The snack food industry has broad market prospects and great development potential. However, with the food industry entering the stage of complete competition, corporate profits are becoming more and more average, and industry integration and market segmentation are about to be completed. Therefore, leisure food enterprises should seize the opportunity, jump out of the strange circle of product homogeneity, implement differentiation strategy, improve consumers' consumption consciousness with differentiated characteristics, closely link consumers with enterprises with the inherent advantages of products, and embark on a road of sustainable development by innovating products, building brands and expanding markets.

The growing snack food market and the continuous improvement of consumption level make multinational companies optimistic about the China market. As early as 10 years ago, large multinational companies such as Wrigley and Danone began to enter the China market, and now they have basically completed enterprise integration, product segmentation and market layout. In the future, they will intensify market expansion and use their own experience in financial strength, brand management experience and channel operation to encroach on the snack food market in China. Therefore, when foreign-funded enterprises rapidly occupy the China market, local snack food enterprises should strive to improve product quality, constantly innovate products, and pay more attention to the establishment and cultivation of brands, which is the key to determine competitiveness.

Twenty marketing elements of expanding snack food market

Although the price of snack food is mostly only a few yuan, there have been three snack food brands with sales of 654.38+billion dollars in the global snack food market-stereoscopic crisp, joy and pinke. In the snack food market in China, many famous brands such as Shanghaojia, Xizhilang, Kebike, Want Want, Hsu Fu Kee and qiaqia have also been cultivated.

At present, there are hundreds of thousands of snack food enterprises in China. As the snack food manufacturing industry is a highly open industry, although the number of foreign-funded enterprises is small, it accounts for more than half of the total sales revenue and profits of the snack food market in China. Faced with huge market opportunities, many domestic enterprises are struggling to develop. Why? The author believes that what we lack is not capital, equipment and market, but the comprehensive control ability of integrated marketing. Based on the author's 12 food industry planning and market practice experience, this paper puts forward 20 marketing elements to expand the market scale for the snack food market and share them with you:

First, the military forces have not moved, and the strategy goes first.

Many snack food enterprises have such a misunderstanding that snack food has a low threshold, relatively simple production, many consumers and a large market, so they are eager to produce products and put them on the market for sale. Once the product sales are not smooth or the sales are stagnant for a long time, we will think about the strategy again, which will not only waste a lot of resources, but also delay time.

Therefore, snack food enterprises should first plan their own brand strategy, market strategy, product strategy, communication strategy and sales strategy before their products go on the market. A great man in China once said: "If the route is right, no one will have a gun. If there is no gun, there will be a gun." Route is what we call strategy. Only when the strategy is clear and correct can the subsequent marketing process be smooth.

Second, don't lose at the starting line.

I often hear customers ask this question: Master Kong has almost successfully made a product and a brand from instant noodles, iced black tea, iced green tea, fresh daily C and Master Kong 3+2 to mineral water. What is the reason? I have the honor to organize the market research of mineral water and iced black tea for Master Kong, and maybe we can find the answer from it.

Ding Xin Group is a well-known food enterprise, and its associate (director level) or above marketers have more than 10 years of marketing and planning experience in the food industry, and have a deeper understanding of related food fields. However, before each new product of Master Kong goes on the market, it is necessary to do a very detailed and comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research. as soon as...

Take Master Kong mineral water as an example. Before the product enters the market, the content of qualitative research includes: product concept, product name, taste, capacity, packaging, price, points of interest, TVC and many other aspects, and the target consumer groups have been repeatedly tested and investigated in many cities across the country. After feeling confident, Master Kong vigorously promoted and spread it, and soon achieved market success.

In order to save money, some snack food enterprises we contact often try to "guess" consumers' needs instead of making systematic and standardized market research before new products go on the market. After the product is produced, it is quickly given to friends and relatives for tasting, which is a taste test for the product. When friends and relatives received "delicious" feedback one after another, they entered the arena with confidence, and I don't know why after the failure. Imagine that your relatives and friends ate your meal for free, and you dare to say it's not delicious!

Therefore, before you make all the marketing strategies, before your products enter the market, the most effective, economical and reliable way is to conduct full and standardized research on market conditions, consumer demand, competitors and sales channels. Accurately understand the needs and differences of consumers, find new market opportunities, and meet the potential market demand in a targeted manner. Don't let yourself lose at the starting line of the market.

