"Narrow your focus."

"Go niche or go home."

Sounds familiar, right? Every startup founder hears these mantras. And yes, carving out a clear niche is crucial to pulling in clients and growing your business, especially when you're not swimming in resources. But when it comes to branding, especially if you have multiple audiences, that simple advice isn’t so simple anymore.

Should you consider several audiences or just focus on one?

This dilemma is commonplace across the startup landscape: think about marketplaces that bridge supply and demand like Airbnb or Amazon, or SaaS companies like Dropbox and Google Apps that grow from B2C into B2B markets with a freemium model. It’s also the case for consumer brands that evolve to cater to diverse segments within a broad audience, each segment having unique demographics, values, and lifestyles, and those that target several geographies each with their own languages and cultural codes.

We faced this very challenge with a recent project for Commune Energy, a startup dedicated to bringing renewable energy to rural and depopulated areas. Despite a lot of funding in the green sector, many initiatives hit a wall due to local resistance. Commune Energy solves this bottleneck by making sure local communities are involved from the start and play an active role rather than just being passive recipients of the projects.

From the project's outset, Louis, the founder, brought up the challenge of connecting with two completely different groups: the 'white collar' world of investors and the 'blue collar' rural communities.

Our advice: focus.

If you’ve been reading us, you know that we like to keep things simple. It’s tempting to think that reaching out to everyone will boost your growth, but experience tells us otherwise.

Consider this: every customer has their own unique desires and pressures. This is precisely why, particularly for startups with limited resources, trying to cater to everyone isn’t just impractical—it’s downright ineffective.

Here's where you might stumble: a 'universal' message hoping to catch everyone but end up resonating with no one — or, you split your brand into separate entities, each with different messaging, names, and visual identities, a resource-heavy strategy that most startups can't afford.

Be clear on your goals

So how do you navigate this? It starts with a clear understanding of your brand’s primary role. At nowthen, we like to approach branding by concentrating on one main audience initially, treating other potential audiences as secondary. This isn't about disregarding other groups but about strategically advancing where it makes the most impact.

For example, let’s take Commune Energy. The company engages in various activities—offering investment opportunities, business expansion, and job creation—but its main goal is to engage rural communities to discuss potential projects. It became clear that while investors are essential, they didn't need as much convincing as the rural communities who required significant branding efforts to overcome their skepticism.

This focus on rural communities didn't just align with Commune's mission—it clarified our branding strategy and ensured all efforts were pulling in the same direction.

The Commune Energy case

We began by developing two distinct value propositions to clearly articulate the specific challenges and solutions for each audience segment. Recognizing the critical role of rural communities, we directed our branding efforts toward them, conducting an empathy exercise that led us to the concept of ‘community empowerment’.

Our messaging and visual design embody this empowerment, diverging significantly from traditional investor-focused approaches.

We designed a presentation template specifically for community engagement and created a landing page that highlights the benefits for rural communities, such as enhanced energy efficiency, cost savings, and job creation. The structure of this landing page also accommodates future sections for investors, allowing our messaging to expand as needed.

Remember, strategy often involves deciding what not to do. And sometimes the most pivotal part of any branding process is figuring out what to skip. There's no absolute right or wrong in determining your leading audience, but making an intentional decision is vital.

Read Commune Energy's full case study here.