Other’s First

In an industry dominated by major institutions and new business coming strictly from referrals and introductions at the local golf club, establishing your brand as different and better is no easy task. As we know, “we aren’t the big guys” isn’t really a strong value proposition. But at the core of the Greenspring brand, we saw their unwavering desire to put “others first“—both coworker and client, as a mighty foundation to build on to ensure their further success. Simplifying the brand into two words has become their mantra and rallying call. As the company grows through hiring and acquisitions, the power to know what’s best for the brand and customers and stay true to themselves will come with ease.

During our deep dive into the brand, we discovered Greenspring fell victim to being a “best-kept secret,” which had us licking our chops. In close to 15 years of successfully advising high-net-worth clients and businesses on corporate retirement plans, they weren’t very well-known to potential customers and the search engines.

Like many businesses, Greenspring’s website struggled with messaging, defaulting to flowery, indirect language and a structure that bundled every visitor into the same bucket.

With the situation understood, our plan was clear: clarify what Greenspring Advisors does and for whom and just say it as clearly as possible. Then develop a UX and information architecture that would easily segment very different audiences to follow an ideal path to information and content we designed to align, inform, inspire, relate, and convert.

Financial well-being is measured not only by financial results but also by customer service and satisfaction. Trusting your assets and employees’ future to others isn’t a quickly and easily earned decision. Leading with transparency, addressing their potential customers’ concerns up front, and being crystal clear with straightforward language rooted in their fee-only, independent, and fiduciary ethos establishes trust at every touchpoint.

Our website auditing process revealed deep content with a ton of SEO value on the old site, something we made sure not to harm but improve further. We built a system to help categorize their extensive content. We prioritized older posts to optimize in the new design system and categorization logic—based on our search and impact measuring system to identify which posts and pages mattered most to the site’s authority and visitor value.

Our user experience research led us to devise a customer segmentation strategy that would support the content categorization plan while optimizing the experience and user journey to inform, inspire, and convert visitors into meaningful conversations for Greenspring associates.

Focusing on the human connection between Greenspring’s people and their customers, our design strategy emphasizes the people behind the brand, then an open, airy, visually stunning, and high-performing interactive design.

The results of the new website were almost immediate; within 4-months of launching the new site, Greenspring closed a $2.4 million deal.

We deliver self-sufficiency and empowerment to our clients with a solid brand foundation, tactical and performance-focused assets, and the knowledge to confidently manage the brand.

Extensive but practical brand guidelines ensure teams say the right thing to the right people consistently and robustly, in both word and image.

Merging business and sales goals with the brand and marketing strategy ensures a silo-free and unified company-wide effort to work toward the same future state and minimize unnecessary, complex, and counterproductive efforts.

Propr provided Greenspring Advisors with an extensive library of brand assets and email templates to utilize in their social and email campaigns and profound guidance and project plans around content creation and marketing. Most importantly, we designed and built a custom WordPress website that transformed their market efforts into high-return, growth-activating efforts.

Challenge

Armed with a robust brand identity system and actionable core values, Greenspring was poised to invest heavily into activating the brand for growth by capitalizing on its success and developing significantly more brand equity and awareness. 

Foundationally, they were solid. Our focus then set on their digital presence and turning a good-looking website into a great one that would function as the hub of customer traffic and business growth. 

Solution

Committed to our user-centered design focus, we began using empathy mapping to understand better their customers’ pains, gains, influences, and needs. We devised a visual system or language and color to differentiate content and sections of the website—later expanded for other assets and collateral, to help easily differentiate their three primary business divisions: private wealth, corporate retirement, and endowments and foundations. 

Each division would feature a “home page” under the core brand umbrella, so their teams could send customers and prospects directly to content and information most relevant to their needs. Our customer segmentation approach improves the experience of organic traffic visitors, who quickly identify the right path to follow, which limits confusion and optimizes their time exploring if Greenspring Advisors is right for them. 

Impact

Within four months of launching the new website, Greenspring closed a $2.4 million deal with a new customer who found the site organically, was impressed by the website, and was inspired by the content and messaging, so when she contacted them, she was ready to buy.

The site attracts the right prospects and has driven over $12 million in new business since its launch. Greensprings associates are having more conversations with the right folks. Their marketing team is empowered and self-sufficient with an easy-to-manage website, brand templates, workflow punch lists, and extensive visual and editorial brand guidelines and assets that keep them consistent and performing at a high level.

Brand refresh, messaging, and all-new corporate website for Maryland’s leading fiduciary wealth management and corporate retirement firm.

Download the Greenspring Advisors Case Study