Communicating Your Brand To Investors
As a tech entrepreneur running a startup, you need investors. You have an intimate understanding of your technology and how it addresses the needs of your early-adopter customers. However, building a better mousetrap rarely attracts investors. You need to be able to explain the problem you resolve for customers, including the acuity of that business pain, and your differentiated approach to providing customer value. How will your brand communicate and connect with potential customers? Investors want to understand the market you are in, including market size, total addressable market, and the competitive landscape. They need to understand the opportunity for revenue growth and return on their investment. Furthermore, investors need to have confidence in the management team and its ability to execute.
Assembling the story for investors is no small undertaking. Most tech entrepreneurs are software programmers, electrical engineers or inventors. They are not professional marketers, researchers, or financial analysts. Building a company or product into a brand is yet another major leap beyond their skill set.
My advice for tech entrepreneurs that are looking to attract investors and raise operating capital is to find a marketing agency or individual that has experience working with tech startups. Why? They understand that they will be working on a shoe-string budget, with the goal of selling the potential opportunity (AKA: the dream). They don’t worry about having an incomplete product or lack of reference customers. The story starts with the founder’s vision, and incorporates your unique value proposition and competitive positioning. The output is a set of marketing assets that will help develop your story to investors.
The brand story evolves as your company signs more customers and delivers value to those customers. As they use your product and interact with your company, there is an experience and a promise of value that are realized. Understanding the customer journey, and the post-sale customer experience is extremely important.
Most small companies are terrible at branding. To many, a brand is a logo — a graphical identity. Most simply don’t have the in-house expertise to develop a brand identity that is well-defined, consistent and is monitored for quality control.
I am often asked whether the development of a brand important for a startup. I believe it is. A brand helps establish an expectation for customers’ experiences and interactions. It presents a promise of value that is compelling and consistent to those customers within its niche. A tech company that develops one product can grow to $20M or $50M in annual revenue. To grow to $100M means extending your product line, entering new geographic markets, and possibly employing distribution partners to resell your products. This is where the brand becomes more important. As you grow and expand into new markets, your brand becomes your company’s biggest asset.
