by Fiona Humberstone on July 23, 2010 · 6 comments
Lisa Cox is a garden designer based in Leatherhead. We’ve been working together for the past three months on her marketing strategy – focusing on getting Lisa plenty of profitable clients to help her achieve her financial goals. We started in May by defining Lisa’s brand strategy and understanding who her most profitable clients would be. This really helped us target our marketing to some very specific groups of people. In June we looked at pricing – how much Lisa should be charging and how she might package up some of her services to make them easier to sell. We also explored a financial plan for the year and created her a set of sales targets. Finally in July we created Lisa’s marketing plan. Using the knowledge we had gained in the first two months we were able to create a really focused and targeted marketing plan that will help Lisa attract more of the profitable clients.
Lisa's current website
Lisa had recently had her brand identity created and was very happy with that but was unsure about her website. We both agreed that whilst the website could do with some tweaks – both in terms of content and design, it wasn’t the most important area to spend her budget on at the moment. It looks good (if a little technical) and there were more pressing issues that needed dealing with, such as the creation of a branded blog and newsletter and the implementation of a direct mail campaign.
Rob has taken much of the look and feel of Lisa’s brand identity and developed it further to bring out more of Lisa’s personality and create something altogether softer and more engaging.
I love the font he’s used which just softens the look and feel. He’s also kept the very structured images but softened them with an inset border which just feels a bit more classy. It should appeal to Lisa’s target market very well! You can see the blog at the top of this post – both newsletter and blog reflect eachother without being exactly the same, which I think is important.
Over the summer Lisa will be running a two stage direct mail campaign. She already has some brochures printed and she’ll be dropping a handwritten note into each of those before posting off to 300 select houses (we’ll be testing two different notes over 50 houses first to see which one pulls the most response). She’ll follow up that campaign with a very focused flyer aimed at encouraging people to book a consultation with her.
I wrote the copy and Rob has created this gorgeous design to really lift the words and bring them to life.
And here’s the back
So what do you think? We have one very happy Lisa, and I’m pretty chuffed with the results myself – even if I do say so myself…
in Blogging, Branding, Case Studies, Graphic Design, In The Studio This Week, Online Marketing
by Fiona Humberstone on July 16, 2010 · 8 comments
We’ve been creating a lot of blogs for people recently, and something I must sound like a broken record on in every briefing meeting is my insistance that bloggers work with a {good} photographer to get a professional headshot. I can’t tell you the difference it makes. Actually I don’t need to tell you the difference. You can see it just from the before and after above. I can’t believe I’m sharing this with you but I’m reminding myself that I’m doing it for the greater good…
Let’s start with the presumption that a good headshot will make you look your most attractive, professional and approachable. By attractive I don’t mean sleazy or sexy or like you’ve just stepped off a boudoir shot. I’m talking about a photograph that strokes your ego and makes you proud. But it also needs to look like you.
Before I met Matt Pereira my headshot was a picture I’d had taken in a studio in Birmingham several years before (see above). I was one of the female entrepreneurs invited to take part in a cover shoot for franchise magazine. They had hired a make up artist and after several hours (I kid you not) primping and preening we were wheeled out into the studio where we were draped over a chaise longue . To get us used to the camera the photographer initially took headshots of us on a bar stool. I looked attractive but nothing like myself. I limped on with this photograph for several years but I had to laugh when I met the lovely Shelly Van Litt from the Elmbridge magazine at an Elmbridge Women In Business event I was speaking at. Shelly said to me “I’ve been looking at your website today, I wanted to meet you. You look nothing like your photo! I wouldn’t have recognised you if you hadn’t introduced yourself”. That was me told.
Fortunately a couple of weeks later I had the most gorgeous shots taken by Matt and I’ve never looked back. Like I said, a good photographer will take photos of you that actually look like you. But they’ll be of your best self. He or she will capture the essence of you and present you as someone people want to get to know. A good social media photograph has got to be engaging and approachable. And so that means eyes to camera, smiling and saving those sexy pouts for the boudoir shoots.
And a good headshot isn’t just about helping you appear more engaging in your social media profile. It’ll also help your website and blog appear more attractive. Let me show you how. This post has been utterly inspired by a blog we created for Sam Jones (herself a fantastic photographer) for her Home Truths blog. I loved the makeover Rob worked up for Sam, but was blown away when I realised she’d changed her photo. Here was the blog with the old photo…
And here’s the new photograph. Personally I think there’s a dramatic difference between the two, and all Sam has done is changed the photograph!
Donna Pourtyemour of Cobham Pilates is so sold on the benefits of having great headshots that she insists that all new staff have a professionally taken headshot. This shows consistency on her website and ensures that all members of staff come across professionally. Something Donna has found is that by having her website revamped she’s been able to attract world class teachers to her studio and her business is now expanding at a rate of knots. I have no doubt that the professional and engaging photographs (along with the gorgeous new branding and design of course!) have a lot to do with this…
So next time you think you’ll just upload that holiday snap from two years ago, think again. Find a great photographer and get some professional headshots done. It will pay dividends.
Tagged as:
cobham pilates,
home truths,
matt pereira,
photography,
sam jones
tagged as cobham pilates, home truths, matt pereira, photography, sam jones in Blogging, Graphic Design, Marketing, Online Marketing
