To many businesses, it’s important that they’re seen as carving the way. If audiences perceive a brand as simply following in the footsteps of another brand, why wouldn’t they just give their business to the brand that’s being followed?
However, the image of a pioneering business might be quite different to the reality. While from the outside perspective, it can seem as though these decisions are complete gambles that are being made out of nowhere, there’s often much more thought and calculation behind them than it might seem, which might make it easier for you to logistically plan how you’ll get there yourself.
A Calculated Risk
What’s a calculated risk in this case? If you can identify that all the businesses in your industry are going about something in roughly the same way, you need to ask yourself whether this is something that you truly want to break away from. Doing something different just for the sake of it might not make any sense at all, and it could backfire spectacularly. However, identifying an area that isn’t supported by your competitors, so long as there’s enough consumer interest in that area, gives you a lot of room to debut within it in such a way that allows you to stake your claim on it as your USP.
A Good Defense
In order to get to a point where the unorthodox direction that your brand is taking is one that customers can trust in, you need to build up customer trust in the first place. This is something that is generally earned over a long period of time, and trying to make it happen overnight simply isn’t a reliable way to go about it.
So, how can you handle it in the long-term? While you might want to start with big, loud declarations and pieces of proof about how trustworthy your business is, it might make more sense to focus on how you can accrue a lack of noise. One of the most obvious ways in which you can do this is through a reliable security system, one that allows you to show your audiences how safe they are with your brand. Practically, this could be something fixed, like a managed detection and response system. If we look at the MDR meaning, it’s a system that continuously surveys your defenses for ways that it can be improved.
All About Networking
Behind each of these decisions are information and experts who can help to guide that information. Therefore, networking becomes a crucial aspect of this process. Even if it’s not obvious to the outside world, your business has a lot to gain from consulting experts and bringing in team members who are capable of pushing your business in new directions, even if your brand appears to be as consistent as ever. If you’re trying to push into a whole new direction entirely, for example, such as gamified apps, bringing in a team of software developers is going to make that a much more realistic goal.
