Scaling for Success E-Book

Kathryn E. Strachan

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 245

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

When Kathryn Strachan established her agency in January 2020, she didn’t have any contacts or networks. This book follows her journey of building a highly successful agency and creating brand awareness from the ground up. Filled with practical advice that you can action today as well as personal stories of things that went right and wrong!

Discover everything you need to know about building brand awareness, either for the first time, in a new market or launching a new product. We walk you through how to make your first marketing hires, set up your marketing strategy and define your target audience to create a website and build a personal brand. Once you have the basics in place, we help you level up and expand into new markets. Filled with practical advice, this book covers everything you need to know to kick your marketing into gear and is backed with practical experience.

Leseprobe

Scaling for Success

How to Build a Brand That Breaks Barriers

By Kathryn Strachan

Published by

Hybrid Global Publishing

333 E 14th Street

#3C

New York, NY 10003

Copyright © 2024 by Kathryn Strachan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

Manufactured in the United States of America, or in the United Kingdom when distributed elsewhere.

Strachan, Kathryn

Scaling for Success: How to Build a Brand That Breaks Barriers

Print Book: 978-1-961757-81-3

E Book: 978-1-961757-82-0

Cover design by: Julia Kuris

Copyediting by: Sue Toth

Interior design by: Suba Murugan

Author Photographer: Gabriel Niedojadlo

This book is for all marketing managers, CMOs and company founders building a brand. Whether you’re building a brand from the ground up or looking to unlock the next stage of growth, you’ll find the insights you need within these pages.

Getting Started

I remember picking a name—the first thing any business needs— with a friend of mine. I had reached the point where my freelance businesses needed to be registered as an Ltd. and, therefore, needed a name. We batted around ideas trying to land on a name and explored everything from silly names like ‘Copy Train’ to names focused on me, like ‘Kathryn Strachan Ltd.’ While many freelancers opt for names like the latter, I wanted to build a company that others could stand behind, as one day I might make it big and have employees.

I knew I wanted a team, so I wanted to choose a name that everyone could believe in, and that would serve as the foundation for what was to come. It was my first step in building a brand.

But a name is just a name until you put something behind it. It’s the messaging, ethos, values, and everything else that goes into building a brand that makes a name really special and something worth talking about. This is the story of how CopyHouse became more than just a name and how I’ve helped countless companies do the same ever since.

★★★

One of the first things people ask me is what motivated me to start an agency. The truth is, I’m not sure I meant to ... not exactly. ...

I had been working as a contractor at Scottish Widows, reporting every day to my corporate job but feeling the soul-crushing impact of corporate politics and not being able to create real, lasting change. The corporate world, in general, requires so many hoops to jump through before any creativity can come to life—so much so that over my eight months as a copywriter at Scottish Widows, nothing I had written had ever made it to the website, as it would eventually die a death in procurement or legal.

I dreamed of creating something from scratch and having a real, lasting impact. So, despite not having an extensive background in marketing or a little black book of clients, I struck out on my own to build an agency and use the nest egg I had saved from my time at Scottish Widows to hire my first employees.

At the time, I didn’t know I was building an agency, let alone a brand. I simply wanted to harness my copywriting skills to create awesome content and knew that I couldn’t do it alone. I needed a team that I could train and bring on the journey with me.

While many agencies rely on a pool of freelancers, I knew that I wanted to have an in-house team that I could really invest in and, in turn, have them believe in the company. I wanted to surround myself with a team that was as passionate about CopyHouse as I was and who could help me build a brand to be proud of and feel truly invested in.

In many ways, that hasn’t changed, and we still keep most of our work in-house today.

So, in January 2020, I made my first few hires—bringing on board an account manager, copywriter, and social media manager. Little did I know how drastically the world would change just a few months later with the outbreak of a global pandemic.

When COVID hit in March 2020, we were a scrappy team of four, having just moved out of a co-working space and into a brand-new office. I had signed the lease on the Monday before we entered lockdown. Needless to say, my timing wasn’t great.

At the time, we worked with clients across travel, recruitment, technology, and financial services. I was new to running an agency, and we didn’t have any contracts or safeguards in place, which meant that our clients could leave with little to no notice. Unfortunately for us, many did, especially that first week. Overnight, we lost almost 60 percent of our clients and were left with very few.

But I had just made my first hires and felt so passionate about the work we were doing. I didn’t want to make anyone redundant or furlough anyone. So, instead, I looked hard at the clients we had left, what we did well, and how we could compete against other agencies. What was the one thing we could do that could set us apart?

