Case Studies
Clear brand message + compelling content = Results!
Powerful marketing tools (including a strategic website) will take your business to the next level.
With a clear brand message and professional-quality copywriting, your marketing toolkit – website, social media profiles, business blog, and brochures – are crisp and clear, polished and professional, strategic and hardworking. This powerful, on-target marketing toolkit sets you above the competition, ensures you shine as an expert, empowers you to grow your business, and delivers qualified leads.
The following case studies showcase how businesses – large and small – get results, thanks to a clear brand message and compelling content. (If you are a solopreneur, scroll down to read multiple case studies for professional speakers, consultants, business coaches, etc.)
Case Study #1
Omnia Health
Medical practice needs a robust website to support lead generation and business efficiency
A functional medicine practice in metro Denver, Omnia Health had grown significantly since its founding. The original website didn’t have enough information for new patients to understand the scope of what they offered. Plus, the look-and-feel never really reflected the professional yet relaxed environment. Finally, with virtually no SEO strategies in place, they weren’t getting found.
They knew a robust website could help grow their practice and drive efficiencies.
Lauren Graphics – a fabulous boutique web/print design agency in metro Denver – asked me to join the team to help create an all-new, on-target website for Omnia Health. The doctor and staff wanted their new website to present:
- A more thorough explanation of functional medicine
- Clear statements regarding the particular types of chronic issues the practice can resolve for patients, so prospective patients could self-qualify
- Their expanded services, with plenty of details to answer most people’s questions and reduce the number of phone calls
- A thorough FAQs section to reduce time-consuming calls that kept phone lines AND employees busy
- An updated “Meet the Team” section with more impactful bios
- A case study section to show a track record of success resolving patient issues
- A blog with regular articles to share advice, showcase their expertise, and improve SEO
Now, with a clear understanding of the “landscape,” it was time to get started.
To address all these needs, we started with my copywriting activity to capture the essence of their practice, put forth clear benefit messages, explain functional medicine, and organize the many details. I also included keywords to improve SEO and, subsequently, have written multiple blog articles to share useful information and support the SEO strategy.
While the copy was being written, the website designers/developers created a bright, attractive, and engaging design to convey the idea of health and wellbeing. As a team, we decided to expand the website to improve the user experience, making it easier to find the information that current and prospective patients need. Omnia’s doctor and staff were thrilled with their beautiful, hardworking website!
This successful practice will continue to grow. As the practice expands, it will be easy to expand the website to support their communication needs.
Here’s what Dr. Jacqui Pariset (Omnia Health’s founder) says:
“Lauren Graphics and team – including Patrice Rhoades-Baum as our website copywriter – did a wonderful job with our website. They listened to our needs and delivered a beautiful and fully functioning website. We are so proud of our website and get many compliments on the design and how informative it is. The option for patients to sign up for a 15-minute consultation through our website has made a huge difference to our workflow. By adding an extensive FAQs page, patients have more information about how our practice works. This keeps their 15-minute consultation focused on their health concerns. The FAQs page also answers many questions, which prompts qualified leads to reach out and get on our schedule. Thank you, team, for listening to us and creating an amazing website!”
Case Study #2
Ground Engineering
A leader in its field, Ground Engineering needs a new, hardworking website
Year after year, this in-demand company stayed exceedingly busy offering geotechnical engineering services, environmental engineering services, construction materials testing, and laboratory services. Meanwhile, its website became horribly out-of-date and virtually useless.
Finally, push came to shove. Ground Engineering’s leadership team planned to roll out an advanced mobile app to support employees and customers in the field. They would need an all-new website to support this app. Of course, this new website must present the extensive service offerings and highlight a wide variety of case-study projects.
To begin, the website project manager, website developer, and I held an in-depth Discovery Session in a conference room. We grabbed a flip chart and markers, listed goals, brainstormed ideas, and jotted down lots of color-coordinated notes and arrows. We clarified the site map, determined the necessary features and functionality, and created a roadmap to move forward.
