Easy to think of and easy to buy: the two pillars of brand growth

Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (Australia) have spent decades analyzing actual purchase data across dozens of industries. Their conclusion contradicts much of what marketing still teaches: brands do not grow by creating absolutely loyal customers. They grow by continuously attracting new buyers and ensuring they remain easy to think of and easy to buy. These two aspects are known as mental availability and physical availability.

Easy to think of (mental availability): when the need arises

Mental availability differs from brand awareness in the usual sense. Brand awareness only asks: “Do you know this brand?” Mental availability asks the harder question: “When you need to buy that thing, does this brand come to mind?”

Sharp refers to the situations that trigger purchases as Category Entry Points. These are specific occasions, specific feelings, specific contexts in which customers think of a product or service. The brand that is anchored to many such entry points in the memories of many people has a high capacity for mental availability.

This explains why advertising that repeats the same image, the same color and the same way of speaking is discipline. Each exposure reinforces the neural pathway linking the brand to the buying situation. Giving up consistency to be “new” breaks that pathway.

For a B2B brand or a professional service such as brand design, the category entry point is not “I need a logo”. These are far more specific moments: “we are about to launch a new product”, “customers often confuse us with a competitor”, “we want to move up to a higher target market”. The brand that comes to the customer's mind at exactly those moments wins the competition from the very first round.

Easy to buy (physical availability): at the right time, in the right place

Physical availability is the other half of the equation. A brand that is thought of but cannot be bought easily loses customers right at the point of conversion. Sharp defines this as making the brand “easy to see, easy to remember, and easy to buy” everywhere customers might look.

For consumer goods, purchase accessibility is about presence on supermarket shelves, on delivery apps, in search result listings. For specialized services, it means: a responsive website, a barrier-free contact process, an easily accessible portfolio, and a straightforward consultation booking process. A small obstacle at the purchase step is enough for customers to switch to the next option on the list, even if you were already in their minds.

A brand grows by reaching more buyers, more often, in more buying situations.

Brands grow by reaching more buyers, more of the time, in more buying situations.

Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Both legs must be steady

A common mistake is lopsided investment. Many businesses pour budget into advertising and building mental availability, but their buying process is still complicated or their distribution channels are thin. Customers think of them but cannot buy. Conversely, some businesses optimize their sales channels very well but do not invest in identity. Customers do not think of them first, and only find them after comparing prices.

Sharp points out that both mechanisms operate in parallel. Lacking one, the other cannot fully compensate.

The role of design in being easy to think of

This is where brand design has its clearest strategic function, not an aesthetic one. Romaniuk calls these distinctive signals distinctive brand assets. They are the technical means of building up mental availability over time.

Consistent color, consistent typography and consistent layout are all signals. Each time a customer meets these signals again in a new context, the brain strengthens the link between the brand and that situation. This is a memory mechanism, not an aesthetic one. Romaniuk measures two dimensions of a distinctive asset: Fame (how widely it is recognized) and Uniqueness (how exclusively it is tied to that brand, without being confused with others). Only assets with both dimensions build up mental availability effectively.

This also explains why “refreshing the identity” is often a more expensive decision than people think. Every change erases part of the pathways built up in customers' memory, and you have to start building again. It is not impossible, but you need to understand that opportunity cost clearly before deciding.

Entry points in the category: practice map

To apply this mindset framework in practice, businesses need to answer two specific questions. First, in what situations do customers typically think of your industry? This is a list of entry points that need to be identified, not guessed. Second, in each of those situations, does your brand come to mind, and can it be purchased?

The gap between the real answer and the ideal answer is where you set priorities. It might mean investing more in identity to build mental availability, or removing barriers in the buying process to improve physical availability, or both.

Growth does not come from absolute loyalty

Sharp consolidates an observation tested across many industries: most customers of any brand are infrequent buyers who buy from several different brands in the same category. Fully loyal customers make up only a small share. Large brands do not have clearly higher loyalty rates. They simply have more buyers, including very light ones.

The practical conclusion: a strategy that focuses entirely on retaining existing customers while ignoring new buyers tends to slow growth. Three things need to happen in parallel, not one after another: build broad mental availability, maintain frictionless physical availability, and keep your identity consistent.

Product quality and customer experience remain a required foundation, and this argument does not set them aside. But if quality is good yet nobody thinks of you, or they think of you yet cannot buy easily, growth is still blocked on one of those two legs.