Brand takeoff requires strategic support
Small and medium enterprises have weak strength. When building brands, they cannot exert effort evenly across all fronts but must use flexible tactics to achieve strategic goals. They can concentrate forces, first seek breakthroughs at specific points, then follow up to seek breakthroughs across broader aspects (expansion and elevation of levels), and finally achieve systematic breakthroughs, which means the brand truly takes root. There are many paths to Rome, and there are numerous strategic layout methods. The author briefly discusses the following:
1. Start from market gaps, and quickly transition to brand building after achieving a certain market share.
Use ancient tree tea and e-commerce as two examples to discuss this layout. Ancient tree tea was an emerging market a few years ago, presenting huge market gap opportunities. Early entrants who achieved initial capital accumulation and market share should plan ahead and prepare responses for the impending intense competition. The response method involves, besides striving to transition from raw material purchasers to raw material controllers, actively extending product lines: extending from pure ancient tea to blended teas; extending from high-end to mid-low end; extending from famous mountain teas to potential high-quality mountain teas; extending from ancient tree garden tea to ecological garden tea. By controlling resources and solidifying the product foundation, they can possess core competitiveness. Introducing brand strategy on this basis can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
As for early e-commerce entrepreneurs, many of them have gained a certain market share and occupied certain channels. At this time, they need to promptly transition from channel sellers to brand merchants. Otherwise, under the pressure from followers, especially traditional brand enterprises, their original market share will quickly shrink. Their way to build a brand is to integrate the upstream supply chain, reduce dependence on manufacturers, and increase the supply of their own products by building their own production lines or commissioning production. Undoubtedly, a very successful example in this regard is Daizi Tea. While using traditional brand products like Dayi and Longyuanhao to open up online channels, they started their own product line in 2010, significantly reducing purchases of brand enterprise products and launching their own product brands 'Shudaizi' and 'Puzhiwei'. Besides starting from the supply chain, 51 Pu'er points us to another path: building a brand through online advertising. The ubiquitous slogan 'Buy Pu'er Tea go to 51 Pu'er Net' undoubtedly brought it into the hall of brands. This year, 51 Pu'er further proposed the idea of community promotion. This indicates a shift from single, one-way advertising to composite, interactive community word-of-mouth communication. This is undoubtedly a model for small and medium tea enterprises to continuously upgrade their brand strategy and grow bigger and stronger.
2. Start with a niche brand and extend to a mass brand.
Small enterprises focus on specialization, large enterprises focus on scale. Small and medium tea enterprises have weak strength and cannot initially create large, comprehensive scale brands; they should create small, specialized niche brands. But this is only a tactical issue, something done out of necessity due to weak strength. It does not mean that small and medium tea enterprises can rest on their laurels on the path of specialization, because your specialization can also be copied and imitated by others, eventually becoming unremarkable. Bigger than tactics is strategy. Niche brands must have a strategic layout. After establishing the niche, you must continuously upgrade your specialization or create more specializations, keeping imitators as perpetual followers, and适时 extend to mass brands, gradually transforming your niche brand into a scale brand.
3. Create a product brand and promptly elevate it to an enterprise brand.
What is a product brand? It's when consumers trust your product and buy it. What is an enterprise brand? It's when consumers identify with your company's philosophy and thus buy your product. For example, Dayi is both a product brand and an enterprise brand. Tea enthusiasts trust the golden reputation of Menghai Tea Factory; any product released by Dayi is pursued by its fans. It is relatively easier for small and medium enterprises to create a product brand. When they produce a suitable product and gain a certain number of fans, they should strike while the iron is hot to shape the enterprise brand, upgrading these product fans into enterprise fans – meaning they love the product and must also love the enterprise (without the country, where is the home?). Building a product brand requires promoting more tangible things, such as function, efficacy, etc., while building an enterprise brand requires emphasizing cultural and spiritual aspects, especially the extraction and dissemination of the enterprise's core values, allowing consumers to identify with your values from the heart and accept your company from the depths of their soul.
4. Use social forces to build the brand and establish a public brand.
Why has China developed rapidly during the thirty years of reform and opening up? Because it is good at utilizing foreign investment. Similarly, when running a tea enterprise, avoid closing the door and being completely self-reliant. Maintain an open mindset, open the enterprise's doors, and invite various social forces to participate in brand building together. In Yunnan's tea industry, Yuntea Web, born just last year, is an enterprise adept at using social forces to build a brand. It creates an open online platform, integrates resources from the industry's government, associations, finance, media, upstream supply chain, downstream online sales channels, etc., to build a data warehouse and online trading platform for Yunnan's tea industry, inviting like-minded friends to work together, thus becoming a cutting-edge website in the industry. A brand must not only be socialized but also publicized, because being public means becoming the focus of public attention – it's hard for such an enterprise not to become famous. The quickest way to create publicity is to use public media, such as television, newspapers, the internet, etc., to promote oneself in the form of event news. If a brand is frequently exposed by news media, isn't it a public brand? Another more effective way is to frequently participate in public welfare activities – no need to elaborate, Chen Guangbiao's example is there. Finally, actively participate in industry activities, and preferably take the lead in forming associations and participate in formulating industry regulations. In this regard, Hougu Coffee has done very well, not only frequently creating event news (like challenging Nestlé) but also taking the lead in establishing the Yunnan Coffee Association and formulating many industry regulations.
5. Connect the Ren and Du meridians of product and brand, create the 'complete product'.
Focusing on product or focusing on brand is a dilemma for many small and medium enterprises. Actually, there is no need for dilemma. Once the concept of the 'complete product' is introduced, it becomes clear that doing product and doing brand are the same thing. The 'complete product' is proposed precisely to prevent the separation of product and brand concepts, ensuring they are combined effectively. The complete product has three levels: The first level is the natural product, which is the use value (or utility) of the product itself; the second level is the extended product, i.e., the value-added space brought by service; the third level is the virtual product, i.e., the cultural value of the brand. If every product an enterprise makes contains all three levels of the product, then consumers who buy your product find the product itself easy to use, the service good, and their spiritual needs met – they will certainly be willing to consume your product and recommend it to acquaintances. This means your product generates brand stickiness and word-of-mouth propagation. In this way, it's hard not to become a brand.