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Growing your brand is a major goal of marketing managers because strong brands will make your business more money, faster, and with less risk. They will also help you attract the best employees, make you the best deals with sales partners, and attract the attention of financial investors. But how should you grow your brand? Unfortunately, all too often in the industry is advice about "the one number you need to know" or "the one thing you need to do" that can stunt your imagination and the growth of your brand. To avoid this, we recently published "A Broader View of Brand Growth and Decline". First, let's focus on (1) strong users and existing customers versus (2) light users and improve mental availability. Combine these into a broader perspective and recommendations on how to grow your brand.

1. Focus on the strong users and existing customers

As early as 1964, Dik Warren Twedt coined the term “heavy half” to describe the market segment that accounts for the lion's share of a product's sales. Additionally, the Pareto 80-20 rule suggests that a large proportion of the business relative to the rest of the buyers comes from heavy users, underscoring the importance of heavy user research for businesses in general. After all, large investments in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have been driven by the '90s idea that it cost much less to keep and grow an existing customer than it does to acquire new customers. Unfortunately, due to research in the field of services, where customer profitability varies widely, the transfer of this thinking to products and their market communication efforts has been rash and often inappropriate. Well-known brands like Coca-Cola may focus primarily on reminding existing customers to buy them more often. For the rest of us, however, targeting existing customers does little to help our brand grow incrementally. For this reason, a "negative orientation" of these customers in digital marketing is strongly recommended and is feasible. Often times, the customers who are most likely to respond to your digital ads are the ones who are most likely to purchase without your ad. This self-selection must be taken into account when calculating the added value of your marketing communications. Heavy users in this category are also bombarded with your competitors' ads and are often more price sensitive than light users, making them problematic from an incremental profit margin perspective. The pursuit of 100% loyalty is both impossible and unprofitable. In other words, a focus on strong users and / or existing customers to bolster your brand isn't backed by empirical evidence.

Generally, if you are looking to grow your brand, it is not a good idea to only focus your marketing on existing customers or strong users.

2. Focus on light users and increase availability and brand awareness

As a wonderful contrast to the focus on strong users and loyalty, Professors Andrew Ehrenberg and co-authors Mark Uncles and Kathy Hammond showed regular patterns of buyer behavior for everyday products (with low participation). The vast majority of buyers practice polygamy (they are not 100% loyal to any brand), and customers of small, niche brands often buy large brands as well (double risk). This could be because big brands are more available in-store (physical availability) or more easily come to mind, e.g. Shopping for family members or visitors (mental availability). As described in “How Brands Grow” (Prof. Byron Sharp, 2010) and How Brands Grow – Part 2 (Prof. Jenni Romaniuk and Sharp 2015), physical and mental availability are becoming the dominant drivers for consumer acquisition and that Brand growth. If anything, brands should focus on distinctive assets that can increase intellectual availability, i.e. brand awareness. In Sharp's (2010) example of lemonade stands, whoever was advertised achieved higher sales simply because of the benefit of salience – the specific aspects advertised should not play a role. In other words, any advertisement would work as long as it consistently repeats the brand logo. These books and ongoing support from the Ehrenberg Bass (EB) Institute have helped many companies stop targeting a small group of supposedly ideal consumers. Additionally, the importance of brand awareness for brand growth is evident in many publications, including my own where the frequently measured "advertising awareness" ("Have you seen this brand advertised in the last X months") is a major sales driver though didn't advertise the brand for those X months. The brand is simply in the foreground of the consumer who mentions it when asked in a survey if they would like to see advertising for it. The EB approach is very skeptical of attitudes measured by surveys, especially if they involve brand differentiation or if an improvement in consumer attitudes leads to brand growth.

