In many organisations, marketers are facing a familiar and frustrating situation. They are working harder than ever, investing in campaigns, refining positioning, and running robust brand health trackers. The reports show healthy levels of awareness and favourability. But high awareness doesn’t guarantee salience when it counts. Favourability doesn’t mean you’ll be chosen.
Many brands find themselves in this uncomfortable in-between: detached from the buying situations, they are well-liked and well-known, but too often, when in the context of the buying situation, they are not considered. Something important may be missing from the measurement mix, and that something could be Mental Availability.
Mental Availability focuses on your brand’s likelihood of being recalled in real-world buying situations. It’s a practical, evidence-based way to understand why your brand may still be overlooked when it matters most.
This approach owes much to the work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. Their research has helped shift the focus of brand growth from loyalty and persuasion to the importance of being easy to think of and easy to buy. Concepts such as Mental and Physical Availability, Category Entry Points (CEPs), and Mental Market Share have provided marketers with practical ways to understand and influence how buying decisions are made.
Understanding Mental Availability
Mental Availability is built through Category Entry Points (CEPs)—the mental cues or situations that buyers use to access brands in memory. These are real, lived moments: “quick snack after the gym,” “treating myself after a tough week,” or “fixing a burst pipe fast.”
Strong brands don’t rely on one or two cues. They build wide, fresh networks across many CEPs. In fact, in our database, brands with broader CEP coverage consistently show higher Mental Market Share—the share of all memory links between brands and CEPs in a category.
It’s a better predictor of future growth than awareness alone. And the best part? It’s actionable.
The Three Building Blocks of Mental Availability
To diagnose and grow your Mental Availability, focus on three key metrics:
- Mental Penetration – What % of category buyers can link your brand to at least one CEP? If they can’t, they almost certainly won’t buy. (In our database, there’s less than a 5% chance of claimed purchase when no CEP link exists.)
- Network Size – On average, how many CEPs is your brand associated with per buyer? Wider, fresher networks result in a higher probability of your brand being thought of in buying situations, which in turn should translate into increased sales opportunities.
- Share of Mind – Are competitors encroaching on the CEPs where you hold a Mental Advantage? This metric helps larger brands spot vulnerability.
Together, these diagnostics feed into your Mental Market Share—your brand’s overall mental reach in the buying moments that matter.
Why This Matters to the CFO (and the CEO)
Mental Availability isn’t just a marketing metric. It’s a business-growth metric.
When a brand grows Mental Market Share, Sales Market Share tends to follow. And when your brand shows a Mental Advantage—stronger-than-expected links to high-frequency CEPs—you have a greater chance of beating your competition.
Five Steps to Growing Mental Market Share
Whether you’re a challenger brand or a category leader, there is a clear process to building Mental Availability and achieving brand growth.
1. Define the Category—and the Buyer
Get this wrong and everything else falls over. Define your category too narrowly and you’ll miss new growth opportunities. Too broadly and you’ll get lost. Be clear about who your category buyers are, not just the buyers of your brand.
2. Identify the Right Category Entry Points
Use qualitative research to uncover the personal and situational cues buyers use to enter the category. Then quantify: Which CEPs are most frequently used? By how many buyers?
3. Run a Mental Availability Assessment
This will tell you: How many buyers can make any link to your brand (Mental Penetration)?
How many links on average do they make (Network Size)?
How your links compare to competitors across specific CEPs (Mental Advantage)?
If your Mental Market Share is lower than your Sales Market Share, you may be over-relying on distribution or pricing. That’s usually not sustainable. But if your Mental Market Share is higher than your Sales Market Share, then your brand has potential, and Physical Availability may be holding you back. This starts to form a powerful story for your Sales Teams to take to their customers.
4. Develop a GROW / FIX / DEFEND Plan
GROW by targeting those CEPs that are credible for your brand and no other brand(s) hold a Mental Advantage.
FIX weak areas by improving associations in high-frequency CEPs.
DEFEND your strongholds by reinforcing where you already hold an advantage.
5. Review Metrics
If Category Entry Points don’t feature in your tracker, it might be time to consider rebalancing your metrics. Jenni Romaniuk suggests circa 60% CEPs, 30% other attributes, and 10% attitudes.
This doesn’t mean you need to overhaul your existing tracker and lose your valuable history. In our experience, introducing these new metrics alongside your existing brand health measurements is possible.
From Insight to Impact
Consider this example: KitKat has an 88% Mental Penetration score thanks to its consistent association with “break time.” This brand idea allows the brand to bridge multiple category entry points, for example, what about “afternoon slump,” “after-school snack,” or “coffee break companion”?
Now imagine you’re a premium beer brand. You may own “celebration” but miss out on “relaxing after work.” If a competitor owns that space, you’ll miss out on valuable occasions, even if people say they like you more when asked out of context of the buying situation.
That’s why we advise clients to not only measure CEP associations but to map them against competitors, so you find CEPs where:
- Many buyers use the retrieval cue
- Few competitors are present
- You have a credible claim
That’s where the growth is likely to be sourced.
Mental Availability Isn’t Just a Marketing Job
It’s a company-wide opportunity. Marketers should bring the Mental Availability data into the boardroom. Show how Mental Market Share correlates with Sales Market Share. Help the sales team understand which CEPs to focus on. Work with media agencies to ensure CEPs are considered in every campaign.
And crucially, train your teams. Too many brand teams have a superficial understanding of what’s being tracked. Not because they lack talent, but because they haven’t been trained in Mental Availability. That’s fixable. And essential.
How AI and Mental Availability Together Will Shape the Next Era of Brand Growth
As artificial intelligence transforms how we gather insights and execute campaigns, Mental Availability offers the strategic lens to ensure those advancements are grounded in what truly matters—being thought of in buying situations.
AI is accelerating the ability to test creative ideas, personalise messaging, and predict consumer behaviour at scale. But for AI to drive real brand value, it needs a strong interpretive framework.
Mental Availability provides this framework, ensuring your brand is thought of at the right time, for the right reason, by the widest audience of Category Buyers possible.
At SmilingCFO, we help brand teams put these principles into practice. Through Mental Availability Assessments, we enable organisations to diagnose their current position, identify growth opportunities, and align marketing activity with the buying situations that matter most.
It’s a process that builds belief across marketing, finance, and the boardroom.
One to Watch…
Further Reading…
Put Mental Availability and Physical Availability at the heart of your strategic thinking.
