The middleman is the intermediary who takes a cut of your profit share. That’s basic business 101. Sometimes the middleman is a necessity. Other times it can be eliminated through the use of today’s technology. If that sounds like a challenge to you, let’s talk about how you can eliminate the middleman. It’s not for everyone, but it may just work for you.
Case Study in Middleman Elimination
A business sells services nationwide. The services are marketed and sold on an intermediary’s platform. The intermediary takes a cut of the profit each time. That really adds up.
The client comes to us and wants to know if they can run a website that does the exact same thing. “How hard is it?” they ask us.
“With the right tools and know-how,” we tell them, “you can be totally in charge of your product’s sales.”
Then we get to work. Our team of techies put together a website that will sell their product. It utilizes ElasticSearch and other fundamental tools to make the system easy to use and easy to update. Consumers will log into the site, compare services, choose their favorite and pay for it right there.
Meanwhile our creative team devises what the website will look like, how easy it will be for consumers to use, and how attractive it will be to visitors. We ensure that it will have the right SEO to get noticed by the Google algorithm.
The work is completed, and we turn the website’s day-to-day operation over to the team. They have an internal website which lets them update the consumer website whenever information changes.
Mission accomplished: No more middleman.
Can it Work for You?
We work with all sizes of businesses, and we know there is no one size fits all. There are definitely many organizations that have the ability to maintain their own sales website and to compete on the local or national level.
Reduce Duplicate Effort
Because you’ve eliminated the middleman, you’ve eliminated the need for a middleman’s tech and advertising budget, combining that seamlessly into your own.
If you want to take on your own national sales site, you’ll need to know how to use search engine optimization to maintain the flow of customers to your website. You’ll need social media strategies in place to help with that. Your advertising budget may shift to accommodate these needs, but it is not necessarily more than it was when you let a third party act as intermediary.
Without the middleman, your efforts at promotion will provide multiple functions. You will hook the consumer and get the consumer to your website where they will hopefully buy your product.
Improve Distribution and Customer Satisfaction
You’ll have direct contact with your customers from the first log-in. This will give you more opportunities to interact with them. If you have a product, rather than a service, your distribution system may become less complicated. A middleman can slow down response times. Now you have an eye on the entire chain from first contact to the final delivery and customer satisfaction response.
If any aspect of this interests you, the team at Elivate has more answers to your tough questions.We’ve got scalable solutions for all types of businesses. Let us help you analyze how your business can grow with or without the middleman.