I saw that we did a lot in the technology sector, and few other agencies worked in this space. It was hard and complicated and far from sexy industries like travel or hospitality. But it was an area with a big need, as technology companies desperately needed to tell their stories in a way that wasn’t dry, dull, or jargon-heavy. It was also an area that could survive and thrive during a global pandemic.

So, I secured the bounce-back loan and used it to invest in our sales, marketing, and business advisory to truly build a brand and allow us to slingshot outside of the pandemic. Good race car drivers know that they need to slow down around corners so they can zip past competitors and this was exactly the approach I channeled to set the foundations for our sky-high impressive growth.

Since then, we’ve grown from that scrappy team of four to a 25-person team with a turnover above £1.5 million (something only 3 percent of agencies achieve). It’s not always been an easy route, and I’ve certainly made mistakes and learned some valuable lessons along the way. I’ve learned how to hire a marketing team, invest properly in marketing, and create a community of marketing managers and CMOs. Our growth is almost entirely due to the strong brand we’ve built and all the opportunities it has unlocked as a result.

Today, I help technology companies that are facing similar challenges. Many have impressive track records and have operated for decades. But they haven’t invested properly in their marketing and have instead relied on word of mouth and referrals. However, this growth model isn’t reliable, and they hit a glass ceiling where they aren’t hitting their growth targets and certainly aren’t growing as quickly as they’d like. At this point, they realize they need to invest in brand building to not only stand out from the crowd but to create inbound leads and unlock the next level of growth.

Join me as I explore the lessons learned from growing my agency and share insights to help you start the journey of building a brand.

Chapter 1

Defining Your Market Positioning

Before you can start building a brand, you need to create the right foundations. Setting the right foundations will ensure you’re headed in the right direction before you spend too much money or time going down the wrong path. It’s much harder to change tracks later on if you decide to drastically change your positioning, and you would be facing the uphill battle of already being recognized for your initial positioning.

Step one in building a brand is to set the right foundations by identifying and defining your market positioning. In other words, what will you be known for, by whom, and why?

Over the years, I’ve met many brands that have struggled to define their market positioning. Should they choose a specific niche or remain generalist—especially if their product could technically be sold to everyone? Should they focus on one industry or be industry-agonistic? Should they focus on one product or embrace a more comprehensive approach? Surely, keeping these options as broad as possible would create the most opportunities and allow them to attract the greatest number of sales.

I believe that failing to create a clear position is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when building a brand.

WHY DEFINING YOUR MARKET POSITIONING IS IMPORTANT

I spend a lot of my time networking and building relationships, so I meet many, many brands. One of the first questions I always ask is, “What do you do?” As a result, I have heard a lot of positioning statements. How people explain what they do tells me a lot about how well a brand understands its positioning.

The conversation often goes like this:

“What do you do?”

“We’re a full-service digital marketing agency working across all industries.”

Or

“We’re a technology provider that offers comprehensive, industry-agnostic solutions.”

These answers are problematic for many reasons. First of all, unless you have a massive team, big marketing budgets, and established reach, it’s highly unlikely that you cover all services or solutions equally well. It’s also unlikely that you’ve worked across all industries and if you do, that you understand all industries.

It’s also problematic because it doesn’t help me understand how to help you. It’s estimated that the average adult makes around 35,000 decisions every day. To make so many decisions, we need to compartmentalize, which helps us store information, understand how to react, and make these decisions without becoming overwhelmed. This basic element of human psychology explains the need for clear positioning.

If your brand doesn’t clearly fit into a category, it will be much harder for people to process and remember you later on.

Whom do I introduce you to? What opportunities would be right for you? Where do you really excel, and where can I rely on you to deliver expertise?

So, while being a generalist may seem like it would create more opportunities, this isn’t entirely true. It ultimately creates confusing messaging that makes it almost impossible for anyone, even those with the best intentions, to actually help you.

You Don’t Sell to Everyone

When defining your market positioning, it’s important to understand your audience, as “what you do” is only half the equation. You also need an audience that’s willing to buy your product or solution and that you can rely on to create brand advocates who’ll champion you even when you’re not in the room.

As part of understanding your market position, you’ll also need to develop an understanding of your ideal audience, how this relates to your brand, and how you can use these insights to develop very clear messaging.

However, sometimes I meet a brand that believes it can sell to everyone. “But everyone can use our product,” I hear them protest.

