The Secret to Brand Growth? Mental and Physical Availability

The key to brand success is both mental and physical availability.

We took a scientific approach to marketing to unlock the truth behind brand growth.

Check out our blog post here.

Brands largely compete not in terms of differentiation or even product offering, but in terms of mental and physical availability.

When a brand is strong in those two regards, more people can more easily buy it in more situations.

Let’s begin.

AVAILABILITY

What are mental and physical availability?

the breadth and depth of your distribution in time and space

MENTAL AVAILABILITY PHYSICAL AVAILABILITY

Brands compete in terms of:

the probability of a consumer noticing, recognizing, and thinking of your brand in a buying situation

Mental availability extends beyond brand awareness: it depends on the quality and quantity of a consumer’s mental structures.

A note on mental availability

MENTAL AVAILABILITY

“Make your brand easier to access in consumer memory in more buying situations and for more consumers.”

— Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow

— Create distinctive assets

— Get noticed

— Continuously reach potential buyers

— Refresh brand-linked memories

— Be consistent

How to increase mental availability

Physical availability is a supply chain problem: how can brands get their product physically in front of their consumer wherever they are, right when they want it?

A note on physical availability

PHYSICAL AVAILABILITY

“Though brands may claim to have achieved 100% availability, no brand has actually accomplished this yet.”

— Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow

— Supply all desired pack types and sizes

— Keep stock levels high

— Expand into new geographical locations

How to increase physical availability

THE CONSUMER

How does the modern consumer shop? Do they optimize their preferences or satisfy them?

begin searching through a set of options but stop once a preference meets immediate needs

OPTIMIZE SATISFY

Consumers can optimize or satisfy preferences:

search through an entire set of options until absolutely certain a specific preference has been met

Knowing whether your consumer is an optimizer or a satisfier has critical implications, as you can take a very different branding approach for either.

It is widely believed that U.S. consumers search for an exact preference match.

“As it turns out, consumers tend to satisfy their needs instead. In other words, they settle for ‘good enough’.”

— Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow

It isn’t because the brand is differentiated, but because an emotional response has been triggered. They’ve browsed a few options and will impulsively go with the one that elicited some sort of internal response.

This explains why customers buy into a brand

We’ve arrived back at mental and physical availability.

First, brands need to be physically available, to even be part of the initial mix a consumer browses through.

Second, brands need to create associations, to refresh salience, and build new memories to be the brand consumers stop at.

THE WRAP-UP

What have we learned?1. Brands need to be mentally and physically available

This enables more people to more easily buy your brand in more situations.

What have we learned?1. Brands need to be mentally and physically available

This enables more people to more easily buy your brand in more situations.

2. Customers tend to settle for “good enough” Brands need to trigger an emotional response to be the brand consumers settle for.

You can read the full story on how to grow your brand on the Percolate blog: The Secret to Brand Growth? Mental and Physical Availability

Percolate is The System of Record for Marketing. Our technology helps the world's largest and fastest-growing

brands at every step of the marketing process.

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Kat Gebert Kat Gebert is on the Product Marketing team at Percolate.