To write the new website’s content, I used a combination of tactics:
- Interviewed a key executive to learn the top messaging to convey (for example: “a trusted name in engineering for 30 years”)
- Leveraged applicable content from the existing website
- Repurposed content from company sell sheets and proposals
- Worked with staff members to acquire logistical details, such as all current locations
- Coordinated with the project manager to create a robust list of case-study projects by industry
- Drafted bios for the leadership team by extracting key information from their resumes
- Compiled and edited a massive list of key services with detailed information from multiple sources
Today, Ground Engineering’s new website works as hard as they do!
Case Study #3
Gielarowski Law Firm
A small-but-mighty law firm needs powerful messaging to help win new clients
Unfortunately, a handful of “ambulance-chasing” attorneys have given personal injury law a bad name. Thankfully, many hardworking attorneys fiercely represent their clients who earnestly seek needed compensation for injuries related to car accidents, wrongful death cases, and justifiable worker’s compensation claims.
Located in Colorado Springs, the Gielarowski Law Firm – founded by Machelle Gielarowski, JD – is a personal injury law firm that leaves no stone unturned to represent its clients. The team’s website was woefully out of date. Plus, it simply did not present the many competitive differentiators that truly enable this small-but-mighty legal team to go toe-to-toe with the attention-getting (yet often ineffective) “ambulance chasers.”
I thoroughly enjoyed working with this all-female team to tease out the firm’s many strengths, then polish them into powerful benefit messages. A key web page is “10 ways we’ll work hard for you – and why we get results.” Also, the new website’s home page declares: “Meet your powerhouse legal team. We are here for you!”
In addition, interviewing the team members for the Case Results web page was eye-opening. We presented multiple, fascinating examples of complex cases and the extent of research required – and dogged determination – to go the distance and win cases.
From the beginning of this project, we teamed with a results-getting SEO/PPC team. With their guidance, I wove in SEO keywords, wrote the text for a detailed inquiry form (instead of the standard, minimal contact form), and wrote a meta title and meta description for each web page. Now, the firm’s website works hard to get new clients, while the team works hard FOR their clients.
Case Study #4
NFI Corp. / Design Mark / Flexible Pack / Concierge In Print
A growing manufacturing company has substantial – and ongoing – website content needs
NFI Corp. (previously Nameplates For Industry)
Several years ago, a new marketing director took the helm at NFI Corp. She knew the company’s website content needed significant upgrades. We regularly teamed together to meet these needs:
- Improve product descriptions with enhanced benefit messaging
- Add prominent calls-to-action to acquire qualified leads
- Support advanced search-engine optimization (SEO) strategies by significantly beefing up product pages, adding keywords, and writing new, effective meta descriptions (this often required conducting research and interviewing in-house subject-matter experts)
- Create landing pages to support the new pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising campaigns
- Post regular blog articles to expound on specific products or technologies, showcase the company’s expertise, and support the SEO strategy
Design Mark
When the executive team announced the purchase of a business specializing in graphic overlays and membrane switches, the marketing director asked me to wrangle the content of that company’s existing website. The in-depth content was substantial and, for the most part, on target. However, it needed a heavy edit to balance engineering jargon with clear benefit messaging and compelling calls-to-action. In addition, the marketing director asked me to research and write several all-new pages as well as multiple blog articles.
Flexible Pack
The following year, this expanding manufacturing company created a new division for an entirely new product offering – flexible packaging – geared to 10 different target markets (food, beverages, cosmetics, medical supplies, pet supplies, the chemical industry, and more). Writing content for this new website and blog articles required a significant amount of research to learn about the flexible packaging industry, clarify the company’s competitive differentiators, identify the specific needs of each target market, and present appropriate benefit messaging (and calls-to-action) for each target market.
Concierge In Print
This innovative company keeps growing! Recently, the marketing director tapped me to write 100% of the website content for a new company division. This all-new website features an extremely wide variety of products specifically manufactured for the hospitality industry. Once again, I began by learning about the products, clarifying the competitive differentiators, and researching each facet of the hospitality industry: 
- Hotels, spas, and resorts
- Convention and event centers
- Restaurants, breweries, and bars
- Cruise lines
- Theme parks and attractions
- Casinos
- Golf, tennis, and country clubs
Who knows, by this time next year we may add another website to this list. Stay tuned!
