Ignore Brand Loyalty & Focus on Product Development

People keep buying the same products when they think it's the solution to their struggle in particular circumstances to make progress.

For example, if I am hungry and don't bother to cook, I may use a food delivery app to order some delicious food. As far as I encounter this circumstance, I will buy food through that app. So brand loyalty is nothing but the customer's familiarity with their struggle & thinking about your product as a solution to make progress in their life. That's it.

Here's the multi-billion-dollar question?

 Does the customer think about a brand or a product during a moment of struggle?

Mostly products alone. (Note: Product First, Brand Second)

Example:- Milwaukee tool creates many tools related to the work site, but apart from all the tools, Sawzall is a big hit than all other tools. Why? Because of the safe way of sawing with this tool, people can saw almost anything they want without worrying about hurting themselves.

From this, you can easily understand that people only remember your product when they think your product is the only way to make progress during a moment of struggle.

What is a purpose brand?

Clayton Christensen "A clear purpose brand is like a two-sided compass. One side guides customers to the right products. The other side guides the company’s product designers, marketers, and advertisers as they develop and market improved and new versions of their products. A good purpose brand clarifies which features and functions are relevant to the job and which potential improvements will prove irrelevant. The price premium that the brand commands is the wage that customers are willing to pay the brand for providing this guidance on both sides of the compass."

Then What about Nike, Adidas, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola? Are they considered to be purpose brands?

No, being popular doesn't make them a purpose brand.

The one thing I want to clarify about the term "purpose brand" is that customers have many jobs to do in many circumstances, and your product is only a part of that equation. If your product did that job well in any circumstances, they would remember YOU.

Scenario 1:-

Do you think people need canva.com( graphic design platform)?

If you say yes, then why they haven't gone for Adobe Photoshop, which is more popular than Canva?

Because when you are not a graphic designer, it's difficult for you to work with Adobe Photoshop; that's why the people who want to create a social media post or who want to create a banner or logo for their business want to use something which makes their process easier without hiring any graphic designers. That is the only reason they keep visiting canva.com to get their jobs done.

If Adobe or some other graphic design platform makes their customer jobs even easier than canva, people will move on to their platform by firing canva. The point is, "People don't need a graphic design platform, but they need something to make their jobs easier."

It may be using canva or Adobe Photoshop or Hiring Graphic Designers.

Scenario 2:-

An employee who works for an agency finds it difficult to create multiple posts for their customers. It takes a lot of time, and she is tired of creating & editing posts daily. So she searches online and asks others for help to create posts quicker than spending most of her time on canva.com or other graphic design platforms.

After wandering to find a solution for her struggle, she finally ends with Bannerbear.com. With BannerBear, she can auto-generate social media visuals, eCommerce banners, and dynamic email images without much work.

To use their services, she has to pay 149 $ (for scale edition) or 299 $( for enterprise edition). Considering the struggle to create many posts and the cost of not fulfilling the order by a given deadline, she had requested the Manager buy(hire) BannerBear service for their team to do their work efficiently. The Manager said "Yes." considering how it improves the team's efficiency.

But what about a small business owner who hesitates to pay such an amount to use their service?

If he is running a solo or five-person business, he didn't have a solid reason to buy their service, and they are happy with using canva, but what about companies with more than ten employees?

Surely they need BannerBear service to speed up their work.

If BANNERBEAR wants solopreneur to buy their services, then marketing comes as a helping hand to convert them. They can do that by clearly communicating how much they could save in terms of time and money by using their service while investing rest of their time on other business operations. 

They both are graphic design platforms, but how do customers view them differently?

In Scenario 1, Customers use canva to make their work easier by paying a low fee or using their free service.

In Scenario 2, Customer use BannerBear to make their work faster by paying a higher fee (but its too low when compared with hiring more employees )

Also, you need to remember that Bannerbear would be better off if they focused primarily on agencies or companies with more than ten employees. But from the customer's perspective, they can use anything (using a design platform or hiring designers) to make progress.

When they care about price, they can use(hire) canva.

When they care about efficiency & the cost of hiring more employees, they can use(hire) BannerBear.

Both firms would have failed badly if they had focused on customer segments. Fortunately, they used "struggle as a unit of measure" instead of customer segments & product categories.

Note: Customer segment is nothing but creating an imaginary person and adding age, gender, occupation & characteristics to him. It is not only futile but detrimental.

Did every successful brand know why their customers buy their product?

No.

"The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him." - Peter Drucker.

Most brands don't know why customers buy their product, but some brand that later knows why their customer buy their products changes their positioning to address those customers with a clear message.

NyQuil has been on the market for several decades as a remedy for colds, but most people consume a couple of spoons to get a good night's sleep even though they are not sick or have a cold. When Vicks understood this, they created a new product, ZZQUILL, to help their customers get a good sleep without needing other ingredients suitable for cold. 

"When brands understand their customer's jobs-to-be-done, they can position their product as a progress during the moment of struggle."

Thanks for reading till now, but can I give you one more example of why you shouldn't focus on brand loyalty? Please bear with me; this will be the last one.

Grammarly is an extraordinary software for content writers, research scholars, or anyone involved in writing. But just because we are using those products for writing better doesn't mean "we are so loyal to them." Because when the moment Google comes up with a free AI Powered Grammer Correction tool (inbuilt with Google docs) for writers, many people will hire google to do their jobs with no cost.

"What's the point of hiring Grammarly when they can get something for free?"

Conclusion:-

When creating a product, look from your customer's perspective instead of considering product categories or customer segments. Most importantly, Ignore brand loyalty and focus on understanding your customer's struggles during particular circumstances and what they use to make progress. (Note:- Most of the time, they use unfit alternatives to get their jobs done. )

Knowing that lets you develop a product or create a business model as a solution to solve their struggle.

What Bob Hoffman said about "brand loyalty"?

A lot of people have shaky jobs. And many have unstable families. Some have illnesses. All have debts.

Lots have washing machines that are broken, cars that need a tune-up, funny things growing on their backs, boyfriends that are always high, socks that have holes, hair that is falling out, toilets that are unreliable, and 10 pounds of extra stomach, and unhappy kids, and rent to pay, and...

...a lot of things to care about.

One thing you can be pretty sure they don't care about is your brand.