Friday, September 04, 2026
Most FMCG brands that succeed regionally never make the jump to national shelf space. Here's what the brands that do scale nationally build before the big order arrives — capacity, standardisation, and sell-through data — and why the brands that don't fail fast once they win it.
Most SME marketing plans are built to make existing customers love you more. That feels right — it's warmer, cheaper to talk about, and easier to measure with a loyalty app. It's also, according to decades of category growth research, almost never where new revenue actually comes from. If you've ever asked "how do I get more customers without spending more on ads," the honest answer starts with a reframe most marketers never make: growth comes overwhelmingly from light and non-buyers who don't yet think of you when a buying moment arises — not from squeezing more loyalty out of the customers you already have.
Byron Sharp's research through the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — now standard reading across FMCG marketing teams globally — found that brand growth is driven far more by mental and physical availability than by deepening loyalty among existing buyers. In practice, that means being the brand that pops into a customer's head at the right buying moment, and being easy to find and buy in that moment, matters more than any loyalty programme. This summary of How Brands Grow's core findings is worth ten minutes of any SME marketer's time, because it dismantles the assumption baked into most small business marketing budgets: that the loyal 20% are where the next 20% of revenue will come from.
The practical tool built from this research is called Category Entry Point (CEP) Mapping — identifying the specific moments and triggers when a customer starts thinking about buying in your category, then building your brand's presence into as many of those moments as possible.
1. List the buying triggers — Write down every situation, occasion, or problem that makes someone in your market start looking for a solution like yours. Not demographics. Moments.
2. Score your presence at each trigger — For each moment, honestly rate whether your brand is visible, easy to find, and easy to buy right then — not generally, but in that specific moment.
3. Fund the gaps, not the favourites — Redirect a portion of your marketing spend away from the entry points you already dominate and toward the two or three biggest gaps where competitors currently own the moment by default.
"Kevin doesn't just present — he electrifies the room and drives massive, real-world value! He drops game-changing insights and actionable shortcuts that show businesses exactly how to turn everyday customers into raving, loyal fans — and acquire new ones faster than ever thought possible."
— Gareth Bayliss, Sales Manager, The Icehouse
Marketing to people who already love you feels safe. The engagement numbers look good, the feedback is warm, and it's genuinely easier to write copy for someone who already trusts you. Chasing non-buyers is uncomfortable — the response rates are lower per message, the messaging has to work harder, and it's tempting to declare it "not working" after one campaign instead of the sustained presence category entry points actually require. This is exactly the kind of decision an SME owner is too close to their own customer base to make objectively — which is where an outside operator, who isn't emotionally invested in the loyalty programme you built two years ago, earns their fee by forcing the reallocation.
The business owners who keep marketing only to people who already love them will be in the same place this time next year. The ones who map their category entry points won't.
...and you become the owner who is the first brand customers think of when the buying moment arrives.