Tip: Click the blue text above to follow "FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting" for more marketing and distributor internal management content.

New product operations are a systematic project, but within this system, there are many key links. If you can accurately grasp these links and focus on one, you can ignite the entire system's energy and ensure the new product successfully enters the market quickly.

1. Pricing Strategy

The pricing of a new product is the foundation for its success. You must adopt different pricing strategies based on the specific market resource environment, competitive environment, and market foundation. Specifically, you can adopt the following two methods:

1. High Price with High Promotion

This strategy is suitable for companies with a relatively weak competitive environment but with obvious advantages in market resources, foundation, and position—essentially, mature markets where the company is a leader. In such markets, a "high price" can establish the image of the company and its products, reserve enough space for the channel price, and extend the product's life cycle. At the same time, high prices increase channel members' profits, creating strong pull and temptation. However, it's important to maintain a balance; otherwise, you might pave the way for competitors. High promotion is achieved by integrating marketing resources through high prices and "throwing" these resources in the form of promotions, quickly generating market influence and penetration. The basic principle of pricing tells us: products aren't better sold because they're cheaper, but because people feel they've gotten a bargain.

2. Bottom-Line Pricing

When a company doesn't have advantages in market resources and position in a specific market—these are weak markets for the company—the new product may lack competitiveness and face significant resistance. If you adopt a high-price, high-promotion strategy, the entire promotion process may encounter layers of resistance, even being rejected by second-tier distributors or retailers, leading to the new product's failure. In such conditions, by analyzing competitors' prices in the specific market, you can reduce the markup at various stages, set a reasonable or lower channel profit strategy, and push the product to market. This enhances channel members' recognition and acceptance of the new product's price, allowing it to enter the market quickly. Second-tier distributors and terminal retailers are only interested in two types of products: those that bring high profits and those with fast turnover (i.e., easily accepted by consumers).

2. Channel Strategy

Marketing competition is resource competition, more directly, channel and consumer resource competition. Channel resources are the first resources a new product must compete for and occupy when entering the market. Channel selection is a key factor in a new product's success. Appropriate and correct channels ensure the product's growth and success. When promoting a new product, companies must combine the specific market's channel characteristics, competitors' control and occupation of channel resources, and their own current channel resource status to adopt corresponding channel positioning and development strategies. There are two specific strategies:

1. Wide Sowing, Thin Harvest

Under the cheers for deep channel cultivation and distribution, channel resources have been divided and damaged to the extreme. New entrants or new products find it hard to find channel space or entry points. Many companies either endure the pain of investing heavily to force entry into channels where they lack advantages or where it's not cost-effective, resulting in exiting the market as soon as they enter. If a company can carefully analyze and find no relative channel space or advantages, nor a breakthrough point for channel concentration, adopting a "wide sowing, thin harvest" approach—selecting, developing, and promoting channels widely—can be effective. This strategy, based on the new product's external or internal quality having enough pull for consumers, allows the new product to avoid strong competitors' suppression and find suitable market soil. It saves time from struggling with second-tier distributors or terminals, widely seeking opportunities and space to spread the product across the "surface" and gain advantages, leading to a situation like "suddenly, as if overnight, spring wind blows, and thousands of pear trees bloom."

2. Channel Relay Race

When promoting new products, most companies only consider their own inherent resources—market foundation, position, product strength, team strength—ignoring the analysis and use of external resources. For example, if a company hopes to cover all target channel outlets through its own strength and capability, it may adopt a tactic of attacking on all fronts, resulting in insufficient resources or making too many enemies and retreating. In reality, companies can adopt a "channel relay race" strategy: select a distributor or large second-tier distributor with network coverage capability in a certain area, agree on rights and obligations through agreements, and support them with financial and intellectual resources while leveraging their transportation and network control capabilities to complete the new product's promotion. This not only compensates for the distributor's weak strength but also quickly completes the promotion—why not do it?

3. Marketing Team Strategy

1. Courage from Heavy Rewards

In reality, to cope with fierce market competition, companies invest almost all available resources into the market, paying little attention to internal employees, especially the marketing team. They might burn large amounts of money in the market without allocating any for team incentives. In an era dominated by material society, we cannot ignore the material interests of our marketing team while considering distributors as profit-driven. For marketing personnel who are not yet very wealthy, companies should allocate a portion of funds for special rewards to the marketing team during new product promotion, ensuring consistency of interests. Only then can our frontline warriors "sacrifice to blow up the bunker," and the marketing team release its maximum potential and energy, and the company will definitely receive unexpected results.

2. Model Team

The power of example is infinite. No matter what work you do, first create a model and then promote the overall work. This not only helps explore successful models but also avoids damaging the team's morale. The process of promoting a new product is inherently a process of exploration. If this process is too long or too bumpy, many people may prematurely spread failure information due to lack of confidence, leading to the new product promotion being abandoned halfway. When promoting a new product, select "sharp soldiers" from the marketing team and form a "sharp knife team" for new product promotion. Provide them with special training and let them lead the way in the market. This not only inspires the entire marketing team but also unleashes the power of example. This is not only a strategy of retreating to advance but also the basic principle of "sharpening the knife doesn't delay cutting wood."

Like this article? Feel free to click the top right corner to share to your Moments.

About us: WeChat ID: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting Management Account Introduction: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally targeting distributor internal management.

Click the "Read Original" below to enter our micro-community for interactive communication and questions. Learning and communication QQ group: 344257092