Great Startups Deserve Great Brands – Build a Strong Foundation by Avoiding These Mistakes
Arielle Jackson, having assisted hundreds of startups with brand strategy, has identified the most common early marketing mistakes founders tend to make. These range from how to articulate your product’s benefits and clarify your company’s purpose, to infusing your brand with personality and making your launch announcement impactful.
Mistake 1: Skipping the Fundamentals and Diving Straight into Tactics
Founders often rush into tactical marketing efforts without establishing the brand fundamentals. It’s tempting to dive right into creating landing pages, logos, and company names, but such an approach can lead to disjointed marketing strategies. Start by defining your company’s purpose and positioning your product correctly. These basics will streamline all subsequent marketing activities, like determining pricing or drafting homepage copy.
Jackson recommends a three-step process for building a minimum viable brand strategy:
1. Define your company purpose: Establish why your company exists and why people should care.
2. Plot out your product positioning: Determine what your product does, the category it fits in, its audience, and differentiation points.
3. Cultivate your brand’s personality: Develop a clear, consistent voice and identity that everyone in the company can adhere to.
Mistake 2: Overcomplicating Your Purpose
Founders often create convoluted mission, vision, and purpose statements. Effective purpose statements should be clear and rally both internal teams and external audiences. Jackson suggests making your purpose about the broader change you want to make in the world, not just financial gains. Use a purpose statement that would yield the same answer from all employees if asked why the company does what it does.
Mistake 3: Not Carefully Considering Your Category
Founders either neglect to define their category or all aim to create a new one, inspired by the book “Play Bigger.” Jackson advises founders to consider their options carefully:
1. Take on an existing category: Compete directly in an established category.
2. Make a modification: Adjust an existing category slightly to create a sub-segment you can own.
3. Create a new one: This is resource-intensive but can be effective for truly unique offerings.
Mistake 4: Focusing on the Wrong Foil
Rather than obsessing over other early-stage startups, focus on what your target audience is currently doing. Often, the real competition is the old way of doing things or the status quo, not another fledgling company.
Mistake 5: Emphasizing Emotional Instead of Functional Benefits in Your Early Messaging
Jackson emphasizes starting with clear, functional benefits before moving to emotional messaging. She suggests two exercises:
1. Find your sweet spot on the Cinderella spectrum: List out functional benefits, emotional benefits, and middle-ground benefits, and try to balance them.
2. Take the bar test: Imagine explaining your product to a friend at a bar, using straightforward language to describe what it does and why it’s better than the alternatives.
Mistake 6: Forgetting to Give Your Brand Personality
Too often, brand style guides focus only on visual elements and ignore the tone and voice. Jackson encourages founders to identify the two main personality dimensions their brand should embody and develop a set of five distinct attributes that represent the brand’s persona.
Mistake 7: Not Putting in the Prep Work for Press
Rushing the press release process or having unrealistic expectations can lead to disappointing launch efforts. Founders should start preparing well in advance, establish relationships with relevant reporters, and determine clear, realistic objectives for media coverage.
Jackson concludes by stressing that securing initial media coverage should be viewed as the start of ongoing efforts to build brand awareness and not an end goal. Continuous, consistent actions over time are essential for developing a strong, recognizable brand.