---
title: "Six Years of Hard Struggle in a Low-Ground Market: Why Can't He Get Artillery Support?"
description: "The more challenging the market, the more important it is to build market fundamentals, team, and channel capabilities. A regional manager of a leading beer brand in a northwestern city has been fighting for six years in a weak market without significant improvement, blaming insufficient resources and unequal allocation from headquarters."
author: "陈思廷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-12-12"
language: "en"
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# Six Years of Hard Struggle in a Low-Ground Market: Why Can't He Get Artillery Support?

> The more challenging the market, the more important it is to build market fundamentals, team, and channel capabilities. A regional manager of a leading beer brand in a northwestern city has been fighting for six years in a weak market without significant improvement, blaming insufficient resources and unequal allocation from headquarters.

**Introduction: The more challenging the market, the more important it is to build market fundamentals, team, and channel capabilities.**

**A Low-Ground Market Without Artillery Support**

"My brothers and I have been holding on here for six years, 'fighting' for six years, but the low-ground market still hasn't seen much improvement." Mr. Wu, the regional manager of a leading beer brand in a northwestern city, expressed his helplessness. Every FMCG company has strong markets and weak ones. Some companies call weak markets "white areas," "low-ground markets," or even "opportunity markets," but essentially, they are markets where "we don't have the advantage." Mr. Wu's market is a typical weak market: high brand awareness, but significantly lower terminal coverage, penetration, and consumer acceptance compared to competitors, with market share hovering around 10% for a long time.

"It's not our fault," Mr. Wu believes. "It's not that we lack breakthrough ideas or methods, but we're always constrained by insufficient resources. All ideas remain just ideas. Under the strong pressure from competitors, it's already not easy for us to hold our ground." Why are resources always insufficient? "When our company sets goals, allocates resources, expenses, and staffing, it plans based on current scale and profits. We already have small business and small profits, so how can we have resources to plan for the future?" Clearly, Mr. Wu is very dissatisfied with the company's resource allocation. "Good regions are always good—high share, high profits, sufficient resources; low-ground markets are always bad—no share, no profits, no resources. Uneven distribution means low-ground markets will never succeed!" Mr. Wu, who has lost some confidence, said, "If the resource allocation method doesn't change, I can only hope to be transferred to a strong market." Why does the low-ground market, which urgently needs artillery support, never get it? Why is the uneven distribution that Mr. Wu complains about a common phenomenon in FMCG? Can Mr. Wu, without artillery support, really achieve nothing? And with artillery support, is victory guaranteed?

**The Battle for Low-Ground Markets: A Necessary Path for Champions**

In weak or low-ground markets, brand momentum, channel foundation, terminal coverage and sell-through, and consumer awareness are one or more aspects lagging significantly behind major competitors. Competing in such markets is a typical tough battle. For every FMCG company aspiring to sustained growth, paying attention to and studying the growth methodology for "low-ground markets" is extremely important: First, whether you can win tough battles and whether you are good at them is the gold standard for testing a marketing team's capability. Second, the battle for low-ground markets is the necessary path for every company to grow from challenger or follower to leader. **The rise of almost every FMCG head brand is a history of continuous victories in low-ground market battles and consolidation of strong markets.** Since low-ground markets are so important, why can't Mr. Wu get headquarters' artillery support? Here, every regional manager needs to understand the principles of resource allocation from the headquarters' perspective. Business is like war; among Comrade Mao Zedong's "Ten Military Principles," at least four are directly related to where "resources" should be directed. For example, "Strike the dispersed and isolated enemy first, then the concentrated and strong enemy"—this is from the perspective of resource efficiency; "Concentrate absolutely superior forces in every battle, surround the enemy on all sides, strive for total annihilation, and not let any escape" and "Fight no battle unprepared, fight no battle you are not sure of winning"—these are from the perspective of success rate. So, first, understand that "resources are always limited." Recognizing this, you will agree: **Resources must be directed to places that maximize "benefits" and "efficiency"!** What is benefit maximization? A place where one unit of resource can bring ten units of benefit! First, you must heavily guard and firmly consolidate your main profit-producing areas; this is the primary direction for resource investment. Second, invest resources in areas of greatest strategic value; capturing one city means taking down a whole region. Every regional market that can significantly impact the national or large regional situation is a primary direction for resource investment. For example, why does Snow Beer continuously invest in the Fujian market? Because Fujian is the core battleground for China's high-end beer market; achieving rapid growth or even capturing the market in Fujian is a major victory in China's high-end beer market. **What is efficiency maximization? It is the pursuit of "if you don't fight, you don't fight; if you fight, you must win."** Every unit of resource has a cost; if it is invested in a place without achieving the expected victory, the negative impact on the company is enormous. When we complain about lack of artillery support, we should think carefully: Are we prepared? Are our team and channel capabilities and status ready? Apart from artillery, is everything else ready? To put it bluntly, without artillery support, we can still find excuses for defeat; but if artillery comes and we don't achieve the expected victory, shouldn't we be "court-martialed and bring our heads to see you"?

**Low-Ground Markets Should Learn**

Chen Siting, CEO of New Distribution, senior FMCG media person, and consultant.

Former editor-in-chief of "Sales & Marketing" magazine, marketing consultant for Tanmuzhu, and founder of the internet supply chain project "Wanchao Bang." He has studied the Chinese market with a professional perspective, conducting in-depth research and practice in consumer brand planning and communication, distributor model transformation and upgrading, and supply chain innovation and reform.


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