When it comes to understanding what really drives brand growth, few books are as impactful as How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. This book challenges traditional Marketing beliefs and offers a data-backed approach to building successful brands.
In this article, I will break down the key principles of How Brands Grow and explain why they matter to Marketers.
1. Reach beats loyalty: Focus on acquiring more customers
One of the most surprising insights from How Brands Grow is that brand loyalty is often overestimated.
Many Marketers believe that customer retention is the key to growth, but Sharp’s research shows that growth primarily comes from expanding your customer base.
Instead of pouring resources into deepening loyalty among existing customers, brands should focus on increasing their market penetration—meaning they should aim to reach as many new buyers as possible.
This means investing in broad-reach Marketing rather than highly targeted niche campaigns.
2. Be mentally available: Build brand recognition
Consumers don’t spend much time thinking about brands. In fact, most purchase decisions happen quickly and with little deliberation.
That’s why mental availability—the likelihood that a consumer will think of your brand when they need a product in your category—is crucial.
To enhance mental availability, brands must create distinctive brand assets such as logos, colours, slogans, and even brand characters. Consistency in advertising and messaging over time also strengthens mental availability, ensuring that when a buying situation arises, your brand is top-of-mind.
3. Be physically available: Make buying easy
Mental availability alone won’t drive growth if your brand isn’t easy to buy.
Physical availability refers to how easily consumers can access your product when they’re ready to purchase.
This means ensuring your products are widely distributed, available in different locations (both online and offline), and easy to find on shelves or search engines.
If a consumer can’t find your product when they need it, they will simply buy from a competitor. That’s why maximising distribution channels and removing purchasing barriers is vital for brand growth.
4. Distinctiveness over differentiation
Many Marketers are taught that brands must differentiate themselves from competitors to succeed.
However, How Brands Grow argues that distinctiveness is far more important than differentiation.
Distinctiveness refers to the unique visual and sensory cues that make a brand instantly recognisable. This includes colours, fonts, jingles, and packaging.
The goal is to make your brand easy to identify in any context, rather than focusing too much on proving why it’s “better” than competitors.
Although Byron Sharp advocates distinctiveness over differentiation, the latter still has a crucial role to play when building brands. Check out Mark Ritson’s view on differentiation.
5. Target the whole market, not just a niche
Conventional Marketing wisdom often emphasises segmentation and targeting specific groups.
While targeting can be useful in some cases, How Brands Grow suggests that broad reach is more effective for long-term brand success.
Instead of focusing on a narrow segment, successful brands appeal to a wide range of consumers.
This doesn’t mean abandoning targeting altogether, but rather ensuring that campaigns have broad appeal rather than being overly specialised.
6. Advertising works by refreshing memory structures
Many people think advertising must be highly persuasive to be effective, but How Brands Grow presents a different view: advertising works mainly by reinforcing memory structures and keeping a brand top-of-mind.
Frequent, consistent, and distinctive advertising ensures that consumers recognise and remember your brand when they are ready to make a purchase.
This is why brands with consistent messaging and long-term ad strategies tend to outperform those with sporadic, campaign-focused Marketing.
Conclusion
Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow offers a scientific approach to Marketing, backed by real-world data.
For Marketing newcomers, understanding and applying these principles can make a huge difference in how you approach brand-building.
If you’re looking to grow a brand, focus on increasing reach, ensuring broad availability, building distinctiveness, and reinforcing brand memories through consistent advertising. These insights challenge conventional Marketing wisdom but are proven to drive real business growth.
Want to learn more? Start by analysing how successful brands apply these principles and think about how you can implement them in your own Marketing strategy!