Is Substack Right for Your Brand? Here's How to Tell

The short answer to whether your brand should be on Substack is probably not. The slightly longer answer is that Substack works brilliantly for a small subset of brands willing to commit real editorial resources to creating genuinely valuable long-form content. For everyone else, it becomes another underperforming channel draining budget and attention.

Substack is thriving, growing its subscriber base by over 25% in just six months to reach 50 million active subscriptions. The platform works incredibly well for individual writers, journalists and creators who've built direct relationships with engaged audiences. The problem is that what works for people doesn't automatically work for brands.

Substack is explicitly designed for high-quality editorial content, not conventional marketing. When brands show up treating Substack like email marketing or another content distribution channel, readers can tell (and feel it) immediately.

What is Substack (And Why Brands Are Curious)

Substack launched in 2017 as a newsletter platform helping writers monetize their work outside traditional media structures. What started as a niche tool for independent journalists has evolved into a hybrid newsletter, microblog and community platform where creators publish everything from cultural commentary to investigative journalism to niche expertise.

The platform now hosts 50 million active subscriptions, including 5 million paid subscriptions. Notable writers include Margaret Atwood, Pamela Anderson and Lena Dunham alongside thousands of journalists and cultural commentators building businesses that earn six figures annually from subscriber revenue.

Brands are noticing this growth for good reason. Social media algorithms increasingly prioritize discovery over community, making it harder for brands to maintain direct relationships with their audiences. Meanwhile, consumers are actively seeking out long-form content. According to Sprout Social, 41% of global social users plan to spend more time on Substack, rising to 52% for Gen Z and 53% for Millennials.

Brands see writers building loyal audiences and generating revenue through subscriptions and wonder if they can replicate that success. But Substack isn't just another distribution platform for existing marketing content; it’s a completely different content model requiring different resources, different expertise and different expectations about what success looks like.

Why Most Brands Shouldn't Launch a Substack

The fundamental problem is that Substack is built for people, not brands. The entire platform architecture, audience expectations and content ecosystem revolve around individual voices with authentic perspectives.

Christina Loff, Substack's head of lifestyle partnerships, is direct about this. The platform looks for "the most important, influential voices" and explicitly centers individual perspectives. People trust people more than brands, and Substack's audience has chosen the platform specifically because it offers direct access to individual writers they value.

Most brands want to use Substack to build awareness, drive conversions or distribute content that serves business objectives. Substack's audience wants insider knowledge, authentic perspectives and content that provides genuine value independent of commercial intent. These motivations rarely align.

The resource requirements compound the problem. As Nikita Walia, Strategy Director at U.N.N.A.M.E.D., puts it: "This feels like the second coming of brands launching blogs in the 2010s to chase the fashion blogger wave. Same impulse, different format."

Writing consistently at the level Substack audiences expect takes significant effort. Rose Anderson, brand marketing director at Alex Mill, explained to Rachel Karten at Link in Bio: "I do think we'd have to hire a full-time writer if we wanted to truly show up and grow. It's reminding me of the start of the TikTok era when all of our bosses were like, 'Can you just do it?' It isn't so simple."

Most brands already struggle to keep existing channels sharp. Adding Substack means committing to yet another platform with high expectations and no guarantee of returns. Substack offers limited analytics, no user demographics and success metrics that look more like "how much fun are we having" than traditional marketing KPIs.

For brands without dedicated editorial teams, authentic founder voices or genuinely unique insider perspectives to share, Substack just becomes expensive theater.

The Brands Making Substack Work

A small number of brands have found genuine success on Substack, but they share specific characteristics that explain why it works for them.

Tory Burch's What Should I Wear? exemplifies the editorial approach that succeeds. With over 4,000 subscribers, the newsletter functions as the next-generation iteration of Tory Daily, the blog they launched in 2009. Critically, Tory Burch staffed the Substack with former fashion magazine editors and art directors. Founder Tory Burch explained: "Our creative team runs WSIW, including former fashion magazine editors and art directors. A lot of people in the company love to contribute, whether it's by pitching ideas or being featured in a shoot outside the office. WSIW is purely editorial and retains the lo-fi spirit of our original blog."

This isn't a side project managed by their social media coordinator; it's a properly resourced editorial operation run by people with magazine backgrounds who understand how to produce the content Substack audiences expect.

M.M.LaFleur took a different approach by migrating their existing editorial platform, The M Dash, to Substack specifically to leverage community features. With over 80,000 subscribers, the newsletter serves career-focused women with interviews, work advice and brand news. Their head of editorial described it as "a safe, high-quality space, not just another sales pitch." 

The key distinction is they already had an editorial operation. Substack became the platform for existing capability, not an attempt to build new editorial muscle from scratch.

Hinge's No Ordinary Love demonstrates what happens when a brand hires real talent instead of tasking their marketing team with writing. The dating platform partnered with established writers like Roxane Gay and Hunter Harris to share love stories from real couples. The content felt native to Substack because it was written by people who actually understood the platform (and readers responded accordingly).

The founder-led model is quieter but equally effective. Dianna Cohen of Crown Affair writes Take Your Time, a newsletter covering wellness, reflection and personal growth with little direct mention of her brand. Melanie Masarin of Ghia does something similar with Night Shade. Neither reads as marketing. Both build the kind of intimate founder connection that makes readers feel invested in the brand before they've bought a single product.

The pattern across successful brand Substacks is consistent: they either staff it like a media company, leverage authentic founder voices or hire established writers who already understand the platform. They treat editorial quality as non-negotiable and accept that direct ROI might not materialize the way it does with performance marketing.

What Substack's Audience Really Wants

Understanding what performs well on Substack requires recognizing that the platform serves a fundamentally different audience need than social media or traditional email marketing.

