Graphic Consulting

Real World Case Studies

Paris Fitness

About

The Paris is a nearly 100 year old former New York hotel that was converted to apartments mid last century. The ground floor of the building featured a luxury fitness center with a pool. The building’s owners had decided to reinvest in the outdated facility and promote it as a separate business open to neighborhood residents.

Challenge

Because of the enormous costs already going into equipment and revitalization, the owners were reluctant to hire an agency to rebrand the facility and develop a promotion strategy. I was brought in to do a quick redesign of their logo and craft small sales collateral. It became quickly clear that wouldn’t be enough to reach the lofty goals the owners had placed upon the fitness center manager and we had to brainstorm a better path.

Solution

Because the team was so small (primarily the manager and myself) we could work swiftly through design and revision stages, and didn’t need to wait for a copywriter or approvals from other departments. In just under 4 weeks of intense collaboration, we developed a logomark for the newly branded Paris Fitness, established Facebook and Twitter followings, shared wireframes with their contracted web developer, and designed and sent two direct mail campaigns announcing the soft launch. We also crafted several automated email marketing series to tap into dormant leads and connect with former members.

Results

30 days after the soft launch:

• New signups were the highest in any single month in the fitness center’s history

60 days after soft launch:

• Revenue goals forecast for the first 6 months of the new brand were exceeded

• 3 new personal trainers and a full time sales manager were hired

Conclusion

Not every project will need so many different arms (logo/branding, social media, website, direct mail, and press releases), but knowing which elements are crucial, and having someone on hand for each task, makes your investment go further and your goals more easily attainable.

Company A (brand name withheld)

About

Company A is an established adult dating site with a growing member base and a deep-seated commitment to ethical action and fair play. New membership had plateaued after a recent Google penalty and some poor structural decisions made in haste. Management was looking to reverse course and lean into growth without resorting to black hat SEO tactics.

Challenge

Because of the adult nature of the business, they were roundly excluded from traditional ad platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google ads – paying for clicks was off the table. Further, one of the primary bricks in any successful SEO strategy is a varied and authoritative link profile, and the brand had struggled for years trying to acquire good links to their product from reputable and authoritative websites.

Solutions

“We knew where we wanted to be – we knew that a high Google ranking was crucial to making our product successful and keeping it useful to our members. But we felt stymied at every turn and excluded from mainstream platforms” the CEO and owner said.

Working hand in hand with the site’s SEO director and an outside press agent, we set to crafting guides, reviews, advice, and commentary on everything from the workings of the site itself, to the adult industry and the impacts it experienced in the current political climate. These articles, drafted by me and another professional writer, became linkable assets which reporters and writers could cite in other articles.

Results

• Within six months, the brand had jumped to the number 3 slot on page one of Google

• Brand mentions and authoritative links were acquired from Forbes, Shape Magazine, Salon.com, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, and more.

• Within one year, the site was number 1 on Google for over a dozen keywords, and had doubled traffic since the previous year (between 6-7M pageviews per month).

Conclusion

The power of copywriting, combined with thoughtful image selection and design, all meshed perfectly here to create a product (linkable assets) whose value and industry niche superseded the negative aspects of being an adult brand.

Kevin A.

About

Kevin was a personal trainer at a major New York chain fitness center, looking to break away from the relatively low pay and long hours of retail personal training. Like Company A’s CEO, Kevin knew where he wanted to be – a private trainer with enough clients to allow him to live comfortably while saving – but didn’t know how to get there (and didn’t have a big budget to make it happen).

Challenge

With limited hours each week, it wasn’t reasonable to assume Kevin would finish after a 10 hour day at his club job and then start to work on his side hustle. But he didn’t have the budget to hire a professional web designer, copywriter, and graphics/photo designer either.

Solutions

What Kevin did have, was personality pouring out his ears. He didn’t know how to write an ad, but he knew his business, and he knew how to attract and retain clients once they were at his door. Unfortunately he was contractually forbidden to poach any of his existing fitness center clients if he left the gym.

What we decided to do was make Kevin an expert at what he did. “I don’t really do social media, so the idea that I would be some kind of authority on anything seemed pretty remote to me,” Kevin says. But that’s exactly how we got him where he wanted to be. Working from a templated SquareSpace website customized for his needs and outfitted with custom copy that channeled the feeling of his magnetism and energy, we created a series of video essays about the life-changing power of exercise and his personal training philosophy. Viewers were required to subscribe to his mailing list to watch. There they received a 4 message email series designed to initiate contact and schedule a trial session.

We also signed Kevin up as a motivational speaker (he could talk!) listed on several websites promoting corporate speakers and niche authorities for hire. While he won’t be making a career swap, his handful of local speaking gigs (and their blog or press coverage) drove new leads to his site, and established a client base that allowed him to drop to part time at the gym, and ultimately leave it for good.

Results

• Within 3 months of our work together, Kevin was part time at the gym.

• Within 6 months, he had quit entirely and was managing a stable of new training clients that provided him with a 90% raise over his fitness center salary.

Conclusion:

You don’t need to have the biggest audience to make a successful living. You just need to find your audience.