Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs

Case studies featured at the Inspiring Women Collaborative Cafe

Project profile: The Practical Lawyer brand launch
Sally B. VanDenBerg, an Eaton Rapids-based attorney, set out to change the way small practice and solo attorneys do business. Success in business is all about the business skills you have, not the talent that led you to start the business in the first place.

Let's explore Sally's business and how we launched her new initiative.

Solo and small practice attorneys get only a few hours of business instruction in law school. And if they work for another firm, they're often shielded from business inefficiencies by layers of staff. So, The Practical Lawyer emerged. Sally conceived the idea while teaching this coursework at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing. She's expanded it greatly to include everything a solo or small practice attorney needs to know - from finance, to marketing, to office organization and staff management. Sally came to Tria to help her launch The Practical Lawyer. We sat down with her in conversation and talked much as we do with all our clients - about her business goals, her target market, looking to understand what they needed to know and what action that Sally wanted them to take.

Understand your client. Sally has a keen sense of what her clients need by having worked with other firms on improving their business practices. For most clients this means research, and we do a lot of it here at Tria, from large-scale and small-scale surveys, focus groups and more (assisted by survey research and focus group specialists so we can stay objective).

Develop the right message for the market. In Sally's case, we used some direct approaches in our copy: Do you have what it takes to succeed in business?

Develop a dynamic, consistent brand. Tria partner Tina Block developed a fresh look and feel for The Practical Lawyer (including a new logo, stationery package, seminar brochure and banner stand signage), understanding that Sally's market is primarily comprised of young, 30-something attorneys. It doesn't look corporate!

Be consistent. We helped Sally conceptualize what type of marketing she needs to do based on what her market needs to see, and how she intends to sell to that market. Not every type of marketing vehicle works for every client or every initiative. In Sally's case, an innovative brochure goes beyond the usual "seminar brochure," and the at-event banner stand signage gives her more bang for her buck because she can use it to market AND at her seminars.

Sally already had a web site for her business, so we provided the graphics that she needed to make it consistent and cohesive. She didn't need to invest in a new site because hers has the features she needs, and can be expanded to suit her market's needs.

Marketing turns business around
In our second business focus this month, we'll explore how survey research, a web-focused marketing plan and a fresh new design helped Christine Jonson Patterns, an online sewing pattern and fabric business, turn a lackluster winter into a bright spring.

Christine Jonson Patterns (www.cjpatterns.com) is a 15-year old business in Hazel Park (near Detroit). Christine has been a pattern designer her entire life, and has worn nearly every hat as a designer - she owned a wholesale business, a retail store, and now runs an online store. She's no stranger to merchandising, but the impersonality of the web coupled with a lack of control of her web site and web marketing left her feeling disconnected. Further, the deepening recession, and lack of control over her marketing communications left Christine wondering if she should continue.

Prior to our engagement, Christine would send e-mail notices to her incredibly passionate and loyal audience only to announce a sale, and they were infrequent because she was relying on another person to produce them for her.

In our marketing recommendations following a 100-person customer survey, we told Christine that her customers wanted - more than anything - her insight and her ideas to help them sew and be more creative.

Take control! In our last issue, we talked about web site content management and why it makes sense for every client. Cjpatterns.com got a fresh new design and overhaul thanks to Tria's efforts. Now Christine and her staff are back in control of their own web site.

Break free of the discount cycle: Customers will buy without a sale. Give them new products, new ideas and simply remind them that you're there and they'll buy!

We suggested Christine use each newsletter (about every three weeks) to pair up a pattern - maybe one her clients already owned - with a new fabric or provide a variation on the design they could try. Her first attempt at the non-sale e-mail was a resounding success: she sold out of the featured fabric in three days and had one of her best sales weeks ever! A followup e-mail three weeks later featuring another pattern and fabric combo garnered the same result (and I know this personally because Christine called to tell ME the fabric I wanted to buy was sold out)!

Show them how to use your product. In as many ways as you can think of! At our suggestion, Christine revamped her Flickr sample and swatch gallery to give her audience new eye candy regularly. While many people can sew what they see on the envelope jacket, they are technicians, not necessarily design creatives and really merchandising the ideas helps spur sales of related products.

Communicate - and track. We recommended Constant Contact so she could track and review her e-mail and web site statistics (Google analytics) and she discovered some great stats. 58% of her audience opened her e-mail within three hours (even if that was during the workday).

Expand into social media. Christine launched a blog. And she plans videos for how-tos for merchandising her product to audiences miles away from her Hazel Park studio. It's afforded her the feeling that she's connected to her clients. Social media offers a two-way conversation model that is critical for business success today.