Victory in any regional marketing war requires not only clear market positioning and rational market layout, but also precise and unique offensive strategies and methods for the regional market; otherwise, the war or campaign will fall into a seesaw war of attrition. To capture a city, the smartest approach is to focus forces on breaching a gap; to capture a market, you must likewise find the breakthrough point or mature opportunity point and achieve a single-point breakthrough. Below, we examine the three most common strategies and methods for regional market offensives in marketing wars, with emphasis on flanking attacks, as they are the most innovative form of attack in all marketing wars; indeed, every major marketing victory where the weak defeated the strong bears the mark of flanking attacks.
I. Flanking Attack Strategies The essence of flanking attack is a form of attack that leverages minimal force for maximal effect: find and seize market opportunities and timing, create differentiated paths, avoid direct confrontation with leaders, adopt circuitous tactics, and seize new high ground. Below, we elaborate on the four major strategies for flanking attacks in regional markets.
- Segment-Based Flanking Attack Strategy: Skillfully Avoid Squeeze from Multiple Brands In regional market offensives, many enterprises find themselves in a state of being sniped at from the front and pursued from behind. If they engage in direct competition with opponents, it often becomes a direct confrontation of resources and capital, with uncertain outcomes. How to avoid the squeeze from encircling brands? Start from a segment where competition is relatively weak or where opponents have obvious channel blind spots. Only by escaping the vortex of mature brand competition and maintaining the vitality of your own brand can you have the opportunity to break out.
For example: The Guan Gong Fang brand under Hubei Daohuaxiang Group, when it first operated in the Wuhan market, its brand power and product power were not very strong. It did not choose to directly confront mature brands such as Zhijiang, Huanghelou, and Baiyunbian in the urban area of Wuhan. Instead, it chose the suburbs around Wuhan and adopted a deep distribution strategy of "rural areas encircling the cities" to enter the market. Because mature brands paid relatively little attention to the suburban market, Guan Gong Fang firmly seized this opportunity. After the suburban market fully matured, it counterattacked and penetrated the urban market of Wuhan. Within just a few years, it grew from an unknown small brand to a heavyweight liquor brand in the Hubei region.
Shandong Heze's Huaguan Liquor, when attacking a market, would choose a dining-concentrated area, concentrate resources to create a model street, and thereby drive the development of the entire market. Taking Liangshan County in Jining City, Shandong as an example: in 2009, the market was almost monopolized by the local Liangshan Yi Liquor Factory. After Huaguan entered, it prioritized 20 dining-concentrated areas, exploited the disadvantage of competing brands' rough management in these places, invested its own advantageous resources, and through refined terminal operations and sales promotion activities, formed brand advantages, gradually driving the development of the entire Liangshan market. Today, Liangshan County has become Huaguan's model market in Jining, with annual sales exceeding 50 million yuan.
- Price-Band Segmentation Flanking Attack Strategy: Compete in No-Man's Land The competition in Chinese liquor is not only a battle for regional markets but also a battle for segmented price bands. For offensive brands, it is essential to study the price gaps left by competitors. If there is also a large potential consumer demand in that price band, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and breakthrough point.
For example: Anhui Golden Seed Liquor is a listed company, a financially powerful enterprise. However, facing fierce competition in Anhui liquor, it had to avoid direct competition and adopt a flanking attack strategy. Relying on the mainstream low-to-mid-end price band and focusing on second- and third-tier markets, it achieved absolute monopoly in many second- and third-tier markets, with sales exceeding 100 million yuan in 18 counties in Anhui.
For example: Anhui Jinyuwan Liquor, when it was still a new enterprise and new brand, also seized the price-band segmentation flanking attack strategy, quickly creating a dark horse legend and achieving a leap from zero to over 300 million yuan. Jinyuwan found a suitable flanking attack strategy for its current situation: making low-to-mid-end products in the 10-30 yuan price band that big enterprises are unwilling to do and small enterprises cannot do. Because in this price band, there were no strong Anhui liquor brands, and foreign brands had not yet deeply penetrated the Anhui market at that time. This was a good price gap and market opportunity. Then, combined with flexible and innovative marketing tactics, such as unique packaging design, various promotional methods, and marketing approaches tailored to each region and each store, Jinyuwan quickly became a shining pearl among Anhui liquors, with sales once exceeding 300 million yuan.
- Core Channel Segmentation Flanking Attack Strategy: Maximize the Effectiveness of a Single-Channel Operation Model For an offensive brand, if the enterprise itself can provide limited resources and has limited market resources to leverage, it can only choose a market strategy of "retreating in order to advance." Solidify the channel model, occupy a single channel, effectively concentrate resources, do the best in that channel, and form its own unique brand competitiveness.
For example: "Yingjia Gongjiu" in the Hefei market comes from Huoshan, Anhui. When it first operated in Hefei, it was hard to see the brand's presence in the market. However, after entering the Hefei market, Yingjia plunged into the hotel channel, maximizing its resource focus in the hotel channel, and combined with its relatively mature "hotel plate-in-plate" channel model refined through operations in multiple markets, it firmly locked down the hotel channel, making it so airtight that other brands had money but no hotels to work with. During this period, despite facing pressure from other Anhui liquor brands such as Kouzijiao, Seed, Gujing, and Wenwang, Yingjia fought its way through and, within just a few years, rose to become the top-selling Anhui liquor brand.
