While getting started on brand strategy and design and website strategy with my clients, one of the first things I want to know is who the ideal client is. Who is the person the brand and website must resonate with and speak to. Who does it need to attract to my client?

How do you know who your ideal client is? Your Ideal Client is some one who:

• Has problems and challenges you can easily fix and solve with your eyes closed
• Sees you as a valuable necessity they treasure, instead of a necessary evil
• Likes you, appreciates your hard work, and will tell their friends, peers, and contacts about you
• Will pay you what you’re worth and will be happy to do so because they know you’re worth it

But how do you find out exactly who they are?

Grade Them.Look at all of your clients for a set time period and give each one a grade — A, B, C, D, F. Don’t think about it too much. Just go with your gut instinct and be honest — Don’t worry! No one will see this but you.

Learn More About Finding & Defining Your Ideal Clients

In our last ezine, we launched a new infoproduct and a new email newsletter template with a simplified design and layout — I LOVE the new template because it really focuses on getting our loyal subscribers awesome content in a way that is easy to read and digest.

Brian and I are also working on an upgrade to our own website design (we’re so excited), but we won’t be ready to debut that until later. We’re in the design facelift phase right now and, as you can imagine, we’re nitpicking everything from the menu and the flow of content, to the paths our visitors travel, and every pixel of spacing.

The new upgrade is already so good, I’m having some website shame of my own (unheard of, I know) in regards to this one!

Why upgrade the site? Well first we do it every 18 months to 2 years as we continue to learn. Second, we’ve gained immense clarity (I’m talking crystal clear) about our brand and we need refine things a bit.

Now, along with gaining complete clarity about the Bourn Creative brand and where we want to take it, I’ve gained clarity in other areas too!

But My Clarity Lead to Infoproduct Irritation

This all came to a head while Brian and I were strategizing for 2012/2013.

Read my Rant on Infoproducts and How I’m Taking a Stand

Now that you know the 8 components of a successful website opt-in box, you have all the information you need to create an awesome opt-in box. But, even though your opt-in box has all the right pieces and works the right way … it may not actually work to build your list?

What?!

If your free offer — the thing you’re giving away for free in exchange for their name and email address — isn’t what your visitors want or need, they won’t sign up and enter their name and email … even if your opt-in box is awesome!

Learn 4 Ways to Make Your List Building Free Offer Irresistible

Let’s talk about your website opt-in box visitors will see when they come to your website, and the eight key parts of an opt-in box that ensure maximum success (and conversions).

In the example to the right, all eight components of a successful opt-in are used to create an irresistible offer for a free video series.

If you already have a website opt-in box, use this checklist to confirm that you have implemented each item listed and aren’t missing one key component that could increase your conversion rate.

If you’re in the process of planning or creating a new website, use this checklist to ensure your designer includes all eight elements in your website opt-in box so you can build your list effectively.

Here are the 8 components of of a successful website opt-in box:

Learn the 8 Parts Of A Successful Website Opt-In Box

Once your website is complete, it’s time to focus on marketing your website and getting people to your site.

After all, they can’t opt-in to your list, download your free offer, sign up for your free teleclass, register for your event, contact you, or buy from you if they never get to your website in the first place!

The old way of thinking, “If you build it, they will come.” Simply isn’t true.

There is so much competition on the internet these days that there are literally millions of other websites, opportunities, and distractions available that you have to complete with. If you just sit back and wait for people to find your website, you may be waiting a very, very long time.

Instead, your responsibility as a website owner and business owner is to get the word out there and market the heck out of your website and business so those people who are looking for and need what you’re offering can find you.

If you don’t like to market, you don’t want to promote yourself, or you’re hesitant to get you name out there in a big way, think of it this way – if you don’t you’re actually hurting and stealing from other people. In a way, you’re robbing them of the opportunity to get to know you, to learn what you do, and to get the help and solutions they have been looking for.

Read my list of 74 Ways to Market Your Website and Business

Marketing includes any contact a person has with any part of your business. It is an ongoing process not a single event.

When you look at it that way, marketing can sound pretty "big" and overwhelming — After all, every contact with your business is a lot of space to cover!

I want to you think about marketing a bit differently though. Think about marketing as a whole bunch of opportunities to educate your audience on how to achieve their goals, grow their business, improve their life, etc.

One important thing to remember though, is that people only read and pay attention to what interested them. That means it’s your job to provide them interesting content, images, videos, audios, and messages so they pay attention!

It’s also your job to market your business. You owe it to the people whom you can help that are suffering and just haven’t found you yet. They need your help and they need to be able to find you. The only way to do that is to market your business.

Now you don’t need to be a marketing guru, expert, or maven to succeed at marketing a small business — you just have to be committed and consistent. Consistent mediocre marketing with commitment will work better and produce more results than brilliant marketing done inconsistently without commitment.

Here’s what you need to know about successful marketing for small business:

Learn How to Succeed at Small Business Marketing

Running and managing your business should be fun. Working IN and ON your business should be something you love and enjoy …

But for some business owners the fun and enjoyment of having their own business is overshadowed by financial stress and worrying about how to improve their bottom line. For some business owners the stress can be almost paralyzing.

So here are 9 simple ways you can add to your bottom line and reduce money stress:

Learn 9 Ways to Improve Your Bottom Line

Freedom…

Many of us entrepreneurs, in our excitement over our newfound independence, often want to express our newly liberated tastes in our logo design. In our exuberance, we might try to include all of our favorite colors, graphic elements, and even an elaborate thousand-word story into our logos.

It’s perfectly natural. Finally emancipated from someone else’s ideas about what looks good, we want to proclaim our own. Our logos often become repositories for all of that previously pent-up creative energy.

Responsibility…

But in reality, we have to step back and take a wider, more long-term look at the function of a logo. Because the elements that go into designing a great small business logo — including the graphics and illustrations, typefaces, and colors—should not be based on our tastes.

Read More About The MUSIC of a Great Small Business Logo Design

This past week put both Brian and I on overload. We were not only in catch-up mode from my Arizona trip for Ali Brown’s Millionaire Protege Club retreat, but also three of our biggest clients all needed giant projects done all at the same time!

Needless to say we were really looking forward to some detached-downtime over weekend with the kids. On Saturday after soccer, we played boards games, Wii, and Legos all day. Then on Sunday we hit the pumpkin patch and Bishop’s Pumpkin Farm with Brian’s mom, June.

When June arrived at our house on Sunday, we were getting in the car and she asked, “Which pumpkin patch are we going to?”

“What?! There is only one pumpkin patch to go to,” I replied. Then it dawned on me. There are a few really good pumpkin patches around our house, but I only ever think of one. For me the words “Pumpkin Patch” and “Bishop’s Farm” mean the same thing.

Read More About Branding Pumpkins

I have to be honest, at Bourn Creative we were so excited to start working with Millionaire Marketing Coach Kendall SummerHawk on her design projects. (I had been following Kendall and her work off and on since early 2009 and had heard wonderful things about her!)

We jumped right in with the design of four different information products! From the workbook front and back covers, to the CD wrappers and CD labels, to the design of the workbook content, Bourn Creative created four beautiful foundations to showcase the in-depth content inside each of these products — I know because I read the all of the workbooks and transcripts included in each product as I was laying out the content… and I learned a TON just from reading them!

Read More About Kendall SummerHawk’s Success Story