Bi-Coastal Business discovers that a sustainable marketing strategy shines a spotlight on a company’s unique impact.
MEET THE CLIENT:
When Communications Coaches Julie Fogh and Casey Erin Clark founded Vital Voice Training, they set out to change the perception of what leaders are supposed to look and sound like. They believed that a person’s voice was meant for more than just expression. Their extensive theater training showed them that the voice is a powerful tool for connection as well—especially when it is grounded in what makes a person unique. They knew their impact on the world lay in helping leaders learn to amplify their voices, not just make them louder.
Leaders and professionals responded enthusiastically to what Vital Voice Training had to offer. These raving fans had nothing but high praise for Julie and Casey’s methods and consistently turned out for their events.
But for some reason, this success was not translating into true sustainability. Julie and Casey were looking to build a business that supported their lifestyle, not the other way around. They seemed to continuously reach a tipping point without actually tipping over, and they were not sure what was missing to give them that final push.
THE CLIENT'S CHALLENGE:
After a couple of years of phenomenal growth—they were doubling their revenue on a yearly basis—Vital Voice Training reached a plateau. They were stagnating with no idea how to regain momentum. They tried various marketing techniques with no consistent results and were disillusioned by their frequent attempts at working with business and marketing coaches. These communications coaches were left unsure how to amplify their voices to get their message heard and expand their impact.
Above all, Julie and Casey wanted to create consistency and sustainability with their small team while honoring energy levels and creating space for rest.
Vital Voice Training faced three central challenges. They needed…
- A way to expand their client base by attracting potential clients who had never heard of them,
- A restructuring of their approach to land corporate clients they had been referred to, and
- A clear pathway for individuals to understand and access their services without always involving a person to increase conversions and free up their time.
The first obstacle Vital Voice Training had to overcome was stepping into their own power in the digital space.
Fogh first met Business Strategy Coach, Renia Carsillo, through the Dear Grown Ass Women community. They connected during a roundtable discussion on the problematic trend of business owners viewing influencer brands as blueprints for success.
At that time, the Vital Voice Training website looked like any other small business website of the day. It used a soft color palette, and the language was warm, gentle, and reassuring. Their target audience was high-powered executives. But their website did not inspire confidence that they could get the job done and make a real impact on these busy women’s lives.
Julie and Casey were using a referral-based approach for gaining new clients. But this strategy was insufficient for their personal and professional goals. A sustainable marketing strategy could help achieve these goals, beginning with an overhaul of their primary sales vehicle—their website.
Vital Voice Training needed a web presence that accurately reflected Julie and Casey’s dynamic personalities and skill sets and clearly explained what people could expect from working with them.
They also needed help converting corporate referrals for a more sustainable revenue stream.
Julie and Casey personally thrived on working with individuals to realize their power. But they needed revenue to continue doing what they loved without burning themselves out.
The answer lay in the corporate referrals they received from their many satisfied clients. However, they had been unable to convert many of those corporate teams and remained at a stalemate.
The duo needed an experienced partner to help them revitalize their approach, restructure their materials, and land corporate clients who could fund their dreams and expand their impact.
For Vital Voice Training to achieve sustainable growth, they needed to create easier access to their offers to free up their time and energy.
When Renia met Julie and Casey, they were personally enrolling each new client. When client conversions require direct contact with the founders, a business cannot grow beyond their personal efforts. Plus, they were fielding a lot of questions because their website was unclear on what they offered and how to access it.
Julie and Casey had no desire to manage a large team. They had a phenomenal personal assistant who took care of day-to-day tasks. But the pair also needed digital tools to anticipate customer questions and convert leads to sales without always requiring the presence of the founders.
Vital Voice Training’s decision to work with Renia ultimately hinged on her rose-colored-glasses-free approach to marketing.
Before they agreed to sign on with the Realign Consulting team, they needed to be sure about what they were getting into. Casey, who was (according to her) the more skeptical of the two, emailed Renia with a detailed list of questions.
