Why should your board care about brand?

Lindsay Says

Whether or not you use the word, brand is essential to what every board cares most about: sustainable, profitable growth.

Where brand shows up most visibly is in the unit economics of your marketing.

Customer acquisition cost

There comes a point in growth when, without brand, buying your audience becomes simply too expensive.

My client, Inkitt, is building the Disney of the 21st century by using AI to find unknown stories and turn those stories into blockbuster novels and shows. Early on, Inkitt grew its audience through Instagram ads. This worked for a while, but then their customer acquisition costs (CAC) began to rise. Each new customer cost more to acquire than the last, because they were dependent on paid ads with little organic pull. The paid-ad engine had hit its limit, and CAC kept climbing. Once they’d reached around $70M, growth became extremely expensive.

After investing in brand strategy and then brand marketing, Inkitt broke through the $70M ceiling. They could grow profitably again.

Customer lifetime value

Without brand, customer lifetime value (LTV) suffers. When customers have no relationship with your brand, you keep taking them on first dates. First dates are expensive. You're paying to meet someone who doesn't yet know you, trust you, or choose you over anyone else.

Brand turns first dates into relationships. And relationships into loyalty and evangelism. Customers who have a relationship with your brand don't just stay. They also recruit.

After Inkitt began to invest in brand, subscription renewal rates for Inkitt increased ~40%. That's more revenue from existing customers, and more value from every new customer acquired. Each dollar spent on acquisition returns more. The whole business becomes more efficient. Sustainable, profitable growth.

Brand is the relationship with the customer. That relationship is worth investing in, because it compounds over time. Transactions reset to zero.

These are not soft benefits. They show up directly in your unit economics. When you build brand awareness in addition to demand gen, your CAC decreases, your LTV increases, and you sustain growth more profitably.

Make the case in their language. They speak numbers. Brand delivers them.