Substack readers choose to subscribe because they want depth over breadth, expertise over entertainment and authentic perspectives over polished brand messaging. They're opting into long-form content in an era of endless scrolling, which signals they value substance and are willing to invest time reading.

The content that succeeds provides insider knowledge, behind-the-scenes perspectives or expert analysis readers can't get elsewhere. Loftie's Little Book of Sleep examines the cultural history and significance of sleep with dispatches from multiple writers covering topics like the history of the pillow and depictions of beds in art. This works because it elevates the lifestyle around their product without being promotional.

The RealReal's The RealGirl takes a different approach, writing from the perspective of an anonymous RealReal-obsessed fashionista. Instead of brand messaging, readers get the authentic voice of someone who genuinely loves fashion resale. The newsletter embodies their ideal customer rather than pitching products.

What doesn't work is content that feels like it belongs in a marketing email. Product announcements, discount codes and sales pushes violate both platform guidelines and audience expectations. Readers can access that content anywhere. They subscribe to Substacks specifically because they're opting out of conventional marketing in favor of more substantive engagement.

The best brand Substacks function more like media publications than marketing channels. They publish on consistent schedules, maintain editorial standards, develop distinct voices and treat reader engagement as the primary metric rather than conversion rates.

Questions to Ask Before Launching a Brand Substack

If you're still considering launching a Substack despite the challenges, these questions help clarify whether it makes sense for your specific situation.

Do You Have a Founder or Executive Who Genuinely Enjoys Writing and Will Commit to Consistency?

Founder-led Substacks work when the founder is interesting, has unique perspectives worth reading and will actually show up week after week. If your founder hates writing or won't prioritize it, don't force it.

Can You Staff This Like a Media Company with Dedicated Editorial Resources?

‍Successful brand Substacks require former journalists, magazine editors or professional writers who understand editorial content. Your social media team already managing five platforms can't just add Substack to their workload.

Do You Have Genuinely Unique Insider Knowledge or Perspectives to Share?

‍If your content plan looks like "product updates and company news," readers won't subscribe. You need content that provides real value independent of commercial intent.

Is Your Audience Already on Substack Reading Newsletters in Your Space?

‍If your target customers aren't Substack readers, you're trying to change behavior rather than meet them where they already are. That's significantly harder.

Can You Commit to This For At Least a Year Before Evaluating Performance?

‍Substack audiences grow slowly through word-of-mouth and genuine quality. If you need quick wins or measurable ROI within a quarter, this isn't the right channel.

Are You Prepared for Limited Analytics and Unconventional Success Metrics?

Substack doesn't provide the demographic data or performance metrics that traditional marketing platforms offer. Success looks more like an engaged community than conversion dashboards.

Will You Be Satisfied With a Smaller, Highly Engaged Audience Rather Than Mass Reach?

A successful brand on Substack might have a few thousand subscribers, not hundreds of thousands. If your boss expects numbers that look like social media followers, manage those expectations early.

If you answered no to most of these questions, Substack probably isn't right for your brand. Don’t consider that as a failure; it’s strategic clarity about where to invest limited resources.

What Brands Should Do Instead

For most brands, partnering with existing Substack writers delivers better results than launching your own newsletter. This approach leverages established audiences, proven editorial voices and platform credibility without requiring you to build editorial capability from scratch.

Substack has quietly become one of the most powerful taste-making ecosystems in media. The writers building audiences on the platform are often more influential with specific consumer segments than traditional press. They have direct relationships with engaged readers and trust built over years of consistent publishing.

Alex Mill and Vestiaire Collective are good examples of brands getting this right. Alex Mill partnered with Becky Malinsky of 5 Things You Should Buy for editorial content that reached her loyal fashion audience authentically. Vestiaire Collective worked with writer Erika Veurink of Long Live in a similar way — fashion editorial that felt native to the platform because it was written by someone who already belonged there. Neither felt like a banner ad or a brand takeover. Both felt like a natural extension of the writer's existing point of view.

Most brands dramatically underutilize these partnerships, defaulting to one-off sponsored posts without building deeper relationships. The brands getting this right think in terms of ongoing collaboration, not transactional placements. Instead of one sponsored newsletter, contract with writers across multiple issues over several quarters. This builds genuine association between your brand and the writer's world. When readers see your brand showing up consistently in newsletters they trust, it carries more weight than any single placement ever could.

Pay attention to Substack Notes, the platform's real-time feed where writers share quick thoughts and links. When writers mention your brand or products in Notes, that content reaches algorithmically-distributed audiences; track these mentions like you track any other earned media.

The simplest way to get on a writer's radar is becoming a paid subscriber to their newsletter before you ever pitch them. This signals you've actually read their work, value it and aren't showing up transactionally. Writers notice who supports their work financially.

Build relationships with writers who are genuine fans of your products rather than trying to buy influence with writers who've never mentioned you. Authentic enthusiasm can't be manufactured, and Substack readers — who chose the platform specifically to escape conventional marketing — can tell the difference between paid placement and genuine recommendation.

Find Agencies Who Understand Modern Content Strategy

Whether you decide to launch a Substack or invest in creator partnerships, executing these strategies well requires expertise most internal teams don't have. The brands succeeding on Substack either built internal editorial teams or partnered with agencies that understand the platform's unique dynamics.

Breef connects brands with agencies specializing in content strategy, editorial development and creator partnerships.

Whether you need help deciding if Substack makes sense for your brand, building an editorial operation from scratch or developing creator partnership strategies, our platform matches you with agencies who've done this work before.

Ready to develop a content strategy that fits your brand? Book a demo call with Breef and connect with agencies who understand the difference between jumping on trends and building sustainable content operations.