In the early days of building a company, focusing all your energy (and budget) on channels that promise fast, trackable results is tempting. Performance marketing metrics like CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), and MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) offer immediate gratification and clear ROI. But in the rush to generate leads, many startups make the massive mistake of ignoring one of their most valuable long-term assets: their brand.
Brand marketing is often treated like a luxury, something to “get to later” after demand gen is humming. However, as industries become more crowded and products become more commoditized, a strong brand is no longer optional. It’s the difference between a business that survives quarter to quarter and one that earns trust, loyalty, and lasting market share.
One of the most overlooked tools in building that brand? Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising. Yes, really.
Why Founders Should Care About Brand (Even If Your CAC Looks Good Right Now)
Let’s be honest: it’s easier to pitch a campaign with numbers attached to every step. Paid search, social ads, and retargeting are easy to spin into tidy dashboards. Unsurprisingly, founders and growth marketing leads gravitate toward channels where ROI feels “provable.”
But digital performance metrics don’t tell the whole story. Attribution is messier than it looks. Digital channels that used to be cheap and efficient are now saturated and expensive. And in many industries, buyers are getting harder to reach (and convert) through digital alone.
Meanwhile, brand equity quietly compounds. A clear, compelling, consistent brand can reduce acquisition costs, speed up sales cycles, and create a sense of familiarity that lowers the psychological friction of trying something new. Customers who recognize you, trust you, or feel an emotional connection to your message are more likely to buy and stick around.
Commoditization Is Coming for You
No matter how innovative your product is today, differentiation won’t last forever. Most categories are converging, whether it’s fintech, SaaS, e-commerce, or AI tools. Features get copied, pricing gets undercut, and go-to-market playbooks look eerily similar across competitors.
That’s where brand becomes your moat.
A brand-first approach helps you rise above price comparisons and feature checklists. It gives people a reason to choose you when all other things are equal. It also enables you to weather the storms of changing algorithms, rising ad costs, and tightening budgets.
The startups that win in the long run are the ones that build familiarity, trust, and resonance, not just traffic.
Why Startups Tend to Ignore Brand (And Why That Needs to Change)
The bias toward performance marketing is deeply ingrained. For the last decade, digital channels have dominated marketing by offering the illusion of perfect attribution. Everyone, from marketers to CFOs, learned to optimize around what could be tracked.
But this over-rotation toward short-termism is showing cracks. Customer acquisition costs are climbing. Digital fatigue is real. Audiences are more skeptical, more distracted, and more likely to tune out ads that feel like ads.
At the same time, brand marketing has evolved. It’s no longer confined to big TV budgets or spray-and-pray billboards. Founders today have access to cost-effective, targeted brand-building tools that didn’t exist a few years ago. Which brings us to…
Rethinking OOH: It’s Not Just for Big Brands Anymore
Out-of-Home advertising–once reserved for massive companies with Super Bowl budgets–is having a quiet renaissance. Startups should pay attention.
Modern OOH is nothing like the static billboards of the past. Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) formats allow you to run campaigns on high-traffic screens in bus shelters, rideshare vehicles, bars, airports, and gyms. You can launch campaigns programmatically, skip expensive print production, and layer in targeting based on location, time of day, or audience behavior.
OOH works especially well as a complement to digital. It adds physical-world validation to digital-first brands. It reinforces messaging through repetition in the real world. And data-driven OOH is an antidote to the ad blindness many consumers have developed online.
Startups using OOH creatively are seeing the impact. In markets where OOH campaigns are live, brands often report spikes in direct search, higher branded traffic, and a stronger connection between online and offline engagement. Even a small, well-placed campaign can punch above its weight.
Yes, You Can Measure Brand (Even If It’s Not Click-Based)
One of the biggest objections to brand marketing is that it’s hard to measure. But there are smart ways to track brand impact beyond vanity metrics:
- Branded search volume: Are more people Googling your name after seeing your campaign?
- Direct traffic: Are site visits increasing in cities where you’re running OOH?
- Social mentions and share of voice: Are you showing up in conversations organically?
- Organic lift: Are you seeing more inbound interest without increasing paid spend?
These signals won’t show up in a click-through report, but they matter. They indicate that your brand is breaking through and that your audience is paying attention.
Making Brand Marketing Work on a Startup Budget
You don’t need a $500K brand campaign to get started. You just need to be intentional.
Some tips for startup founders looking to integrate brand and OOH into their growth mix:
- Start small and local: Pick one market, neighborhood, or customer segment to focus on. Data can help you find the right OOH locations where your audience spends time.
- Use DOOH to test: Digital formats offer flexibility, speed, and budget control.
- Align creative across channels: Your OOH ad and Instagram story should feel like they come from the same company.
- Focus on consistency: Familiarity is built through repetition, not one-off stunts.
- Talk to people who’ve done it: Whether it’s your network or an advisor, learn from brands that have found scrappy ways to build awareness.
The Future Belongs to Brand-Led Startups
At a time when performance marketing is getting harder, customer trust is more valuable than ever. Brand isn’t a soft, abstract concept; it’s a business asset. And it’s one you can start building today.
OOH may not be the obvious choice for a startup trying to stretch every dollar, but it’s a channel that deserves fresh consideration. Not because it replaces your digital strategy but because it complements and amplifies it.
In a crowded market, the best product doesn’t always win. The most memorable brand does.
Greg Wise is a Grit Daily Group contributor and the co-founder and Chief Customer Officer at OneScreen.ai.
