Drive distribution (Grow the Core Book Post 3)
This is the third in a series of weekly posts introducing key themes from the new brandbgym book, "Grow the Core: How to Focus on Your Core Business for Brand Success". Here, we look at one of the three key ways to grow the core: driving distribution.
The book is officially out on 4th Feb, but there are limited stocks to order or pre-order on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. Or, if you are a Kindle fan, the book is ready to dowload here.
Distribution: sure to help you SMS
No-one really knows what effect social media has on your core business. Come to that, a lot of marketing activity is still hard to evaluate. But one thing is sure to help you "SMS" (sell more stuff), and that is driving distribution. If you get your brand sold in more places, you will reach more people and so sell more.
Grow in existing channels
At the most basic level, this is about dirving distribution in existing channels. Tom Allchurch and the team at ready meal brand Charlie Bigham's have worked hard to get the brand into Sainsbury’s supermarket, in addition to Waitrose. This retailer also has an excellent reputation for fresh, tasty and high-quality
food and, most importantly, it reaches a lot people, having a
16% share of the UK market. This extended distribution is forecast to dramatically
increase the sales of Bigham’s by c. 70%.
In addition to extending distribution, you can also grow the core by increasing your presence in store. One way of doing this is working on multiple placings in store, something that WD40 have used to great effect in DIY stores.
Grow in new channels
This tends to
be much harder, requiring a change to the company’s whole
business model. This is why, in many cases, channel innovation stays stuck in the ‘too difficult’ box. However, creating new
routes to the market can be an excellent way of growing the
core, and a way for brand owners to wrestle back some of
the power currently held by the major retailers which have
become increasingly dominant over brand owners.
Examples of growing in new channels include Coke's extensive use of vending, linking to food in restaurants and selling at events. A step even further is creating your own retail channel, both online and physical, as has been done with great success by Nespresso, that I posted on here.
In conclusion, driving distribution might not be the sexiest bit of marketing, but its definitely one of the best ways of growing your core.
