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Watch This Episode About An Eco Jeweller Branding Case Study

An eco-jeweller branding case study this week featuring program alumnus Sally How from How Fine Designs.

This is a great insight into how my On Your Terms Branding Program works to help a female brand owner like Sally, who is highly creative and a major expert within her field, to build confidence in the fact and logical side of brand strategy, so that her natural flair can support her growing her brand in the direction she wants it to on the terms that she has for her career, life, and business.

If that sounds a bit like you, then stick around.

About This Branding  Case Study

Client: Sally How from How Fine Designs
Category: Branding Program
Project Objectives: To build confidence in the fact and logical side of brand strategy so that Sally’s natural flair can support her growing her eco-jewellery brand in the direction she wants it to go in. Sally wanted to use her spot in my On Your Terms branding program to gain clarity and accountability with her career, life, and business.
Return on Investment: Clarity about the direction of her branding. Confidence in following a clear plan for progress. Branding Assets to show up more as part of a wider marketing plan.

Meet Sally How – Eco Jeweller

Hi, I’m Sally, and my business is called How Fine Designs. I make handmade jewellery using recycled silver and gold. I make it for mostly female entrepreneurs and coaches.

How Sally is a LEGIT expert

My previous experience was as a BBC graphic designer, so I’ve had a lot of history in the creative field, so everything I’ve done has been creative, really. After we relocated, I started to train to be a teacher ’cause I wanted to actually do something in a different area. I’ve really enjoyed teaching children and then teaching adults how to make art.

Eco Jewellery Branding Case Study - Laura Pearman Creative

Into Education

Fast forward a few more years, and I decided that I wanted to do something creative for myself. I then learned about jewellery. I did it, first of all, in evening classes, and then I did a LOT of self-teaching from YouTube and all sorts of books.

Then, I found Jewellers Academy, and I started to do courses with them. Since then, I’ve been in their membership, and then I actually joined their team, and I now mentor on the Silver Diploma.

Relentless Upskilling

Now, I’ve done the Fine Diploma, and this year I’ve done the Advanced Diploma as well. So I’m upskilling myself, as well as helping others to do the same.

Silver Diploma is about learning from scratch, how to hold a saw, how to drill holes, how to use a solder torch, and how to put things all together. And then the Fine Diploma is just honing those skills, and then the Advanced, that’s taking things to the real pro level.

Sally’s Suspension Ring

This ring, for example, here, you can see it’s got a tension set ring in the middle, which is, it’s a moissanite, but it could be a diamond, and you can see it hanging in the middle there and it looks like there’s no way that it’s held in there.

And then we’ve got channel setting on the shoulders on either side, which is the stones are kept inside, and that’s the sort of thing I’ve been learning to make recently.

It’s a lot more advanced and it’s so much fun.

Eco Jewellery Branding Case Study - Laura Pearman Creative

What was the deciding factor for you to take the leap and join my On Your Terms Branding Program?

I was doing too much stuff in my business and not going in any particular direction. So I was a bit scattered and fragmented. I have way too many ideas and I just get overwhelmed with what I can do because I know I can do everything, and it is kind of, it’s just that…

There is not enough time to do everything. And so then, I thought if you could help me with that, I would sort of be able to work out where to go. I felt confident that from your branding and things that I had seen, you would know what was missing from my brand and how to help me actually get that.

Eco Jeweller Branding Case Study Behind The Scenes

If you’ve tuned in to Mwah TV before, you will have seen that I am a huge fan of creating as much behind-the-scenes content as I possibly can. I got Sally to agree to record a series of diary cams so that we could document how she felt, whether it was good, bad, or ugly, as she was progressing through my On Your Terms Branding Program. So now, we can flash back in time to when Sally was just about to begin…….

Flashback To Sally BEFORE Beginning The Program: What She Thought

It’s going to be interesting. I’m a bit nervous about being more visible on video and everything, but I know that Laura’s going to be able to help me, so I’m quite excited about that too.

I’ve got to put myself out there, and I’ve got to turn up and show up and put in the effort.

I’ve got a big discovery workbook that I need to go through, so that’s quite daunting, but it’s also got a lot of information that I thought, “Oh yeah, I do need to think about that.”

So yeah, we’ll see where we end up.

Revisit Sally’s Photoshoot

Sally chose to shoot with me a while back. If you’d like to see how this went down, replay the episode below:

One of the integral stages for Sally in the program was learning more about her customers, and we did this relatively early in the program.

This was her opportunity to deeply reflect on who she served in the years that she’s been trading. Then, she took an analytical look at which customers were most profitable and compared that to which customers were in alignment with how she wanted to be known as a brand.

And then the most important thing, reflecting on which customers have brought her the most satisfaction and joy in who she served. Let’s take a look at how she felt about this.

Different Ways To Navigate Customer Insight: Sally’s Thoughts

I think the biggest takeaway I got from working with Laura on understanding my clients better was that I shouldn’t be worried about asking for feedback.

The overall client’s takeaway was that they loved working with me and they really, really loved their jewellery. So I felt… Yeah, that was really nice.

I’ve watched quite a few YouTube videos about customer avatar. And before doing this, I think I probably would’ve chosen an avatar that was one that was the most obvious but not necessarily the most helpful to me as a brand because I think many of the other businesses will be using that also.

So yeah, it is quite good to actually choose one that was slightly less obvious. And in fact, in the end, I’ve decided to choose a blend.

The Customer Journey (Hidden Expectations)

Working with Laura on this in her methodical way was really super helpful, and it really helped me to embrace who I am and how I can help my customers. Doing things this way has helped me see my customer needs guidance and support.