This isn’t exactly true, as not everyone could, or should, use your product. Even the biggest brands don’t sell to everyone. Your grandmother is unlikely to be the ideal audience for a metaverse Oculus headset (no offense, Granny) .Your product or solution will be more attractive to some audiences than others, and you may even have specific business reasons for focusing on one audience; for example, do some customers have a higher cost of acquisition or lower retention rates? Do some not align with your core values or future vision for the company?

If you’re working in the technology industry, you may also need to consider Rodger’s wave of adoption, depending on how cutting-edge your product or solution is. For very cutting-edge technologies, you might be looking for early adopters, who are more comfortable with risk and enjoy using emerging products (even if the use cases aren’t there yet or they aren’t fully developed), while more mature technology might rely on laggards or late adopters or need to look at other ways to unlock new audiences.

Regardless, it’s almost impossible for you to sell to everyone. Understanding the audience your product or solution most appeals to and going after this audience will help you greatly in setting the right foundations.

Standing Out From the Competition

Having a strong position is even more important in oversaturated industries, especially if you offer similar products or services. For example, open banking companies often have this problem as open banking solutions are largely the same, and standing out requires developing a strong proposition.

Begin by looking at the competitive landscape. What do you do that your competitors don’t? How do they describe their product or solutions and how can you position your company as different? Is there a certain industry or vertical that you can champion to narrow down the competition?

Identifying a unique advantage that’s easy to communicate in one or two sentences will make a massive difference when operating within an overly saturated market.

HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR POSITIONING

So, now that you understand the value of having clear positioning, how exactly do you develop your positioning? Where do you begin?

Keep. It. Simple.

When defining your positioning, it’s always best to start with one question:

If you could be known for one thing, what would it be?

Or, in other words, where can you sink your flag and really claim it as yours? What do you do better than anyone else, and why should your customers choose you?

When I decided to narrow our focus to the technology industry, I did this by looking at what we did very well and where my personal expertise lay. During my master’s program in modern literature at UCL, I loved diving into more technical concepts and once wrote an essay on complex theories of time in Alice in Wonderland and the riddles Lewis Carrol hid in the text. So, when working as a freelance copywriter, I naturally embraced some of the more complex subjects and built the early days of my career at the desk of Scottish Widows. Having come from a more technical background, I understood the need for good copy in these industries and also knew it was something others really struggled to deliver. It was the one thing we could be known for, and it continues to shape my company today.

I’ve seen firsthand the benefits of focusing on one key strength and, as such, am a big believer in doing one thing really well. It allows you to simplify your messaging and to make it clear what you do and for whom. Of course, as you grow, you can expand your core focus and extend your capabilities. But remember, the more you want to be known for, the more you’ll need to invest to build brand awareness and market credibility around this capability.

Conduct Market Research

While you could choose a niche or market segment that’s already popular or oversaturated, it’ll be much harder. Now, if you have an unlimited marketing budget and resources, you might be able to compete with those already dominating the space.

But, if, like most brands, you don’t have deep pockets or unlimited resources, you’ll want to find a market segment that isn’t already saturated. Given the current markets in the US and UK, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll offer a truly unique solution and not have any competitors.

Once you have identified target markets, conduct research into who else already works in these industries. Whom will you be competing against? Do they already have strong brands? What can you offer that they don’t? How will you stand out?

When I defined CopyHouse’s focus on the technology industry, I started by conducting market research on who was already in the field. At the time, there weren’t many agencies that were delivering content for the technology industry, which gave us a good opportunity to stand out. We were also hearing from clients and prospects who were struggling to find providers who could create content on complex topics like blockchain, NFTs, metaverse, etc. You can’t just wake up and write about blockchain so having clear expertise and an existing understanding of these industries allowed us to quickly get up to speed with new clients and also deliver the quality of content they were looking for.

Not only do you need to identify the one thing you do better than anyone else, but also how can you stand out against those already dominating in that space.

How to Conduct Market Research

When conducting market research for my consulting clients, I start by asking them for the top five competitors (normally, they’ll know this as these are the brands they lose clients to) and also look at the brand’s ranking on page 1 for my client’s core services or products.

I then look at the messaging on their websites and marketing activities to identify how they talk about their company (i.e., how they position themselves) as well as their more general marketing activities. How often do they publish articles, and on what topics? What social media channels are they active on? Who appears to be their main audience?

This light desk research often reveals how they position themselves, where the gaps might be in the market, and how my clients can gain a competitive advantage.

