You’ve created something that breaks the unspoken rules of your industry. The kind of solution that makes people realize they’ve been doing things the hard way for no good reason.

So why would you hire a marketing agency for disruptor brands that uses the same tired playbook they’d use for selling soap or software?

Here’s the disconnect that kills most innovative brands: traditional marketing agencies are built for traditional businesses. They’re designed to help brands compete in existing markets, not create entirely new ones. They know how to make you 10% better than your competitors, but they have no clue how to help you explain why your entire category needs to be reimagined.

If you’re tired of agencies that want to dim your distinctiveness to fit their cookie-cutter processes, this guide will show you what a marketing agency for disruptor brands looks like—and why it’s nothing like what you’ve been pitched before.

Why most agencies want to turn your revolution into a renovation

Most marketing agencies treat every client like they’re selling variations of the same thing. They’ve got their playbook, their “proven processes,” and their one-size-fits-all approach that worked for their last fifty clients. The problem? None of those clients were trying to create a new category or challenge fundamental assumptions about how things should work.

They’re focused on features when they should be sparking movements

Traditional agencies love to focus on product specifications because it’s easy. They can make bulleted lists of what your product does, create comparison charts against competitors, and build campaigns around “faster, cheaper, better.” But when you’re disrupting a market, leading with features is like trying to explain the internet by comparing it to a really fast fax machine. It falls flat every time.

Take Peloton’s early marketing. They could have positioned themselves as “a high-tech exercise bike with a screen.” Instead, they sold transformation: “Join a fitness community that fits your schedule.” They weren’t competing with other exercise equipment—they were creating a new category where fitness, technology, and community intersected. Their marketing focused on the feeling of being part of something bigger, not the specifications of their hardware.

The best marketing agencies for startups understand that disruptor brands aren’t selling products—they’re selling new ways of thinking. They don’t help you list features; they help you articulate the transformation you’re making possible.

They worship at the altar of “best practices”

Walk into most agency pitches and you’ll hear the same marketing mantras repeated like gospel: “Post three times a week on every platform for maximum visibility. Run brand awareness ads to build recognition. Send weekly newsletters to stay top of mind. Blog consistently for SEO. Be everywhere all the time.”

These agencies are so committed to what worked yesterday that they can’t see what’s possible tomorrow. They’re risk-averse to the point of being innovation-averse, which is exactly what you don’t need when you’re trying to do something that’s never been done.

They’re sprinting to tactics while you need strategy

Most agencies want to jump straight to the fun stuff without doing the boring foundational work. And it’s killing their chances of succeeding. They’ll start running ads before your messaging is clear, launch social media campaigns before your positioning is solid, and measure vanity metrics instead of the numbers that drive real growth.

They’re so focused on keeping the client acquisition cost low that they miss the middle of the funnel entirely—which is where most disruptor brands lose potential customers. For category creators, the middle is where the magic happens: it’s where confusion turns into understanding, skepticism turns into trust, and “interesting” becomes “I need this.” As our CEO always says, “When you have an email, you have an opportunity.” But traditional agencies treat email capture as the finish line instead of the starting line for building relationships with people who need time to understand why your approach is better.

What happens when agencies actually understand challenger brand marketing

Your brand strategy agency should look completely different when you’re creating a category instead of competing in one. 

What you need from a marketing partner who gets what you’re building:

They pivot with you, not against you

When you’re first to market, you’re going to learn things about your customers and your positioning that nobody saw coming. You need a marketing agency for disruptor brands specifically. One that can adjust messaging and strategy as your market understanding evolves, not one that’s locked into a six-month campaign they refuse to change.

Traditional agencies hate pivots because it messes up their workflows. The best marketing agencies for startups embrace pivots because that’s how breakthrough brands find their footing.

They do the homework nobody else wants to do

Before any ads run or content gets created, you need foundational work that most agencies skip entirely. This means extensive market research (we’re talking 40+ pages of customized findings) to understand not just who your customers are, but why they make the decisions they make. It means customer analysis to uncover the emotional and practical triggers that would make someone choose your disruptive approach over the status quo.

Most founders are way too close to their product to see what customers see. They know their innovation is brilliant and world-changing, but they’re confused when conversion rates stay low. Usually, the problem isn’t the product—it’s that they’re either making it too complicated to understand how to buy, over-explaining the innovation instead of the outcome, or retreating to familiar messaging when their disruptive approach feels too risky. 

A great disruptor agency will help you hit the ground running with your approach to things so you can stand out as the obvious choice, not fade into the sea of sameness. They also help you get the customer perspective you can’t see from inside your own vision.

They translate new ideas into “I need this right now”

Your biggest challenge isn’t getting attention—it’s helping people understand what you do and why it matters in under ten seconds. Challenger brand marketing is about taking complex innovations and making them feel obvious and necessary.

This requires building compelling stories around transformation, not just listing what your product does. People need to see themselves in your “after” picture before they care about your technology, methodology, or proprietary process.

