The Backstory
During the pandemic, Mollie’s business as an adventure elopement photographer exploded as couples opted for smaller weddings—with stunning backdrops.
All credit goes to Mollie here. During the first round of stay-at-home orders, she buckled down and got serious about SEO. Her blog posts propelled her to the top of the rankings for couples looking to elope in her staple destinations, including public lands in Washington State and the island of Kauai.
Now, she was working on a refresh of Between the Pine with her trusted designer, Sophie from Mod Bird Creative (who also happens to be a client of mine).
As part of the project, she wanted more polished copy that subtly called attention to her expertise, without losing her down-to-earth personality. She also wanted to highlight her focus on accessibility, so that potential clients could see that eloping in the outdoors is for everyone, no matter how much outdoor experience they have.
Oh, and one more thing—over the course of this project, Mollie made the decision to expand the Between the Pine brand to include associate photographers. That meant switching up our strategy to talk about the team using “we,” while positioning Mollie as the founder and the face of the brand.
The Brief
We distilled the Between the Pine brand voice into four key words: adventurous, warm, inclusive, and elevated.
Then we explored what these actually meant for her website copy.
For Between the Pine, inclusive means two different—and equally important—things. One is that the brand welcomes LGBTQ+ couples and wants them to know that from the homepage onward.
The other is that Mollie firmly believes the outdoors is for everyone, and that you don’t need to be able to scale rock faces or hike 20+ miles round-trip to have a gorgeous outdoor elopement. In fact, BtP works hard to find ADA-accessible elopement venues as well, to accommodate a wide range of needs.
To make this really, really clear to her ideal couples, we decided to put a values statement right on the homepage that focused on inclusivity while also highlighting her expertise.
Another key element was making the copy sound more elevated, which usually means taking a less-is-more approach and being judicious about the amount of copy on each page—especially the homepage. I read through a ton of Mollie’s writing—blog posts, Instagram captions, the questionnaires she filled out for me—and identified adjectives that fit the elevated tone, as well as some words and expressions that we were going to leave out in the future.
The Project
The first order of business was rewriting the homepage, about page, and pricing page to reflect the more refined brand voice. I also rewrote Mollie’s travel schedule page to spotlight her top destinations (go look at it and try not to be jealous of her adventures).
Mollie also wanted to update two key pieces of cornerstone content on her site that help answer potential clients’ questions while also bringing in new traffic.
The How to Elope page was created for couples who are just now considering the idea of eloping. If they’ve never been to an adventure elopement, they need a clear picture of what their wedding day would be like, especially in comparison to a more traditional wedding. (As a bonus, this page is chock-full of links back to Mollie’s blog, leading couples even further down the rabbit hole.)
The FAQ page is, well, an FAQ page, but we wanted to cover all the bases before the reader bounced, so that they could see that Mollie has thought of literally eve-ry-thing. (Can we bring our dog? How many guests can we have and still call it an elopement? What happens if there’s a wildfire? What if we want to elope in the Outer Hebrides—will you be our photographer?)
As you can see below, one of the challenges was including all the information couples needed (BtP has 4 photographers who cover 5 states, all depending on the season) without overwhelming them. I basically lay down the gauntlet for Sophie, and she handled it with aplomb.
The Copy
Design (including hand-drawn elements): Mod Bird Creative
Mollie Says
“I was absolutely blown away by your talent for truly making me feel like my best friend wrote this. I felt really taken care of. Once I got the copy, I started crying because it was just so spot on. It was such a relief. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.
Rest assured you’re going to be taken care of. Working with Andrea is an investment, but you have to be willing to invest in yourself if you want others to invest in your company. For me it was worth every single penny.
Hands down, stop looking for anybody else. This is your person.”
Want to uplevel your copy?
Hire me, and get it off your plate. You can book me for a full-fledged website copy project or a VIP day. (And after we’ve worked together once, you’ll have access to a whole secret menu of services—I’ll basically write anything for you.)
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