What does it mean to be too close to your own brand, and what can the consequences be? Knowing your brand, intimately from within is incredibly valuable, and in the early days of a business’s life, you know your customer’s viewpoint clearly too.

But as time goes on, and the company grows, keeping hold of that perspective can become increasingly challenging. Especially when other employees become responsible for the company’s direction and communication. Or even more likely, your industry changes and evolves around you, while you are working hard on the day-to-day.

It’s not that you don’t know what’s best for your customer, its simply the age-old adage of a ‘fresh pair of eyes’. It’s one thing knowing your sector and your industry, but a whole separate thing knowing how your customers see and interact with it.

Here are a few examples of how being close to your own brand can have a negative impact on how your business provides for your customers.

1 – LOOKING FROM THE INSIDE OUT 

Sometimes looking out towards your customers from within your company, can give you a slightly biased view. As someone within your company, you know your products and your services incredibly well, and it can be easy to assume everyone else does too. But sometimes, some of the things you might consider basic and obvious are not as apparent to your customers, who have maybe entered this sector for the very first time.

Overloading your offering and communication with jargon can be daunting for a customer, especially if you are a retail company that deals with the general public. But even expert customers such as those in the trade or technical industries can benefit from clear product naming conventions, easy to navigate stores and websites, and consistency of language.

2 – MISSING PARTS OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

As an employee, it’s easy to fall into the trap of looking only at the centre of the business, the retail outlets and the sales, and thereby focusing on doing your best to convert and incentivise customers once they are within this area.

But it’s worth getting into the mindset of someone who doesn’t even know your company exists, and discovering the journey they might take from there, to setting foot inside your doors. What is it about how you communicate through advertising and messaging that will take someone with complete ignorance about your product or service, to wanting to buy it? And what sort of person are they? What do they like to do, where do they like to go?

Answering these questions and ensuring every step along their journey to you is optimised can increase your leads, footfall and customer interest dramatically.

3 – ‘HOW IT’S ALWAYS BEEN’

‘We’ve always done it like this’. ‘It’s always looked like this’. ‘It’s been working for years’. These are the kind of statements we hear a lot as an agency, when suggesting that a business tries something new. And it’s not that they’re wrong.

But by being outside of your business’s habits and having a wider perspective than just one sector or industry, we have seen 101 different strategies that other businesses are trying. Some of those strategies are working and some of them aren’t, and we can help you apply lessons from outside that you might not have even seen or heard of.

It’s easy to assume that everyone thinks and operates the same way in your industry or sector, and even if that’s true that isn’t necessarily a reason to do the same as them! Standing out is a powerful thing, and there might be things to be learned from other sectors that could be applied to your business to help it stand out even more!

4 – HAVING SOME IN-HOUSE CAPABILITY

Sometimes having an in-house creative solution can lead to stale and repetitive creative concepts, messaging and campaigns. By working purely within one business with one standardised approach, in-house creative departments can end up less adventurous and imaginative with possible solutions and strategies.

This goes further by making business leaders think they don’t need to outsource because they have their own in-house department. This ends up creating a vicious cycle of not having fresh eyes on a business practice or campaign for years and years.

It’s almost like having a little in-house talent has a negative effect, because it stops the business from looking outside the office for new ideas and broader perspectives.

Not only that, but an in-house solution will inevitably have a smaller creative skill set than an external agency. This means when you want to try out something truly new, like animation or video, your in-house is likely to not have the setup or skills to do it. This leads to ideas being abandoned purely because they can’t be done by staff on the payroll.

By plugging into an agency now and then, maybe just for a concept phase for a new idea or for a specific skill, the agency can work with your in-house to add an outside perspective to your project and business as whole. The agency will have worked with countless other businesses in a wide variety of sectors, so will have experience and insight far outside the scope of your business. By working with your in-house they can freshen up the whole business’ approach and maybe even add new ideas and strategies that wouldn’t have been thought of before.

Being close to your brand is a good thing. It shows pride, passion and engagement and it should be celebrated. No-one knows your business and your company better than you. But by connecting with a fresh pair of eyes, you can uncover new avenues down which the expertise and passion you have for your business can grow.

Why not think about connecting with Holla today for that next campaign or creative strategy requirement coming up? We might think of something you would never have thought of!