3form’s Digital Strategy to Build Pre-Sale Brand Equity

00:00 – Digital-First Buyers in a Relationship-First Industry
05:15 – What to Build Between First Click and First Call
08:45 – Why Most Digital Tools Fall Short
13:00 – Making Customization Feel Easy and Intuitive
18:00 – Defending Marketing Investment Internally
25:15 – Creating Brand Loyalty Without Relying on the Rep

With more than two decades of marketing experience across multiple industries, Karli Slocum now leads marketing and product strategy at 3form, a materials manufacturer known for innovation, customization, and design-forward brand presence. Under her leadership, 3form has doubled down on architect- and designer-first tools that make product specification intuitive, visual, and connected to sales in meaningful ways.

In architecture and design, relationships still matter. But Karli sees a shift: specifiers have less time and more tools at their disposal. Many want to get 80% of the way through a decision before speaking to a rep—and they expect brands to make that self-service process seamless.

At 3form, that means building immersive online experiences that let users explore finishes, configure hardware, adjust translucency, and visualize products in real environments. It also means removing friction wherever possible. No account walls. No unnecessary steps. Just clarity, creativity, and access.

For Karli, success isn’t just about getting designers to engage on the website. It’s about ensuring sales reps pick up where digital leaves off. That means making sure reps know what the customer viewed, downloaded, and configured—so they don’t have to start the conversation over from scratch.

This is where sales-marketing alignment really matters. When a rep opens a lead and knows exactly what the designer was interested in, it turns a cold lead into a warm one. It moves the relationship forward without repeating the same steps. That saves time, builds trust, and closes more projects.

Karli calls out one of the biggest traps in digital marketing for building materials: investing in beautiful, technically impressive tools that end in dead ends. If your product configurator can’t export a Revit file or support the way specifiers actually work, you’ve lost the opportunity.

3form prioritizes making their tools not just engaging, but actionable. Everything a designer builds online needs to transfer directly into their workflows—without requiring them to ask for help or start from scratch with a rep. That’s what makes digital tools valuable in a sales-led industry.

3form is known for custom work. But that kind of flexibility can be overwhelming if you don’t make it feel approachable. Karli shares how her team is creating new visualization tools that let designers “build the sandwich” with core elements of 3form’s Veria product—playing with color, translucency, pattern, and layer combinations in a way that reflects what’s physically possible.

By showing rather than telling, 3form makes customization feel exciting, not intimidating. It also helps the brand protect its position as a leader in design flexibility, without boxing itself into a “standard-only” perception.

One of the most useful parts of Karli’s approach is how she handles internal buy-in. Instead of pitching big initiatives out of nowhere, she socializes problems and opportunities early. That way, when a proposed campaign or tool finally comes to leadership, they’ve already bought into the strategy behind it.

Her advice to marketers? Don’t assume the data speaks for itself. Build the narrative. Keep the language accessible. Share wins and losses transparently. And bring leadership along for the ride—so they support the next investment instead of resisting it.

In a category built on rep relationships, how do you build loyalty to your brand itself? For Karli, it starts with consistency. She and her team obsess over details—from tone and voice to the correct spelling of 3form (lowercase “f,” no matter what autocorrect says).

Designers trust what they see repeatedly. They remember brands that show up in a consistent, relevant, design-forward way. Even when reps change, the brand presence stays. That’s what keeps designers coming back.

Karli’s advice for manufacturers looking to build stronger brands is clear: don’t rely on a single channel or tactic. Brand awareness takes time, investment, and a consistent presence both online and offline. Trade shows still matter. So does social. So do visualization tools and search optimization and paid ads. It’s not one thing—it’s the combination, done well and done often, that builds equity over time.

You can connect with Karli Slocum on LinkedIn or reach her directly at [email protected]. For a closer look at 3form’s products and tools, visit 3-form.com.

The Smarter Building Materials Marketing podcast helps sales and marketing professionals find better ways to grow leads, sales and outperform the competition. It gives insights, examples and shares stories about how to create a results-driven digital marketing strategy for building products and construction companies of any size. SBMM is co-hosted by Venveo’s Founder, Zach Williams and Venveo’s CEO, Beth PopNikolov.