How to Choose Your Brand Mission

Many start-ups want to be all things to all people. They’re so enthusiastic about their product/service that it’s difficult to imagine, given the proper marketing budget, a single consumer who wouldn’t engage their brand.

That’s a problem. The purchasing mind is extremely impatient; it gives brands only seconds to make its case; and that level of immediacy demands clarity, which demands concision. One thing that makes your brand essential to a specific consumer segment.

How does a startup decide what this is?

First, the company must identify what it considers its essential/marketable qualities. Does it offer a genuine “technological” innovation to a product or service? Is it uniquely cost-efficient due to manufacturing/distribution expertise? Is it oriented around a particular social initiative?

Now it’s time to check these qualities against the competition. Many tools exist to perform this comparison, but an easy place to begin is with a simple Excel sheet.
On one axis should be the brand and its competitors, while on the other axis are the qualities that the brand offers. By checking off the appropriate boxes, that is, where the competitors feature the same qualities, a picture should begin to emerge of where the brand stands out, and where it doesn’t.

To further color in that picture, the company must continue to question itself. Which quality is the easiest/most attractive to build a brand around? Which quality is the most scalable based on capabilities and resources? Which quality is best suited to achieve pricing goals?

At this point, it may help to articulate, in black and white, what the proposition is. One simple sentence, including no more than one or two commas, that summarizes the product/service. Read the sentence aloud. Read them to others. Gauge their reactions. Qualitative/anecdotal data like this can go a long way.

Of course, there’s the customer to consider. Indeed it’s impossible to formulate the brand mission without understanding the customer, but it’s also impossible to fully understand the customer without a formulated brand mission. The point is, investigations into the product/service and the customers are far more simultaneous than sequential.

This article, remember, is a response to the All-Things-to-All-People startup complex, therefore, the first and most important thing to remember when it comes to consumer selection is that a selection must be made! Yes, the product/service can appeal to a variety of consumer groups, but it is virtually impossible to effectively market to many consumer groups at once.

Among the identified consumer groups, hopefully, classified by psychographics as well as demographics, it’s a good idea to target the lowest hanging fruit, even if, as it often is, that consumer represents a relatively small piece of the pie. Better to jump to the front of the line and grab a small piece, especially in the early stages, than get on a very long line for a bigger piece. Pie runs out. People get tired…