Beyond features: why brand is your biggest opportunity to scale your tech business
If you’re operating in the fiercely competitive tech scale-up landscape of today, you’re likely grappling with a myriad of challenges. How to capture the attention of your incredibly busy ideal customers or clients? Where to source much-needed investment? How to attract and retain the right talent to fuel your ongoing innovation? It’s easy to be tempted to lean into product or service functionality as a way to differentiate yourself, assuming it’s the features you offer that will sell your product or service to your prospects. But this narrow focus can fail to connect your solution with your customers goals and ambitions, missing the opportunity to align on values and establish a long-term loyal client base that won’t be swayed by a new gimmick coming to market.
As competition intensifies, the businesses that succeed are those that invest strategically in their brand. Not just a visually appealing and authentic look and feel representative of brand purpose and values, but equally the effective brand storytelling that helps establish emotional resonance by humanising the tech functionality customers often don’t really understand. This article— part of the Purplefish ‘Beyond features: the power of brand in scaling your tech business’ content series, explores the power of creating narratives that are not only memorable, but connect authentically with your target audience to achieve sustainable growth by standing out from the crowd.
Creating connection with a humanised tech brand
Tech brands that choose to connect with humanised brand storytelling make more meaningful and long-lasting connections with customers who understand why the business exists, what it stands for, and, most importantly, who it serves.
Your customers don’t buy features—they’re looking for solutions to their real-world challenges. Equally, purchasing decisions are being made more frequently based on shared values. By showcasing the human side of your tech— be that your leaders, your engineers, or particularly your customers — you transform sterile functionality into relatable, human stories. This emotional bridge fosters trust, loyalty, and genuine differentiation.
Health tech unicorn Cera featured at London Tech Week this year. They excelled by positioning their story around patient care—not just remote monitoring powered by AI. Founder Mahiben Maruthappu’s personal journey in healthcare added authenticity, transforming Cera’s brand into one that’s trusted by users and investors alike. The narrative of care resonates far deeper than any technical specification alone.
Bringing your brand storytelling to live through effective PR
Want to grow 30% faster than your competitors?
The power of brand isn’t anecdotal—it’s evidenced clearly in market research. A 2024 McKinsey study found that tech companies prioritising meaningful and differentiated brand strategies experienced growth rates nearly 30% higher than those that focus purely on product features. Further reinforcing this, Deloitte’s 2024 Brand Impact Report showed that brands achieving emotional resonance with customers not only experience loyalty rates around 25% above average but also benefit from more stable revenue streams.
In a fiercely competitive tech scale-up landscape where products can be replicated quickly, brand emerges as your sustainable competitive advantage. A well-constructed brand narrative and messaging can be communicated clearly and concisely through well-planned PR activity, ensuring connection with your audience through various touchpoints across the media, digital channels and events. It moves beyond communicating what your product does and clearly conveys who your brand serves, why your business matters, and how you uniquely address your customers’ challenges and values. In practice, this means clearly communicating what makes your solution not just different, but uniquely valuable in addressing your customers’ specific challenges in a way that engenders trust and connection.
Brand highlight: What3words (B2C/B2B)
Location-tech business, What3words, transformed complex geospatial technology into a brand narrative centred around human impact, using targeted PR storytelling to amplify their message. Rather than focusing exclusively on the accuracy and precision of their solution, their brand stories highlighted personal experiences—such as improving emergency responses, streamlining logistics for businesses, and supporting humanitarian missions. This relatable approach drove emotional connection, significant media coverage, and ultimately clear market differentiation across both consumer and business audiences.
Payments platform Paddle are a great B2B example of effective brand storytelling to differentiate a homongenous product. Competing in a highly crowded technical market, Paddle leverage PR storytelling to humanise its solution, spotlighting its founders’ entrepreneurial journey and sharing transparent customer success stories. By articulating authentic, relatable narratives around reducing complexity for SaaS companies, Paddle successfully established emotional resonance, fostered trust, and effectively positioned itself as the empathetic partner in a market dominated by impersonal, functionality-focused alternatives.
Three steps to kick start your brand story
Understanding the strategic potential of brand storytelling is only valuable if you take action. The good news is, there are some quick wins you can embrace right now to begin positioning your brand strategically, capturing market attention, and delivering real business outcomes.
Step 1: define your authentic brand story
Start by clearly articulating your purpose and values. Identify why your company exists beyond just selling your product or service or the features you offer. Think about what genuinely motivates your team and excites your best customers. This can help form the core narrative from which all future brand communications will flow.
Purplefish can help with this, get in touch to book a brand exploration workshop.
Step 2: prioritise brand storytelling in your PR
Consider how human-led stories can showcase your purpose, values, people, and customer experiences more effectively. Plan out the opportunities to amplify these narratives through all the channels you have available – should that be thought leadership articles, founder media interviews and podcasts, customer case studies, and targeted media outreach.
Step 3: audit your current brand positioning
Conduct an honest audit of your current communications, looking at your website, social media, and existing marketing materials. Do they clearly articulate your brand story, values, and emotional impact? Is it clear the value you bring that stands you apart? Adjust your messaging to reflect your newly defined narrative, ensuring consistency and clarity across all channels.
Need help to get started?
We are offering free brand and PR audits throughout August, providing a summary report of your opportunities, along with recommended brand and PR activation roadmap.
Book a brand consultation today with our managing director.
Interested to hear more about the power of brand in fuelling your growth? Keep connected for more insights on creating connection by humanising your tech brand, creating stand out for investors, and how to use your brand to attract and retain the people you need to scale your business.