And more specifically, they need help with working out how to actually make some custom jewellery without knowing anything about the industry beforehand.

So that’s my role to actually make it a smooth process that they can actually go through without stress and worries. The next bit is to do my role in my customer’s life and buying journey. And if I’m honest, I feel a little apprehensive about this, but yeah, I think it’s going to be helpful in the long run. So let’s do it.

Branding Personality

One of the modules we get into later on in the program is how to articulate in detail the personality overall of your brand. We then finesse this out further with real-life scenario forecasting and pinpointing the support and creative direction with creative anchoring. Here’s sally again with her thoughts.

Eco Jewellery Branding Case Study - Laura Pearman Creative

Into Branding Archetypes

Now I’m going to be talking about archetyping and the personality part of the program. I’ll be honest, going into this module, I was feeling a bit scattered because there were so many directions I could go.

What I see now as totally helpful before doing this part was the previous modules, like competitors and client feedback. Without the right level of detail, I don’t think I would’ve been able to decide where I fitted in when it came to my archetype, and personality, and what my brand should look like.

The final module was all about creative direction, and this is totally fascinating to me. So I was looking forward to it, and I had a pretty good idea about how detailed Laura was expecting me to be with this. So what stood out to me was learning how I could appeal to my clients by applying what I’d already learned. And to put some of my background as a teacher into my application.

And Creative Direction

I know that I’m a laid-back sort of type of mood boarder. I prefer Pinterest, and so this has helped me to embrace immersing myself in creative inspirations, like watching movies and reading stories, which I know that I would’ve never prioritised as a genuine business task before doing this. I’ve always tended to do more of my own creative stuff because it feels like part of my wheelhouse with my skillset.

WITH Delegation

I can see clearly that continuing to do everything myself isn’t really conducive to growing my business.

I can see how articulating things to this level of detail has helped me to process my thoughts and ideas, and some of the things on my mood board have actually been on my notice boards and my Pinterest account floating around for years. So yeah, it’s been cathartic to get this level of clarity.

But thinking ahead into the future, I can now begin to see how I could feel a lot more in control when delegating creative tasks out to people who are experts in the field without stressing about how an investment like that will go wrong and cost me money, as well as additional stress.

Explore How Fine Designs Jewellery

Eco Jeweller Branding Case Study 6 Months AFTER Completion: Sally, what do you think the results look like now in your business with the benefit of hindsight?

It was really, really useful to actually hear some of your feedback when I gave you my findings of what would be good to do next.

It gave me a bit more of a road plan and a map of where I can go and what I could focus on ’cause I could have done any of them, and any of them probably would’ve worked, but I just then worked out that actually hearing what was working well in my business back at me when we’ve got things that we’d found discoveries, et cetera, from clients, and feedback, and things like that, then I was able to actually go, “Ah, yes.” My business was in too many different directions all at once before this program.

Sally’s Top Priority

So now, I find that actually, I know the top priority for my business. And then I’ve got several others that are just next orders. So I worked out that the Wedding Ring Workshops were going to be my primary focus, then the bespoke, and then after that, the collections.

And I think that with me doing Diplomas and things, that I needed that focus particularly, ’cause I think otherwise… And I’ve worked part-time for the Jewellers Academy, so it was literally… I was trying to do too many things at once.

Now, I’ve been able to sort of give myself permission that actually, I can do priority of things and then everything else sort of slots in place and it’s given me permission to actually say, “I’m not going to do everything now. I can park a few things and come back to them like the collections.” I know that I’m going to axe a lot of things off my website very soon once I’ve finished my Advanced Diploma.

And then I will be able to sort of make it fresh, and new, and all the things that I’ve been planning.

And New Approach To Customers

This really helped me to actually know a lot more about my customer that I can actually tell quite quickly within a couple of minutes when I get a customer onto a call whether they’re going to be a good fit for my business.

So it’s given me a lot more confidence to actually move along if somebody’s not the best fit for my business. And actually, I can send them to other places.

Once I’ve identified that they’re a good fit, I think it’s really good that I can just know that I’m confident that they will be good to work with.

When I get customers to come to my workshops for the Wedding Ring Workshops, they are usually really interesting people, and I seem to manage to attract the right sort of clients.

AND Customer Loyalty

I’ve got the customers to come for the Wedding Ring Workshops, they tend to then come back for anniversary presents and presents for relatives and friends. And so the bespoke side of my business then benefits from me nurturing those relationships with my lovely clients.

 

Reflecting On Eco Jeweller Branding Case Study

So, you see. Sally was able to create her own focus using her creative intuition abilities, as well as the all-important facts and logic. She now has an easy-to-implement marketing plan that is already underway.

The important side of that is that Sally’s business is now profitable business. Maybe more important than that, she now has the benefits of a smart workload. So she’s able to schedule that crucial time when you’re creative to give her creative curiosity space to blossom and bloom so that she can make sure she’s growing as an artist, which fulfils her soul’s purpose.

Timestamps For This Episode

00:00 Episode Begins

00:49 Recording Bloopers

02:06 Meet Sally

02:21 What makes Sally a Jewellery EXPERT?

03:42 Sally’s latest Jewellery creation

04:16 The decision to start my On Her Terms Program

05:05 Capturing Sally’s journey behind-the-scenes

06:39 A customer breakthrough

08:15 Articulating CREATIVE details like a pro

10:37 How Sally Feels 6 months AFTER Completing the branding program

13:51 How the On Her Terms Branding Program Works for Creative Businesses and Brand Owners

14:39 How to apply

14:50 Sally’s recommendation to you

15:09 Connect with Sally

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