Why Loyalty Won't Grow Your Brand — with Byron Sharp
with Byron Sharp, Director, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science · Hosted by Alex Chich
The big ideaA brand grows through availability - being easy to remember at the moment of buying (mental availability) and easy to buy (physical availability) - not through loyalty or retention.
Most marketers pour their effort into keeping customers: loyalty programs, retention, delighting the people they already have. It feels right. The evidence says it barely moves growth.
Real loyalty is hard to build even with family and friends, and a brand has far less of a chance. Most people simply don't care which brand they buy; they'll switch for the smallest reason, or no reason at all.
In this episode, Byron Sharp lays out what actually grows a brand: availability. Being easy to remember the moment someone buys, and easy to buy. The brands that win are the ones that come to mind first.
Byron Sharp is the Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, part of Adelaide University, and the author of How Brands Grow, the book that turned decades of research into law-like patterns marketers can actually use. The Institute applies the scientific method to marketing, uncovering repeatable laws of how buyers behave and brands grow.
Selected Links From the Episode
- Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — the home of evidence-based marketing
- How Brands Grow and other books
- How Brands Grow Live! for Executives — the courses Byron runs in Europe, North America and Asia
- Become an Ehrenberg-Bass Sponsor — Byron's tip for smaller companies
In This Episode
- →Why most sales are lost before the competition even starts: the mental availability problem
- →Mental vs physical availability, and why both decide how much a brand is worth
- →Why loyalty and "delighting" customers barely move growth, and what does instead
- →The over-segmentation trap: why a growing brand steals from every segment
- →Distinctive brand assets: why you must look like you and keep looking like you
- →Deciding by evidence, not gut, and the cost of one wrong two-year call
People Mentioned
Byron Sharp
Director, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
Jenni Romaniuk
Ehrenberg-Bass, author of Building Distinctive Brand Assets (category entry points)
Alex Chich
Host, Beyond the Algorithm
