---
title: "Marketing Strategy Not Landing? It's a Timing Issue!"
description: "How to do the right things at the right time is worth every marketer's consideration. After discussing the five major operational strategies for FMCG companies—product, channel, organization, consumer, and expense—this article explores the time advancement strategy to implement these five strategies, emphasizing the importance of reviewing past issues, closing loops within each period, and maintaining a long-term perspective."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-12-26"
language: "en"
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# Marketing Strategy Not Landing? It's a Timing Issue!

> How to do the right things at the right time is worth every marketer's consideration. After discussing the five major operational strategies for FMCG companies—product, channel, organization, consumer, and expense—this article explores the time advancement strategy to implement these five strategies, emphasizing the importance of reviewing past issues, closing loops within each period, and maintaining a long-term perspective.

**Introduction: How to do the right things at the right time is worth every marketer's consideration.**
Previously, we discussed the five major operational strategies that FMCG companies must consider: product strategy, channel strategy, organization strategy, consumer strategy, and expense strategy. Today, we will discuss how to implement the time advancement strategy for these five strategies. The time advancement strategy is a type of resource control strategy, which can be understood as how to plan time to implement marketing operational strategies more quickly. People have limited time and energy, and tasks have priorities. How to do the right things at the right time is worth every marketer's consideration.

**Review the problems encountered in time advancement last year**
First, the time advancement strategy for the new year must be a correction based on the problems of last year's time advancement. This correction includes both internal shortcomings and external competitive changes. Let's take beverages as an example: constrained by the need for product batch numbers to cross years at outlets, every January, large and medium-sized beverage companies start their water head pressure policies. Generally, the focus from January to March is to occupy the warehouse and funds of distributors and wholesale dealers, so for multi-brand dealers and downstream key accounts, they can only focus on their own products at the beginning of the year. From April to May, the focus shifts to "pressing storefronts" and "doing displays," with the same core idea: occupying terminal outlets' funds and warehouse space. Terminal funds and storage are limited; if they stock this brand, they can't stock another. From June to September, the peak sales season, the focus shifts to shelves, freezers, and multi-point locations for convenient consumer purchase, with the core content being to increase consumer competitiveness. From October to December, the focus is on year-end sales closure and next year's sales planning. The above is the key time advancement strategy for beverage annual sales. So what do we need to review?

**1. Matching of strategies on the timeline:** For example, during June-September for beverages, the core work is to get products into freezers. Does the expense strategy have competitive display fees (avoid overspending earlier and lacking funds now)? Does the organization strategy have corresponding personnel to maintain it? Does the channel strategy have sufficient quantity and quality of outlets, and is product turnover efficient? Does the product strategy have core single products fully exerting their strength? Is the consumer strategy interactive and efficient? A seemingly simple task requires coordination and support from many strategies. If the matching is insufficient, the effect is hard to release.

**2. Competitive dynamics:** Current marketing is not "working behind closed doors"; we must fully consider changes in the competitive situation. Still using beverages as an example, your water head ordering meeting is planned to fully launch in January, thinking it's early enough, but you don't know that major competitors start laying out in December, collecting order deposits from distributors and key customers (paying deposits first, even with "high" interest subsidies, then the ordering meeting starts to pay the balance, or even not collecting the balance after delivery). In this case, launching in January is obviously lagging. By analogy, our time strategy should be prepared to correct based on major competitors' dynamics.

**3. Emergency preparedness for unexpected events:** Plans can't keep up with changes, which is a norm for marketers. An unexpected event can cause serious cost overruns, affecting all subsequent strategy adjustments. In the three years of the pandemic, unexpected events seem more common. A wave of outbreaks, lockdowns for ten to twenty days, disrupts the rhythm. What to do without a contingency plan?

**4. Coordination among departments:** This should be emphasized. Market operations are never the work of one department; they require multi-department coordination. Each department has its own KPIs. Don't expect everyone to "sacrifice themselves" to do things against their KPIs. Seek the best cooperation plan through continuous adjustment to ensure efficient implementation of multiple strategies.

**Do the closed-loop work within each time period**
A company's marketing year consists of several marketing time periods. Here, we must ensure that the marketing strategy within each time period forms an independent closed loop, and secondly, that each independent closed loop is linked. Let's use beverage marketing as an example.

**1. Independent marketing closed loop:** The water head policy from January to March each year achieves channel inventory pressure from F2B2b through channel gifts, warehouse subsidies, and working capital incentives. This process should first form an execution closed loop according to PDCA. From policy formulation, plan design, to implementation, then checking problems during execution, and finally evaluating and correcting the entire activity, we must achieve phased victories at time nodes. The same applies to other time periods of the year.

