sure how to close that gap or where to begin
✓
You want marketing that supports your sales team, not just flyers and social posts
✓
You recognize that marketing should be strategic, not just creative
It’s for distributors who are ready to build the function.
How It Works
Weeks 1-2
Discovery and Alignment
We get into your business: your sales process, your customers, your systems, your competitive position. We interview your reps. We audit what you have. We align on where we’re going before we build anything.
Weeks 3-6
Build
This is where the infrastructure goes in: personas, lead scoring models, automation architecture, content strategy, value proposition work, and AI system training.
Weeks 7-10
Integrate and Activate
Automations go live. Content plans activate. Sales and marketing teams get the tools and the training to use them. We work the integration points with your existing systems.
Weeks 11-12
Handoff and Transition
We document everything. We train your team. We make sure the system runs without us. If you want ongoing support after 90 days, we offer that. But you won’t need us to keep the lights on.
The Investment
Digital Distributor Essentials
$7,500/month
90 days. One substantial, focused build. A marketing function your team can run.
Three months, then it’s yours. No ongoing retainer, no open-ended contract.
About Susan Merlo and The Digital Distributor
Susan Merlo is the founder of The Digital Distributor, a consultancy that builds marketing functions exclusively for wholesale distributors. She is the author of The Digital Distributor: Six Steps to Accelerate Sales, published by Modern Distribution Management.
Susan has spent more than ten years at the intersection of distribution and digital marketing. She’s not a generalist who pivoted to distribution after a few client engagements. She’s not an agency that added distribution to a list of industries served. Wholesale distribution is the only thing she does, and she built The Digital Distributor specifically because the industry deserved better than adapted B2B frameworks from other industries.
Her clients are regional and national distributors in manufacturing, industrial, and specialty distribution. She understands margin pressure, ERP reality, rep-driven sales culture, and the channel dynamics that make distribution genuinely different from every other B2B category. She’s been in the rooms where distributors make real decisions. Not the boardroom version, but the ones where the sales manager is stretched, the ops team is underwater, and the owner is trying to figure out whether any of this will actually move the needle.
That experience is why Digital Distributor Essentials works. It’s not built on marketing theory. It’s built on what actually moves revenue inside a distribution company. Integrated with the systems you already run, designed to support the reps you already have, and built to keep running long after we’re done.
Not Sure Where to Start?
Take the Distribution Marketing Gap Assessment. It takes two minutes and will show you where your marketing function is leaving money on the table, and what to fix first.