The Reality Behind Startup Success Stories

Starting a new brand is an exciting journey for many that do venture down the path. This journey is something that typically consists of lots of ideas. The ideas that one has about products or services they want to sell are researched and then are put into action… The result of this is a new brand being born.

In the public atmosphere of social media, everyone loves to talk about the excitement and success that their startup brands bring them, but the challenges that come along the path of this journey are seldom spoken about. As both an agency owner and paid media strategist, I can tell you that building a successful brand requires far more effort and mental bandwidth than most people expect, especially if you want a bulletproof operation.

Your brand may be your baby, I know mine is. This is the case for tons of people, so it is normal to get anxious about the operations of things like ads, web development, and creative. This anxiety stems from a fear of the unknown. This fear of the unknown is the natural mental response that I have seen time and time again from founders. This mental strain is the pain that comes with growth.

You should be confident when starting a brand and your confidence should be backed by your effort. The truth is… as a brand owner, you need to mitigate the things that you don't know about so you can put yourself in the best positions to be successful. The way to mitigate what you don't know is by committing to continuous learning. The best way to continuously learn is to find experts to partner with and learn from working with them. This will help alleviate any stress you might have.

Ultimately, your confidence needs to stem from your own mental clarity so you can really trust yourself. You are only going to trust yourself if you commit to continuously learning about the details of how operations work. So when you do have other people working on operations, you can rest assured that you are making a smart decision because you trust yourself.

Now you know you need to find people you can really trust to partner with. The primary necessity of weathering the storm is to partner with people who have weathered storms before (worked in marketing and have helped scale startups).

The truth is… 90% of startups fail. Most new brands drown in the storm. That is a scary number that you don't want to be a part of. The main reason this harsh reality exists is simply that not enough consumers convert. This is because most new brands do not strategize and execute properly. This is often due to startup's not investing in the right talent.

The Hidden Truth About Many Marketing Agencies

Lots of new brands will sign deals with agencies to get started on paid media campaigns. Usually these agencies are not really partners, they are really just service providers. I say this as someone who has had first hand experiences being in environments where this was the case. I have been in situations where I would have liked for the agencies I worked for to be able to do more, but they could not because they did not possess the capabilities to solve all the clients problems and get them results. However, even though this was the case, the agencies would take on anyone who wanted to sign a contract, even if they were not really a qualified candidate.

A lot of the chaos of the storm that startup brands may encounter comes from issues within the inner workings of the agency they choose. Most paid media based agencies that brands outsource marketing operations to are giving them cookie cutter packages of the same services that they do for everyone. So many startups entirely rely on the agencies they contract to achieve performance to the point where they are practically outsourcing the management of their entire business.

Oftentimes these kinds of agencies (which there are very many of) are usually trying their best to sell you as many of their services as possible. They are going to try to tell you everything that you want to hear and they can likely do an excellent job of crafting an explanation as to why their services will be great as new solutions to overcome your obstacles. All great sales people possess the ability to get you to sell yourself on why you should buy from them.

Oftentimes you get this kind of promising conviction from sales people because they simply want to get themselves paid. It is their job to sell. In all honesty you cannot be that mad at them for doing their job. Don't get me wrong, there are sales people who will be honest with you and give you a great assessment. There are lots of great marketing agencies out there that do great work and have great sales people.

Unfortunately, most salespeople are not experts at properly diagnosing brands' areas of improvement and opportunities for growth. They may not have the intention to be dishonest. They can likely convince themselves that their sales pitch is great if they get people to believe in them and are closing deals. They are usually not concerned with what happens after the deal is closed. If the agency does not achieve the brands desired results, it's not their problem because they do not work on the deliverables that they sell. It is very common for a lot of agency sales people to not have any contact with teams that work on deliverables.

When there is 0 contact between sales and marketing teams, that is by design. Many agency owners do not want the marketing people to tell the sales people that a prospective client is not qualified because they need to have X,Y,& Z in place before they start running ads. The goal of this approach for agency owners is to get as much money into their business as possible. This is a very flawed approach that stems from agency owners being short sighted and not really caring much about the people who are fulfilling the contracted work for them.

Salespeople may think it's not their fault that a client gets bad results, (it could absolutely not be) but it totally can be and it is super common for it to be their fault. This is because they are not experts at marketing. They may not even really know much about marketing. As a result of their lack of knowledge or experience actually doing marketing work, they misdiagnose critical issues. This sets deliverables teams up for failure, as they're tasked with driving performance while fundamental problems remain unaddressed.

Typically these sorts of underlying issues are foundational and are outside of the scope of what these deliverables teams are working on. You could have a world class team of A+ players working on media buying, creative, web design, and copy, but if they are put in bad positions with improper expectations set, then it is mostly too steep of an uphill battle for them to get their clients results.

A great example of sales misdiagnosis is a brand getting sold on running paid ads to an average product with no social media posts and no social proof. The vast majority of brands need to invest time into building a strong organic footprint and gain social proof for paid ads to be effective. This is the underlying problem.

When a brand does not have its underlying foundational problems solved, they are not going to have success. Lots of startups put the cart before the horse and get nowhere. They want results right now, but have not invested the time into building up a solid foundation for their brand.

The deliverables team does not have the bandwidth to go out of their way to solve the underlying problems because they have to focus on what they are assigned to work on. They really can only do their best and hope things work out. The result of this is the brand being angry (rightfully so), leaving the agency, going to another agency, and probably still not getting their underlying problems solved.

What True Growth Marketing Actually Looks Like

Again, I am using these examples because I have experience being a team leading employee in an advertising agency setting. I have had first hand experiences seeing these chaotic storms brew with plenty of brands. Taking this into my business, True Growth Labs, there are many times where I find myself saying no to new business because the brand is simply not ready for a higher level of scale and operational focus. True growth marketers are going to tell you the good and the bad.

True growth marketers do not care about getting a quick buck from you because they are already making great money from doing great work for brands. Closing a sale is the end game for the typical agency contract, but it is the very beginning for a true growth marketer. This is because true growth marketers need to be invested in the quality of their work and the results they get are crucial to maintaining positive relationships with their clients.

The truth is… you need to partner with people who have expert opinions on marketing and are not just trying to flatter you so they can sell you on how successful you can be working with them. Growth marketers that are honest and care about their work will be the light in the fogginess of the waters that you are sailing into.

Most startup brands are going to sail through some really rough waters when they are first getting started. It is inevitable. If you are a startup founder, you want to gain as much knowledge as you can and talk to someone who is going to help you build a boat with the best tools possible to help you navigate the hyper competitive, stormy waters that you are sailing into. You want to make sure that when you get into the choppy, uncharted waters, you feel confident that you'll be smooth sailing toward the success that you envision.