Notes

How Brand Positioning Transformed a Counselling Business into a Market Leader
Standing Out from the Crowd: A Case Study on TalkOnline Counselling When you?re a small business owner, one of the primary problems you?ll face is figuring out how to differentiate your business from the competition.
It might not sound that tough, but the truth is, no matter what level of competition you?re coping with, making a name for the business and building awareness of your brand could be incredibly difficult.

And for businesses operating in oversaturated industries, it can feel just like an impossible task.

If you?re attempting to figure all this stuff out for yourself, you?ve probably got a million and something questions beating on the back of one's skull, a shortage of answers, and a boatload of worries that just won?t appear to go away.

But by the end of your day, there?s really no reason to worry, if you understand how to properly position your brand.

Because in the event that you?ve got the right brand positioning, it is possible to build familiarity, gain trust, and fully differentiate yourself from your own competitors, even yet in an oversaturated industry.

So, if you?re wondering how to differentiate your business, and you?d prefer to see an example of how exactly we?ve helped one of our clients to accomplish just that, then keep reading.

A Dilemma Late last year, registered clinical counsellor, Josipa Katinic, asked us to accomplish a whole rebrand of her business ? an online therapy service called TalkOnline Counselling.

When Josipa found us, she was coping with two very disruptive issues: 1) She had too many clients on her plate and didn?t want any more, and 2) The counsellors she?d hired weren?t getting enough clients.

The idea was for Josipa to eventually have her employees undertake most of TalkOnline Counselling?s clients, so she can concentrate on getting her PhD.

This made me think about brand positioning in a significant unique way.

I mean, typically, brand positioning refers to the way you?re positioning your brand with regards to competitors in your industry, but I never considered that it could also involve the way each member of a business is positioned within the brand itself.

Not sure why? Let me offer you a bit of background.

Initially, Josipa attemptedto fix this issue by simply raising her price, as she felt it would deter people from arriving at her, and help persuade them to work with one of her employees instead.

But this change actually finished up getting the opposite effect, since it positioned Josipa as the best therapist TalkOnline provides. So we had to come up with some other suggestions to properly position Josipa within her brand.

We did this by first ensuring each counsellor has a highly in-depth bio listing all their specialties, modalities, and certifications, just like Josipa?s, that was considerably lengthier than those of her employees and positioned her as someone with a lot more experience.

Then we also added an email to her bio, and on her booking service, rendering it clear she?s unavailable to defend myself against any new clients.

Subsequently, Josipa and the counsellors on her behalf team are now much better positioned within her brand, as the playing field between her and another counsellors has been leveled.

So, now that we?ve discussed how we helped Josipa to properly position the many members of her organization, let?s talk about how we?ve positioned TalkOnline Counselling in relation to its competitors.

READ: How exactly to Determine YOUR SPECIFIC Brand Positioning

Understanding the partnership between differentiation and brand positioning is all well and good.

But if you?re not sure the method that you want to position your brand, you then?re still going to have to go back to the drawing board.

So, if you?re wondering how to differentiate your business, and you want to find out about how to determine your unique brand positioning, then this video is for you personally.

It dives deep into brand positioning, giving you what you ought to know to do brand and competitor analyses, identify why is your brand unique, and more.

Keep reading on our website.

Logo We first examined her logo. Not merely did the name ought to be changed, but the overall design needed a brand new, new turn to better reflect her brand positioning.

The old logo was made up of elements that did not accurately depict the professional brand image Josipa was after, and most importantly, it did nothing to represent TalkOnline?s brand values.

Josipa was also not just a fan of her old website?s colour pallette that was predicated on her logo colours, saying that the white, black, peach, and dark mauve looked too ?girly and cheap?.

So, as part of a rebranding process, we experienced a brandname analysis with Jospia to gain a clear understanding of how her brand positioning ought to be so that it not merely resonated with her market but also garnered the valuable trust needed to appeal to them.

After the analysis was complete, we designed a new visual brand and logo with an increase of appealing colours, fonts, and design elements.

Gone will be the irrelevant colours from Josipa?s old website, now swapped out for beige, teal, green, and dark blue, which give off more of a safe, peaceful, welcoming vibe.

read more , along with the addition of the leaves in the logo and design elements, is a lot more aligned with TalkOnline?s brand values, which include things like safety, support, trust, peace, nurturing, and understanding.

As well, they?lso are more representative of Josipa?s mission, which is to help clients become self-led by embracing their experiences and making peace using them, so that they?re better equipped to generate the life they need.

Website Aside from logo design, one of the most critical considerations for any counsellor is how to make their website stick out from the crowd in what is, generally, an oversaturated industry.

