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Any war must be planned before fighting, and victory must be ensured before battle.
Studying the reasons for many enterprises' failures, the main issue is having courage without strategy—neither clear regional market positioning and goals, nor clear market development strategies and methods. More planning leads to victory, less planning leads to defeat, let alone no planning at all.
We often see many enterprises prefer two most undesirable ways to layout regional markets. First, the dragonfly-like guerrilla warfare: selling wherever possible, with opportunistic thoughts and actions that will struggle to adapt to enterprise development amid intense market competition. Second, the pepper-spraying all-out attack: casting a wide net, sowing seeds everywhere, greedily and blindly aiming for "broad sowing with thick harvest," but in return, the enterprise's path narrows and the market shrinks. The outcome of this approach is that despite the vast market, there is no place for their enterprise to stand.
Every enterprise needs to effectively layout markets based on its own scale, resources, and capabilities, and effectively adopt the competitive strategy of "creating regional local advantages," establishing stable market bases and strong market support, increasing market share in one or several regional markets, winning a larger market share, and then seeking expansion after strengthening overall strength.
Any enterprise that wants to develop must first learn to plan. Those who do not plan for the whole are not sufficient to plan for a part. Below we look at nine common regional market layout strategies.
1. Snowball
The "snowball" expansion strategy in target regional markets is one of the most commonly used strategies by many enterprises. It is an expansion strategy that advances to a new region only after completely winning one region. Specifically, this strategy takes a certain regional target market as the "base" or "headquarters" for market expansion, cultivates it meticulously, making the "base" or "headquarters" market bigger, stronger, deeper, and more solid, serving as the foundation and backing for future expansion. After gaining absolute advantage and stability in the "base" market, the enterprise gradually rolls forward and penetrates into adjacent regions, finally achieving the goal of occupying the entire market, like a single spark starting a prairie fire.
The snowball market expansion strategy has the following advantages:
1. Helps reduce marketing risks
The "base" marketing strategy provides rich experience and good demonstration for marketing practices in surrounding areas. During the process of building the "base" market, the enterprise gains more understanding of product marketing laws, including successful experiences and lessons from failures. The accumulation of marketing experience in the "base" naturally becomes the most valuable asset and capital for future expansion, further reducing marketing mistakes. As the market continuously rolls out and the "base" market expands, these experiences and lessons become richer, and marketing risks become lower.
2. Helps ensure timely supply of resources
The start of market rolling is based on the "strong soldiers and sturdy horses" of the "base" market. The profit harvest from the strengthened "base" market provides sufficient capital accumulation for newly developed markets, and the marketing practice in the "base" becomes the "Whampoa Military Academy" for cultivating marketing talents, thus continuously supplying talents to the front-line markets during expansion.
3. Helps steady consolidation and expansion of the market
Only after firmly occupying the existing market does the enterprise expand to new surrounding markets, adhering to a steady and pragmatic philosophy, achieving the goal of advancing step by step.
2. Mushroom Picking
Mushroom picking is a leapfrog market layout strategy, selecting and occupying markets with competitive opportunities and advantages, regardless of whether these markets are adjacent to the original ones.
Its market selection methods are as follows:
- Opportunity selection method: Focus on building market areas with certain market foundation and strong distributors; or markets with high inclusiveness.
For example, Taishan Liquor Industry has cooperated with Wujiang Taishan Economic and Trade Company for 20 years, achieving sales of 50 million yuan in the Wujiang market with a market share of over 70%; cooperation with Guangdong Huasheng Company has lasted 14 years, and with Zhejiang Xinyou for 20 years. Also, Yilite in Zhejiang and Wanjiuwang in Guangdong have seized opportunities for deep cooperation with distributors, achieving leading positions in these markets.
- Blue ocean attack method: Develop markets where local brands are not strong enough, or leading brands are declining, or competitors are weak; or markets where competitors do not have heavy troops; or price bands ignored by strong brands.
For example, Yingjia Liquor Industry in the Jiangsu market seized the opportunity of the three major brands Yanghe, Jinshiyuan, and Shuanggou, which focused competition on products above 60 yuan, leaving much space for foreign brands. Yingjia seized the 35-40 yuan price band opportunity to attack Jiangsu, achieving very considerable results, making it Yingjia's second largest strategic market after Anhui.
For example, the Henan market is a major liquor consumption province, but due to the weakness of local brands, it has become a market contested by Sichuan, Anhui, and Jiangsu liquor brands. Similarly, southern markets like Guangdong, Shenzhen, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, due to their openness, inclusiveness, and large migrant worker populations, have also become battlegrounds for major liquor brands nationwide, and every brand that enters and deeply cultivates can achieve considerable success.
- Consumption convergence method: Regional markets with similar consumption habits and taste preferences to the brand have relatively low education costs and high market success rates.
For example, Hengshui Laobaigan, Erguotou, and Fenjiu often layout in markets like Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Beijing, and northern Hebei, achieving good marketing results; similarly, Langjiu in its early stages laid out in markets with a certain sauce-flavor liquor consumption base such as Hebei, Henan, Guizhou, and Guangxi.
The mushroom picking market layout strategy, although lacking geographical continuity, is a relatively common strategy for enterprises. Not only strong enterprises can adopt it, but weak enterprises can also achieve good results with it.
3. Breaking the Whole into Parts: Network Main Lines
Divide a regional market into several interrelated "war zones," each "war zone" into several echoing "battle points," and each "battle point" can be connected into several closely linked "battle lines," sorting out market context, highlighting key points, grasping key elements, and driving the overall situation.
4. "Casting the Net and Blooming"
The net-casting strategy is when an enterprise, while expanding its target regional markets, adopts the method of casting nets everywhere, blooming everywhere, launching attacks on all markets simultaneously, and occupying all markets at once.