Case Study #5
Fiber Optic Center
High-tech company needs polished & professional blog articles for content marketing
Over the course of several years, I teamed with Fiber Optic Center’s marketing director to create dozens of blog articles (and a few technical white papers) to support the company’s content marketing strategy. The organization’s subject-matter experts – exceedingly busy engineers – have little time to write articles. And clearly, I’m not an expert in fiber optics.
Here’s the streamlined process we created to enable the company’s engineering team to “write” numerous articles:
- I would conduct a detailed interview with one of the company’s subject matter experts located around the world. I would record the call and order a transcript.
- Next, I would carefully edit the transcript to reduce wordiness, polish awkward statements, eliminate any redundancies, slightly reorganize paragraphs (if needed), ensure clarity throughout, and “bookend” the article by writing a compelling introduction and conclusion. Also, I would add a headline, subheads, and brief bio for the article’s author.
- The subject-matter expert would carefully review this polished and professional article to ensure absolute accuracy. Thanks to this streamlined process, review comments tended to be extremely light.
This was an efficient strategy to provide insights, guidance, and problem-solving advice to fiber optic engineers around the world; showcase the engineering team’s expertise; and continually reinforce the company’s leadership role in the industry. Plus, as a lead-generation strategy, the regular blog posts were extremely successful. In fact, a single blog article is responsible for attracting the company’s largest client!
Case Study #6
NEoWave, Inc.
Teaming with a financial company for more than a decade
Time flies! NEoWave’s founder, Glenn Neely, recently sent me an email with a surprising question: “Patrice, did you realize we’ve been teaming together for more than 10 years?” he said. “Thanks for a decade of help!”
Over the years, Glenn has told me things like “I couldn’t run my business without you.” How nice!
Here are just a few of the many, many projects we brainstormed and implemented over the years:
- Wrote new content for a complete website restructure and redesign (working hand-in-glove with our team’s talented website designer)
- Provide content and direction to create free tools such as an infographic – again, teaming with our designer – for a landing page to build the list (over time, we’ve created multiple landing pages with enticing “freemiums”)
- Write regular blog posts to support SEO and our content marketing strategy
- Team with our social media expert by providing content and marketing direction, as needed
- Conduct recorded interviews with Glenn Neely to post on our website and share with customers and prospects
- Create a robust automated email campaign, so prospects receive evergreen, useful emails every week, which drives engagement and subscriptions to the company’s services
“The website strategy document Patrice Rhoades-Baum prepared was the most spectacular piece of business and website planning I have ever seen. Now, 3 months after we updated my website, the subscriber base for my services has increased at least 33%!”
– Glenn Neely, Founder, NEoWave, Inc.
Case Study #7
Darn It!
Apparel-refurbishment company needs on-target website content, plus regular (and creative!) blog articles
A niche apparel company, Darn It! offers apparel inspection, repair, and refurbishment services as well as warehouse, fulfillment, and distribution services. Several years ago, they reached out to me for SEO/website content. In the process, w
e realized that many pages in their website simply did not reflect the depth and breadth of the services they offer.
Section by section, we worked to make every service shine, with its own robust web page – while addressing SEO, of course.
Meanwhile, the company’s owner knew he needed to commit to posting regular blog articles. This content marketing strategy offers SEO benefits while reinforcing the company’s position as a leader in its field. What’s a busy CEO to do? He called Patrice!
Every few months, I chat with Darn It! folks to hear details on multiple case studies, then write a batch of case study blog articles.
While the Darn It! folks know that quickly resolving their customers’ issues is serious business, they prefer a creative approach to the case study articles I write for them. We recognize that even a simple turn-of-phrase (e.g., “We have a ‘bias’ for finishing” or “Baseball t-shirts need a triple play to save the day”) can entice busy apparel managers to pause for a moment and read these helpful – and somewhat playful – articles. Prospects will quickly see that Darn It! offers the right solution for their apparel-remediation issue.