So, once we designed and developed her site, we ensured to do up to we could to position Josipa?s brand as the go-to online counselling service in British Columbia.

Let?s first compare Josipa?s old website to her new one. This is a snapshot of her previous website

The design was very dated, and the entire vibe of the website didn?t feel like a thing that exemplified TalkOnline?s brand values. There is nothing telling the first-time visitor why they should hire this company to help solve their problems.

We went to work and designed a distinctive website layout that better reflects her brand values, and works to create trust with potential clients. We did this with the addition of, among other activities, unique, flowing design elements, inviting copy, relevant imagery, and a completely new colour palette.

This kind of website redesign is essential for differentiating any brand, as those who have professionally designed websites tend to look more trustworthy, and passionate about what they do, so already, Josipa is creating a better first impression on potential clients than a lot of her competitors.

We also added several elements to the web site in an effort to differentiate TalkOnline even more, with our definitive goal being to create trust with clients.

For example, as a way to position TalkOnline as B.C.?s go-to online counselling service, we made a point of including some type of computer in practically every image we used on the web site, so users know right away, before they?ve even read any of the copy, that the principal focus of this website is online counselling.

Apart from the imagery, all of the copy was changed to better reflect the benefits potential clients are certain to get from the services Josipa and her team provides, and remind them that TalkOnline is their best option.

Similar alterations were made throughout the website, both in terms of the imagery and the copy, letting potential clients know that the corporation understands them by concentrating on the struggles they?re coping with, and the benefits they?re going to receive from the services it provides.

These changes, coupled with the fact that the website no longer gets the amateurish look it once had, let users know that they?re in the right place, and position TalkOnline Counselling because the very best option for online counselling in British Columbia.

Content Marketing Before working with us, Josipa had never sent out a newsletter.

She had several articles on her blog, and many of them were quite good, but she wasn?t attempting to build up a contact list or gain any subscribers.

But considering how effective content marketing could be for differentiating a brand, we convinced Josipa to utilize us to produce a monthly article and newsletter on her behalf subscribers.

Her first article does an excellent job of differentiating her brand from your competition by detailing what?s different about TalkOnline?s approach to anxiety and depression and confidently claiming that ?Our Approach Is Better?.

And aside from how we?ve differentiated Josipa?s brand with the words we?ve used in her blog and newsletter, we?ve also done it by choosing imagery that?s fully aligned with her brand.

For instance, the image we useful for the blog above exemplifies Josipa?s brand beautifully, from the caring expression on the girl?s face, to the plants in the backdrop, and even the color palette.

We also created branded imagery for her newsletter, which helps to tie everything together and is particularly fully aligned with her brand, from the colours to the laptop to the leaf, and also the heading from her website.

Initially, the problem we had with Josipa?s content marketing is that she didn?t have any existing newsletter subscribers. Thus, we'd to start from scratch, gradually building up subscribers through the use of search engine marketing techniques tactics like running ads on Google.

Slowly but surely, we started to create a following on a restricted budget, with 18 people registering in the first month. For TalkOnline?s first newsletter, the open rate was 68 %, meaning 13 of 19 subscribers actually opened the e-mail.

Moreover, the newsletter also had a click rate of 68 per cent, which means that each and every person who opened the email ended up simply clicking one of the links. These rates are unusual, especially for a brandname that has minimal following.

And now, after two months, Josipa?s subscriber count has a lot more than doubled, from 18 to 40 subscribers.

Social Media Marketing Social media was another thing that TalkOnline Counselling was sorely lacking, so Josipa asked us to accomplish her social media marketing.

This involved several steps, including adding social media icons to her website and social media marketing sharing buttons to her blogs, along with creating a content calendar, setting up a Publer account for scheduling, preparing monthly analyses of her social media stats, and creating social media headers, with branded imagery to accomplish a uniform look across all platforms.

Furthermore, we also create and publish social media marketing posts for Josipa several times a week, which also works to differentiate TalkOnline and build trust with clients, in and of itself, since it?s never a good look to have social media marketing accounts that are without recent posts.

The posts themselves also do a great job of working toward these goals, because they highlight TalkOnline?s specialties, show they understand the needs, desires, and problems of those searching for counselling services, and provide poignant advice to potential clients.

It?s too soon to talk statistics just yet, as these accounts are barely 8 weeks old, however they?re slowly gaining traction, and it?ll be exciting to see how Josipa?s social media marketing presence grows as time goes on.

Are you still racking your brains on how to differentiate your business? Contact us today to find out more about what we can do for you.

To your organization success, Susan Friesen
Here's my website: https://telegra.ph/How-Brand-Positioning-Transformed-a-Counselling-Business-into-a-Market-Leader-07-18-3