Most people don't care about your company or your products. It's healthy to remind yourself of this every day. You need to work extra hard to earn their attention.
Forget about loyalty and connecting with your customers on a deep level. Decades of marketing research from Ehrenberg-Bass and other research institutions have thoroughly disproven these concepts. People care about their children, their partner, next weekend, dinner, the coffee machine at work, and their next promotion.
People care as much about your company as you care about USE Agency. Not a lot. And that’s ok. Companies solve problems and fulfill the needs of their customers. We’re thought of when people need us, and then they go about their day.
With this in mind, there are a few things every company should continually work on – mental availability and purchase availability. “Mental availability” is about being easily thought of, and “purchase availability” is being easily bought.
Mental availability
Mental availability reflects the extent to which a brand is top-of-mind for consumers in a particular product category. It is based on the consumer's awareness and recognition of the brand and their overall perceptions and associations with the brand.
Building mental availability is essential for brands because it can increase consumers' likelihood of choosing the brand over competitors when purchasing.
This can be achieved through consistent branding and marketing efforts that create strong associations between the brand and the product category and through building distinctive brand assets (such as logos, slogans, characters, and colors) that help the brand stand out in consumers' minds.
Purchase availability
Purchase availability refers to the ease with which a consumer can purchase a particular brand in a given product category. It is based on factors such as the brand's distribution and availability in physical and online retail channels and its accessibility through online search, e-commerce platforms, and other channels.
Purchase availability is essential for brands because it can influence consumers' purchase decisions, especially when they are in a hurry or faced with limited options. Brands that are widely available and accessible are more likely to be purchased than those that are difficult to find or require additional effort to purchase. Therefore, building purchase availability is crucial for brands to ensure that consumers can easily access them when and where they need them. This can be achieved through effective distribution strategies and partnerships with retailers and e-commerce platforms.
Creating a growth strategy around these two concepts is based on decades of scientific marketing studies and is the foundation all USE Agency branding and marketing projects are built on.
Contact USE Agency partner Ari Haack Marteinsson to learn more about evidence-based branding and marketing.