“Brand marketing makes me want to throw-up in my mouth,”
says a b2b2c tech company CEO to me. As a serial “first” marketer for early-stage tech companies I hear this - in different flavors - consistently.
Why is “brand” getting a bad rap? Because it elicits visions of brand identity coffee table books, creative deep dives, Super Bowl commercials and touchy feely performance indicators. In other words, it’s not measurable where it counts. And, it’s expensive.
As a tech marketer focused on emerging technologies and new markets, and who believes that one’s brand is at the heart of every strategy behind marketing, product development, fundraising, PR, employee recruitment, customer retention and more, I was initially taken aback by this reaction. Do I need to shy away from the fact that I bring years of brand building experience to the table?
No. However, I get it and a pivot is necessary.
Marketing leaders need to re-orient brand strategy conversations to that of ‘clarity of purpose’ - the halo that can efficiently power every marketing program and tactic to optimize demand generation performance and fuel revenue growth. A former colleague and friend, Jim Lecinski, associate professor of marketing at Northwestern University and former Google executive, passionately beats into his students’ heads that “the first purpose of marketing is to drive incremental profitable growth while building long-term brand equity”. One could imagine a situation where you drive profitable incremental growth but drain the equity (think: a Mercedes "MLK Weekend Blowout Sale") so we need to add that guard rail, and likewise given the megaphone that marketing has (who we show in ads, values we promote overtly and subtly, etc) tactics need to demonstrate brand purpose.
Any brand marketer worth their salt has results and attribution top of mind. In fact, the term growth marketing, the idea of driving engagement with relevant content, seems redundant. Growth is the very purpose of marketing; it employs many tactics that require key skill sets,, but most critically it begins with brand.
Simply put, a brand strategy or a brand marketing effort is undertaken to address two things:
Your why
Your opportunity for impact
Your Why: Brand Purpose
I think we all agree that it’s hard to align around the ‘what’ before fully understanding the “why”- which is the essence of a brand strategy. And, it’s not all emotional, it is very much rational. It never ceases to amaze when a b2b marketing team dives into tactics without the ever important customer insight, defined personas, a clear objective, and a distinctive messaging architecture. Tactics in search of a strategy!
Simon Sinek coined the power of why where “why” explains the reason your brand exists and how it motivates your tribe. The “why” is not an idea that justifies the tactics in a retrofitted manner, but rather the opposite: the reason for being, the place to start. Honing your why does not need to be a scary, cerebral, laborious exercise but it does require reflection: the unmet customer need, the void in the competitive market and the technology or solution which you can deliver better than anyone else. Many times it’s already known by your founder and/or CEO, but just not articulated clearly nor shared across all stakeholders.To this point, I love the power of Renegade Founder & CEO Drew Neisser’s Purpose Driven Story Statement, a six word definition of your brand that engages customers, motivates employees and drives your product/service strategy. (If you haven’t discovered Drew’s podcast Renegade Thinkers Unite yet, check it out.)
Knowing that the “why” matters, Forbes recently examined CB Insights’ top 20 reasons startups fail and 10 or more of the reasons fall into the camp of marketing and the #1 reason start-ups fail is the when there is no “why” (aka the market need).
Customers don’t buy what we do. They buy why we do it.
Your Opportunity for Impact: Brand Meaning
I’ve started more briefs and decks than I can remember with “What is the Problem We’re Trying to Solve?” Anymore, this is table stakes. Of course we need to clearly identify the right problem to tackle - i.e. engagement amongst user base, decision making streamlining, website abandonment, new market entry - but isn’t there an opportunity to go beyond and create positive experiences and meaningful impact in people’s lives, or in the marketplace through disruption, or within your employee base where all understand their purpose?
Impact is not reserved for NGOs and cause marketing, but for those with profit motives that can align a company’s vision with marketing efforts, and then employ great storytelling. Think about it: once a transaction is made, there is always a before and after. Why is the after better? Shout it from the rooftops and shout it from the perspective of the customer. This makes it human and makes it matter.
Of course, there is no impact without customers. Which gets us back to why we’re doing all of this in the first place. Brand fuels the marketing strategy for revenue and market share growth. This strategy in turn drives the marketing tech stack, demand generation programs and data-driven tactics to optimize performance across measurable metrics. Now is the time to do the aforementioned dive-in, then iterate, iterate away! Your tactics are now in search of efficiency rather than a strategy.
So, as a growth marketer, I talk in “brand” to confirm the place to start. The brand becomes the halo that encompasses all your company says, the experiences you create, the demand you drive and the on-going engagement you motivate for growth across all stakeholders, including customers, employees, investors, partners, vendors and more.
Marketing is a journey. Once the brand is clear (aka the starting line), growth tactics and performance optimization take off, evolves, and continues.
Clarity of purpose (aka a clear brand) resonates with your stakeholders, resulting in:
higher customer engagement
increased customer loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV)
price premiums
decreased cost of acquisition
greater margins
revenue growth
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, a clear brand aligns purpose and promise with employee culture and OKRs - critical in a startup environment where employees join because of passion and belief in THE mission. Try recruiting top talent without one.
Calling all early stage tech companies: whether you use the word ‘brand’ or not, take a bit of time to crystalize your “why” - your purpose - before launching initiatives for growth and expansion. And do it with impact.