Driving revenue growth through revamped branding & marketing strategies for a social impact firm

Identifying opportunities to increase client acquisition and revenue generation through renewed marketing, branding and social media strategy.

Project Type: Client Project

Timeline: 3 Months (January-November 2023)

Team: Team of 15

Methods & Tools: Stakeholder Interviews, Brand Diagnostic Workshop, Co-creation workshop, Competitive Research, Brand Study 

Software: Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Zoom

Role & Contribution: Design Strategist, Design Researcher, Branding

Conducted brand research and competitive analysis and presented key insights to stakeholders along with 3 other team members & Co-created concepts for the membership-oriented platform
One of the lead facilitators for the brand diagnostic and co-creation workshops with the clients helping drive alignment between the team and the members of the firm and gathering crucial input about their vision. I also co-designed the revised brand guide with another designer. I played a major role in devising the strategic vision by proposing a core focus on impact creation and revenue generation. This recommendation became the foundation of the strategic framework.

BACKGROUND & CONTEXT

Consilience Group LLC is a women-owned, social impact consultancy based in Memphis, Tennessee, that specializes in organizational transformation and provides equitable people-centered services to clients across sectors, systems, and organizations.  Consilience partnered with SCAD to consult our team of 15 designers from diverse backgrounds to identify opportunities for revenue growth and brand expansion.

THE CHALLENGE

Limited reach restricting client-base expansion:
Presently, the organization relies on the quality of its work to attract clients through word-of-mouth marketing. However, while this approach is effective on a smaller group of clients, it is not successful in attracting larger, more prominent client bases because the visibility of their impact is low.   After evaluating Consilience Group's presence on multiple platforms, we found that their offerings were only listed on a few websites. It appears that the messaging regarding their offerings, past clients, and overall influence lacks specificity and clarity.

METHODOLOGY

We used enterprise design thinking methodologies that focus on co-creation and human centered outcomes to solve complex organizational problems.

VIEW PROJECT REPORT

STAKEHOLDER ALIGNMENT AND DISCOVERING OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH

Diagnosing the brand

After our initial client briefing where we discussed client needs and expectations, we identified high level areas that the organization wanted to focus on like Branding & Marketing, Social Media presence and passive revenue generation streams. Next, we conducted a Brand Diagnostic Workshop virtually on Miro where we helped Consilience reaffirm its brand identity, reveal problem areas and identify future directions for the organization.  

PROBLEMS & LIMITATIONS

Constrained staff, budget and resources  

Consilience has a limited budget and resources restricting their capability to expand through marketing and social media efforts. Their intense long-term projects take over much of the small tight knit staff’s work time with no more time and resources to spend over the company’s expansion plans.  

OUR STRATEGIC SOLUTION

A revamped branding, marketing and social media approach  

After our initial client briefing where we discussed client needs and expectations, we identified high level areas that the organization wanted to focus on like Branding & Marketing, Social Media presence and passive revenue generation streams. Next, we conducted a Brand Diagnostic Workshop where we helped Consilience reaffirm its brand identity, reveal problem areas and identify future directions for the organization.  

CO-CREATING STRATEGIES

Through a co-creation workshop, we worked with our clients to visualize their digital presence including social media, their website and the platform/toolkit.

Building brand awareness through social media expansion:
To tackle these problems while also focusing on expansion, we suggested that the company make use of popular social media platforms such as Instagram to expand their digital presence. Instagram alongside LinkedIn, would provide help create brand awarenes across a larger audience, without overextending their resources, time and budget. We curated a sensory cue, where we co-created and envisioned what their social media feed would look like on popular social networks such as LinkedIn and Instagram.  

Establishing significance across all touch points:
To convey the firms identity, highlight their impact and significance across all touch points, we curated a sensory cue to co-create and visualize a brand language that would effectively project their mission, message and voice.  

STRATEGIES & DELIVERABLES

We developed a concept for the platform/toolkit that enables Consilience to showcase its impact through testimonials and generate passive revenue by providing valuable resources to its clients without using additional budget, time or resources.  

A subscription based platform for Consilience’s customers providing curated resources comprised of expert advice, guidance and information. The platform leverages information from archives or past work and expertise acquired from previous projects.   

Key benefits: 

Provides value to customers
Helps demonstrate expertise
Increases traffic to official company website and e-mail open rates.

WIREFRAMES FOR SUBSCRIPTION BASED PLATFORM

BRAND ESSENCE

Transformative. Purpose-Driven. Trustworthy 

I helped transform Consilience’s visual design language.  

This involved ironing out visual inconsistencies in their branding and creating an enhanced brand identity with uniform and consistent brand language through a revised brand guide. Consilience's uplifting internal culture reflects inthe transformative and purpose driven work theydo for people and societies. View complete brand book. 