Strategic Channel Management: Hard Support For Brand Building

Introduction: advertising star movement dies in backward channels.

How to build a strong national brand?

If you ask an advertising agency, you will see the advertising budget cost of 7 figures or more; if you ask a brand consulting company, you usually end up with a 6 digit consultation fee.

At the same time, sales departments all over the country are caught up in frequent promotions, lots of manpower and publicity materials, and tens of millions of sales expenses have been spent a year, but they still complain about the lack of brand pull.

In fact, in the field of fast moving consumer goods, there is a trend of increasing the share of actual promotional expenses in total expenses, or when the media advertising fees increase, the cost of effective promotion is also increasing.

Enterprises can not give consideration to both ends, they are too tired to run.

For fast moving consumer goods, nowadays, it is much more difficult to enter the increasingly complex channels than the design and dissemination of brands.

The planning of brand and communication has formed a specialized operation mode, and the professional level of channel possession is still in its original state.

At the same time, channels have become an important medium for spreading brands.

This means that the sales department, which is usually regarded as an executing agency, is now taking on a new mission to achieve the goal of brand communication.

But what we see is that the traditional sales department and traditional channel management can not serve the purpose of supporting the brand.

Three major problems in traditional channel management

Problem 1: lack of channel strategic positioning leads to unreasonable distribution of marketing resources, especially the primary and secondary costs of advertising costs and channel fees are not clearly defined.

1. the tragedy of advertising.

In the new century, the production of homogeneous products, the complexity of channels, the rationalization of consumer behavior and other factors have made it impossible to achieve the goal of establishing sales channels by using the effective investment and Exhibition methods such as convention and exhibition, advertising and so on.

Establishing a sales network and deepening the distribution channel has become the first difficulty for the brand to base itself on the market.

Channel management has not been professionally managed, but has invested a lot of mass media advertising. The disadvantages of this "brand building" method can be found in the fifth quarter of the rising season, the Hengtai mango juice and the recent Jianlibao.

This is also true of Jianlibao, a powerful financial force. Other small and medium-sized enterprises are more likely to be losers.

After they drop the first advertising fees, what can they do without money?

Of course, we expect dealers to pay.

But these money can not be affordable by distributors.

For example, the cost of KA channel is various and huge. If there is no advance budget, it can hardly be amortized.

Don't tell me how many brand advertisements you put money into, KA stores will not let you free.

Shanghai roasted goods association and Carrefour confrontation, miss, dragons and phoenix from Guangzhou trust Mart withdrawal, even these brands are unable to get a profit balance point and conflict with the store, let alone other?

Therefore, it is unrealistic to ask dealers to bear these costs alone.

Most manufacturers did not carry out the channel planning in advance. As a result, the manufacturers spent all day on the cost of the channel and the expense reimbursement. The two sides did not focus on the two core tasks of how to get consumers and fight against competition.

2. channel precedes advertising.

Therefore, we must make it clear that we must first establish channels for brands.

Adhering to this concept, we should straighten out the relationship between channel construction cost and traditional brand construction cost, that is, mass media advertising costs.

First, according to the layout of the market expansion, we should plan the construction cost of the budget channel.

Prioritization of the proportion of channel costs in total marketing costs.

(3) budget media plans and costs in the event that all two points are ensured.

In 2004, CCTV's "bid king" auction ended, and the advertising bid for the golden section of CCTV has reached 5 billion yuan, a 2 billion 100 million fold increase over 2001.

The business community should be careful: the media, especially the TV media, including CCTV propaganda, should not be the basis for the business community to believe in the so-called "media power".

Overnight fame can be found, but there is not much after all.

In a word, in the current business environment, it is better to retire from the net instead of facing the fish.

Question two: the strategic focus of channel management is not clear, and the organizational structure can not establish the status of channel management.

1. the marketing department can't wear shoes in the sales department.

Nowadays, the marketing organization of enterprises generally adopts the organizational structure separated from Marketing and Sales, that is, the marketing department (or planning department) and the sales department, which are co ordinated by the marketing director or the general manager of marketing.

As a result, we can often see that the marketing department's channel operation plan is either unenforceable, or unwilling to execute or discount.

The reason is that the scheme of the marketing department may be too large for the actual deviation of the market, and it may be due to the lack of coordination or communication barriers.

Channel management is not only a management responsibility and skill for the executive staff of the sales department, but also a channel management group in the market department referring to the brand management system.

In the former, channel construction is basically equivalent to sales network management.

Limited to the lack of the strategic resources of the company, that is, the guarantee of the channel budget, the effect of the sales staff can not change the weakness of the channel planning and the inability to attack the resources.