For example: The Tianqing product under Wanjiu (a brand under Anhui Wanjiu) was a product bought out by a distributor in Bengbu. Although the Wanjiu brand had a strong brand background locally, due to capital constraints, the distributor did not choose to roll out comprehensively in terms of channel promotion. Instead, it chose a district where it had relatively rich resources, and through channel segmentation, concentrated its efforts and heavily invested in the public relations and group-buying channel, successfully entering the district's reception liquor. It also selectively assisted hotels and clubs with frequent business and official activities. After a period of intensive cultivation, Tianqing established a strong consumer reputation among opinion leaders, and ordinary consumers began to actively purchase the product, with a consumption atmosphere about to form. In 2010, before the Spring Festival, Tianqing began to penetrate conventional channels such as second-tier distributors and famous tobacco and liquor stores, ultimately achieving great success.
- Brand PR Flanking Attack Strategy: Build Brand Momentum Mature brands, because they are strong and focus on sales, often neglect their image. In brand breakthroughs, aggressive brands can appropriately use brand image campaigns to achieve brand momentum, thereby joining the ranks of strong brands and winning consumer favor.
For example: Xuanjiu from Xuancheng, Anhui, entered the Hefei market in 2009. Although its total sales were not large, its brand communication formula was very clear. Xuanjiu was a mature local brand in Xuancheng, but when developing the Hefei market, it faced the problem of insufficient brand awareness. To change and establish Xuanjiu's image in consumers' minds and improve recognition, Xuanjiu first hired Li Youbin as its brand spokesperson, and simultaneously carried out various channel communication and brand promotion activities in Hefei for brand PR. Although Xuanjiu's sales in the Hefei market were not large, its brand reputation was quite high, which proves that its brand image flanking attack was successful, opening a door for Xuanjiu to later achieve hundreds of millions in sales in the Hefei market.
II. Launching a Direct Attack Through flanking attack efforts, your brand may have reached the second or third position in a regional market. To further increase market share and sales, you can use certain market strategies to launch a sustained attack on the market leader. But you must be clear: your strong enemy is stronger than you. If you attack on all fronts, it is possible that the enemy is wounded but you are dead.
Grasp the "Three or Four Rates" to Improve Market Competitiveness Carefully study how to reduce the leader's market share, shorten the "three or four rates" (likely referring to the gap between the leader's and your market share or penetration rates), weaken the opponent's market share, and catalyze the opponent's maturity.
Find Weak Points, Concentrate Resources, and Attack Fiercely Like an eagle flying in the sky, you must see the weakness of the ground target, aim at one of its hind legs, and continuously attack until it becomes three-legged, then aim at the other hind leg and continuously attack until it becomes two-legged. Then all the wolf meat is yours to enjoy.
Attack on as Narrow a Front as Possible For example, if the leading brand's main product has a terminal consumer price of about 40 yuan per bottle for its three-star product, and its four-star and five-star products are its weak points, you might use a four-star product with a terminal consumer price of about 50 yuan per bottle to thoroughly occupy the four-star price band consumption interface in the target market, becoming the leader in that product interface, thereby driving your three-star product and pincer-attacking the leader. In other words, you must skillfully use everything you have to create a relative leadership advantage at a decisive point.
If Your Strength Is Great, You Can Directly Confront If your strength and resources are sufficient to defeat the leader, it is simpler: increase investment and directly engage in a hand-to-hand battle with the leader.
III. Local Guerrilla Warfare The core strategy of guerrilla warfare is to find a market segment small enough to defend, such as choosing a county or township in terms of region, or locking onto the group-buying/wedding market in terms of product segmentation. The purpose of guerrilla warfare is to minimize the battlefield to gain numerical advantage, to be "a big fish in a small pond"; for example, being king in the township market or king in a specific segmented channel. Guerrilla warfare is a war strategy of seeking development while surviving: flexible, agile, decisive, and concentrated. Resist the temptation to disperse forces, otherwise it will be a disaster.
For example, when we were serving an Anhui liquor factory, we noticed that a Sichuan distillery called Xiaojiaolou was doing very well in many township markets in a certain county, almost monopolizing them, which piqued our interest. Research found that the distributor for Xiaojiaolou, due to lack of strength and limited support from the manufacturer, found it difficult to start operating directly from the county seat, and also difficult to start with mid-to-high-end products, because directly operating from the county seat and directly operating mid-to-high-end products both require significant resources. Due to resource scarcity, the Xiaojiaolou distributor only chose a township where he had rich local connections and started with low-to-mid-end liquor. Because the product had no brand awareness and lacked funds for advertising, the distributor adopted a strategy of selling on credit with payment after sale, and during the process, frequently held free tasting events, and, based on the preferences of hotel terminal owners, offered exclusive distribution rights, greatly stimulating customers' enthusiasm for pushing the product. Within less than six months, Xiaojiaolou products were selling strongly in that township. Then, the distributor chose a larger town, found a local sub-distributor, and leveraged the sub-distributor's network and resources to start operating the second township market. By breaking through township by township, the number of mature township markets grew, and the distributor's life became very comfortable, with more available funds. Due to the radiation and influence of the townships, many terminals in the urban area began to proactively seek cooperation with the Xiaojiaolou distributor.
If guerrilla warfare can achieve king status in a small local area, accumulate strength, and refine a model, there is an opportunity and ability to convert to flanking attack warfare, gradually encroaching on competitors' markets.
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