"Avoiding The Real And Attacking The Void" In Marketing Strategy

This is one of the most important military ideas and tactical principles of Sun Wu's predecessors. Sun Tzu compares war power to water. When the water moves, it avoids the height and flows to the lowlands. Similarly, the disposition of troops in combat should also be like the flow of water, avoiding the solid parts of the opponent and choosing weak links to attack. What a vivid and figurative metaphor! How refined and accurate the expression is! However, no matter what the soldier Saint would have thought, after 2500, this principle was vividly interpreted by a group of foreigners in another field of war.

The ancients left us valuable ideological wealth. These thoughts have certain philosophical height and universality, so they can be applied flexibly to different fields of practice. However, because these ideas are too abstract and concise, posterity is paradoxical in understanding, so it is difficult to learn to apply them. Such is the military idea of "avoiding the real and attacking the void". I believe only a few marketing people can carry out this idea in marketing practice.

Different from the Oriental sages, western scholars are better at accurate description and systematic analysis, so the theory of systems always comes from the West. Can these western theories jump out of the category of philosophical thinking in ancient China?

The theory of blue ocean strategy and positioning is basically a systematic method summarized in the marketing behavior with the principle of "avoiding the real and attacking the void". The SWOT analysis in strategic analysis is also aimed at "attacking the virtual" in the direction of choosing the development direction of enterprises. As a practitioner of marketing activities, we must learn and understand all kinds of marketing theories abroad, but we must not stick to these theories. We should stand at the height of philosophy to see the essence behind these theories. Only in this way can we understand these theories more profoundly, and then apply them flexibly and even innovate in practice. From this perspective, the combination of Eastern philosophy and Western marketing theory is the best choice for guiding our marketing activities.

The principle of "avoiding weaknesses" has been widely applied in domestic marketing practice, but it is not enough for us to understand only from the perspective of "differentiation". Several examples can be tried:

Avoiding weaknesses in products

In the market of high priced instant noodles controlled by Kangshifu and the unified market, the taste of products has always been the main selling point and advantage, that is, the "real" aspect of the products. If today's wheat is also emphasizing its taste, it will have a "hard hitting" situation. But today, the direction of the attack will be transferred to the opponent's bread. The opponents' noodles are not refined, and they are not resistant to bubbles. This is the weakness of the opponent's products, the "virtual" aspect, attacking their opponent's weakness with his own "face", and succeeds at one stroke.

It is a correct idea that the "fried foods" and "unhealthy" of other instant noodles are taken as the "empty" position and then "get in the way".

In the positioning of a health wine, the co operative planning agency avoided the propaganda of the effect of the mainstream health wine, such as anti fatigue and aphrodisiac, and adopted the brand-new functional appeal of "tiredness fast", which is also the embodiment of the idea of "avoiding the real and attacking the void" in positioning.

Avoiding obstacles in channels

In the "two music" dominated cola market, Wahaha finds that the market is not monolithic. The one or two tier market is firmly occupied by "two music". But in the broader three tier market, its market base is not solid. This is the place where "two music" is "empty" in the channel.

Promotion of avoiding weaknesses

Shu Lei shampoo was born and had to compete with P & G's powerful opponent.

In the face of P & G's television advertising, shalai will also put a limited amount of money into the advertising campaign. Through Procter & Gamble's analysis, Procter & Gamble's air propaganda is very strong, but in front of the store's shelf -- the battleground front of the final customer is empty. Therefore, Shu Lei concentrates most of its marketing resources in the store, with terminal personnel promoting sales, buying shelves, and selling three-dimensional packaging, and so on, Procter and gamble launches terminal interception, and finally gains rapid growth.

Procter and gamble will not sit idly by for the provocation of Shu Lei. In the view of Procter & Gamble, Sibao group and its Lei Lei occupied their own advantages in a short time, but the overall strength is still not comparable with themselves. In the market investment, they can not afford to fight attrition. This is the "empty" of Shu Lei. Therefore, P & G maintains high density TV advertisements on the one hand, on the other hand, increases investment in the terminal, and competes with the tough terminal of Shu Lei, and attacks on the two fronts in the air and the ground, and finally curtail the development trend of shampoo such as Shu Lei and its subsequent wind and shadow.

Similar examples are numerous.

In the current competitive environment, we need to compare the resources between ourselves and our competitors before making every marketing decision for our customers. The aim is to be more effective in avoiding the actual situation. The co operative planning body believes that this idea should be the most basic criterion of action for all marketers.