Growing a Business in the Digital Space
North Berkeley Wealth Management’s clients love the firm and are happy to refer new business. The main challenge for North Berkeley Wealth Management was translating their brick and mortar, community-based presence to digital channels. They wanted to make use of digital marketing in a way that reflected the warmth, personality, and commitment to community that they have achieved via traditional marketing. They also wanted to reach younger audiences that expect to find digital experiences in all aspects of their lives, from shopping to banking and more.
North Berkeley was also considering changing the name of their firm. At project start the company was called “North Berkeley Investment Partners,” which did not highlight the most important part of the value they bring clients, which is confidence and peace of mind through a consultative and approach to managing wealth.
The opportunity was to update their brand and build on their current success without compromising their core esthetic and community values. The firm’s leadership was ready for a change, but they were held back by concerns about additional workload , the culture change required by digital marketing transformation, and the impact of “going digital” on their existing clients.
North Berkeley’s needs included:
- Deciding on a new company name
- Refreshing their brand
- Developing a coherent digital marketing plan
- Building a mobile responsive website
- Reaching new audiences through improved online visibility, especially via organic search (SEO) and social media strategies
North Berkeley’s marketing team needed the right tools, familiarity with those tools to streamline production, sustainable systems and processes, and a website update to go along with their rebrand.
Digital Marketing Transformation
Colibri Digital Marketing provided North Berkeley Wealth Management with our Digital Marketing Transformation and Nest Website packages, along with additional services that met their unique circumstances.
Deliverables included:
- Research and discovery
- Business analysis
- Competitive analysis
- Audits of existing marketing practices
- New name, logo, and style guide
- Actionable digital marketing plan
- Training
At the end of the project, the client came away with a new website, an actionable marketing plan that included which channels would be used to reach their various audiences, and training on a production process using their internal team to implement a sustainable marketing strategy.
A Collaborative Approach
The Colibri Digital Marketing process is collaborative. We spend time with our clients so we have a deep understanding of their business, their industry, and their competitors.
We used our familiarity with Bay Area sensibilities to create a strategy and process with North Berkeley Wealth Management, leveraging their innate knowledge of their audience and integrating it with their strong values and esthetics. We provided the tools and training so that solutions could be implemented in North Berkeley’s time frame.
For the website process, we focused on the design and a build that supports a website strategy designed to delight users and generate new business. Our approach includes more than having a pretty and functional website. We make sure that websites serve as a marketing tool and asset. Our goal is to make a website findable via search, optimized for social media, and have a lead capture strategy in place.
Core to our approach is the idea that even if a client doesn’t understand digital marketing, their inherent wisdom about their audience and business can be translated into digital space. Our job is to draw out what they already know and translate it to digital spaces through strategy and training.
The Impact of a Brand Refresh
As a result of the project, North Berkeley Wealth Management’s marketing was transformed in the following ways:
A new company name. The new company name is more contemporary, and also includes a keyword term, “wealth management,” that not only expresses the brand’s focus on place, but is also searchable and has improved their rankings, making their brand more visible.
Brand refresh. North Berkeley now has a new logo and style guide. The logo works well on social media profiles and represents a more streamlined version of their existing brand. It is elegant and approachable, just like North Berkeley’s team of wealth managers.
Actionable digital marketing plan. North Berkeley now has an actionable digital marketing plan with a content strategy that will help improve their rankings and website visibility over time. Accountabilities have been assigned to various team members according to a schedule so that workloads are not overwhelming and everyone on the team knows what they are responsible for.
Mobile responsive website. The new website reflects the brand’s esthetics, expertise, and professionalism. It is user friendly and contemporary, so it works for North Berkeley’s existing audience while welcoming younger audiences.
Infrastructure and collateral. Using their new logo and style guide, our team created marketing materials, including social media and email marketing templates to create brand consistency and to ease production.
Training. The North Berkeley marketing team is now grounded in all aspects of digital marketing.
We are pleased to say that North Berkeley’s rankings have gone up and they have increased search visibility.
A Brand New Look
Old Logo:
New Logo:
Fresh and Functional Website
Pre Nest Website Package:
Post Nest Website Package:
Improved Rankings
Before the transformation, North Berkeley Wealth Management had close to zero ranking keywords.
Now they have #1 rankings for branded keyword terms along with improved rankings for terms on the buyer’s journey.
Here is a selection of top ten rankings:
- North Berkeley financial services
- Berkeley wealth management
- Socially responsible investing San Francisco
- Bay Area responsible investing
- B Corp certified financial planners
- Bay Area ESG
- Bay Area sustainable investing
What North Berkeley Had to Say
The North Berkeley project lead, James Wilson, had this to say:
“Transforming an established brand, big or small, is daunting. Launching the project, maintaining momentum, and staying on track is challenging. As we embarked on the challenge of taking our firm and our brand into the digital realm, we had conviction about our needs, and energy to move forward. What we lacked was an understanding of the path to do so and a way to look at an outside, informed perspective.
“Working with Anna Colibri and her team at Colibri Digital Marketing provided us with the expert guidance we needed to take our firm’s marketing, in the digital realm and beyond, to another level. Early in the project, we threw a curveball in that we decided to consider a name change in addition to refreshing our brand and launching a more robust digital presence. Anna and her team handled all the adjustments with grace, while also helping us articulate our goals, define success, and better understand our firm’s identity.
“Most importantly, CDM pushed us to maintain momentum, even through some difficult decision-making amidst the busyness of our regular business. At the end of our collaboration with Anna and her team, we had a real sense of accomplishment, and an outcome we were proud of and excited about. We achieved a new visual identity, a modernized and impactful website, and a better understanding of our story and how we want to tell it.”
If you want to improve your digital marketing to invest in your future, contact us today and set up your free digital marketing strategy session to find out how digital marketing can help to build your business.