From Startup to Scale-up: How Unconventional Marketing Integrates with Branding to Fuel Growth and Innovation
Diving even deeper into our approach to branding, today we are going to explore how branding can fuel and expand marketing through bringing your mission, culture, and value proposition to life in unconventional ways and channels. (This is our fourth article in an ongoing series focusing on why branding is crucial to startups. You can find the other articles here.)
No matter if your company or brand has been around for 100 years or 100 days, marketers and sales leaders know it is becoming increasingly harder to capture the attention of your prospects and customers AND keep that attention. Scaling a business in today’s landscape is an always on exercise in engagement to accelerate and amplify growth. As venture capital and private equity investors know all too well, capturing and keeping this attention often is the difference between scaling or shuttering a startup.
The pathway from startup to scale-up is not merely about pumping capital into a business. It’s about smartly building and amplifying branding to grow an investment through the right customer acquisition and retention. Unconventional marketing emerges as a powerful tool to drive growth in a way that's inherently tied to a startup's branding by strengthening its identity, enhancing its market position, and building a lasting relationship with its audience.
Unconventional marketing should not only be seen as a standalone strategy but as an organic extension of a startup's branding. It's an expression of the brand's core values, mission, and personality in ways that resonate with today's consumers who crave authenticity and innovation. Below are three thought starters for unconventional marketing:
1. Brand Engagement Through Stealth Tactics
Stealth marketing tactics are designed to create memorable experiences (both in person and digitally) that cut through the noise and reinforce your why and differentiation. When these experiences are creatively aligned with the startup's brand story and purpose, they can create powerful narratives that enhance brand recall and deepen customer engagement.
Example: A food delivery startup can employ a stealth marketing strategy by creating pop-up kitchens in unexpected urban locations, showcasing the convenience and reach of their service and reinforcing their brand image as innovative and customer-centric.
2. Viral Campaigns That Reflect Brand Personality
Viral campaigns must do more than just capture attention; they should be a reflection of the startup's brand personality. By infusing campaigns with the brand's voice and ethos, startups ensure that the message being shared widely is the right one.
Case in Point: A tech startup with a brand persona that's quirky and approachable could release a series of humorous yet informative videos demystifying their technology, prompting viewers to share due to the content's entertainment value and alignment with the brand's image.
3. Community-Building as Brand Building
As we’ve mentioned before, a brand isn't just a logo or a tagline—it's a community. Unconventional marketing approaches that focus on building communities can reinforce a startup's brand from the inside out. Through genuine engagement and shared values, a brand can build a loyal customer base that becomes a part of the brand's identity.
Strategy in Action: An eco-friendly apparel startup can build an online community focused on sustainability, inviting customers to take part in conservation challenges. This will integrate the community with the brand's vision of environmental stewardship.
Investor's Role in Bridging Branding and Unconventional Marketing
Investors play a pivotal role in ensuring that unconventional marketing strategies are in sync with a startup's branding to drive smart, strategic growth. Their oversight can help maintain brand consistency across all marketing efforts, which is crucial for building trust and recognition in the market. So, how can portfolio managers utilize unconventional marketing smarter? Here are a few areas to focus on:
Promoting Brand-Centric Campaigns: Investors should encourage startups to craft marketing campaigns that are reflective of their brand ethos, ensuring that every marketing activity and piece of content are unmistakably connected to what the brand stands for.
Ensuring Brand Coherence: While encouraging creativity, investors also need to ensure that there's coherence in the brand messaging across all unconventional marketing platforms, whether it's a street campaign, a social media blitz, or a community event.
Measuring Brand Impact: Beyond likes and shares, investors should advocate for metrics that gauge the impact of marketing on brand perception and loyalty, ensuring that unconventional tactics contribute positively to the brand's strength and market position.
The intersection of unconventional marketing and branding is where startups can truly differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace and drive sales. These marketing strategies should be seen not as outliers but as the embodiment of a startup's identity, ethos, and promise to its customers. For PE and VC firms, recognizing the intrinsic value of this integration is key to nurturing startups that not only grow but do so with a clear, strong brand identity that carries them forward. By investing in companies that understand how to weave unconventional marketing with their brand fabric, investors are cultivating the bedrock for sustained market leadership and success. The future belongs to those startups that know who they are and how to express it in the most creative and engaging ways possible.
If you want to learn more about how Hatch can help uncover and build smart, unconventional marketing programs, don’t hesitate to reach out. We are always here to help break businesses open and help you unlock all your growth potential.