Third, build a brand and make a decision before moving.

There is a saying that makes sense: "You will be what you want to be!" We must also know what kind of enterprise and brand we want to be, so that we can work hard and realize our dreams. Building enterprise brand structure is an unavoidable primary marketing topic for snack food enterprises to expand market scale.

At present, China's snack food enterprises mainly have two brand planning models:

The first is the single brand strategy. In other words, a brand covers multiple categories of snack food at the same time. For example, if you are good, you will adopt a single brand strategy. Shanghaojia establishes and enhances its brand awareness with puffed food, and then extends its brand with the help of Shanghaojia's brand power, and uses Shanghaojia's brand to enter the snack food market such as natural potato chips, lobster slices, biscuits, cotton candy, soft and hard candy, so as to build Shanghaojia into a strong brand in the snack food market (with the further expansion of the market scale, it is suggested that Shanghaojia can consider adopting the strategy of "Shanghaojia" as the main brand and "category brand" as the sub-brand). The main advantage of single brand strategy is that it can extend the brand with the help of existing brand power, which greatly saves the communication cost; The main disadvantage of this brand strategy is that it is difficult for a single brand to occupy a dominant position in different categories of snack food market at the same time, and it may only become the dominant brand in one or several categories of markets.

The second is multi-brand strategy. That is, enterprises use different brands to operate in different snack food categories. For example, Dali Group uses its three brands "Dali Garden", "Kobik" and "Delicious Point" to target the market segments of three different types of snack foods: pies, potato chips and cakes. Compared with single brand strategy, the main advantages of multi-brand strategy are that it can establish a clear brand image in each market segment and fully expand the scale of each market segment; The main disadvantage of this brand strategy is that the communication cost is relatively high.

There is no difference between single brand strategy and multi-brand strategy, and enterprises can decide to adopt brand strategy suitable for their own enterprise development according to their own conditions and characteristics. Of course, small-scale snack food enterprises or enterprises newly entering the snack food market can also operate a certain type of market with a brand first, and then decide what brand strategy to adopt according to the present situation and market demand of the enterprise after brand promotion and market scale enlargement. Whether the brand structure is clear or not determines how big and far the enterprise can go in the future.

Fourth, talk to your target consumers.

Children and young women are the mainstream consumers of snack food at present. In addition to the above breakdown by age and gender, the snack food market can also be subdivided by consumers' occupation, income, education level, consumer demand and consumer psychology. For example, according to consumer demand, snack food can be divided into basic, flavor, nutrition, value, enjoyment and so on.

There will be obvious differences in the target consumers of different categories of products and products with different price points. For example, although it overlaps with the target consumer groups of potato chips, melon seeds and puffed food, the difference is more obvious. The target consumers of pistachios are mostly white-collar workers among young women; The target consumers of potato chips are more children and students.

After the brand structure of snack food enterprises is completed, it is necessary to solve the problem of who to sell your products to. Who is the target consumer of the product; What kind of people they are; What is their consumer demand, consumer behavior and consumer psychology for such products; The correlation between their values and product brands, etc. Only by first defining the target consumer groups of products and understanding their characteristics and needs can we realize the accurate docking of product selling points and consumer demand, which will determine your brand positioning and the refining direction of product appeal points.

Five, first positioning, and then spread

The purpose of brand positioning is to make your brand leave a clear position in the minds of consumers. When consumers have such needs, your brand comes to mind first, not other brands.

Brand positioning includes brand positioning of snack food enterprises and brand positioning of a single product or several categories. Only when the brand positioning is defined first, the subsequent communication will focus on the brand positioning, and the brand positioning will be interpreted and enriched from different angles, so that your brand can be in a leading position in one or several market segments of the snack food market. If your brand's positioning is not clear at first, spread this theme today, spread that theme tomorrow, and finally you don't know where your brand's advantages are, which will naturally not leave a clear impression on consumers, and consumers also lack reasons to buy this brand.

