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Here is an activation that you can deploy that has proven successful in the marketplace, with single and double digit sales increases for billion dollar brands. In the end, there are even some additional branding tips for you.

Whether you’re building a product or service business, here’s a proven way to grow your brand:

First. Identify your brand zealots and define what makes them the best promoters for your brand.

Second. Identify your potential zealots and define what is holding them back from becoming staunch trademark attorneys.

Here’s the first step: Identify your avid fans – brand zealots. These are the people who not only like you, they love you. These advocates are passionate about who you are, what you do, why you exist and constantly interact with you. They even rave about you, whoever is listening. In sum, they are the core of your business.

Pick your brand zealots based on the hard IRL (In Real Life) metrics: number of repeat purchases, purchase volume, online visits (or visits to the store), or any other metric you trust. These factors vary by product or service, industry, and category. You probably already know who they are.

(Tip: If you don’t know who your trademark attorneys are, you need to find out. Keeping you happy is your reason to be on the planet.)

Once you’ve identified your branded zealots, now do a qualitative study to find out what draws them to you and makes you sticky. The good interactions between customers and brands can be complex. Instead of a web survey, you need to conduct discrete qualitative groups of respondents or individual interviews. You need to speak to at least a dozen people. More if your budget allows.

(Choose cities that you are already popular in. The US standard is to conduct studies on both coasts, such as Orange County, Westchester County, or New Jersey. If you have the resources, add other regions you want to grow in such as Chicago, Nashville or Austin. Readjust locations based on product or budget factors.) Yes, you can do this online.

Question: Why do you choose brand zealots – rather than the large public out there who haven’t tried you (or even heard from you)? Answer: Because you cannot afford to waste time or money.

Not only are your brand zealots central to your brand as first-time adopters, but as attorneys they are also responsible for Word Of Mouth, your best form of branding. (For the purposes here, WOM may include loose reviews, likes, and other positive customer reactions.)

Your brand zealots know what makes you sticky and why they chose you as another wonderful part of their life. If you can discover these brand values, take special care not to accidentally lose them.

You might even want to double-click on this magical sauce and make more of it.

Best of all, your advocates will stand up for it – they will put their zeal for your branding community in their own words. Listening hard and then translating your messages into the consumer’s voice can be best for any brand.

Step two. Once you’ve identified your best clients, now is the time to identify your potential lawyers.

You need to identify both groups as now you want to move your potential zealots from this column to the staunch IRL zealot column.

Again, how you identify potential zealots depends on your market and category. Potential zealots can be defined by the number of visits, repeat purchases, and a dollar sales amount. You decide.

During one-on-one quality meetings, find out what is holding these potential zealots back from becoming zealots.

And don’t miss this important next step. Take your qualitative findings through a quantitative study to substantiate your findings. This is especially important if you want to invest millions of dollars in the media multiverse.

Removing points of friction for potential zealots can result in low hanging fruit. Some billion dollar brands have seen single- or double-digit increases in sales as a result of this alone.

But this is just the beginning. Now that you’ve switched potential zealots to actual IRL zealots, you’ve only helped increase your branding and positive WOM. This becomes a self-sustaining circle: not only have you increased your bottom line, but you are growing and maintaining your own army of influencers. (Since your attorneys work hard for you, it sometimes even lowers the cost of sales.) Nice job.

Back to potential zealots. Keep in mind that what is holding these potential zealots back may not be easy to fix – it could be a seasonal purchase. It could be that you’re just too damn expensive. Or it could be some crazy thing your CEO just said in the media.

So, target brand attributes that you can improve: usability, more exciting flavors, discounts, and sponsorship for social change.

Note: Some grocery brands have increased their sales by up to 30 percent by updating their packaging to something more standout and exciting.

Understanding what holds you on with core customers – and uncovering friction points that you didn’t know existed – is an efficient way to get better results with reduced resources. Even if you’ve had a banner year, this is a bad way to keep growing.

Note that we didn’t mention changing your brand logo or website. Or hop over social channels – from FB to influencers or TikTok. These subtleties don’t always create the same straight line to market growth.

There are other ways to brand a brand, and sometimes that means going deeper than search optimization, content marketing, influencers, or retargeting. Example? Fill in the gaps in your strategic brand narrative.

But try the activation described above first, it will grow on you.

Contribution to the Branding Strategy Insider by: Patrick Hanlon, author of Primal Branding

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