Help accelerate your brand growth by being more present

Over the last few months we have been unpacking the Blueprint for Brand Growth. We have provided clear evidence of the power of predisposing consumers by being meaningfully different to more people, and how you can operationalise this to make it easy for more consumers to choose your brand.

This article looks at the second important growth accelerator – being more present. This is all about making it easy to buy your brand.

If your brand has strong predisposition, this will increase your chances of winning at the decision point.  Predisposed buyers are more likely to search and find your brand, and less influenced by price and other factors.

However to maximise your brand’s growth, you need to be able to convert this consumer predisposition into sales, and also capture buyers from other brands. We know that strong brands (those with high Demand Power) that activate well (high Activation Power) will accelerate their growth 2.5 times more*.

(*compared to strong brands that don’t activate well)

Be More Present is all about ensuring you have the right availability and prominent visibility in places where consumers shop, and making the shopper experience easy.

1. Be in the right place where choices are made

As the purchase landscape becomes more diverse, brands need to ensure they are where the  decisions are being made. Being available more widely and reaching new channels, ensures predisposed shoppers have the chance of choosing you on more occasions.

Marketers need to consider both physical availability (e.g. distribution, shelf space, limited out-of-stock situations) and digital presence (e.g. search optimisation, or the streaming service at the top of your connected TV’s menu). While many brands started with direct-to-consumer e-commerce business models (particularly during Covid), some are now looking for retail partners to extend their presence in the physical world.

Distribution reach is particularly important for smaller brands – our evidence shows that the change in distribution is a key factor in determining whether small brands grew or declined. (For larger brands the focus is more on managing range and portfolio – more on this next time).

2. Be visible

Consider how effective your brands are in leveraging their distribution. Marketers need to actively work to ensure their brands show up prominently and intentionally – to own your share of physical and virtual shelves.

Ensure you have strong distinctive brand assets and are consistently reminding consumers across all touchpoints, including in comms, at shelf (e.g. POS) and on pack.  This will aid fast recognition and quickly trigger the positive mental connections consumers have for your brand in the purchase moment.

In an e-commerce environment, you need to have quality imagery, descriptions that link to relevant purchase moments, and showcase awards and review ratings – all of these are important in boosting conversion.

With physical products, consider how you can optimise your packs, to ensure they stand out on shelf in a competitive environment (talk to us about our PackEvaluate solutions).

3. Remove any shopper friction

The final consideration is how you can make it easy for shoppers to buy and complete the sale by removing friction points in all channels.

Many large brands around the world e.g. Nike and Apple are opting to create their own retail outlets – so they can be more in control of the transactional customer experience and optimise it over time.

Think about how you manage your transactional customer experience both online and offline, across the whole shopper journey, so you can anticipate and predict consumer needs, preventing your customers from spending with your competitors.

Does your brand have any barriers to purchase? We can help you understand your in-market facilitators and barriers and shopper journeys (with ShopperEvaluate).

For marketers, being more present means ensuring your brands are showing up in the right place, prominently and intentionally, consistently triggering mental connections, and ultimately being easy to buy.