Pashion Footwear cracked the code on women’s daily shoe dilemma. Every woman knows the ritual: start the day in heels for that polished look, then spend hours dreaming of flats. Pashion saw this universal pain point and built their entire brand around one transformative promise—shoes that convert from heels to flats in seconds.

Their marketing doesn’t waste time explaining the mechanics. Instead, they lead with the emotional payoff: “Women can do it all. Now their shoes can too.” This isn’t about innovative design or convertible technology (although their shoes have plenty of each)—it’s about freedom. The freedom to look professional in a morning meeting and comfortable on the evening commute, without carrying an extra pair of shoes or compromising your style.

By positioning themselves as the solution to a problem every working woman has lived, Pashion turned a simple product innovation into a lifestyle upgrade. They didn’t disrupt footwear through better materials or manufacturing—they disrupted it by understanding that versatility isn’t a nice-to-have feature, it’s the missing piece of modern women’s wardrobes. And their marketing agency didn’t try to force them into a mold, they knew their brilliance lay in stepping out of it.

Building trust before building urgency

When someone has never heard of your category, starting with “buy now” energy feels pushy and confusing. The best marketing agencies for startups always understand that disruptor brands need to educate and inspire before they can convert. Remember: people love to buy but they hate being sold to. It’s one of the biggest paradoxes in marketing.

Airbnb mastered this approach in their early days. They weren’t just asking people to book accommodations—they were asking them to trust strangers with their safety and comfort. Rather than leading with price comparisons or feature lists, they built trust through storytelling: showcasing real hosts, authentic experiences, and the human connections that made staying in someone’s home feel like discovery rather than risk. They had to transform “staying with strangers” from scary to exciting before anyone would consider booking.

To strike this balance, lead with stories that help people recognize problems they didn’t know they had, or see possibilities they hadn’t considered. The psychology behind effective marketing is about building emotional resonance alongside logical appeal—helping people feel understood before asking them to make a decision.

Amplifying your unconventional voice instead of sanitizing it

Most disruptor brands are founder-led, which means the founder’s vision and values are inseparable from the brand’s identity. Traditional agencies often try to “professionalize” this authentic voice, smoothing out the edges that make founders compelling in the first place.

Challenger brand marketing works with leadership vision, not against it. Instead of asking founders to sound like everyone else, the right agency helps amplify what makes their perspective unique and necessary.

What happens when challenger brand marketing gets it right

When Reframe first came to us, they had the classic disruptor problem: getting people to choose their THC beverage over the alcohol they’d been reaching for their entire adult lives. Their email list was essentially dormant—they were sending the occasional post-purchase email and calling it a day, which meant thousands of potential customers were hearing crickets instead of reasons to keep choosing something new.

Here’s what traditional agencies would have done: thrown together some generic “lifestyle” content, blasted weekly newsletters about company updates, and called it engagement. Instead, we treated their email list like what it actually was—a direct line to people who were already curious enough about rethinking their relationship with alcohol to try something completely new.

We built messaging that met people where they were in their journey from alcohol-curious to THC-confident. Within weeks, their dormant list became a revenue powerhouse:

Campaigns drove over 2x ROI on send costs because we stopped talking about features and started talking about transformation. Automated flows became the backbone of revenue, with the Welcome sequence accounting for nearly 70% of automated sales in August—turns out when you help people understand why they need to “rethink their drink,” they actually do it. The Abandoned Cart flow converted at 7x revenue per recipient compared to the average campaign, proving that the right message at the right moment beats generic urgency every time. The list itself exploded, growing 49% in one month while high-value customers jumped 35%.

The difference wasn’t better subject lines or prettier designs (although they got those too)—it was understanding that Reframe’s customers weren’t just buying a beverage, they were buying permission to choose something different. And once we started speaking to that deeper motivation, everything else fell into place.

The questions that separate posers from pros

Not every agency that claims to work with startups understands challenger brand marketing. Here are the questions to ask and red flags to watch for:

Questions that reveal their approach:

• “How do you help brands explain something that’s never existed before?”
• “What’s your process for developing messaging when there are no direct competitors?”
• “How do you measure success for brands that are creating new categories?”

Red flags that scream traditional thinking:

• They have a set-in-stone process they use for every client
• They want to start with tactics before understanding your positioning
• Their case studies focus on awareness metrics instead of business growth
• They jump right into content planning without doing extensive industry research first
• They don’t ask questions and instead assume they know your business 

What to look for in agency-brand fit:

• Experience with category-creating brands, not just fast-growing ones
• A strategy-first approach that emphasizes foundational work
• Willingness to evolve and adjust as your market understanding develops
• Focus on business outcomes, not just marketing metrics

The best marketing agencies for startups will spend more time asking questions about your vision and market than pitching you their services. They’ll want to understand what you’re building before they tell you how to market it.

Your brand breaks the mold—your agency should too

If you’re creating something that challenges how an entire industry operates, you need a marketing agency that understands the unique challenges and opportunities of being first.

Traditional agencies will try to make you fit their processes. The right agency will build processes that fit your vision.

If your brand breaks the mold, your agency should too. Learn more about our approach to challenger brand marketing and how we help disruptor brands turn industry outsiders into category leaders by reaching out here.