---
title: "Off-Season Marketing Breakthrough: 11 Directions and 36 Tactics - Market Chapter"
description: "In the off-season, the first thing to consider is what you want in the peak season, as the future determines the present and the present determines the future. Off-season marketing is not just a sales task but a strategic issue for leadership. Based on over 10 years of experience, this article analyzes 36 tactics across 11 dimensions including market, channel, product, brand, promotion, wedding banquets, customer relations, skills, atmosphere, management, and sports. The market chapter focuses on breaking through weak markets, attacking blank markets, and consolidating strong markets."
author: "朱志明"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-06-17"
language: "en"
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# Off-Season Marketing Breakthrough: 11 Directions and 36 Tactics - Market Chapter

> In the off-season, the first thing to consider is what you want in the peak season, as the future determines the present and the present determines the future. Off-season marketing is not just a sales task but a strategic issue for leadership. Based on over 10 years of experience, this article analyzes 36 tactics across 11 dimensions including market, channel, product, brand, promotion, wedding banquets, customer relations, skills, atmosphere, management, and sports. The market chapter focuses on breaking through weak markets, attacking blank markets, and consolidating strong markets.

In the off-season, the first thing you should think about is: what do I want in the peak season? The future determines the present, and the present determines the future. The results of the peak season determine what you need to do now; what you do now determines what you will harvest in the future. Off-season marketing is absolutely not just a sales matter, but a strategic consideration for the enterprise's leadership. Based on my over 10 years of industry experience, I will analyze from eleven levels—market, channel, product, brand, promotion, wedding banquets, customer relations, skills, atmosphere, management, and sports—covering 36 aspects, to discuss and exchange ideas with everyone.

I. Market Chapter
I start with the market. In terms of market, I will discuss three issues: first, break through weak areas, attack blank areas, and consolidate strong areas.

Do you know that a brand's market position is determined by two key factors:
First, market share (market share, 34 rule, 1.5 times rule)
Second, product structure.

If you are among the top 3 in a market, you have a relatively good chance to compete, and the leader's share should not be more than 4 times yours. This is the famous Boston theory's 34 balance theory.

If your market share has not entered the top three, or if your share is being gradually eroded by competitors, even if you are currently the leader, it is dangerous, let alone if you haven't entered the top three.

The three most painful things for marketers: First, no matter how hard you try, the market remains lukewarm (weak market); Second, just as the market is established, it suddenly faces death (mature market); Third, the huge cake is there, but you lack the ability to eat it, only able to sneak a taste. Blank market.

This is the main reason why, among the four types of markets in conventional positioning, I only choose three types for off-season marketing discussion.

What are the four types of markets? They are: weak market (one just introduced, one that has been slow to develop), blank market, strong market (mature), and the growing market that is on the rise.

The growing market is currently in a favorable position and has few crises, so it is not mentioned. Therefore, I will focus on weak markets, blank markets, and strong markets.

First Tactic: Break Through Weak Areas
First, let's look at weak markets. Since it is a weak market, we must find the reasons for its weakness.

There are mainly two reasons for market weakness:
First, trying to do everything, selling all products in the market, covering all channels—a typical sales-oriented mindset.
Second, the product's momentum-building actions have not kept up, causing slow movement at the terminal, and finally, the product and market are in a state of neither dead nor alive.

Breaking through a market is not, as many imagine, achieved by continuous distribution, terminal maintenance, and promotional activities. Instead, you need to find a breakthrough point, break the thinnest ice layer, and then the market will move with the trend. Otherwise, you will only be stuck in a state of constant busywork while market progress is slow.

Therefore, I divide market breakthrough into four standard steps: find opportunities, insert nails, create momentum, and big explosion.

First, find opportunities, considering from five levels:
1. Price band, 2. Product packaging; 3. Competitor product life cycle; 4. Channel opportunities; 5. Promotional activities.
In fact, this is to explore breakthrough opportunities according to the marketing 4Ps.

People often say success comes from opportunity, not meaning that a pie falls from the sky, but opportunities discovered and analyzed, which increases the chance of success.

Second, insert nails.
The so-called inserting nails means to firmly nail down the opportunity point, lock it tightly, and continuously attack.

Because, throughout history, successful events often stem from single-point breakthroughs and persistent effort. For example, single product breakthrough, single channel breakthrough, single theme promotion, single price band breakthrough, core customer breakthrough, core area breakthrough, model street breakthrough, etc. This is also the law of winning in war: attack must rely on fiercely attacking one place until a gap opens, while defense requires guarding every corner. War is like this, and the market is even more so.

Third, create momentum.
Once the opportunity is found and the nail is inserted, is it over? No, it's just the beginning, because only consumption and continuous consumption can keep the market alive.

To keep the market alive, two issues must be solved: the terminal's willingness to sell and the customer's willingness to buy.

I must do some momentum-building work around the terminal and consumers to stimulate product movement.

How? Through visibility projects, model street projects, model store projects, community square roadshows, small meetings, promotional activities, etc., choose the appropriate method based on customer resource conditions.

Finally, the big explosion.
By continuously hammering the nail and persistently promoting momentum, the ice layer is broken, cracks appear, and an explosion occurs. At this point, the enterprise launches a full-scale attack, either taking the market at once or truly moving it toward a strong position. This is the process of a market going from weak to strong; each step is indispensable, or missing one increases the difficulty of attack or increases resource investment.