While the latter part of the channel management work, but most of the market management system under the channel management is more inclined to the promotion cost audit, market investigation, market planning and other work content, and can not achieve professional channel management, in specific implementation is still out of touch with sales.

It can be clearly seen that channel management, whether it belongs to the sales department or the marketing department, can not achieve the strategic orientation in the current marketing channel management.

2. integration of brand management and sales management.

On the organizational setup, the channel management department or the channel development department will eventually replace the sales department.

It is a new management system that integrates the brand management of the marketing department and the sales management of the sales department. It is through the channel that the essence of the brand is embodied in the channel, that is to achieve the brand and specialization of the channel.

It may not be possible to evolve one step at a time. At least, the sales director must be a professional person who is proficient in channel operation. At the same time, the management core of the sales department must be redesigned around the operation of the strategic channel. The core of future sales management is the specialized channel construction system.

Question three: the overall design of the channel fails to embody the focus and spirit of the channel strategy.

1. traditional design is behind closed doors.

At present, the biggest problem of traditional channels, such as vividness, visual packaging and VI integration, is the mistake of using "guns to attack bastion".

In many FMCG enterprises, a large number of promotional gifts, posters and product display shelves are often found.

These promotional items are all carefully chosen in the design process, but the result is always a big drop: they will appear in the inventory of the manufacturers and distributors, and appear in the home of the business people, but they are rarely seen in the market or in the channels.

It is not that the salesperson is unwilling or unwilling to perform, but that most of the advertising products need a lot of manpower in execution, and a relatively high sales condition to reach the consumers.

But neither the salesmen or consumers who are responsible for the implementation of each link have the patience to cater for such a cumbersome request.

For example, the marketing department of beer enterprises often hurts the salesmen to provide promotional products: they are too valuable to give, or they are too low to be attractive.

This causes a lot of "nice" promotional items to sleep in the warehouse until one or two years later become a discount or scrap.

Even if these promotional materials are used in the market, they often get three points worth of money.

For example, the highest rate of gum brand in China is known as the rate of distribution. The display rack provided by them is often sold to a second-hand dealer by a salesperson or a retail store owner at a price of 1/4.

The effect of distribution is achieved, but the waste of expenses is often amazing.

Marketing is not only the art of achieving results, but also the art of reducing costs and maximizing profits. No competition threshold is built on waste of resources.

2. bottom-up channel design.

The difference between strategic channel management and traditional channel visual integration lies in:

From the method, one is the derivation, from the top to the bottom; the other is the inductive form, from bottom to top.

In operation, one is the visual creative design and material planning based on the experience or the direction of the frame. The first is to identify the focus of the development of the channel, to conduct a targeted investigation of the channels to be occupied, to investigate the competitive shape, and to determine the design direction and material selection of the brand.

In effect, one is sprinkled with pepper, the other is precision guided and point by point blasting.

YOUNGOR, the famous clothing brand, has entered the "brand grave" for a period of time before 2001. Due to its high popularity and low recognition, local shops and counters with huge investment have suffered serious losses as consumers are willing to be weak.

After conducting market surveys and consumer surveys, YOUNGOR replanning the channels, withdrawing or reducing the counters in the shopping malls, focusing on the form of franchised stores, especially in the city's commercial streets, adopting the strategy of intensive shop opening, while using the image spokesperson to integrate seasonal theme activities and publicity, and carrying out a full range of "visual packaging" for all stores, changing the rigid rigid decoration style of the building itself, and wrapping the shops with color, visual imagery and decorative materials.

As a result, less than three months, the local consumer awareness was straight up, sales and market share rose in a straight line, setting up a real threshold for competition.

This is the embodiment of strategic channel planning.

In the sale of other products, channel planning, channel design, and the choice of channel focus will also have a direct stimulation to sales, much more effective than price competition.

To sum up, the above three phenomena and problems are due to the lack of clear background, foundation, principles and procedures for strategic channel management.

Two, how to establish a strategic channel management system.

The establishment of a strategic channel management system is an organizational guarantee to ensure the professionalization of channel operation, as well as a management guarantee for effective implementation.

1. first set up an independent channel management department, keeping pace with the traditional sales department and marketing department.

Within the channel management department, the corresponding institutions and staffing should be set up according to the channel type and regional layout.

The principles set forth are:

Set up a channel management group according to the proportion of sales channel distribution of the company, such as KA stores (large stores), BC stores (medium-sized supermarkets), D stores (small self selected stores and so on), W/S (wholesale) and so on.

For key channels, regional distribution should be further divided, such as the north and the south.

There are two ways to measure the key channel: the proportion of channel sales to total sales and the focus of the company's future channel development strategy.

In terms of regional division, we must plan according to the actual situation. If some non key markets do not have to follow the "subarea" under the channel, we should adopt the way of "regional plate fusion channel type".