As 2015 draws to a close, the falling snow and cold weather signal that future marketing efforts will also be chilly; excessive optimism and letting things take their natural course will not yield good results. To achieve good marketing performance in the future, entrepreneurs and marketing managers need to better integrate resources in areas such as products, channels, customer service, personnel incentives, and competitive strategies to cope with market developments. Here are some thoughts to share and discuss.

Thoughts on Products

As marketing personnel, we must truly understand and remember that the product we need is not "our product" but the product the market needs—the product that can help customers win the market and consumers, and the product that can gain market share and profits.

In sales work, marketing personnel spend most of their time developing customers, maintaining the market, and executing policies, but rarely take the time to study their own products. Without a corresponding understanding of the product, we cannot make the product exert corresponding influence on the market, nor can we enhance its sales power in the market. Under normal circumstances, marketing personnel should act as product managers, deeply studying the product, researching its unique selling points, and using them to pry open and invade the minds of consumers or customers.

As everyone knows, the hardest thing to move now is the minds of consumers or customers. Massive amounts of information are selectively rejected; only when your information matches the frequency that customers subconsciously accept can it be received. If our marketing personnel simply engage in bland selling, it will only intensify rejection.

We need to find or "develop" the USP of our own product, then repeat it over and over, purposefully and methodically invading the customer's mind, until your unique "pitch" is recognized and responded to, and then spontaneously spread by the other party. Only then is the beginning of sales work correct.

I just talked about understanding the product. With the above understanding, plus a large degree of free dissemination, market influence will be reflected, and then your sales volume will grow and market share will increase. In the product era, what is needed is a unique customer experience; many customer experiences are first guided, then recognized. If our sales personnel have a strong awareness of studying the product, it will itself provide more precise positioning for the improvement of our internal product system and provide more effective support for product improvement.

Thoughts on Channels

Trout's positioning theory has already had a great impact on China's marketing circles, and through the success of Wanglaoji or JDB, everyone has also gained good results; the era of product focus has arrived.

Whether it is the American A-model or the Japanese J-model, whether the product line is narrow and deep or broad and rich, it will appear on channels, and it will inevitably experience congestion or smoothness on channels. No matter how good the car, it cannot do without the support of the road; otherwise, it cannot demonstrate its due performance. We know that in ancient times there were dedicated post roads, and now in the military there are also dedicated military roads. Only by finding a road that suits yourself, or building a channel exclusively for yourself, and taking a channel different from others, may be an indispensable consideration for marketing breakthroughs in the coming period.

Many large international supermarkets are no longer the carriers of fast-moving consumer goods; the success of Three Squirrels' e-commerce channel is crazy and joyful. The combination of JD.com and Yonghui, Carrefour's massive construction of standard supermarkets, SF Preferred and its Heike stores, Ele.me's rapid delivery, etc.—channels that used to change once every ten years or so are now changing rapidly, even every few days; cross-industry and cross-border have become commonplace. Therefore, we need to think deeply about our product sales channels, considering the acceptable traffic of the channel for the product, the impact of channel changes on product sales, and the future development potential and change trends of the channel itself.

In the past, we designed our product system, price system, management system, and service system according to the characteristics of the channel, which was relatively rigid and fixed. In the future, how to respond flexibly will be the theme. Future channel compatibility will increase, while channel segmentation will still exist. The current regional horizontal management and channel vertical management may both become matrix management. How to combine specialization with versatile talent to adapt to future channel changes will be a thought of opportunity and challenge in 2016.

Thoughts on Customers

Our sales personnel deal with customers all the time; in fact, all kinds of customers are now more difficult than manufacturers and enterprises. The current marketing army of about 70 million is bombarding our physically and mentally exhausted customers every day. While dealing with downstream customers and consumers, customers face various pressures such as capital, talent, warehouse, and development, while juggling various so-called policies, product selection obstacles, and heavy mountains. If we cannot carefully consider the customer's interests, it is unrealistic and even naive to expect the customer to be loyal to us unilaterally. How to establish a new type of customer cooperation relationship and interest chain? Perhaps while reducing pressure for customers, we can make the customer group more dynamic, liberate productivity, unleash creativity, and enhance market competitiveness.

Wahaha's joint venture with distributors, Synear's credit model to customers during peak sales seasons, some enterprises' major customer shareholding models, and customized product models for major customers are all based on thinking from the customer's perspective, transforming the customer from a "handler" to a "partner"—a big step forward. However, how to manage and serve effectively is not limited to this; how to sort out interest relationships, unblock channel congestion, and truly guarantee interests is a long and arduous task.

The sales team should also seriously consider increasing the number of customers, improving customer quality, and expanding customer capacity.

Thoughts on Incentive Mechanisms for Our Own Personnel

Everyone has long recognized that the most scarce resource in the 21st century is talent. However, most enterprises have not yet established a correct view of talent. When short of people, they poach so-called "experts" with high salaries, then send their old staff to "herd sheep in the mountains." But when the expert comes from afar and gradually becomes an old hand who is powerless, either they become mediocre and lose support, or they are not suited to the environment and "set sail" again.

How to make the old staff dedicated and the new staff do their best, combining wisdom and action, is truly not an easy task. Starting from the heart is the right path. It is crucial for enterprises to treat employees as family members, which is far from being solved by wages alone. Think about it: when a family has problems or seeks development, would it casually add family members? That's one point. Then, after recruiting a Han Xin and appointing him as general, how much trust is placed? This is the key to using experts. Is there also the ability to know people? Is the company's talent evaluation system sound? Does the boss make major decisions alone or through a committee mechanism?

Also, is there a normal sharing system for the company's development dividends? If there is a sharing system, is it implemented normally? Does our sharing system have relative market competitiveness? This is a point that managers must consider. Thinking should not be short-term only; the incentive mechanism is a long-term mechanism, and it should combine fixed and flexible elements, just like using troops in battle.

Thoughts on Competitive Strategy

We face competition at different levels. But if we cannot clarify our competitors and determine a reasonable competitive strategy, we will fall into a predicament where everyone around us is an enemy, and we cannot break out of it because we cannot determine a winning strategy. Competitors are two or more similar people or enterprises playing a game; only when they are evenly matched is it interesting. It will not be a crushing comparison. Therefore, we must dig out the core strengths and core weaknesses of our competitors, then sort out our own core strengths and weaknesses, and effectively compare and plan how to win.

Our competitive strategy should not be temporary or limited to one place, but should be long-term, effective, and integrated. The competitive strategy should be based on important aspects such as efficiency, effectiveness, development, and trends. The competitive strategy should be considered from our own positioning and position, and must not be blind. When determining the competitive strategy, we must consider our own resource support capability. It is unreliable to want to win without looking at our own cards.

Conclusion

In 2016, marketing work will be a year with opportunities for breakthroughs but also many difficulties. The economic situation is unclear; from consumption development to supply-side reform, the elimination of overcapacity, many opportunities and challenges will have a great impact on marketing work. But no matter how things change, from products to customers, from channels to competition, from self to opponents, from volume-cost-profit to market share, all aspects need serious consideration based on data and research.

Thinking determines the way out; marketing determines the direction of the enterprise. Only enterprises that pay attention to marketing can go further!

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