An inside look at the EnticEdge process…
If you’ve landed here, you’re (hopefully) interested in learning more about EnticEdge and our process towards helping your company share its authentic story and build its competitive edge. If you know anything about us at all, it’s probably that we believe that business strategy and design shouldn’t live in silos. The same people that are advising on your business strategy and helping you in the market with business development (hopefully us), should also be working collaboratively every day with the people (hopefully us, again) working on your visual communications, whether that’s your website, product, social media, or more. Building and maintaining synergy between these two disciplines allows companies to effectively share their stories and build that competitive edge we told you about earlier. So, let’s take a look behind the curtain at what a “typical” client process might look like. (Call us clichéd, but we have to add quotes around “typical” because really, truly, no two clients are alike. Every team works differently with their own intricacies and every project has its own challenges and solutions).
Let’s start at the heart of every company: the team. We like to think of ourselves as an extension of your team––integrated team members who are ready and motivated to chip in at a moment’s notice, give advice when needed, and always hard-working. We think getting to know a company’s team is one of the most important parts of our process. Your team matters. Your company culture, teamwork dynamic, personality, motivations, and challenges are all an essential part of what contributes to your organization’s authentic story. We always seek to get to know the companies and the people we work with, just like if we were team members ourselves.
Moving on from there, we usually like to take stock of where everything is at, using our EnticEdge Cornerpiece™ as guidance. What is the current state of your company’s mission statement? How well do you know your target audience? Do you have clearly set and communicated unique value propositions? How’s your digital presence? Your social media? Your website? What are your strategic goals and motivations? Do your business strategy efforts and your online presence align? How are you communicating that messaging to your target audience? Think of this part like a business strategy and design audit, but more fun than a regular, run-of-the-mill audit (we promise!) and this one comes with next steps. Getting to know your starting point and what you hope to see at the finish line is really important for building market traction and achieving long-term success.
Now that we’re integrated team members and we have a good grasp of your authentic story and your business strategy goals, the real work begins. From here, we execute on our plan to craft and share your authentic company story and build your competitive edge. This can include a number of different projects, including but not limited to the following:
Business Strategy & Market Research
Vett your potential customers and define your marketing persona
Have a clear go-to-market strategy with success tiers outlined
Gain clear, go-to language for all presentations, BD, meetings, and elevator chats
UX Design & Research
Once we’ve refined your authentic story together, we’ll design and build your website, and ensure the strategic language we’ve built together in the Cornerpiece™ is reflected to grab the attention of potential customers
We’ll also make sure you feel like you’re a part of the process. That means keeping a clear list of links and digital assets for easy reference and making sure everyone who needs to be in the know on the website feels empowered and equipped to help maintain it
When it comes to your online presence, especially your website, we always take a user-centered approach. User research, interviews, and usability testing allow us to ensure that your website isn’t just meeting your goals, but seamlessly serves your audience.
Content Strategy
Social media is part of our day-to-day reality, so stake your claim, define your voice, and have us create consistent posts to gain credibility, market recognition, and/or thought leadership opportunities.
Business Development
Managing partnerships
Aiding to align stakeholders
Signing up a pilot for more data
In practice, these services are very seldom linear. A “typical” (there we go, using quotes again, but you get the idea) project might be building a website that aligns with your social media brand, which reinforces the market strategy recommendations we’ve created. Then you need a one-pager designed and written for market BD work, so we’ll pull that together using the language we’ve already all worked on for the website, (which we pulled from the approved Cornerpiece™), but with a voice tailored for the one-page sell sheet specifically. Ready for a pitch deck for a new partnership or the investor deck — let’s go! As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts to what we do just as we’re sure there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to the work that goes on within your company. Keeping business strategy and design in the same house means you don’t lose alignment throughout all that movement, and it makes for an incredibly streamlined and efficient way to work.
We pride ourselves on our ability to always step up to the plate, and hit the goals that we set. That means returning to the mission statement, goals, etc., frequently and with a critical eye. We measure necessary metrics and make sure that our smaller KPIs always ladder up to the big-picture items that we’ve prioritized with our clients. Hopefully you get the idea. Our work with clients is never the same, but it always considers the business strategy and design implications of the project at hand. Keeping these two concepts under the same roof means better alignment, stronger communication (internally and externally), and ultimately more long-term sustainable company growth.
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