Here is a well-known case of successful brand positioning: Qixi faces two powerful competitors, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, occupying most of the market share of carbonated drinks. It seems that 7-up has no room for market survival. However, 7-up's marketing staff found through careful consumer research that a large number of people don't like the taste of coke, and they don't reject carbonated drinks. Qixi thinks this is a new and potential market segment, so Qixi positions its brand as "non-cola", forming an obvious market segment with Erle, and spreads around this positioning. Soon, the brand awareness and product sales of Qixi have been greatly improved. 7-up became the third largest carbonated beverage brand in the United States after Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Differentiated brand positioning made Qixi World War I famous.

At present, among the well-known snack food brands in China, there are basically clear brand positioning. For example, Shang Haojia's brand positioning is "good taste" and the brand communication slogan is "good taste starts with Shang Haojia". The brand positioning of qiaqia food is "happiness", and the brand communication slogan is "qiaqia food, happy taste". If you want to become a strong brand in the snack food market, you must remember to position the brand first, and then spread the brand.

6. Plan your product line clearly.

Planning enterprise product line is an important follow-up strategic link after the establishment of brand structure of snack food enterprises.

Festival. Whether the product line planning of an enterprise is clear and reasonable determines whether the enterprise can carry out more complete market coverage.

It also determines the size of the enterprise market.

Under the premise of corporate brand or category brand strategy, the market coverage methods of product lines mainly include:

(1) Price coverage: high, medium and low-priced products of the same product category are launched at the same time to meet the consumption needs of different price segments.

(2) Taste coverage: same category, multiple tastes. Such as barbecue flavor, tomato flavor and barbecue flavor in potato products.

Taste, original flavor, etc. Strive for market coverage of more consumer groups through different tastes.

(3) Capacity coverage: launch products with different packaging capacities, which are aimed at personal consumption (small packaging), family consumption (family clothing) and gift consumption (gift clothing).

(4) Variety coverage: candied snacks can be divided into bayberry, preserved plum, peach, jujube and apricot.

Multiple varieties cover the market.

(5) Efficacy coverage: according to the differences of consumers' needs, the demands of nutrition, health, enjoyment, value, fashion and leisure are highlighted respectively, so as to realize differentiated marketing of product categories.

(6) Color coverage: In view of the characteristics that the mainstream consumers of snack foods are teenagers and young women, enterprises need to introduce products with different main colors according to product differences to meet consumers' demand for color preference.

(7) Coverage of packaging forms: Due to the characteristics of snack food consumers, snack food enterprises can consider boldly using different forms of packaging, such as geometric modeling and animal modeling, to attract consumers' attention and interest in buying.

Seven, extract the core interests of products.

The core interest point of a product refers to the best connection point between the benefits that a product can bring to consumers and consumers' demand for the product. Each kind of product needs to extract a core selling point and a series of supporting points, and this core interest point is the basic point of product communication slogan.

Consumers' demand for snack food mainly focuses on fashion, nature, nutrition, health and so on.

The process of refining the core interests of a product is to organically combine the characteristics and advantages of the product with the consumer's demand for snack food, refine the product's understanding of the basic needs of fashion, nature, nutrition and health, and show it in an image way.

Let's take liquor as an example to explain how to refine the core interests of products. Hetao liquor industry is the first brand in Inner Mongolia liquor market. Hetao Plain has fertile land since ancient times and has a brewing history of more than 2,000 years. The enterprise has a mid-range liquor brand-Hetao Laojiao. The product is mellow and sweet. The traditional cellar storage technology is adopted, and the quality is excellent. Through the understanding of the needs of target consumers and the decomposition of the advantages of the products themselves, it is finally concluded that the core interest point of Hetao Laojiao products is pure quality, so the core communication concept of the products is further deduced: "consistent quality commitment" and the communication slogan is "pure truth, Hetao Laojiao". Hetao Laojiao realized the perfect combination from core interests to communication ideas and then to communication slogans. Now Hetao Laojiao has become the liquor brand with the highest market share in Inner Mongolia.

Give your product a good name.

Almost all successful brands have a good name. Such as: Shanghaojia, Wangwang, Kobik, Haoliyou,

Master Kong, farmer's tea, Danone and so on.

A good product brand name can not only reflect the characteristics of the industry, but also bring out the selling point of the product, and it is easy to remember. If a good name can be given to the product, it will save a lot of publicity expenses for the future spread of the product.

