---
title: "Why a Successful Product Must Be a Successful Marketing System?"
description: "In recent years, many new consumer brands have risen, but why do many products disappear within months of becoming hits? Is it due to competitor imitation, fickle consumers, or poor marketing? While these reasons have merit, the question remains: if these factors were absent, would the product necessarily succeed? Analyzing successful brands often focuses on what they did right, such as Yuanqi Forest's sugar-free positioning or Taishan Beer's short-shelf-life focus. However, earlier brands had already used similar approaches with similar products, yet they failed. The key insight is that a brand's success is not just about the product but about a successful marketing system."
author: "赵波"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-04-02"
language: "en"
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# Why a Successful Product Must Be a Successful Marketing System?

> In recent years, many new consumer brands have risen, but why do many products disappear within months of becoming hits? Is it due to competitor imitation, fickle consumers, or poor marketing? While these reasons have merit, the question remains: if these factors were absent, would the product necessarily succeed? Analyzing successful brands often focuses on what they did right, such as Yuanqi Forest's sugar-free positioning or Taishan Beer's short-shelf-life focus. However, earlier brands had already used similar approaches with similar products, yet they failed. The key insight is that a brand's success is not just about the product but about a successful marketing system.

In recent years, a large number of new consumer brands have risen, but why do many products disappear within a few months after becoming hits? Is it because competitors copy them? Or because consumers change their preferences too quickly? Or is it due to improper market operations by the operators? I think all these reasons have some validity. But the question is: if these reasons did not exist, would the product necessarily succeed? When we analyze a successful brand, we often like to analyze what it did right, such as Yuanqi Forest's success due to its sugar-free focus, or Taishan Beer's success due to its short-shelf-life positioning. But the problem is that before them, there were already brands that used the same methods to launch similar products, so why didn't they succeed? Analyzing the reasons, we find that the success of any brand is not just about the product, but also about a successful marketing system.

If we only look at product-level innovation, it is impossible for a product to establish itself in the market. Because in the FMCG industry, the technical barriers at the product level are actually very low. If a product relies solely on its success, it is extremely easy for competitors to imitate and copy. However, the effectiveness of a marketing system, as it changes with space and time, requires continuous iteration and improvement. This means that the competitive barriers of a marketing system are still very high and difficult for competitors to imitate and replicate.

For example, Coca-Cola covers about five to six million retail outlets in China, with over 20,000 sales representatives from COFCO and Swire. These 20,000 people serve so many retail outlets. Do you think there is a barrier to this? Actually, there is, and it is very large. In China, not everyone can manage channel management efficiently and effectively. But Coca-Cola does this very well, which is also a point that competitors cannot imitate.

We see many new consumer brands that are impeccable in terms of product quality, packaging, concept, and selling points, but when placed at the level of a marketing system, we find that the system is full of loopholes, and the product and marketing system cannot form an effective linkage.

So, from the perspective of a marketing system, it is also traceable why many new products with good concepts often fail. So **what is a marketing system?** Many people think that a marketing system is an organizational system, but that is not the case. A marketing system includes the entire process from consumer demand insight, product positioning, communication, channel organization, to competition. This process is a complete set of logic designed systematically from the beginning, targeting consumer pain points and needs. This system includes not only the product's marketing logic but also many factors such as processes, management, systems, standards, assessment, and value chain. This is a very large system, and the broader the product's audience, the more complex the system. Today, let's briefly sort out the ten questions that need to be considered when building a product's marketing system:

**1. First, see the category clearly and act according to the trend**
**1. Industry trends**: What is the current industry development trend of this category? How large is the market size? How fast is the market growing? Is the category in a stage of consumption upgrading or shrinking? Is it pursuing health, or diversification, or personalized development? Is the category a rigid demand? Is it high-frequency consumption? Is the market concentration high or low?
**2. Current situation**: What is the competition in the track? The market share of leading players, the selling points of competitors' products, their current channel models, and profit structures.
**3. Our own advantages**: What resources and capabilities do we have? What competitive advantages do we have that others cannot match?

**2. Start from demand, gain insight into what consumers really need?**
1. Who are the consumers? (Why do they consume this product? Is it a pain point? Rigid demand? Or impulsive consumption?)
2. What needs do they have that competitors have not met? (Functional level? Pricing level? Social level? Personal spiritual level?)
3. What is the reason for not meeting them? Technical issues? (Marketing issues? Industrial issues? Channel issues? Pricing issues?)
4. **Among so many problems, what valuable problem should we solve most, and how can we bring direct value to users?**

**3. Then, look at scenarios from the demand dimension**
1. In what occasions do users typically consume the product?
2. At what time and place do they consume the product?
3. Where is the logic of consuming this product?

**4. From the value point, think about why consumers should consume our product?**
1. In a clear demand scenario, among many products, why should consumers choose us? (Value point, differentiation, consumption ability?)
2. How is our product different? (Aesthetics, texture, emotion?)
3. How to make users feel surprised?
4. How to make users unforgettable?
5. How to directly show our core selling point, which is the value point that users perceive most clearly and need, to them?

**5. How to let consumers know and be willing to choose our product?**
1. Does our category need a traffic model or a retention model? (Let more people know and then consume, or let a small number of people consume and retain, then gradually let more people know?)
2. What stage of development is our product in now?
3. In what scenario should our product be communicated to most directly trigger the purchase mechanism?
4. Use live streaming? Or word-of-mouth marketing? Is it private domain or large-scale media bombardment?
5. Does our copy match our core appeal?

**6. How to get closer to consumers?**
Where should our product be placed? How should it be placed to be closer to consumers?
1. Is our category immediate consumption or impulsive consumption? (Ubiquitous? Value for money? First choice in mind?)
2. How can our product reach target consumers through the shortest, fastest, and lowest-cost channel model?
3. What channel combination can reach more consumers?

**7. How to design an irresistible transaction reason for consumers?**
From the perspective of terminal sales logic.
1. What is the core logic of product sales at the terminal?
2. Where should it be displayed? Who should it be placed with? Does it need freezing?
3. Is the shelf position important? Stack display? Or bar counter? Do product selling points and differentiation need special display?
4. How to let consumers see the pain points in a certain way?

**8. How to build the supply chain behind the transaction system?**
1. What are the weights of each channel? (E-commerce? Private domain? Live streaming? Distribution? SR or DSR? Distribution? Direct-operated stores?)
2. What are the three core channels, and what are their proportions?
3. What is the relationship with the distributors, sub-distributors, TP providers, and direct operations?
4. Do we need to use SR?

**9. How to ensure both effectiveness and efficiency of the entire supply chain?**
**(Price and benefit distribution system)**
1. Channel pricing
2. Profit system
3. Channel reserved fees

**10. How to ensure that in fierce competition, we are not eliminated by competitors?**
**(Competitive barriers? How to stand where giants cannot reach?)**
1. Terminal interception?
2. Imitation and copying?
3. Price war?
4. Larger investment than ours?
5. Bigger brand than ours?

The above ten questions are the ones that must be clearly answered in the process of building a successful marketing system. Only when these ten questions are sorted out can the marketing logic of a product be smooth, and can the entire marketing system be designed based on this marketing logic. Moreover, only such a marketing system can quickly and efficiently sell products to consumers, and the so-called brand marketing barrier is essentially the operational efficiency of this system.

| Founder of New Distribution, FMCG industry channel expert, original author of over 400,000 words of FMCG industry research articles. For communication, you can add WeChat by long-pressing. When adding, please indicate your unit, position, and name.

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