Renia’s commitment to being real about the issues in front of them assured Casey they were in good hands. Vital Voice Training signed on as coaching clients, and the work began.
THE SOLUTION FROM REALIGN CONSULTING:
Renia knew that if the Vital Voice Training team was going to get their message heard by a wider audience, they needed to apply what they were teaching their clients to their digital strategy. The Vital Voice team needed to show up online like they show up offline: vivacious, irreverent, direct, and confident.
They needed to…
- Update their website copy and the visual look and feel of their digital presence so that it no longer suppressed their uniquely powerful voices,
- Allow their transformational perspectives to shine in their interactions with corporate clients through a well-thought-out and beautifully structured meeting and proposal process, and
- Make it easy for executives and speakers to work with them through clearly defined packages, pricing, and asks on their website and in their marketing materials.
Just like they were teaching their clients, Vital Voice Training team needed to redefine what they expected of themselves as founders to forge their own path to sustainability.
Creating a Sustainable Marketing Strategy Requires Showing Up to Own Your Awesome
To help the Vital Voice Training team reach their personal and professional goals, Renia created a multi-layered plan to help them clarify their messaging. Clients needed to know what Julie and Casey were offering, why they needed it, and how to get it.
Renia and the Realign Consulting team consulted and trained the pair over the course of a year. During that time, they worked to…
- Redesign their website to send a message of confidence, expertise, and professionalism—mixed with a bit of fun,
- Optimize their website for conversions by ensuring each page has a Clearly Defined Ask™, so visitors know how to work with them,
- Restructure their programs so that visitors to their site could easily navigate between the different services and enroll on the spot,
- Create the “What’s Your Work Armor?” quiz as a lead generation tool to more proactively fill their courses, and
- Reimagine the way they presented themselves to corporations to demonstrate their professionalism and ability to cultivate change within organizations.
The ultimate goal of this strategy was to sustainably generate the income Julie and Casey needed to live the lifestyles they wanted and have fun doing it. Over the next year, Vital Voice Training would finally see their efforts pay off and achieve that financial goal that had seemed so out of reach for so long.
Creating a Sustainable Marketing Strategy that Defines Success as Creating Space for Joy
HOW WE CO-CREATED VITAL VOICE TRAINING'S SUCCESS:
Most of Renia’s work with Vital Voice Training centered on their website content and strategy as their primary vehicle for lead generation and sales. Julie and Casey needed a site that could represent them accurately in the digital space. It needed to answer all the questions that the dynamic duo could not always be present to answer.
Questions like…
- Who are you?
- What exactly do you do?
- How are you different from all those other coaches?
- Why is your work important?
- Could I benefit from your courses?
- How can I access your courses?
- Where can I learn more about amplifying my voice?
The work began with a website design overhaul.
The Vital Voice Training website needed to create an accurate first impression as their primary sales vehicle.
Renia and her team helped Julie and Casey work through how they wanted their brand to feel. Then, they worked with the necessary contractors to implement their changes.
Their original website used soft and muted tones, with Julie and Casey literally fading into the background.
The overall feel was warm and welcoming, which can work for some brands. But the target audience visiting the Vital Voice Training website was not looking for reassurances from a friend. They were looking for expertise from a dynamic powerhouse team who promised to help them change the course of their careers.
The website redesign chose a more assertive approach. Julie and Casey are front and center with poses that demonstrate confidence and charisma—the very things they promise to bring out in their clients. This new layout creates a presence that is not easily overlooked, with high-contrast colors and bold designs.
Even their photography was updated. The images on the original About Page (below left) featured muted colors and standard portrait photos. As you can see from their updated photos (below right), these two are anything but typical. They are dynamic, self-assured, and ready to help their clients take on the world.
These simple changes clarified Vital Voice Training’s message, but it was just the beginning.
Sustainable Marketing Strategy is About More Than Looks
The website redesign’s first layer was about making the best first impression. Once visitors landed on the site, they needed to know where to go and what to do.
