On a shoestring budget, the highest-leverage branding activity is achieving clarity on the business vision, target audience, and differentiation. Investing in a brand strategist to define this foundation is more critical than spending money on visual assets that may need to be redone later.
Related Insights
A rebrand should be viewed as building the fundamental foundation of a business. Without it, growth attempts are superficial and temporary. With a solid brand, the company has a stable base that can support significant scaling and prevent the business from hitting a growth ceiling.
Establishing a strong brand involves more than customer research. It's critical that the internal team and key partners are aligned on the brand's vision and messaging. This internal clarity serves as the stable foundation for all external marketing efforts.
While a personal brand is valuable long-term, it has a high opportunity cost for new businesses. Founders with limited resources may achieve faster results by focusing on direct outreach first, and only investing heavily in content and branding once they have more traction.
Before scaling paid acquisition, invest in a robust brand system. A well-defined brand DNA (art direction, voice, tone) is not a vanity project; it's the necessary infrastructure to efficiently generate the thousands of cohesive creative assets required to test and scale performance marketing campaigns successfully.
A strategy defined only by the current product and target audience is brittle and fails to guide future development. A more holistic strategy is built on the company's underlying ethos, or 'how we do things.' This ethos provides a durable foundation for future product and marketing decisions.
The "build it and they will come" mindset is a trap. Founders should treat marketing and brand-building not as a later-stage activity to be "turned on," but as a core muscle to be developed in parallel with the product from day one.
In the 2020-2022 era of cheap capital, brands could afford to "move fast and break things." Now, with tighter funding and a more complicated marketing mix, a solid brand strategy is a foundational requirement for survival, not a later-stage luxury.
To achieve brand clarity, first define your 'three golden keywords': one 'soft' adjective describing your style (e.g., fierce) and two 'hard' keywords for your role (e.g., luxury executive). Use these as the foundation to build your broader brand pillars and content themes.
Many founders conflate their brand with their first product. A successful company requires a broader brand positioning that can accommodate future products. This prevents the business from getting stuck as a single-product entity and enables long-term growth and category expansion.
To hire a founding designer, founders need a clear theory on how design will help the company beat its competition. This strategic framing is far more compelling than simply stating that design is important.
