Leslie Payne is a good friend of ours; afterall she has helped us bring several of our children into the world. Her midwifery business, Traditional Midwifery of Lynchburg, serves the homebirthing community in the greater Lynchburg, Virginia area. When we met, Leslie had no website, no visual identity for her business and only generic business cards. Her business spreads best via word-of-mouth through passionate clients telling others about her excellent services. It’s no doubt that her business would continue to grow even without any unified marketing efforts, but the niche nature of her business poses a unique challenge: how do families in the Central Virginia area who are seeking homebirthing as an option find her easily?
Starting with the process of developing a visual identity, we worked with Leslie to create a logo system, color scheme and other visual elements that have become the ‘face’ of her 
business. We charge a significant amount for this process because it is so critical to establishing a solid public awareness. We continued with custom business cards with which we introduced her new logo and visual identity. A well designed business card featuring your unique logo is critical to presenting a consistent and professional public image as a business. We then entrusted the printing to CLARK, Inc., a local print shop I use to work for. (They did a great job by the way!)
Next we helped her purchase a domain and webhosting and built her a simple WordPress-driven website that would enable her to control the content and easily makes updates. The WordPress platform as a CMS has so many benefits for the client as well as the designer/developer I think I may have to start writing about it in upcoming posts. For now, let me just say: I truly love WordPress.
Finally, we flat out said: ‘you’ve got to use social media’. With a little help and coaxing she made use of the integrated blog (ok, maybe only once but it’s a start) and reluctantly made the plunge into Facebook. For many clients new to social media it’s totally unnerving so we skipped the other big services like Twitter and LinkedIn. Watching how Facebook has actually improved the Traditional Midwifery of Lynchburg search engine results and allowed many to connect easily with the fan page, I will continue to advocate that businesses and organizations take the plunge and use it wisely.
Check it out: www.lynchburgmidwifery.com
