Our Process
What can you expect when you work with us?
Brand Strategy & Consultation
Whether you just started your business or you are an established brand, we highly recommend working with us on a strategic plan. If you’re looking to strengthen your brand or content marketing, our audit can establish where your pain points are and help you make more informed decisions about what content creation and management services you need.
1
We get to know each other
We believe in developing meaningful relationships with our clients, whether we’re working on one project or we work together regularly. Yes, work quality and results are important. But so is having mutual trust. Making each other laugh doesn’t hurt either! When we take on a client, it means we believe in your mission and what you’re offering. We’re a team working toward the same goal – your success.
We’ll start off with a questionnaire so we can get to know your business and your needs better. If you’d like to chat or have questions, we offer free 30 minute phone calls or video chat sessions. If you’re an email person, that’s fine too. Whatever your communication preference, it’s important for everyone to feel we’re a good fit before moving forward.
2
We get to know your business
We specialize in working with the nonprofit, healthcare, animal care, tech, and creative industries, but we are open to working with any business making a positive impact in the community. Before creating brand strategy, we do market research and ask questions to understand three key points:
- What you do and why you do it
- Who you want to serve
- What makes your business different
We only take on projects we are passionate about, so you can expect us to be eager to learn about your business and to be as invested in your success as you are.
3
We develop a strategic plan together
We sound like a broken record, but it’s the truth. Every brand needs a strategy behind it, and every business needs a compelling story to share. Otherwise, you’re throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks. After more than a decade of working on creative and marketing teams developing brands and digital marketing strategies for a variety of organizations, we’ve learned a lot about engaging with an audience and what questions to ask. We use the information you share with us and the results of our market research to map out a marketing SWOT analysis and brand audit for your business. This helps us identify your strengths and challenges, internally and externally. Your plan will include brand strategy suggestions, such as:
- How should you position your brand?
- What is your value proposition to your customers and/or staff members?
- What core values make sense?
- What color scheme might appeal to your customers?
- What messaging might resonate?
- How can your website best represent your business and make it easy for customers to find what they need?
- What social media platforms might you get the best engagement on and what should you post?
We’ll go over your plan together and you get to decide next steps. If you’d like us to create your brand assets, such as a logo, and handle your content creation and strategy, we can design a custom service package for you at a 10% discount. If you’ve got an internal creative team and would rather take on the content creation yourself, you’ll have a plan to guide you. You need to do what is best for your business, and we fully support that. Our goal is to make brand development and marketing less overwhelming, so you and/or your team can focus on serving your customers and clients.
Interested in a Brand Development or Refresh Package?
Please fill out our Brand Development and Refresh questionnaire, and let’s see if we’re a fit. We know your time is valuable, so we only ask what we need to know. We appreciate your interest in working together!
Got Questions?
We outline more details about our process, our communication and work style, and who we love working with.
FAQs
Learn more about what services we offer and how we work
This section is under construction. Check back soon!
General Questions
Learn more about who we are, who we love working with, what we do, and our work style.
Where are you located?
We are located in Ridgefield, Washington, just outside of Vancouver. We work remotely with clients across the U.S and love working with local clients too.
What can we talk about during a discovery call and is it free?
We offer free 30 minute “getting to know you” calls or video chats to anyone who is interested in working with us. We highly encourage you to fill out our questionnaire beforehand so we can make the best use of our time together.
The goal of this chat is for us to get to know each other, discuss your needs and challenges, answer any questions you have about our process or services, and see if we’re a good fit. We cannot offer advice on strategy or consulting services during the call, but we can help you decide what services might be best for you.
We’ll send over a proposal after our meeting if you’d like to move forward with us. If you choose to go in another direction, we appreciate you letting us know.
What industries do you work with?
We LOVE working with clients and businesses that want to make a positive impact in their communities. We specialize in working with nonprofits, healthcare organizations and professionals, B-corps, and solopreneurs.
Will we work with clients outside of those industries? Absolutely! We have experience working in other industries, including tech companies, real estate agencies, and even aerospace.
Our one rule is that we only take on projects we are passionate about. We owe you that!
Why would Tansy Aster Creative be a good fit for me (or us)?
We’re a good fit if:
You want to make a positive impact in your community, improve lives, promote health and education….change the world.
You’re looking for a collaborative approach, and you see us as an extended part of your team. We care about your business and success as much as you do.
You’re open to giving and receiving respectful feedback.
You’re open to changing your perspective based on data and facts, and you’re willing to try a “new way” when the “old way” isn’t working.
You understand the importance of brand strategy, content, and marketing, and you’re willing to invest time and energy into it.
You understand that building an effective brand takes time. High quality content doesn’t come fast and cheap. The market is always evolving and we have to evolve with it.
You value good communication, being direct but kind, and transparency.
Our work and mission resonates with you and you trust us to guide you
You are a goofball who loves to laugh. We love making people laugh!
We probably aren’t a good fit if:
You’re looking for us to convince you to put more effort into your brand or marketing. We’d rather be focusing on getting results.
You prioritize personal preference over strategy and providing a good user experience.
You want good, fast, and cheap. We do the best we can for our clients and sometimes feel like we’re practicing wizardy, but we are not actual wizards.
You don’t believe in organic marketing – hey, it’s our jam.
Your last brand/web/marketing vendor did you wrong and now you can’t trust any of us. While trust needs to be built in every new relationship, we believe in giving others the benefit of the doubt.
You seem like generalists - what if I want a specialist?
We know – we’ve heard it too. Jack/Jill of all trades, master of none. Hey, it’s not always true. We happen to be lifelong geeks who love learning, and we’ve picked up a versatile skill set over the years. Variety is what gets us out of bed every morning.
We only offer the services we specialize in or have signifcant experience managing. For example, you will not see reputation management, PR, or paid marketing on our list of services. We have work to show for each service we offer. If a project goes beyond our skill set and we need more expertise, we have a network of community partners we personally know and trust to help our clients out.
What does your onboarding and payment process look like?
After we send you a proposal and you’ve decided to move forward with us, our process looks like this:
1. We sign a service agreement that outlines the scope of the project, our responsibilities, cost, and any expectations we have on either side.
2. We send you an invoice. 50% of the estimate is due as a deposit before work can begin. We ask for the other 50% prior to final delivery.
3. We have a kick off meeting and get to storytelling!
Can you do rush projects?
We know life happens and things come up, so we do our best to accommodate our clients whenever we can. If the turnaround time is less than 24 hours or it requires weekend or holiday work, we charge 2x our rate. If the turnaround time is less than 72 hours, we take it on a case-by-case basis. Some projects may be 1.5x our rate and others we can do at our regular rate. Requesting a 48-hour turnaround time for a video is a much bigger ask than asking for a social media post.