"Smile Curve" The Other Side of Innovative Marketing of Hardware Enterprises

Marketing innovation, a proposition that has been repeatedly mentioned. Especially in the current situation of severe homogenization of marketing methods and weak traditional marketing methods, if companies want to increase competitiveness and increase sales volume in a fierce market competition, marketing innovation is an inevitable “beggar” to cross.

According to the "smile curve", in the industrial chain, the added value is more reflected at both ends - design and sales, with the lowest added value of manufacturing in the middle. When the hardware companies develop to a certain extent due to manufacturing, when the regional industry reaches a certain height due to manufacturing, from low-profit manufacturing links to high-profit "smile curve" at both ends of the advance, is the hardware industry development, industrial upgrading, historical trends and opportunities.

Smile curve

Co-Marketing: Reduce Channel Costs

Joint marketing refers to a number of hardware companies that do joint channels instead of simply selling products to distributors and agents. This is a transition from single marketing to joint marketing, and it is a new marketing model.

It is understood that at this stage, small and medium-sized hardware companies still occupy the majority. They have a lot of weaknesses. For example, products and brands are not as well known as international competitors, and their channels are relatively weak, including the lack of self-constructed channels and lack of the right to speak in front of channel terminals such as professional markets and supermarket chains.

Selecting joint marketing will allow more companies to unite and jointly establish domestic sales channels to expand the domestic market's influence and market share.

Export to Domestic: Brand-oriented

Due to the complex and ever-changing international market, the foreign trade-oriented leading enterprises are particularly affected. Fight to the domestic market, no brand is almost impossible to move. While ensuring the quality of products, hardware companies are accelerating the pace of technical transformation, increasing the technological content of products, and creating brands that belong to the company itself.

In fact, it is very difficult to do both inside and outside markets to keep pace with each other. Hardware companies need to be able to quickly make accurate judgments on the domestic market demand, and be able to produce products that meet the needs of consumers in the shortest time. Therefore, people in the industry believe that for hardware companies, brand-oriented marketing innovation is the way to victory in the future.

E-commerce: Avoid direct competition with online products

Due to the growing trend of e-commerce, more and more hardware companies have expanded their network business operations, including large companies. In the author's opinion, small and medium-sized hardware companies can be more flexible with large companies, because large companies still have to face many entity dealers. In order to protect the profits of distributors, online product sales prices cannot be reduced very much. low. And if companies do e-commerce on a full-time basis, they can respond to changes in many rules of online sales.

To achieve long-term online marketing, it is necessary to avoid vicious competition with offline channels. It is best to use some personalized, fashionable, and small-volume products as the main products, and to distinguish them from products in physical stores.

Xiao Bian concludes that the global economy is still complex and changeable during the post-financial crisis. In addition to competition in technology and product quality, competition among enterprises has gradually evolved into competition in marketing channels. Under such circumstances, whoever masters the high end of the "smile curve" has mastered the market and whoever is the winner. Therefore, the hardware company's marketing channel management concept must go "with the market", making the original single, rigid marketing form evolve into a variety of forms, flexibility and adaptability.

At present, some companies that are not good at sales can choose to “market outsourcing” this way. As long as the company is in good agreement with the company responsible for marketing, the establishment of the channel and promotion of the brand can all be seen as a kind of “purchase service”. .