Recently, many peers have asked me the same question: how to boost beverage sales in local (county-level) markets. This is a representative issue in the industry, so I will share my experience and methods for increasing sales in county-level markets, hoping to provide reference for peers.
Any national beverage brand grows from a regional one; only by succeeding regionally can it go national, except for Evergrande Spring. How Evergrande Spring went national is not discussed here.
The most representative regional market is the county-level market (including administrative districts of prefecture-level cities). There are 2,400 county-level administrative units in China. Doing well in county-level markets is the必经之路 for all beverage companies to become national brands. So how can sales in county-level markets be increased? This is also a direction of FMCG marketing that I study, namely regional breakthrough marketing. Since each county-level market has different actual conditions, I will still analyze from the perspective of marketing push and pull. The local market must gradually solve the links of enthusiasm, coverage, display, willingness to buy, and buying more. These links are closely connected and indispensable. A brief analysis is as follows:
- Enthusiasm: Doing anything relies on a team, not just one person. How to improve the team's sales enthusiasm is paramount. Here, the team refers to frontline salespeople, who can be salespeople of distributors or deep-distribution sales reps in the local sales office of the enterprise. The team size can be 2-3 people or more than 5. This requires our local regional managers to provide continuous training and guidance in both spirit and material, enhance personal confidence, inspire team fighting spirit, clarify team goals, and break them down to each team member. We must follow the principle of more encouragement and less punishment. Commissions, distribution rewards, etc., should be clear and distributed promptly. Set examples, share experience, increase confidence, and then sales will increase.
I have always appreciated a saying: "An excellent team has no failed individuals; a failed team has no excellent individuals." It is essential to instill the idea of sharing honor and disgrace with the team into every member's mind. Improve each person's individual combat capability, and the team's overall performance will naturally rise. Of course, those with negative and pessimistic emotions in the team must be resolutely removed, otherwise they will bring great harm to the team.
- Coverage: Coverage solves the possession of terminal networks. Therefore, our regional managers need to survey the local terminal network. This work is already mature in the FMCG industry and has extended into a series of methods to control terminal stores, especially with the channel refinement brought by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Master Kong, which divides terminal networks in detail, such as schools, internet cafes, restaurants, scenic spots, traditional stores, townships, etc. I won't go into details here.
However, I want to point out the effective coverage of beverages. Should all channels sell our products? No, according to the packaging and price of beverages, we should selectively enter stores, which is effective coverage.
Canned beverages should occupy terminal restaurants; selling in terminal circulation stores and scenic spots is more difficult. Terminal circulation stores mainly sell PET bottles, which are convenient to carry and can be put in a bag if not finished. Community stores should focus on whole-box purchases and increase the promotion of gift boxes. These require our frontline salespeople to understand effective network coverage to increase sales.
- Display: Beverage consumption is impulsive. In this era of brand homogenization, how to capture consumers' purchasing psychology and make them willing to buy our brand's beverages is currently a difficulty in marketing for all brands.
Everyone is making great efforts to seize terminal shelves and freezers, invest in terminal shelves, make store signs for terminal stores, post posters at doors, set up sun umbrellas outside, hang banners, buy the largest display area on in-store shelves, and cut-box displays at counters. All the tricks that can be thought of have been thought of, with the only purpose of attracting attention. But are these really useful?
Let's put ourselves in the shoes of an ordinary consumer. Do you remember which brand's display you saw in a terminal store today? Right, there are too many brands; you simply can't remember.
The only purpose of maximizing display is to attract consumers to buy. Since everyone is fighting for display space, consumers don't remember anyway. Can we save this expense and use it to create a series of fun, interesting, and interactive things for consumers? So, I suggest that peers think carefully about making terminal displays more interesting based on the different characteristics of their brands.
- Willingness to Buy: Consumers go through two stages when buying beverages: trial purchase and habitual purchase. We need to analyze which stage our brands are in.
In the trial purchase stage, we should create a series of promotional activities to get consumers to buy, such as tasting, buy-one-get-one, etc., to increase sales. I suggest making it fun for consumers to learn about and buy the product. For example, when I was the General Manager of H Brand's Guangdong region in July 2012, I held 7 roadshow events in Shenzhen in one month. Each roadshow started at 16:00 and ended at 21:30, at leisure squares in suburban areas. The activity offered 5 chances to throw rings for 10 yuan for 3 bottles of beverage. The highest sales in one night reached 6,700 yuan.
The second stage is habitual purchase. In this stage, we need to solve the next issue, which is buying more.
- Buying More: In this stage, consumers will actively go to sales points to buy our brand's beverages and have habitual consumption. But to increase sales, we need to solve the problem of consumers buying more. We generally use instant discounts in supermarkets and bundle discounts of several bottles at terminals to encourage consumers to buy more.
When I worked at Prince Milk in 2005, I discovered that the secret to Prince Milk's national sales of 2 billion yuan for a white bottle was whole-box purchases. Therefore, in this stage, I suggest that brands or regions focus on whole-box purchases. Currently, dairy companies Yili and Mengniu have both entered the 50 billion club. Do we see them selling single boxes? Almost all are whole-box purchases. Whole-box purchases of beverages will also become a trend, especially in community stores.
Regarding increasing sales in county-level markets, I have briefly discussed these 5 aspects, hoping they are useful to everyone.
Hu Wei, from Jiujiang, now lives in Beijing, graduated from Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, practical FMCG marketing expert, 15 years of experience in the FMCG industry, has served as Product Director of Huiyuan Juice Group, General Manager of Guangdong Region, Marketing Director of Hunan Prince Milk Group, Marketing Director of Northern Region, Marketing General Manager of Jiangxi Gaozheng Group, and Deputy General Manager of Marketing of Duoduo Runer Company, specializing in differentiated marketing of food and beverages, channel incentives, and regional market breakthroughs.