Why Startups Need A Brand Strategy To Win

Picture this. You’re having a Eureka moment. An idea so compelling that you’re called to bring it to life.

So you go about writing a business plan. You’ve identified your product sell and designed a look. Heck, you’ve even started hiring folks and fielding potential clients. Open for business!

Your prospects are starting to ask more about your company. They’re excited, want to engage, and ask the million-dollar question “Can you tell me what your brand is all about?”

This gives you pause. How do you describe the crux of your work? You’re struggling to come up with the right words to encapsulate the pulse of your masterpiece. You thought developing a robust marketing plan would be for later on down the line.

In the excitement, you’ve neglected to establish your company’s brand strategy. With the whirlwind of getting a business off the ground, brand identity is the last thing you thought about. Has this happened to you?

70% of startups fail within the first 2-5 years, with 14% of them failing due to not meeting their customer’s needs. A good brand strategy can be a bridging point that helps resolve these customer pitfalls.

Brand strategy typically consists of a:

1) positioning statement

2) target audience review

3) brand messaging

4) visual identity

and finally 5) management of brand experience to maintain consistency.

Here’s how these components can increase your chances of beating the statistics and keep you winning over competitors.

Take, for example, a client of mine. She runs a coaching program designed to help menopausal women reclaim their lives. In our discovery work, we uncovered some key insights that would set her apart AND help her stand out from competitors.

Her biggest differentiator was that her business model didn’t rely on menopause shame and promoting iffy weight loss supplements, unlike her competitors who used these tactics. Rather, her program was developed to take into account individual needs as a holistic program that tackles mind, body, and spirit needs. No other coaching program on the market had these advantages.

Taking in those key insights we developed a strategy that

highlighted these key differences

clarified the goal of her program

conveyed her core business values.

Having those defined was the difference between night and day in building out her business offering. Post strategy, my client found it a lot easier to narrow down her niche and clear out the white noise. Her clients also found it easier to glean value from her coaching and felt compelled to stay on as long-term clients.

As consumers, we’re loyal to the businesses that have served us. This rapport is especially critical to develop for new startups striving to build profitability. When you establish an emotional connection with your audience, you build something deeper than just a surface-level purchase. You start building continuity and familiarity.

In one past project, I was tasked with helping a well-loved D2C men's grooming startup re-establish itself as a gender-neutral brand. At the height of the pandemic, this brand wanted to make a statement that not only were they a reliable purchasing option but that they specially designed a line of products to help with the times.

Their old messaging lost its luster, but the brand had a rich heritage that needed to be tapped into so they could activate that tier of returning customers. The solve? Working together, we tweaked the brand messaging to include an “About Us” that detailed their extraordinary founding story, created fresh taglines and product copy, and dug deep into the unique corner of the market they served.

The result? A surge of returning customers who loved their aftershave care returned to try out their mask line, and as a bonus, kicked off a strong referral pipeline. That’s the power of activating a community. When new sales acquisitions slow down, having a loyal base helps to ease the pressure.

This one is straightforward. Good brands can get customers through the sales funnel. Great brands can accomplish that, make a statement, AND are aspirational. It’s why people return to companies like Glossier, Patagonia, Cartier, and Blueland time and time again. When people are attracted to what your brand stands for, it literally stimulates them into action.

For example, in a 2019 DISQO survey, they found that 58% of people had a greater affinity towards a name brand versus a generic alternative. In other words, if you’ve captured the public’s imagination, chances are, they’ll remember to choose you over other competitors.

When you think of top companies, chances are you remember their campaigns, their slogans, and who their ambassadors are. They become dimensional in your life and occupy mental space. Startups should aim to capture that wide admiration and “relatability” through their materials and presentation because it can pay off BIG. After all, you’re not likely to forget your favorite brand of oat milk or your go-to perfume.

As a newer venture, chances are operations are lean and there’s a lot of “shiny object syndrome” going on with ideas flying around every day. When there are too many choices available and not enough decisions made, this can make your brand look inconsistent.

And inconsistency is the hallmark of a green brand. You don't want to be eliminated because your color scheme was disconcerting or your taglines didn’t match. An easy solution to that? Having a consistent brand strategy!

It sounds counterintuitive, but even if it’s not a formal brand document and it’s just a Google document, having a set standard for official messaging will save you a lot of headaches down the line. This can make your business look “bigger” and more uniform than it really is. You can sleep easy at night knowing that your Instagram, LinkedIn, and website are all indeed speaking the same language.

Not developing a brand strategy is a common mistake for startups. However, this framework is critically important to develop in order to strengthen the foundation of your business. As Jeff Bezos, former Amazon CEO says:

Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” It has the power to resonate and win business long after you’re gone.