According to the characteristics of various categories of snack foods and the differences of mainstream consumer groups, this paper puts forward four naming ideas for your reference:

1, emotional naming: combining the emotional benefits of snack food with the consumption psychology of young women and children, the brand name of the product reflects the emotional appeal point and consumption demand point of the product. Such as: leisure, pleasure, funny corner, etc.

2. Cartoon naming: According to children's preferences for cartoon images, the brand names of products are directly named cartoon names, such as flying squirrel with blue flowers and Teletubbies.

3. English cultural naming: Some snack foods were originally introduced from abroad, and foreign brands still occupy an important position in the snack food market. Consumers have a high acceptance of English cultural naming, and using English cultural naming is a good choice for domestic leisure products. Such as: Kebik, Boca, etc.

4. Personalized naming: the product name not only reflects the characteristics of the category, but also reflects the brand personality and communication ideas. Such as: idle people, good people, cha-cha, etc.

The above are just several naming reference ways of snack food, and snack food enterprises are giving products.

Naming can be completely eclectic. The key is that the brand name of the product can impress your consumers and make them remember you at once.

Nine, the taste decides to repeat the purchase.

Snack food is the most typical fast-moving consumer goods, which is bought casually and consumers' loyalty to the brand is relatively low. If the new brand tastes good, consumers will remember you immediately and will buy it again next time. If the consumer tries to buy it for the first time and the product tastes bad or average, the consumer will not remember you, and it will be difficult for him to spend it again.

The main products of successful snack food brands are products with good taste. We might as well take Kebik potato chips of Fujian Dali Group as an example. You can taste every flavor of Kobik potato chips, and each product has a unique taste, especially the green packaged barbecue potato chips, which makes people want to eat. You don't even want to try other brands of potato chips. You will think that Kebik represents the authentic taste of potato chips.

So, what is the standard of product taste and who will judge it? There is no doubt that the evaluation criteria and judges of taste quality are the food and clothing parents of enterprises-consumers. After the product is produced, it is necessary to do a standardized quantitative and qualitative taste test and adjust it according to the needs of consumers, which has been recognized by consumers and actually by the market. Don't just let employees eat and give them to relatives and friends, and then go public hastily. If you test the taste of the product like this, you will suffer a big loss sooner or later.

The taste of the product will also affect the future market scale of the brand and the success or failure of the brand market. If the taste of your product can remind consumers of you when they are greedy, it will be difficult for your brand to be famous or not!

X. packaging is the face of the product.

Packaging is the face of products. If the product looks ugly, even if the product in the package is delicious, most consumers will definitely not like it.

The basic elements of product packaging design include:

(1) Graphic creativity (pattern, color, product name, selling point and text collocation, etc. ); (2) packaging

The shape of; (3) Materials used in packaging, etc. The above three aspects * * * together constitute the grade and visual impact of product packaging. If the product packaging does not have enough visual appeal, it will soon be buried on the shelves of the supermarket.

It is not difficult to find that many well-known food brands have the same exquisite packaging design, which makes people fondle it. For example, Kebik (potato chips), Haoliyou (pie), Master Kong's fresh daily C (fruit juice drinks) and Fang Shuijing (white wine) are all classic cases in food packaging design.

No wonder some people say that good packaging speaks for itself!

Eleven, advertising slogans let consumers remember you.

After defining corporate brand positioning, product brand positioning and product core interests, you need to extract a concise advertising slogan that can impress consumers for your corporate brand and series of product brands respectively. A good advertising slogan is like the eye that makes the finishing point. It can not only make your target consumers remember you quickly, but also promote the promotion of the brand of the whole enterprise or product.

In food marketing, the sales of brands and products have been promoted rapidly, because advertising slogans have touched consumers.

There are not a few cases. The most classic is the slogan of Nongfu Spring: "Nongfu Spring is a little sweet". This slogan not only clearly states the unique selling points of consumer products, but also forms obvious market segmentation with Wahaha, Lepuxi and other brands, creating a huge natural water segmentation market, which makes Nongfu Spring quickly enter the top three water markets. Other creative food advertising slogans include: unifying the advertising slogan of freshly squeezed orange juice "more C, more beautiful"; Hualong instant noodles slogan "Just you play"; The slogan of farmhouse tea is "good water, good tea, people who drink well" and so on.

