Creative: Part 1. Keep Your Brand Identity Across Customer Touchpoints

As a multichannel marketer, you touch your customers in many ways. In a given year, they’ll see your catalog, e-mails, postcards, package inserts, Web site and even store displays. Across these varied media, what should stay the same? What should be different?

Lois Boyle, president of Mission, Kan.-based catalog consultancy J. Schmid& Associates, offers the following three tips on maintaining brand identity across multiple customer touchpoints.

1. Vary your message, not your voice. Customers will get used to the way you speak to them, notes Boyle. If the same person isn’t responsible for writing copy for every customer touchpoint, keep samples of your copy voice on handfor easy retrieval, says Boyle. The message, however, should change with the goal of the piece. Reaching out to new prospects? Tell them what’s unique about your brand, she notes. Reactivating old customers? Let them know you miss them by saying so and offering a promotion, she notes.

2. Keep the look consistent. “Design elements need to be the same from effort to effort,” say Boyle. Maintaining the same color palette, use of company logo and slogan, and product presentation will help your customers recognize you, she notes. Which of those elements takes focus will depend on the type of effort. “A direct mail piece is very offer- and copy-driven, as opposed to a catalog, which is very visually driven,” Boyle points out.

3. Establish the role of a brand zealot. This person would see each piece before it reaches customers and judge if it’s representative of the brand.”Smaller companies do this well, because there’s just one person in charge of everything from catalog mailings to e-mail campaigns. The larger the company, the harder it is to monitor,” says Boyle. Whether it’s a single individual or small committee, a brand zealot should be in charge of maintaining that image, she notes.

Boyle can be reached at (913) 236-8988.