Why Outsourcing Your Brand Identity Isn’t as Risky as it Sounds
Brand identity feels personal. If you’ve built your business from scratch it feels like your second skin. Companies live and breathe their brand. So why on earth would you consider outsourcing your brand identity? It’s certainly an issue that can bring conflicting emotions to the surface.
The worst situation is to have warring factions for and against. In that instance the conversation becomes a bit of a no-go area and nothing happens. That’s bad for business in an age when brand identity is a crucial marketing tool.
So here’s five conversation starters we’ve used with companies struggling at an impasse on the subject. Each one invites participants to consider just how risky outsourcing your brand identity is.
1. Are You Brand Identity Experts?
You’ve probably got a great story lurking in your family’s past. It’s probably great material for a film or TV drama. So why isn’t it up there on the silver screen? Most probably because no-one in your family has the screenwriting skills to turn it into the killer film script.
Identity branding is all about taking your company’s story and turning it into killer content that customers will buy into. It’s a specialist skill, and if you don’t have someone in-house with that specialism, it makes sense to buy it in.
2. Is Your Business a Bit Quiet at the Moment?
Most businesses will be quick to assure us that they’re run off their feet. So where will they find the time to plan and manage a brand identity project? You know that decorator down the road whose house hasn’t seen a paintbrush in a decade? Same problem.
Brand identity creation takes time and resources. And the less you know about it, the more time and resources it will gobble up. A brand identity expert will know how to manage the project in the most productive, time efficient way, to arrive at the best outcome.
3. Give me a 60 Second Pitch About Why You’re Brilliant
This is a great exercise which reduces even the most confident business person to a gibbering wreck. Why is it so difficult? Because we all carry around an internal critic who’s very good a reminding us of our faults, but less good at remembering what we excel at.
A brand identity specialist won’t take long to know exactly why your company’s so brilliant. They’ll also be able to tell you why you’re better than any of your competitors. Along the way, you’ll probably find out a few brilliant selling points that you’ve never even thought of promoting.
4. What Would You Charge?
One of the major stumbling blocks to businesses outsourcing their brand identity, is the cost involved. The argument is that doing it in-house would be free, whereas getting in an overpriced specialist will cost a fortune.
To open up a more informed discussion around money, we ask businesses how many hours they’d be willing to commit to an in-house identity branding project. Then we ask for their hourly rate. More often than not, the commercial costing they come up with is far higher than outsourcing.
5. What’s the Worst That Can Happen?
Change is scary. Handing over control is scary. Holding up a mirror is scary. Brand identity pushes a lot of emotional buttons. Fears that stay inside your head tend to get bigger and bigger. Get them out in the open and they rarely survive rational discussion.
It takes courage to ask ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’. But inevitably the responses prove that outsourcing your brand identity isn’t as risky as it sounds.
Outsource Your Marketing Can Help With Your Brand Identity
We know that making decisions around brand identity are difficult, especially if you’ve helped to build the business. Outsource Your Marketing can help by talking through the process with you, and allowing you to explore the pros and cons. We won’t try to influence your decision, but we will give you the benefit of our experience in this area.