In short, if you want consumers to quickly remember your brand and product selling points, the most direct and effective way is to create a wonderful advertising slogan for your brand and product creativity.

Twelve, TVC (good ideas+celebrity endorsement) to achieve the brand.

To some extent, TVC is both the starting point and the end point of advertising strategy, because all strategies need to communicate directly with your target consumers face to face through TVC. In today's competitive environment, you can't become a strong brand without TVC, and you can't quickly expand the market scale.

The core element of creating excellent TVC is to have good creativity and wonderful advertising language. Of course, it may be better if we can invite suitable celebrities to speak for us. Now the farmer's tea TVC, which is being broadcasted by CCTV and local TV stations, is perfect in terms of creativity (highlighting water sources with the help of tea culture), advertising language (good water, good tea and people who drink well), and the choice of image spokesperson (Li Yingai, the heroine of Korean drama Dae Jang Geum), which is a classic in TVC.

In the snack food market, Dali hired Zhao Wei, Summer Xu, Guo Jingjing, Edison Chen, Jay Chou and Zhou Xun. As the image spokesperson of the company's three major brands: Kobik, Dali Garden and Delicious Point. Although the advertising slogans and TVC creativity of the above three product brands are not excellent, the market scale of Dali Group has been expanding, and it has become a strong force in the snack food market with the advantage of celebrity endorsement.

Thirteen, print advertising directly drives sales.

Print advertising is an important supplement to TV advertising. Generally speaking, the creativity of print advertising is the extension and deduction of TV advertising creativity. Television advertising has short time and high cost, and can only convey important information to consumers; Print advertisements are large in area and low in price, which can systematically explain the contents of TV advertisements. It is an important propaganda form of snack food communication, which can directly drive the sales of products.

There are various forms of print advertisements, such as newspapers, magazines, outdoor street signs, light boxes, Optimus Prime, car bodies, posters, single pages, POP, table cards and so on. For some small-scale snack food enterprises,

At first, we can make full use of print media to replace TV advertisements, and then consider TV advertisements after a certain scale. From this point of view, the creativity and production of print advertisements are related to the survival and development of such enterprises, which deserves great attention from enterprises.

Fourteen, choose the sales area, determine the key market.

After the brand, product strategy, TVC and print advertisement are completed in the early stage, it is necessary to choose the sales area and determine the key market. Large-scale snack food enterprises generally divide the whole country into seven regional markets: Northeast China, North China, East China, South China, Central China, Northwest China and Southwest China, and then subdivide the market into provincial, municipal and county markets. For the entry of new products, several large regional markets will be selected for priority entry, and one or several provinces or cities will be selected as key markets.

For small-scale snack food enterprises, new products can choose to enter several provincial markets first, and at the same time choose 1-2 provincial capital cities as key markets to gradually expand the market scale.

In addition to the above two ways of choosing sales areas, in order to increase the success rate of marketing and reduce risks as much as possible, snack food enterprises can also consider choosing 1-2 as a model market to test the correctness of various schemes and modify them at any time. After the model market is successful, they can replicate their promotion model in other markets.

Fifteen, planning channels, open sales channels.

The rational planning of product sales channels can be considered in four steps:

1. Determine the channel model: the channel model refers to the way for enterprises to establish sales channels. For example, whether to adopt agency system, hierarchical distribution form or specialty store form, and the level and mode of setting up middlemen in various channel models.

2. Think about the length and width of the channel: the length of the channel refers to the space where the center of gravity of the sales channel extends and sinks. From the municipality directly under the central government to the countryside, what levels do enterprises involve? Channel width refers to the number of sales terminal categories of enterprises in the same level of channels.

3. Dealer selection: according to the channel mode and the setting of channel length and width, the number and selection criteria of dealers are determined.

4. Formulate sales policy: Sales policy refers to the way of cooperation between enterprises and distributors at all levels. For example, the company's relevant policies on dealers in pre-distribution, transportation, terminal maintenance, publicity, deduction, rebate and settlement.

Sixteen, planning the enterprise's own sales system

The enterprise's own sales system planning mainly includes four aspects:

1. Building a sales system architecture: The sales system architecture refers to the sales organization structure of the enterprise itself. For example, whether to establish branches or offices in regional markets; Division and scale of sales organizations in various regions, provinces and below.