The languaging of the original website, like the design, was a little soft. The calls to action (CTAs) were sentences such as “I want to work on my executive presence” and “I have a big speech/presentation coming up.”
With no other text supporting these links, visitors were left unclear about what to expect when they clicked through. This translated to a lower click-through-rate, with many visitors instead choosing to click away from the site.
Renia worked with the Vital Voice team to create more CTA buttons, strategically reposition them, and clarify their language. They replaced the vague wording of the original CTAs with text like “Get Presence Help” and “Get Project Help.” They also accompanied their clickable buttons with language that focused on the deep benefits of what Julie and Casey had to offer, giving visitors a reason to click through.
With advice from the Realign Consulting team, Julie and Casey also restructured their programs so visitors knew precisely what packages were available and what each entailed. Interested clients could navigate to each option from the header menu, and each program had a landing page that provided additional information. Plus, most could now be purchased or scheduled online.
For true sustainability, sometimes it makes sense to inject a little fun.
To help generate more leads, Julie and Casey worked with the Realign Consulting team to develop a fun quiz for visitors to the site. This quiz would serve to introduce their message in a valuable way to those in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey.
The quiz, titled “What’s Your Work Armor?” helps people identify what kind of persona they put on to cope in the workplace. This is followed by an email journey to help them understand the persona, ways it is not serving them, and what to do instead.
The ads for the quiz also gave Julie and Casey a platform to show off their fun, personable selves to give potential clients a taste of what it’s like to work with them.
The final part of their marketing strategy overhaul reworked their approach to converting corporate referrals.
Because the Vital Voice Training team was highly effective at what they do, clients were excited to refer them to friends, family, and workplaces. But that success was not translating into more corporate clients, and they knew something had to change.
With Renia’s help, Julie and Casey reworked the language and design of their emails, project proposals, and presentations. As with their website, they needed to learn how to present their true selves to potential clients who did not know what they were missing until they walked into the room.
Vital Voice Training had spent years helping others step into their power. Working with Renia enabled them to translate these skills into marketing their own brand.
THE BUSINESS RESULTS CREATED:
As of the fall of 2022, the Vital Voice Training team has reached the goals that seemed so unattainable just a year prior. Through their work with Renia and her team, they have…
- Sustainably quadrupled the size of their business,
- Conducted trainings in places like Thrive Global and Google,
- Significantly increased their revenue from corporate clients, and
- Seen a massive increase in qualified leads through their website and quiz.
With reliable revenue streams, Julie and Casey have begun to find the space they needed to have lives outside of work.
Perhaps more importantly, their perspective on what it takes to create a sustainable marketing strategy has changed. The Vital Voice Training team feels better equipped with the tools and understanding they need to move their company into the future with confidence, clarity, and joy.
Hear their full testimonial below:*
*Please note that we rebranded from Genevieve Digital to Realign Consulting in the summer of 2022.
THE TAKEAWAY FROM VITAL VOICE TRAINING'S EXPERIENCE:
For any marketing strategy to be truly sustainable, it must create space for joy. When your work supports your lifestyle (and not the other way around), you can approach those working hours from a place of rejuvenation, enthusiasm, and creativity. Simply put, sustainability gives you room to be your best self.
Julie and Casey needed a service structure and digital strategy that would support their desire to remain a small team. They needed to restructure their marketing plan to drive revenue more sustainably. And they needed the revenue to help create space to expand their work with individuals and to have lives outside of work.
The right support tools and strategies are different for each business, and they depend on the founder’s goals for her company. Sometimes the ability to find a way forward requires a third-party perspective. But for any marketing strategy to have an impact, company founders cannot be afraid to step into their power and let their unique voices be amplified.
Learn More About Do Better Digital™ Coaching with Realign Consulting
Together, we can develop your unique path to sustainable growth that gives you space to live your life.
It’s time to return to the feelings of freedom and joy that first inspired your vision. With an expert business strategist by your side, you can walk with confidence toward an impact-filled future.