The net-casting strategy has great market expansion power and can achieve the goal of simultaneously occupying various markets in a very short time. However, the conditions for success are extremely demanding:
The enterprise needs sufficient marketing resources: conducting marketing in many markets simultaneously, each market needs its own sales channels, often accompanied by "carpet bombing" advertising, so the required funds are obviously beyond what ordinary enterprises can bear; on the other hand, each market must send capable marketing planning, sales management personnel, and sales representatives, so the enterprise must have a large and experienced marketing team.
The enterprise needs a large amount of development costs: because each market has different demands, naturally requiring various products. The more markets expanded simultaneously, the more new products may be needed. Therefore, large expenditures on new product development become inevitable.
The enterprise needs strong coordination and control capabilities
When an enterprise attacks multiple markets simultaneously, whether it builds its own channels or uses others' resources, it may encounter many unexpected situations and uncontrollable market chaos. Without strong coordination and control capabilities, the enterprise cannot cope with various unexpected events occurring at the same time.
The "blooming everywhere" market expansion is like a "blitzkrieg," aiming for rapid occupation and broad sowing with thin harvest. However, the probability of success for this target market expansion strategy is far lower than the probability of failure; few succeed, but many fail, showing that this strategy is not suitable for ordinary enterprises or those with insufficient strength and experience.
5. "Point and Surface Echo"
The layout of points in each war zone should try to center on a central city, with a radius of one-day logistics reach to customers, integrating points and surfaces to form radial, concentric circular, fan-shaped, or triangular market patterns.
For example, in the Hubei market, the western war zone can center on Jingsha, connecting north to Jingmen, south to northern Hunan, east to Xiantao and Qianjiang, and west to Yichang, forming two triangular patterns of east-west, one large and one small, echoing each other.
6. "Bowling"
Bowling has this characteristic: there is an inherent connection between the bowling pins; if you hit the key first pin appropriately, it will knock down a large number of other pins.
Enterprises can use the same method when expanding markets. To occupy the entire target regional market, first attack a "key market" in the target market—the first "pin"—and then use the huge radiation power of this "key market" to influence the surrounding vast markets, achieving the goal of occupying a large area. This market expansion strategy is called the "bowling" strategy.
Of course, the "key market" should have the following characteristics:
Consumers in the "key market" have a strong sense of innovation and strong purchasing power, so they accept new things quickly;
The consumption demand in the "key market" has extremely strong influence, penetration, and radiation. Generally, consumption concepts and trends in the "key market" are highly advanced and guiding. Once a certain commodity consumption or lifestyle becomes popular in these markets, it will cause a large number of consumers in surrounding small and medium-sized markets to imitate and follow. Therefore, as long as the enterprise occupies this "high-energy" market, it can achieve the effect of driving the surface with points and radiating a large market area.
Of course, this is a "first difficult then easy" market expansion strategy. Key markets are often contested by merchants; to capture this strategic market point requires substantial financial and human resources. But once occupied, other markets can be swept away like rolling snow. Obviously, this is a strategy that only strong large enterprises can choose.
7. "Rural Surrounding Cities"
Contrary to the "first difficult then easy" bowling strategy, this is a "first easy then difficult" market expansion strategy. That is, first nibble at the easier-to-occupy surrounding markets, accumulate strength, form an encirclement of key markets, and also exert an invisible influence on central cities. When the time is ripe, capture the central market in one fell swoop.
For small and medium-sized enterprises, choosing to attack the hardest central market first is counterproductive; the probability of success is very small. At this time, it is better to first choose the easier-to-attack surrounding markets, on the one hand accumulating strength and marketing experience, and on the other hand exerting a subtle influence on the central market.
In practice, the implementation of the "rural surrounding cities" strategy is often accompanied by the "time-space interruption method." While surrounding and occupying the peripheral markets, the enterprise will carry out certain advertising and publicity for the central market, but without product follow-up, intentionally creating a market vacancy, causing a time-space interruption between sales and publicity, making consumers go from surprise to seeking, from seeking to desire, accumulating consumption momentum like a dam holding back river water, artificially creating a water level difference, finally forming a surging force. This provides a good foundation for capturing the central market in one fell swoop.
8. "Threading Beads with a Line"
After completing the initial market development work, regional managers inevitably face the problem of how to establish their own network. Experienced regional managers will use an artistic approach to develop a perfect network structure. A typical method is the "threading beads with a line" method: using the traffic trunk lines within or between war zones as the main line, threading the transportation hub cities into a line, forming a crisscross network pattern.
For example, in the Central Plains market, with Zhengzhou as the center, and the Beijing-Guangzhou and Longhai railways as the vertical and horizontal coordinate axes, connecting north to Xinxiang and Anyang, south to Xuchang, Luohe, and Xinyang, west to Xi'an and Luoyang, and east to Kaifeng and Xuzhou, forming a "cross-shaped" connected market pattern.
9. "Focus on One Point Entry Method"
This method is actually a centralized marketing strategy. It refers to choosing one of multiple target markets, concentrating all sales capabilities, and increasing the enterprise's market share and market position in this market in the short term. The key to focusing on one point is how to choose the point, mainly considering sales potential and political-economic influence. If the point is chosen incorrectly, it can cause losses in manpower, material resources, financial resources, and time, and may even lead to "dying before the expedition succeeds," causing the product to fail at the newly laid point.
The regional market layout strategy varies according to each enterprise's product line, target market, customer positioning, resource sufficiency, market promotion and management capabilities, etc., resulting in different division bases and expansion strategies that cannot be simply copied. After market division is completed, under the premise of recognizing one's own strengths and weaknesses, conduct a detailed assessment of the feasibility and risk of each segmented city market development, first grasp strategic key markets, and develop from high to low in order.
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