What Small Brands can learn from Big Brands

All of us know that learning requires time and effort, but a more important question to ask is who should you learn from? When founders are in the early stages of launching a startup, they are often sensitive to what type of advice they are given. Particularly when someone tries to use big companies like Apple or Tesla as examples, they roll their eyes and say that there’s no way to compare giant brands who have immense budgets with early stage startups.

I want to kick off this article with a quick analogy that will simplify my theory for you. If you were learning to drive, would you request to learn exclusively from 16 year olds who have never been behind the wheel for more than a few hours? I Assume your answer is a big “NO”. Well, what the founders in our webinars forget is that every company starts small. Comparing your startup to competitors that are at the same stage as you are is fine, we all agree that you can learn from them things to do and things to avoid, but that’s not to say that your startup is incomparable to big companies and there is nothing that should discourage you from learning from them. Here are three of the top lessons we learned from the achievements and mistakes of big brands.

Meaningful customer experience

According to a Forbes article, customer experience is what you should be focused on. The article mentions that “With so many advertisers "screaming" at the consumer, it seems the best thing to do in 2020 is spend your money on the customer experience.” Psychologically speaking, people’s reaction to an Ad varies depending on their mood—which can change almost everyday based on what’s happening in their lives. 

As you start to understand your customer’s behaviour, the best thing to do in order to get them to talk about your brand in their daily conversations, is to adapt to said behaviour, respect it and exceed their expectations by rewarding them with a meaningful experience rather than annoying Ads. This could be done with a well designed website or maybe a nice message showing your gratitude when a purchase has been made. An approach like this will result in events that really stick in their minds and make them come back, or maybe even tell their friends and family about it.

Business is all about treatment and if you treat your customers like they mean a lot to you, I can assure you that they will always pick your brand from among many others. I like this quote from Errol Gerson, a professor at Art Center that teaches sales. he says “If you do something great to a client they’ll tell a friend, but if you piss them off they’ll tell twenty”.

Be careful with Ads

We always tell our clients “Don’t advertise your product/service early, using Ads to push something down people’s throat is a waste of resources. Instead promote content that shares your vision in an insightful manner”. People who don't know your brand may not feel an incentive to interact with what you sell at first. I'm not talking about one time shoppers, but I’m talking here about life long customers who really care about your brand’s vision, relate to it and are willing to spend money on your product/service to help you achieve it.

In 2011 Slack was still an early stage business, Yes 2011. That was just 9 years ago but we saw how fast they grew and became one of the leading and preferred communication tools for businesses, leading to an evaluation of $20 billion at the time of writing this article. Not only that, but back in October 2014 they were considered as the fastest startup ever to reach the unicorn status when they first reached an evaluation of $1.2 Billion. That was pretty fast right? But what are the factors that contributed to their success? 

In my opinion they advertised their solution in a genius way. Professionals had already been complaining about how dysfunctional using emails was. Slack took these complaints seriously and started to put out insightful content to get their audience's attention. After having people hooked by their content and talking about their brand, they launch their successful ad campaign that you’re probably familiar with, you know... the one where they covered trains and billboards with rainbows and unicorns! They showed the advantages that slack has compared to the old way of professional communication. And the reason it was a success is because it didn’t try to sell service, but a feeling.

Maintain consistency

Consistency is one the important aspects that helps people understand, recognise and remember your brand quickly. Unfortunately many startups fail at this early on, they get too focused on getting their product or service in front of as many eyes as possible and as quick as possible, but meanwhile their brands are still inconsistent—showing up differently in every touch point.

One prominent cause of inconsistency is the rush to make decisions, which often leads startup founders to choose not to hire a brand specialist just because they think it would be easier and faster to do it themselves. So they go hire a freelance graphic designer and tell them exactly what to do. Think about it, would you ever go to a doctor’s office and ask for surgery because you “self-diagnosed”?

Playing with your brand’s identity is such a risky move, because if you do it poorly, people won’t understand what you are trying to sell. For a brand, communicating a message to an audience isn’t that easy, unless your brand is taking the right steps towards building a precise strategy, which keeps the presence of your brand consistent both visually and verbally across all touch-points…

Conclusion

There is obviously a lot more to learn from big brands, notably if you are seeking fast growth and sustainability. But I chose to only touch on these essential aspects just to get you thinking about preparing for the future of your startup’s brand. How will you as a founder be able to create a vision that will allow you to connect with people on a deeper level, as well as maintain that connection over time. Learning is a great way of getting ahead because it spares you from making the mistakes yourself, you instead learn from those who came before you. Your startup might be small now but it could become a giant too, so always look for ways to make that transformation possible by emulating the great brands we have today.