To Niche or Not to Niche

One way to cut through the noise is to focus on specific industries or verticals. Focusing on specific industries allows you to pare down the number of competitors. While there may be many digital agencies, there aren’t many (or as many) specifically targeting the technology industry.

Choosing the right industries to target can often seem like an insurmountable challenge. It might mean needing to part with certain clients that don’t fit within this niche or seem to limit new opportunities by narrowing your focus. However, as the saying goes, “The narrower the focus, the deeper the cut,” and I’ve certainly found this to be true.

Having a niche not only gives you a stronger focus but also allows you to really champion and become known in one industry. It’s much easier to establish your expertise within a specific industry and position yourself as the go-to company.

Focusing on the technology industry has been massively helpful in CopyHouse’s growth. By niching into the technology industry, I was able to direct the budget to the right places and quickly establish our expertise with CMOs and marketing managers at technology brands. It’s allowed us to punch above our weight and attract large clients, like Meta and Klarna, almost from the get-go. It’s shaped everything we do, from who we hire, the systems we use, and most importantly, how we’ve built a brand and what we’ve become known for.

Identify Your Target Industry

Now that we’ve recognized that you don’t sell to everyone, the next step is to identify whom you sell to. One way to do this is to look at who you currently work with or, in other words, where you already have case studies.

It’s sensible to start with industries and audiences where you already have case studies, as building credibility in an entirely new industry is a lot harder and will definitely take longer. However, that’s not to say it’s impossible if you’re building from scratch or really feel it’s essential to pursue a new space.

Start by mapping out the industries of your current clients. Where do you have the most clients? Do these industries have a role to play in your company’s future? Can you leverage your past experiences and customer testimonials to attract more clients in these industries?

With CopyHouse, I saw that we already did a lot of work within the technology industry. Due to the pandemic, our clients in other industries, like travel and recruitment, had been wiped out, which, perhaps fortunately, allowed me to clearly see where we had strong case studies and examples we could leverage to attract more clients within the tech space.

Create a Target List

While it’s always helpful to look at your past experiences and track record, it’s also equally important to look forward by identifying the industries you want to be part of. If you could work with anyone, who would it be and why? In what industries do you see the most growth or potential?

I often recommend that clients start by creating a target list or dream list of brands they’d love to work with and then examining this list for any similarities. Do these brands operate within a similar space? What do they have in common? Do they all operate within a similar geography or industry, or even have a similar need?

This list can also serve for account-based marketing (ABM) research and give you the opportunity to really understand what makes your targeted brands tick. For example, do they cover B2B and B2C industries and are likely to need a provider that does both? Do they work exclusively in the US and need a provider in this market?

You can then use these insights to shape your positioning statement to reflect their perfect solution and some of the key traits they might be looking for. You can also use these more future-focused insights and pair them with your past track record to find your sweet spot and ultimate market position.

CREATING A BASIC POSITIONING STATEMENT

By doing this research and reflection, you ultimately want to get to a position where you can confidently say what you do and for whom. For example, a basic positioning statement might look like the following:

“A global content marketing agency helping build brand awareness for technology companies.”

You want one or two sentences that encompass what you do, for whom, and why. While these statements can take many forms, if you’re stuck, you can use the following formula:

We help X achieve Y by offering X.

YOUR POSITIONING CAN CHANGE OVER TIME, AND AS YOU DO

Many companies are intimidated or overwhelmed by creating a clear positioning statement because they think that once defined, it’ll be set in stone. What if they want or need to pivot later down the line? Wouldn’t this limit their ability to do so?

However, this isn’t entirely true.

While it can certainly be difficult to switch tracks, the level of difficulty will depend on the extent of the changes. Typically speaking, your positioning can, will, and should evolve as your company does.

I often meet companies that haven’t looked at their messaging for years or decades. They may have set their positioning and all the surrounding messaging at the beginning of the company’s establishment and then parked it in a drawer to gather dust. As a result, it no longer fits them and isn’t fit for purpose.

Instead, I recommend continually reviewing your positioning and messaging to ensure that they still reflect your company and your goals.

Take, for example, CopyHouse’s messaging. It’s certainly changed over time—as we’ve adapted who we wanted to target, the markets we operated in, and the services we offered.

When we first created our positioning statement, it read something like, “A copywriting agency for B2B fintech and technology companies”

However, as we grew, we expanded our services to include social media and design, so pivoting away from a copywriting agency to a content marketing agency gave us greater scope.