2. Determine the functions of sales organizations at all levels: the functions mentioned here are the sales organization personnel at all levels of the enterprise.

Composition, functions, sales tasks and other corresponding functions.

3. Training sales team: the contents and methods of training related marketing knowledge and skills for all kinds of personnel in sales organizations at all levels.

4. Dealing with the relationship between sales organizations and dealers: it refers to defining the division of functions between sales organizations and dealers at all levels, and forming a cooperative relationship with complementary advantages between sales teams and dealers at all levels.

Seventeen, choose the right store and win the terminal.

Snack food is a typical fast-moving consumer product, and its purchase is very random, so the distribution rate of products directly affects the sales of products. Besides supermarkets, convenience stores, grocery stores, department stores and wholesale markets, parks, tourist attractions, railway stations and airports are also suitable sales terminals frequented by children.

In recent years, there are more and more Internet cafes, most of which are teenagers, who are the target buyers of snack food. Snack food enterprises can consider increasing their investment in Internet cafes, a new sales terminal, and treat them as specialty stores. You can have a good relationship with the owner of the Internet cafe and put the goods directly into the Internet cafe. At the same time, you can also post posters and product leaflets in Internet cafes.

Judging from the current supermarket terminal display, the performance of snack food seems to be unsatisfactory. Compared with the stacks, shelves and shelves of food categories such as drinks, wine and pies in supermarkets, except chewing gum and melon seeds, most kinds of snack foods are simply displayed, and there are few special terminals. In fact, large-scale snack food enterprises with rich product lines can completely enhance their brands and expand product sales through terminal display in the form of stacking heads and end racks. Small-scale enterprises with fewer product categories can also join hands with other brands to build a supermarket stack, or independently carry out other forms of terminal display activities to promote product sales.

Eighteen, terminal promotion, to stimulate the purchase.

Since snack foods are fast-moving consumer goods, the promotion activities can't stop for a day to increase the sales of products. According to the promotion scale, terminal promotion can be divided into national market unified promotion activities and regional market respective promotion activities; According to the time of promotion, it can be divided into holiday promotion and ordinary day promotion; According to the different terminals, it can be divided into hypermarkets and small and medium-sized terminals. According to the different promotion objects, it can be divided into special promotion for children and promotion for young white-collar women and so on.

Terminal promotion, TV advertisement, newspaper advertisement and terminal display are four closely related important links in integrated marketing communication. They work together to promote enterprise brand and product sales, and are also one of the four core marketing elements for snack food enterprises to expand the market scale.

Nineteen, with the help of soft text, event marketing, surprise.

Soft text should solve the problems that TV advertisements and print advertisements can't solve, but it needs to communicate with the target consumers. What can't be said in the advertisement can be said in soft language. Soft text is not an advertisement, and it is easier to convince consumers. Soft text can introduce your enterprise, brand and product from different sides and angles, and explain your business philosophy, brand proposition, product characteristics and various advantages. You can say it yourself or someone else can say it. Soft text can achieve the goal that hard advertising can't, and it is a unique tool for enterprise communication.

With the successful launch of China Shenzhou VI as a national event, we can easily find that event marketing is the most effective marketing method to rapidly enhance the brand awareness, reputation and product sales of Mengniu. China Bank, China Petrochemical, Yili and other well-known brands. They are using the world-famous Beijing 2008 Olympic Games to enhance their brand. The vast majority of snack food enterprises in China are still relatively small in scale, not strong enough to become the main sponsors of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games like Bank of China, China Petrochemical and Yili, but they can find business opportunities from the "small events" around them, just as you donate a penny to Project Hope for every bottle of Nongfu Spring, and the cost is very small, which can also become a well-known success story in event marketing.

Twenty, the establishment of market monitoring and information feedback system.

In fact, many snack food enterprises have started some such work unconsciously, but most snack food enterprises have not established a scientific and systematic market monitoring and information feedback system. This monitoring system mainly includes: macro market monitoring, market situation monitoring, consumer demand change monitoring, competitor monitoring, product sales monitoring, advertising effect monitoring, channel monitoring and so on.