SOLOPRENEUR Case Study #1
Brian Dennis, Keynote Speaker, Author & Customer Service Innovator
A Fortune 200 executive needs a polished, on-target website to support his speaking business
While everyone talks about customer service, some people really “get” it. Brian Dennis tells how, at the age of 6, he learned a life lesson about the importance of delivering great customer service. (We captured this story on his “Meet Dennis” web page.) A 2-decade executive in Fortune 200 corporations, Brian is recognized as an industry thought leader, innovator, and trend forecaster on customer service.
As part of his executive role, Brian began participating on conference panels and, eventually, presenting keynotes. He needed a professional, polished website with on-target website copy to support his speaking activities.
As the foundation, we needed to first clarify his brand. Brian and I held 2 deep-dive discussions to clarify his brand message. (My definition of branding is to quickly communicate: Who you are, What you do, What they get.)
Next, I wrote all-new website content while the designers were busy with logo design and website design. It’s always a thrill for our client – and the entire 
team – when it all comes together as a polished, professional website that beautifully and strategically supports the business goals!
“Patrice Rhoades-Baum is an incredible brand expert but an even more amazing listener. She asked the right questions, challenged appropriately and ultimately delivered my brand in a manner that exceeded my expectations. Patrice also wrote copy for my new website and speaker one-sheet – the content is clear and on-target. What I love about Patrice is her contagious enthusiasm and her ability to visualize what does not exist but soon turns into brilliance. Today, when meeting planners call me, they’re ready to hire me.” – Brian Dennis
SOLOPRENEUR Case Study #2
Steve Scher, Chief Executive Officer, Acrobat Advisors
A team approach supports major pivot for new consultant/author
Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, Steve Scher purchased an underperforming business located in a shabby office in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco! Determined to fulfill his dream, Steve rebuilt this company from scratch. Decades later, he had built a $50 million business and sold it for 8 figures.
Still energized by his relentless entrepreneurial spirit, Steve decided to write a business memoir and launch a career in consulting to guide small-business owners. Steve needed 2 teams to help make this pivot happen.
- The book-production team included a ghostwriter, designer, and publishing expert – and I was the content editor. I also wrote the back-cover copy, came up with the book’s title/subtitle, helped select the cover artwork, and encouraged Steve to write multiple, lengthy “sidebar” articles, which would expand and transform his business memoir into an evergreen reference and guidebook for business owners.
- The marketing team consisted of a logo designer, website designer, and photographer – and I was the branding expert and wrote the website copy.
After his book was published, Steve emailed this lovely testimonial: 
“Writing a book is a daunting task. It takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to tell your story the way you want it to be told. When I finished the initial first draft with the ghostwriter, I was pretty satisfied. But I quickly figured out that it just wasn’t good enough. Patrice and her colleagues transformed my story into a masterpiece. A brilliant editor, Patrice Rhoades-Baum took my words and was able to convert my manuscript into a real business book treasure.” – Steve Scher
SOLOPRENEUR Case Study #3
Kathy Kerchner, Media Consultant, Master Your Message
Website makeover makes an impact: Consultant needed a new website for her media consulting biz
“Outdated and dark.” That’s how Kathy Kerchner described her old website, adding that she wanted a new site featuring a bright, contemporary design – with impact! As a media consultant to corporate executives, Kathy’s business is all about making an impact.
I had written the copy for Kathy’s old website about 7 years earlier. To begin our new website project, we revisited points about Kathy’s service offerings, target markets, and the many benefits and results her clients receive.
While writing entirely fresh website copy, I kept my finger on the pulse of her tagline and top benefit message: “Master your message, Master the media.” To add punch, I sprinkled these messages throughout the copy (including the calls-to-action): “Armed with media skills training, you can control any interview,” “Don’t miss another PR opportunity,” and “Opportunity’s knocking!”
Today, Kathy’s new website features on-target copy; an active blog, video, social media links, and other contemporary features; and a bright, strong design. Her new website makes an impact!