We also made some mistakes along the way, like including two sectors in our proposition, which meant people naturally thought of us only for fintech. This wasn’t quite right and definitely not the impression we wanted to make, as we’ve always worked across the tech sector.

We also discovered that most of our ideal brands operated in B2B and B2C, so we would naturally want an agency that could offer both. Limiting ourselves to only B2B could make us less attractive to our target audience. That’s why customer research and considering your audience are so important.

Today, our positioning isn’t a million miles away from where we originally started, but it has changed to allow us to attract our ideal clients and refine what we’re known for.

Chapter 2

Identifying Your Audience and Leveraging Emotive Marketing

I’m a strong believer in the power of understanding your audience and using those insights to shape and lead your marketing strategy. All good marketing strategies should start with your audience.

Your audience will determine your overall approach, including how much budget is required, what channels you should be active on, and even what topics you should talk about. It all stems from your audience, as the entire point of marketing is to build relationships and kick-start important conversations.

Without this understanding and perspective, any relationship will be entirely one-sided. This is how and why you meet brands that only talk about how great their product is and the granular features and forget about their audience. Understanding your audience allows you to make better decisions and justify your reasoning.

So, it’s hardly surprising that I always start building a marketing strategy by defining the customer avatars. Without detailed profiles that identify pain points, your marketing will be directionless—like a ship adrift at sea—and you’ll seriously struggle to build brand awareness.

WHY UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCE IS IMPORTANT

“If you’re trying to reach everyone, you’ll reach no one.”

Without a strong understanding of your audience, your messaging will lack a punch and will likely fall on deaf ears. You’ll often see this represented as generic vanilla copy that lacks any emotions, empathy, or strong hooks. Generic copy is like being in a crowded room and saying, “Hey, everyone,” to try to get the crowd’s attention. Nine times out of ten, no one will pay you any attention and will continue with their busy days and schedules.

How often have you walked by the person handing out leaflets on the street? Probably almost every time, as it’s not relevant to you.

However, when you understand your audience, your messaging is personalized and designed to cut through the noise to attract attention. Now, your messaging shifts from being generic to making people sit up and pay attention as they think you’re speaking directly to them. Instead of saying, “Hey, everyone,” you’re suddenly saying, “Hey, man wearing the blue shirt,” and all the men wearing blue shirts will turn around and look at you as if they believe you’re speaking to them.

How often have you been with your child in a store and heard someone say, “Hey, Mom,” and turned around expecting to see your loved one? This is the power of personalized messaging.

When you understand your audience, you can craft messaging that makes them sit up and pay attention. You secure their trust as you show them that you understand them, their challenges, and what’s keeping them awake at night. Since you understand, you can offer them a solution that addresses their unique pain points. Taking the time to understand your audience and then harnessing these insights ultimately allows you to build relationships that foster trust and loyalty and position you as the only brand that can solve their problems.

WHAT ARE BUYER PERSONAS?

Most marketers are familiar with buyer personas in some form. Buyer personas often go by many different names: ICPs (ideal customer personas), customer avatars, customer personas, etc. But ultimately, they all mean essentially the same thing—a detailed profile of your audience and what makes them tick.

In its simplest form, a buyer persona should capture all the information you need to put yourself in your audience’s shoes.

Many marketers build buyer personas by simply looking at the data in their systems and then don’t take it any further. While these insights can be helpful for data segmentation or prospecting, the data from your CRM system won’t tell you enough about the psychological triggers and pain points that make buyer personas useful. After all, knowing the job title, location, or age bracket of your buyer persona isn’t enough to secure their trust and effectively position yourself as a brand that understands them.

Perhaps one of the biggest criticisms of buyer personas is that they’re not helpful and are limited in the insights they offer. When buyer personas aren’t created properly, they’re likely to be ignored and sit in a drawer gathering dust. However, when done properly, they allow you to unlock a new level of empathy and emotions that make your marketing truly effective.

To achieve this, good buyer personas need to go much, much deeper than surface-level demographic information by looking at the paint points and psychological elements that influence how people make decisions. What’s keeping your audience awake at 2 am? What are they worried about? What are they experiencing in the days, weeks, or months leading up to looking for a solution? How can you help them overcome their challenges? And how can you, perhaps more importantly, convert them into customers that use and love your product?

EMOTIVE MARKETING IN B2B

Historically, B2B marketers have struggled to embrace a more emotive approach to marketing. After all, they’re selling to businesses rather than humans, so they shouldn’t need the same level of emotional understanding as B2C marketers, right?