One Tapestry: Increasing Your Brand’s Value through an Interwoven Customer Experience

Marketing, selling and networking online is a huge maze and playground of tools, systems and platforms that you need a decoding map to navigate. Grasping the terrain of the options and possibilities is imperative.

This might be intimidating at first, yet hopefully it becomes inspiring to you around what is possible for building your brand. Before you make any final decisions on your systems and toolset, let’s talk about building your customer’s integrated brand experience.

Awesome brand relationship, high in emotional resonance with customers, is done through three integral layers.
The core inner nucleus of your brand is your brand’s Identity, the brand voice and communication “outbound” is the expression layer, and the interactive relationship “inbound/conversation” is the Experience layer. We call this the Experience Tapestry. Design it well, to up-level your brand’s value, and make more money.

The four distinctive, essential threads to weaving increased value, and therefore higher fees, are simple, strategic and intentional, by design.

Define the experiential roadmap for your ideal customer relationship, throughout the entire, customer courtship. From awareness, interest, education, acquisition, work process, repeat business into customer loyalty, you must put pen to paper and define what is the experience you wish for the target audience to have with you. So lets use an example. If a key Brand Identity definer of your value is that your “quick and efficient”, as well as “proven and professional” you will want to be sure to design that experience of those four characteristics from beginning to end, and throughout all your tools in your toolset.

Decide which tools will allow you to meet those strategic goals, systematically, and experientially. Be sure to draw out the tools needed, the “mouse trap” of all the parts, and see what tools work together well. Keep in mind the cost of “duct-taping” tools that don’t integrate seamlessly. Select tools that are easy to update and customize the imagery and content.

You will always spend more on talent than tools, so choose wisely.
Plan for your ideal experiential journey, even if you think you can’t afford the best tools you dream of, just yet. Craft the ideal customer experience for your target audience. Then break the plan out over four phases:
1) “NOW” 2) NEXT, 3) “SOON” 4) “ULTIMATE” toolset.

You may be surprised how quickly you can evolve through to your ultimate toolset. In fact, tools are very inexpensive relative to talent, so, I say; dream big, and don’t settle. It means the difference between speed of conversion, and the financial difference between profit, and dream profit.

Design the communication assets as an integrated whole. I would ask you to repeat that, out loud, five times, so that you really embrace this concept. Let me tell you why.

Deliver If we are communicating “quick and efficient”, as well as “proven and professional” you will design a visual graphics palette for all things visual, such as your photo style, borders, colors, and cadence. Then, be sure your graphics are of the same expression, same style and congruent across tools, and the nurturing experience, the “courtship”.

Specifically if your look and feel is a fresh pop of mango orange, and dove grey, this would be great to communicate simple, direct, and a nice clean feel. Be sure that all impressions across tools are consistent across the board, or as I say, on-brand.

Bottom Line
What is the ROI for this approach, the return on investment, you ask? Great question.

If you define, decide, design and deliver one interwoven experience across the customer courtship, these things will happen:

1) Brand connection is established faster, relationship is richer and deeper.
2) Trust is instilled faster.
3) Sales convert faster.

Done well, your nurturing process will deliver ready, willing and able, educated buyers, begging to be hired as your client.

They can even get pushy about it! This is a sign of excellence on your part. A sense of urgency to work with you, that it is essential to work with you, now, so they will excel, is what branding, brand experiential design, and conversion is all about.

The final feature, is massive profit. You will need to “sell” and “network” (non-billable activities) less, and deliver services (billable) more.

Best of luck.

Kerri Konik