Even in a strong economy with substantial market growth, success isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Achieving it requires relentless focus and continuous nurturing of your brand growth strategies – this is the key to your company’s long-term prosperity.
To understand how to grow a brand, consider the four types of growth strategies – market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification – offer unique pathways to expand your brand’s reach and impact. However, how to translate these strategies into actionable steps – create a comprehensive growth strategy framework and roadmap that aligns with your brand’s vision and objectives.
So, what does a growth strategy framework look like? How do you create a roadmap that supports your brand’s growth? Let’s delve deeper into these questions and uncover the secrets to successful brand growth.
Double Jeopardy Law: Unraveling Reality
According to this empirical law, small brands with a smaller market share tend to have fewer buyers, and these buyers are slightly less brand loyal.
It implies that smaller brands are ‘hit twice’ because their sales are lower due to having fewer buyers (first jeopardy), and these buyers are also less loyal to the brand (second jeopardy). When market share declines, penetration and brand loyalty drop together. Moreover, penetration drops at a much faster rate compared to loyalty.
This law suggests that brand growth is primarily driven by market penetration rather than loyalty. Despite popular marketing belief that retaining existing customers is easier and cheaper, the law asserts that investing in loyalty-building strategies may not yield significant returns. Instead, brands should focus on increasing their market share, as loyalty gains typically follow.
The Double Jeopardy law is influenced by two key factors:
Mental availability (how likely the brand comes to mind during purchase situations)
Physical or digital availability (how easy it is to buy the brand offline or online).
Larger brands tend to score higher in both aspects due to better awareness, wider distribution, and broader assortments. They not only attract more buyers but also increase their consideration and loyalty due to their prominent presence. Mental and physical availability also extends to light buyers who are less familiar with smaller brands. These factors collectively contribute to the Double Jeopardy law where increased penetration directly influences brand loyalty.
Your brand roadmap to growth should focus on improving your brand’s mental and physical availability, for example, through a good branding strategy and addressing potential customer barriers.
Crafting Your Brand Growth Strategy
Know your customers
The first step in growing your brand is conducting market research to identify your customers’ pain points. Show your customers how your brand can solve their problems in your marketing messages and brand positioning.
Establish a meaningful difference of your brand
The path to ongoing success lies in making your brand meaningful and different over time because brands that successfully differentiate themselves manage to retain their customers without constantly having to compete on price. Ideally, your brand development strategy should incorporate either a functional or emotional aspect. Without this aspect, the brand runs the risk of becoming a mere price comparison in the market.
Make your brand’s meaningful difference the centerpiece of your branding strategy across all marketing channels – in a physical store, on search engine results, or on your website.
Grow your audience with social media marketing
Expanding your audience is key to brand growth, and a great way to do this is through social media marketing. With the average person spending 147 minutes daily on social media, it’s a missed opportunity not to use social media platforms for your brand.
Building Your Brand on Social Media. Social media gives you access to a massive, engaged audience. By maintaining a strong online presence, you can increase brand awareness, position your brand as a leader in your industry, and interact with your target audience. Choose the right platforms for your audience and business goals, and create engaging and relevant content regularly.
Engaging with an Online Community. Posting on social media isn’t enough; users want to engage with your brand. Successful brands connect with their audience, start conversations, and add a personal touch.
Influencer Marketing. Influencer marketing is another effective strategy for brand growth. Partnering with influencers who align with your brand values can help you reach a broader audience and build brand trust.
Promoting User-Generated Content. User-generated content, like product reviews or customer photos, gives you insight into your customers’ needs and preferences. Encourage this by hosting contests, asking customers to share their experiences, or creating branded hashtags. This fosters a community around your brand, builds brand loyalty, and boosts consumer engagement.
Get more exposure through other media channels
As your resources allow, maximize your brand’s exposure to your target audience through all possible media channels, including SEO content marketing, Google ads, local sponsorships, e-mail marketing, etc.
Approach each channel with tailored creative efforts that align with your brand’s unique selling proposition. While the impact of brand awareness can be hard to measure, it’s crucial to use metrics to balance new conversions and ad spend.
Make your brand easily accessible
Take an omnichannel approach to make your brand accessible across all available platforms. For example, you can list your products on Amazon or any other e-commerce platform.
As for your direct-to-consumer channel, ensure a seamless shopping experience – address any website glitches promptly and optimize your web pages for quick loading times to prevent potential customer drop-offs. Simplify the purchase process by allowing guest logins and saving credit card information. Use tools like Google Analytics to gain insights into your customers’ website experience.
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Ensure your product value matches its price
The next step is to re-evaluate your pricing strategy or use your branding and marketing strategy to explicitly explain your product’s added value to assure customers that the higher price is justified. Develop a unique strategy that consistently communicates your advantages and sets your brand apart from competitors.
Adapt to changing customer needs
Stay attuned to your customers as well as innovate and introduce new opportunities that align with your customers’ changing requirements.
For example, there’s a Flanker brand strategy that involves launching a new product or service to target a specific market segment without diluting the parent brand’s identity. This approach, also known as multibranding or fighter branding, allows companies to attract new customers from various market segments, thereby increasing their overall market share.
Generally, avoid diluting your brand with unnecessary variants or line extensions that don’t resonate with your customer base.
Improve Customer Retention
It’s generally easier and more cost-effective to get current consumers to buy more than it is to acquire new consumers. For this reason, prioritize delivering a positive experience to your current customers. Address issues that might hamper a positive interaction with your brand, whether online or in-store. This can include streamlining your shopping cart process or updating your subscription services. All in all, introduce loyalty incentives and unique ways to acknowledge repeat customers.
Leverage point-of-purchase marketing
POP marketing is designed to bolster your product line visibility in searches and e-commerce platforms. Using it, you can optimize profits while concurrently targeting your audience effectively. SEO, pop-up ads, appealing packaging, or PPC campaigns are some of the tools you can utilize to capture customer attention and stimulate brand desire.
Grow Your Business on the Largest E-Commerce Platform
Are you a brand owner seeking to scale new heights in the digital marketplace? Consider selling your products on Amazon, one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms. With the vast reach and visibility that Amazon provides, your brand has the potential to connect with millions of consumers worldwide.
However, navigating this vast platform can be daunting. That’s where Weby Corp steps in. As an expert Amazon marketing agency, we have the tools, knowledge, and experience to help your brand thrive on Amazon. Our customized strategies and solutions are designed to maximize your brand’s visibility, increase sales, and drive growth.
Looking for an Amazon Brand Growth expert?
Partner with Weby Corp, your full-service marketing agency that can help you dominate your competitors on the largest e-commerce platform.
FAQ
Brand growth can be measured through different metrics such as brand awareness, brand equity, market share, and customer satisfaction. Regular monitoring of these metrics can help in assessing the effectiveness of your brand growth initiatives.
Growth initiatives are actions or strategies implemented by a company to achieve business expansion and increase market share. These can range from launching new products (multiproduct branding) to entering new markets.
Multiproduct branding refers to a strategy in which a company uses one name across all its products in a product class. This helps create brand recognition and loyalty.
Internal development, which involves nurturing internal resources like talent and technology, plays a crucial role in brand growth. It helps in creating a culture that aligns with the brand, innovating products, and delivering exceptional customer service.
A growth strategies framework provides a structured approach to identifying and implementing growth opportunities. It can include market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification.
Certainly, three common types of branding strategies are corporate branding (where the company's name is used on all products/services), product branding (each product has its own brand), and family branding (a group of products shares a common brand name).