Second Tactic: Attack Blank Areas
Now we discuss blank markets. Why is a market blank?
First, the enterprise is temporarily inactive, strategically abandoning it, focusing resources on markets that are easier to take, then later entering the blank market;
Second, the market entry barriers are too high, and the enterprise, without finding a successful opportunity point, temporarily shelves the market or uses small forces to harass. The market is basically blank.

In fact, according to market layout principles and sales growth laws, in a regional market, it is best not to have blank areas. This is like besieging a city: although you concentrate on one point to break through, the other points are not attacked but feigned, otherwise the enemy can easily see through your intentions.

Do points without layout, and the point dies and the game is lost; layout with points, and both points and the whole are alive. This is also Mao Zedong's strategy of divide and combine: divide to sow the seeds of revolution in the largest area, combine to eliminate the enemy in the smallest area.

Although I have always advocated focusing on one area for concentrated breakthrough and then replicating the model, which is the fast path to market success, I have never said not to lay out the overall picture; it's just that it is not the main attack area for now.

Moreover, according to the market growth law, before a regional growth hits a bottleneck, we must find new growth points; otherwise, once the market declines, it will collapse across the board.

There are only three new growth points: first, expand into new markets; second, cultivate new products; third, find new consumption channels.

Therefore, in the development of a regional market, it is best not to have blank areas. For non-strategic areas or places that are easy to defend but hard to attack, you can adopt infiltration methods, segmenting products, customers, and promotion forms to cultivate the market. When the time is ripe, use the successful model market to quickly take it over.

Third Tactic: Consolidate Strong Areas
Finally, let's talk about strong markets.

Many enterprises and distributors, once they achieve a strong market position, tend to relax their vigilance and neglect defense, resulting in the mistress taking over and being cast into the cold palace.

For strong markets, how to defend well? You need to do the following four aspects, the defense ten-character formula:

Coverage:
This refers to developing products at multiple price points and across all channels at the product level, leveraging the energy of "one person attains the Dao, and his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven," adopting an extended brand strategy, fully utilizing the leading brand's driving effect on the corporate brand, responding to channel and market needs, and forming a complementary, multi-price, full-coverage product line. For example, distributor exclusive sales, OEM, customization, and other special supplementary products can achieve the purpose of occupying positions, disrupting competitors' positions, occupying channel resources, achieving volume growth, and continuously giving consumers new highlights.

A high-coverage product line is not developed arbitrarily; the product line structure is directly related to brand structure, channel structure, and price band intervals. A slight mistake can affect the life cycle of leading and co-sold products, even causing self-competition among products, and also involve brand image building and market order maintenance.

Blockade:
To consolidate the market position, adopt the strategy of "blocking channels and clearing the field." "As long as the channel is there, the position will be there." For mature markets, by occupying core terminals, sinking channels, integrating distribution resources, and establishing strategic alliances with core terminals and distributors, as long as the enterprise forms a strategic alliance with core channel members, competitors will find it difficult to enter the market. This also effectively avoids vicious or suicidal price impacts from competitors and forced buyouts of terminals, such as buying goods, cross-regional dumping, and personnel buyouts.

Upgrade:
Upgrade or replace the leading product. The decline of mature markets often begins with the decline of the leading product. At this time, it is necessary to cultivate the upgrade or replacement of the leading product, preparing for the "second spring" of the mature market. Otherwise, once the leading product declines, the market will face a situation where "when the tree falls, the monkeys scatter." It is like a woman giving birth: it should be done when she is young and strong, easy to conceive, easy to raise, and easy to survive. When she is old and faded, the difficulty of giving birth increases. That is, cultivating a new leading product in a mature market is much easier than during a decline.

Freshness:
If a woman does not care about her beauty and skincare, once she becomes a yellow-faced woman, the mistress can easily take advantage. The same is true for the market. A brand that has achieved a strong position, if it does not strengthen its top-of-mind position in consumers' minds, thinking that market leadership allows cutting promotional expenses and frequency, the change in market position often begins with such cuts. This is one of the most common mistakes of market leaders. General practices are as follows: diversify brand promotion methods, make brand promotion activities annual and institutionalized, and try to establish exclusive cooperation with local advantageous media to set obstacles for competitors' market and brand promotion.

Strict Management: Rigid Management.
Unified product management: clarify missions, strengthen the leading product; unified pricing strategy: unify prices at all levels, with differences only in rebates, rewards, red envelopes, and support, but strictly follow the company's guidance standards; unified promotion strategy: channel activities, terminal displays, consumer promotions, consumer interactions—for a strong market brand, nothing is more powerful, influential, low-cost, and efficient than unified execution. (Weak brands need flexibility and adaptability; strong brands need uniformity); unified network structure: eliminate regional chaos (cross-regional), eliminate unclear levels (enterprise, distributor, second-tier, key accounts), eliminate bloated structures (the flatter, the easier to manage, the more efficient, the lower cost); eliminate channel management confusion (supermarkets, hotels, group buying, circulation, etc.); unified assessment standards: assess what you want; strong markets focus more on process, less on sales volume, more on market, less on selling goods. (In strong markets, doing sales is easier than doing market), but many enterprises do the opposite, resulting in strong market salespeople basically just delivering goods continuously and bragging.

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