Looking Beyond: Why Cross-Industry Insights Drive True Innovation

As marketers, our first instinct is to focus on competitive analysis. We look at what others in our space are doing, and look for whitespace in which to compete. But there’s more! Your customers aren’t only interacting with your industry. Their expectations are continuously being reshaped by every brand, platform, and service they engage with everyday. Whether it be in their customer experience, their user interfaces, the way they are communicated and sold to, customers are comparing you to others brands, often in completely different parts of their lives -  “if only X (Finance Brand) made it as easy as Y (Digital Retail Brand) to do ABC”.

To truly persuade, engage, and delight today’s buyer, marketers need to look beyond their direct competitors and start looking across industries. At Advanis, our research frequently reveals that the most powerful insights come from breaking out of industry silos.

The E-Commerce Effect on Every Customer Journey
Consumers do not compartmentalize their expectations by sector. They don't forgive a clunky B2B interface just because "that's how the industry works."

We recently worked with a client looking to redesign elements of  their customer journey. Through our focus groups, a striking reality emerged: customers' expectations were heavily dictated by the norms of retail e-commerce. The convenience of "always-on" shopping and overnight free shipping has set a new, universal baseline for service. For our client, the prior industry standard—which required a one-week turnaround and culminated in an in-person appointment—was simply no longer acceptable. Because they took the time to understand the influences of a completely different industry on consumer expectations, they were able to pivot and modernize their UX to meet the *actual* standard of the modern buyer.

Borrowing Brilliance to Break the Mold
True innovation happens when you adapt successful models from entirely different sectors. Recently, Advanis partnered with a banking client to improve the way they priced their business products. If we had only benchmarked against other financial institutions, the result would have been uninspiring.

Instead, we shared observations from telecom services pricing to brainstorm entirely new billing and packaging concepts. We didn't just guess, though—we rigorously tested these lateral concepts through targeted market research. The client appreciated that we didn’t just hand them “me too” solutions copied from other banks. By looking at telecom, they found a fresh, data-backed approach to differentiate their products in a mature market.

The AI Crossover: Blurring the Lines Between Work and Life
The way consumers adopt disruptive technology further proves that professional and personal experiences are deeply intertwined. As artificial intelligence weaves into our daily lives, Advanis has actively investigated the interest, usage, and concerns surrounding AI across a wide variety of contexts.

We examined its role in internet search, shopping, and daily productivity, as well as its impact on the working lives of marketers, IT leaders, and entrepreneurs. Our research revealed that the fears, excitement, and expectations about AI that exist at work extend directly into personal use and shopping habits. For marketers, this means that understanding your buyer’s professional mindset can directly inform how you market to them as consumers—and vice versa. You cannot fully understand your customer's mindset regarding new tech without looking at their life holistically.

Ready to look beyond the status quo?
If you rely solely on industry-specific benchmarks, you risk falling behind the broader curve of consumer expectations. True differentiation requires lateral thinking, backed by rigorous, data-driven market research to validate those bold ideas.

Don't settle for "me too" solutions that merely keep pace with the bank, firm, or store down the street. Partner with Advanis today to uncover out-of-the-box insights, brainstorm cross-industry concepts, and rigorously test them with your target audience. 

Want to learn more? Email Lori Reiser to set up a virtual coffee. I'd love to chat.