**2. Links between independent closed loops:** The work from January to March is the first phase: pressing channels; April to May is the second phase: outlet display. How to effectively link these two phases is also important. Some companies habitually use policy expenses to link them simultaneously, while others separate the expenses of the two phases, using building core stores, model streets, and consumer interaction activities to pull outlet stocking, which is the so-called bC integration, pulling the b-end through the C-end. There is no right or wrong method; only whether it matches. You should measure your closed-loop linking method based on your product competitiveness, channel competitiveness, and consumer competitiveness. "Best-sellers" and "hard currency" can use simultaneous expenses, while new brands and waist companies can use the second method. Find the most suitable linking method.

**From phases to the whole year**
**Ensure the goal doesn't deviate** The core of the time advancement strategy is to ensure the annual marketing main line doesn't deviate. Many marketers unknowingly deviate from the main line during time advancement. Take product strategy as an example: the most common problem is that the main product promoted each quarter is inconsistent. Over a year, countless consumers are attracted by cognition but few retain brand concept. How to keep the core route stable throughout all time periods? The ultimate goal of all strategies is to meet consumer needs with profit. So the core content is clear: **What products, at what price system, through what type of channels, with what marketing team, spending what expenses, and doing what means to make target consumers willing to buy.** So my suggestions are:

**1. Clear strategic positioning:** First, let's talk about what strategy is. It's not a "high-sounding" term; in my view, it's the optimal path a company chooses to achieve its goals. This optimal path is the core content of the time advancement strategy, requiring phased implementation to gradually achieve the company's goals. So if the strategy is clearly positioned, time advancement won't deviate.

**2. Time strategy centered on the product line won't be chaotic:** All marketing strategies start with products and end with consumption. As long as the beginning and end correspond, the goal won't deviate. It should be emphasized that product line as the core doesn't mean all product lines, but selection and optimization. Company resources are limited, team energy is limited, and consumer cognitive capacity is limited. Learn to "cut off, discard, and let go."

**3. Adhere to long-termism and not be swayed by changes:** The biggest mistake in a company's time advancement strategy is making major adjustments with market changes. Without a long-term mindset, it's hard to achieve great success. Take Oriental Leaf as an example: ten years ago, when it first launched, selling a bottle, or even giving one away and having a consumer drink it happily, gave a sense of achievement; sales were out of the question. But persisting for ten years, promoting with the original intention every year, resisting various temptations, and persevering led to today's gratifying results. So **the time advancement strategy requires the perseverance of long-termism and the original intention not to be tempted.**

**Do every strategy well**
**Time advancement chart, mark intersections** My suggestion is that every strategy a company formulates should have a time advancement chart, ultimately aggregated into one operational chart. Why do this? The reason is simple: once the new year begins, marketing teams are swamped with trivial matters. The daily core work is either sales or distribution, day after day, month after month. People easily fall into their own silo thinking and can't view the overall strategy of the year macroscopically. The result is often habitual work, with a big gap between planning and reality. Here are a few strategy time nodes to help you think.

**1. Product strategy timeline:** More than ten years ago, my product strategy time nodes at Nongfu Spring were: March-August focused on selling water (peak season for bottled water), September-February focused on selling Nongfu Orchard (Mid-Autumn and Spring Festival), with other products sold alongside these two main lines. At that time, Nongfu was not strong, so choosing two categories was the best path at the moment. So the product strategy timeline should combine the company's own characteristics and select the products most likely to succeed for phased layout.

**2. Channel strategy timeline:** In the channel chain F2B2b2C, clarify what time period, which channel to focus on, and what to achieve. Have priorities; don't grab everything at once.

**3. Organization strategy timeline:** Personnel allocation time points, response measures for recruitment and resignation, and nodes for adding or reducing temporary staff in peak and off-peak seasons should all be planned on the timeline.

**4. Consumer strategy timeline:** Create a calendar for consumer activities, e.g., what products, which channels, and what activities for important festivals? At ordinary times, focus on youth communication, interactive innovation, and key items.

**5. Expense strategy timeline:** Plan expenses and sales for each time point. Are expenses invested according to the predetermined plan? Have predetermined goals been achieved? Do phased expense inputs and outputs meet company requirements?

Finally, integrate the timelines of the five strategies onto one chart. Horizontally, we can clearly see what to do in each time period and what effects to achieve. Vertically, we can see how other strategies coordinate to achieve a work goal in a certain time period, truly knowing what to do. Let the team both pull the cart and look up at the road, and also collaborate efficiently. This is the greatest value and significance of the time advancement strategy.

**Extended reading:**
Hai You: Special author of New Distribution, senior researcher, offline channel marketing practitioner, and designer of enterprise channel coverage models. He has provided channel consulting for more than ten first-line brands, gaining a good reputation.


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