“Anna is excellent at learning the specific personality and brand that you want to portray with your business and helping you figure out the best way to do it. My revenue has grown annually since having Anna as part of my team.”
Mandy Pearce
Founder of Funding for Good
www.fundingforgood.org
A Shift in Messaging, Step One
When Mandy Pearce began working with Anna Hetzel to completely reposition and rewrite her website copy, her biggest goal was to have her website serve as a magnet for her ideal client.
As the founder of Funding for Good, a consulting firm that provides nonprofits the systems and strategies needed to increase sustainability and impact, Mandy’s business had grown consistently since its inception in 2009 — growth that came from taking a targeted approach with the content she offered on her website and through her email marketing.
“In order to grow our mailing list from 3,500 to 32,000, we needed to do things to get people on our mailing list,” Mandy said. “For the first eight years, that included offering free webinars, free downloads, free tools, a free YouTube channel, and freebie Fridays. We even had a link on our website called ‘Free Stuff’.”
But after growing her audience to over 30,000 people — as well as watching her revenue continue to build — Mandy was ready to shift to a new way of doing business and attracting clients.
“Once we got the audience we were looking for size-wise, we recognized we had attracted a lot of people who had seen our value — and we knew we could start incorporating more paid things,” Mandy said.
Not only did that mean their email marketing could begin to promote more resources — like webinars and downloads — that came with a price tag, but it also meant the company’s website needed to shift its messaging and positioning, too.
Mandy said, ultimately, she wanted to focus exclusively on attracting clients who were interested in their high-level consulting services like strategic planning — and were willing to pay for them.
“I wanted to create messaging that would attract established organizations who had the budget to work with us instead of the organizations who were only interested in free resources,” Mandy said.
To create that messaging, she turned to Anna Hetzel, a website copywriter who had successfully written the then-current version of her website.
Focused Services, Step Two
For this iteration, however, Mandy needed a much deeper level of strategy and knew Anna would be the perfect person to not only write her a website but strategically build a messaging structure that would attract a higher level client and stimulate continued business growth.
As the project kicked off, Anna’s first step was to take a deep dive into Mandy’s business and provide expertise in an area that is unique for a copywriter to offer: strategy around her services. This looked like a complete audit of Mandy’s various services, analyzing each of them through the lens of how well they served to attract and provide value to Mandy’s ideal client group, as well as filter out the prospects who were only interested in free resources.
To do this, Anna created a spreadsheet of each service, detailing the price, the time investment to both deliver the service and prepare for it, as well as the current positioning of its pitch.
Then, they decided together what services needed to stay, what services needed to merge, and what services needed to be removed altogether. They also discussed if there were new services that should be created to best meet her ideal clients’ needs.
Next, Anna encouraged Mandy to raise her prices on the services she had decided to offer so that they better reflected the value she provided thanks to her many years of consulting in the nonprofit space.
Site Map and Process, Step Three
Finally, Anna created a site map of Mandy’s new website so each offering was positioned strategically in terms of how they were categorized within the topline navigation menu. Gone was the ‘Free Stuff’ page and in its place was a ‘Templates/Downloads’ page that offered paid resources at the top and the free resources at the bottom. They also created separate pages to highlight Mandy’s top-level services, events and webinar series, and templates — as well as a Shop that housed everything available in one place.
In addition, they pinpointed portions of Mandy’s process that needed streamlining — such as when she was speaking with prospective clients — then created space on the website to make things easier for clients as well as herself.
“I had many great prospects who were always asking me for this one particular thing,” Mandy said. “Anna knew that the ultimate solution was to create a page on our website that provided them the information, and in doing that, it has saved me hours of time.”
Website Copywriting, Step Four
With all of the strategy complete, Anna got to writing — and didn’t stop until they’d created the most targeted messaging for each page of Funding for Good’s new site as well as all of her offerings.
Mandy said when the copy for her new site started coming back, she was very pleased with how close it was to what she’d been hoping for.
“It was really, really well done,” Mandy said. “It was pretty much ready to go right from the first draft. Plus, Anna is easy to work with and knows what I need with minimal direction. Anna always asks my opinion, and is very open to feedback, and then just takes it from there. I know that I can leave it in Anna’s hands to make it as good as possible.”
Mandy said the process of working with Anna has provided a lot of value for her as a business owner — primarily in the way it’s helped her do more of the work she loves.
“When we analyzed my services, we rearranged some things, combined some things, and even took some services out — which was great,” Mandy said. “Now I’m not doing the things that I don’t love doing. I can focus more on the strategic planning and coaching work I enjoy — and that’s been awesome.”
She also appreciates the depth of knowledge that Anna brings to the table — as well as Anna’s open and highly adaptable communication style.
“It’s been great to soak up some of Anna’s knowledge to become a better business owner,” Mandy said. “It helps to work with experts in their field like Anna, and they help to educate me on new things, especially tech things that I can use to automate my processes and save time. Also, Anna’s communication skills are excellent. The ability to work with a wide range of personality types and communication styles is amazing, and I really appreciate that about Anna. Anna can also communicate with all of my team members, and I don’t have to be the middleman in the communication between Anna and the rest of my team, which I love.”
The Results
Mandy said the best part of her work with Anna has been the positioning she’s achieved in her messaging to attract her ideal clients.
“All of the changes that we’ve made as a company with our marketing, our website, our emails, and our communication in general has resulted in a bigger connection with our ideal clients,” Mandy said. “That was my goal. We have fewer inquiries from people who are not an ideal fit, and Anna helped get the pieces in the right places to be able to do that.”
Mandy noted that she’s referred Anna to fellow business owners who need expert website strategy and copywriting because Anna’s value can only benefit their business.
“Anna is excellent at learning the specific personality and brand that you want to portray with your business and helping you figure out the best way to do it,” Mandy said. “My revenue has grown every year since I’ve known Anna and that’s thanks to having them as part of my team.”
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