In my non-profit board work, I have been learning a lot about fundraising best practices and the need to build strong, long-term relationships. In sales training, I have been learning the same. Relationships make life better, but the challenge is that, as humans, our capacity—and willingness—to nurture them is limited.
This fact is super relevant for human’s relationship with brands. Don’t take my word for it. Byron Sharp wrote an entire book (technically 2 books) about it called, How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know.
There simply isn’t room or interest in consumers’ lives to have much of a relationship with you. Within every brand, there is a marketer or 5 working hard to create the next Liquid Death or Stanley runaway success, but the reality is that focus won’t sustain your brand over the long-run. In fact, most brands trying to chase the flashy trend will come across as trying-too-hard and inauthentic.
Instead of chasing the next big thing, brands need a smarter, more sustainable approach to staying relevant—here’s how:
Reduce friction: Humans operate 98% of the time in System 1, non-conscious thinking. Our brains are drawn to the path of least resistance. Make it easier for them to see and understand/recognize you, and they are far more likely to want to buy you.
Be trustworthy: The need for manufacturers to retain profitability in higher cost of goods environments has led many to take price past the threshold of acceptability. Price/pack initiatives introduce the risk of being perceived as deceptive. All of these margin-protecting decisions have the potential to damage trust and weaken the ability for brands to be seen as worth paying more for. Be trustworthy, even if it means short-term tightness.
Deliver value: Receiving value is high on the priority list of almost all shoppers now and there is more openness to experimenting with private label than we have seen. Private label has also elevated their game in quality and branding, making them a stiff competitor in most categories by delivering more than just low prices.
In summary, focus on building and deepening the kind of relationship shoppers and consumers WANT to have with your brand instead of attempting to build the kind of relationship that YOU want to have with them. While quick trends have their appeal, if you simply make it easy to choose you and feel good about it, you will see more loyalty and profit as a result.