However, ample empirical evidence shows that improved attitudes lead to changes in behavior, whether it is brand considerations in emerging markets or brand lust in mature markets. Imagine how a high-priced and peculiar tasting soft drink (Red Bull) spawned another offering capable of winning a share of a cola that was always within reach. Think how a mainstream brand like Dove managed to maintain growth in the very mature and competitive personal care product market by introducing a self-esteem trend that was years before it was fully embraced by public opinion. Or how relevant non-sensory perceptions are for the taste preferences of beers. Winning the hearts and minds of consumers has been a growth driver for many brands and also opens up distribution (physical availability) as retailers prefer brands that are desired by consumers. Additionally, different consumer segments can prioritize different benefits of the brand over them. So it still makes sense to target your communication strategies when you can prove such differences.

In general, if you want to grow your brand, it is not a good idea to just focus on availability and consistent marketing communications to get it done.

3. A broader view: Promote attitudes, innovate and target a broad portfolio of segments

So what do we propose? First, use a dynamic perspective to take into account both the availability of your brand and the opinion and opinion of consumers and distributors in the marketplace. At certain times it is more important to focus on one versus the other (and understanding your current and desired situation will help you decide), but it is their combined effects that will grow your brand. Consumer attitudes, retail penetration, and branded sales show a dynamic causality over time: as they grow a positive spiral develops, while decreases create a negative spiral: consumers stop thinking about your brand, which makes retailers less Gain shelf space and / or online awareness and the resulting drop in sales justifies these positions. The good news is that even for a mundane product like toilet paper, brands can revive consumer attention and reverse the path of decline. Instead of the notion of balance that underpins much of the economy, strategic marketers know they benefit from change. For example, the strategist Richard D'Aveni and I show how the “fair value” line (price-quality ratio) is formed, developed and replaced in markets and that corporate measures can help to shape these perceptions to your advantage .

Second, innovate to stay relevant. Balance the management of your existing franchise with the introduction of new products. EB's mass marketing recommendation does not provide a detailed explanation of the role innovation plays in brand growth, as it promotes meaning and strengthens existing mental structures. Brands like MySpace, AltaVista, Blockbuster, Barnes & Noble and Nokia lost their market leadership due to new offerings from Facebook, Google, Netflix, Amazon and Apple because they were not innovative and remained irrelevant. It did so despite the fact that they maintained their brand awareness and consistent branding. In its June 2019 report, BrandZ shows that the brands that fell the most in the global brand value ranking maintained their importance, but were no longer “meaningful” and “different”. "Making Sense in a Volatile World" and "Meaningful Disruption and Scalable Relevance" are important chapter headings, and "Be Purposeful" and "Change Your Mindset" are the first two action points of the report. Legacy brands like Gillette, Luxottica, and Serta are being challenged by new business models like Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Casper, though there's no apparent loss in brand awareness or purchase friendliness. Several studies have shown that advertising and innovation are key to defending against such market players, including private label.

Thirdly, expand your portfolio to two competing dimensions: market leadership in one part of the market and growth in adjacent areas or even completely new markets. Recent examples include Amazon, CVS, and UnitedHealth Group, which have grown the most in transient environments such as low-penetration markets.

Brand awareness must not overshadow meaningful product differentiation. Large companies manage a portfolio of multiple products and brands and need to avoid cannibalization and technological or cultural obsolescence. Ben & Jerrys, Pukka Tea, Neurobion and This is L. are four brands that have grown through significant differentiation and not just through outstanding importance. They are also part of a much larger portfolio; the first two in Unilever, the next two in P&G.

In terms of market research, a combined view of attitudes data and behavioral data is key to understanding brand growth. To know when to innovate strategically (change the game) rather than tactically optimize (play the game), one needs to understand the needs of multiple consumers by including each section of the brand portfolio. A brand must be visible and make it easier for consumers to purchase the “Right Now Now” brand. However, it should also strive to be the “trademark right” for today and tomorrow.

So do the hard work of getting to the consumer insights (the why) behind the observed behavior (the what) and creating a relevant marketing mix (such as) to serve the demand (how) better than others . This is the way.

Contribution to the brand strategy Insider By: Dr. Koen Pauwels Author of:

The Blake Project Can Help Your Brand Growth: The Brand Growth Strategy Workshop

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in brand research, brand strategy, brand growth and branding

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