SOLOPRENEUR Case Study #4
Suzanne Smith, Gold Certified Pilates Instructor, Pilates With Suzanne
“What a year!” Pilates studio owner’s new brand becomes the touchstone, guiding her through a pivotal year
Suzanne Smith knew it would be a transformative year. She planned to move her Pilates studio when the lease ended but grappled with a big question: Should she move to the larger space she was eyeing (with a hefty rent) and hire a bevy of instructors – or move to a smaller studio and personally instruct all classes?
Suzanne felt foggy about the direction to take her business. She needed clarity – fast! She hired me to clarify her brand message and write website copy. I quizzed Suzanne about her services, unique skills, target market, and the benefits clients receive. I also asked about her personal and business goals. What did Suzanne really want?
With honest introspection, Suzanne declared that she loves to personally teach every client. She did not want to hire instructors and step into an administrative role. A passionate and caring Pilates instructor, Suzanne thrives on guiding every client to achieve his or her optimal strength and flexibility.
Based on these discussions, we created this tagline: “Get results. Get back to life!” The clarity Suzanne gained through this process served as the foundation to create a new logo; new website copy, design, and photos; new business card and letterhead; and new ad campaigns.
Further, by gaining clarity on her business direction, Suzanne discovered an office space for lease in a great location, which perfectly suited her space requirements. Today, in her newly remodeled downtown Pilates studio, Suzanne personally teaches every class with enthusiasm, guiding every client to “get results and get back to life.”
SOLOPRENEUR Case Study #5
Christie Ward, CSP, Leadership Facilitator
Successful speaker needs a bit more clarity for her already powerful brand
Virtually every small business owner can benefit by gaining more objectivity, clarity, and focus on their brand message. This was the case for Christie Ward, CSP. Since 1999, Christie has owned a thriving speaking and training business. Yet she needed just a bit of help connecting the dots for her brand message.
As Christie prepared for a complete website makeover, she realized she needed a tagline – a compelling promise statement that would “speak” to her prospective clients. We started with a deep-dive interview to discuss her target market, their needs, and her unique skills. In short, why do clients rely on Christie Ward when grappling with their serious team issues?
At the end of our in-depth call, we brainstormed key concepts and on-target phrases. We arrived at this powerful tagline:
Real Issues. Tough Questions. Real Results.™
Christie added this “challenge statement,” featured on her home page: Your team has tough issues. Christie Ward asks the tough questions, then works with your team to ensure they’re focused, energized, and ready to tackle the tough stuff. Are YOU willing to go there?
We also addressed Christie’s other Brand Elements. We decided to emphasize her name instead of her company name to take advantage of her strong reputation. Since she prefers facilitating workshops and team meetings, we changed Christie’s title from Speaker to Leadership Facilitator.
With a clear brand message as the foundation, we were ready to move forward with the next steps. I wrote all-new content for Christie’s new website (including multiple case studies) and handed it off to the website development team.
SOLOPRENEUR Case Study #6
Paula Ruffy, MBA, Strategic Consultant & Management Coach
The power of being clear: Armed with a clear brand, business coach now has a unified message for all target markets
As a small business owner, do you have a wide range of skills? Do you offer various services to different target markets? If so, how do you integrate the many facets of your business? How do you unify everything into one brand?
This was Paula Ruffy’s challenge. As a consultant and business coach, Paula was maintaining two websites that presented different services targeting two different types of clients: small business owners and corporate leaders.
Plus, she needed guidance on how to explain the powerful creating process she teaches: a supercharged process that yields astounding results. Paula was at her wit’s end trying to communicate this unique process and its dramatic results.
We started by clarifying her brand message. During our in-depth branding discussions, we discussed Paula’s disparate services and target markets, addressed the thorny communication issue, and identified the top benefit that every client receives when teaming with Paula.
I created this tagline, along with a supporting headline:
Be clear. Be focused. Be brilliant.™
Challenging professionals to achieve the clarity, commitment, and capacity they need to create the results they want.
Next, we teamed with a talented designer to create Paula’s logo while I wrote the website copy. In this exciting, streamlined process, our team was able to clarify and unify Paula’s brand with one powerful message that “speaks” to both target markets in ONE website.
