Articles on Marketing and Marketing Strategy

If you build it, they won’t come. If you market it, they might &$8212; as long as you do it right. But what is the right way?

As a business owner, it is your job to market your business and get the word out so people who need what you offer can find you, hire you, buy from you, learn from you, and tell their friends about you.

But marketing is about so much more than covering the world with marketing materials, blasting your message across every medium available, and promoting yourself like crazy.

Below you will find:

  • A collection of articles on marketing strategy and marketing planning
  • Tips on finding and choosing the best marketing tools and tactics for your business
  • Strategies on how to make your marketing as effective as possible
  • Ideas on how to market your business, gain visibility, earn trust, and attract new clients

One Profound Question That Can Drastically Improve Your Marketing

May 1, 2013 | By | 8 Comments

Improve Your Benefits-Based Marketing With This One QuestionI’ll bet you started your business to follow a passion, to do something you love, or to create your own future.

And yet, marketing is what you find yourself wrapped up in all the time.

After all, you need leads, clients, and customers, and no one can hire you, buy from you, or learn from you if they don’t know that you exist!

Why Marketing Is So Hard

You’re good at what you do. You know it. In fact, you’re brilliant at what you do. But unfortunately, for most of us marketing isn’t what you do best.

Learn the one question that will make marketing with benefits easy

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Copywriting & Communication, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , , , ,

Start A Sales Conversation With Your Marketing Message

March 22, 2013 | By | 4 Comments

Jennifer Bourn and Ali BrownRecently I flew to LA for Thrive Live, Ali Brown’s Elevate member event. The two day event, was mainly taught by Elevate coaches James Roche, Joy Chudacoff, and Sue Painter (as Ali is very pregnant with twins!), and was focused on basic business concepts like your mission, your marketing message, and your business model.

One of those areas caused some serious grief and stress for many of the attendees… and the exact same thing causes several of our clients who are newer to business ownership to freak out a little. Can you guess which one it is?

It wasn’t understanding and communicating their mission, and it wasn’t choosing a business model.

It was figuring out a marketing message and how to communicate what you do in a way that is clear, easy to understand, and in alignment with your mission and values.

As I sat in the room, I couldn’t help but think that if this many business owners at this event were struggling with crafting their marketing message, then imagine how many others around the world are struggling with the same problem … Yikes!

Learn what a marketing message is used for and get a step-by-step formula to write your own marketing message

Filed Under: Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , , , ,

Adding Google Authorship To Your WordPress Site

March 1, 2013 | By | 31 Comments

(AKA: Getting Your Photo To Show Up In The Google Search Results)

Google Search Results Page Showing Author Photo

Facial recognition is a powerful marketing tool and authors, business owners, and bloggers alike are taking advantage of it.

When searching Google, you have more than likely noticed that photos are now appearing next to some of the listed search results on the search engine results pages — and you may have even been influenced by those photos when deciding which link to click.

Getting YOUR Photo to Show Up

Adding your photo to Google’s search results can easily be accomplished in a few different ways with a WordPress site. In fact, the process is nearly identical using three of our favorite WordPress tools:

Learn How to get your photo to show up next to your pages and posts in the Google search results

Filed Under: Blogging & Blog Strategy, Client Attraction, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design Tips & Strategy, WordPress Tips & Resources | Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Branding Mistakes That Will Sabotage Your Small Business Success

February 16, 2013 | By | 19 Comments

Brand StrategyIt takes an enormous amount of time, effort, perseverance, determination, consistency, and action to build a strong and powerful brand … But it only takes one negative brand experience to undermine your credibility and sabotage your success in the eyes of your ideal clients and customers.

Here are 8 branding tips to help you avoid the most common brand mistakes small business make:

Branding Tip 1: Stick to Your Brand Fonts

Don’t use gimmicky, cheesy fonts to be “different” and stand out from the crowd. Using fonts with “wow” and “pop” aren’t going help your brand, neither is changing your fonts in each piece of marketing material! Too many fonts, cheesy fonts, or constantly changing fonts will give your brand an amateur and unprofessional feel. Stick to your official brand fonts to build credibility and promote your professionalism, and maybe every once is a while add in one unique font for a special use case. (NOTE: The same rule applies to your brand colors!)

Learn 7 More Branding Tips

Filed Under: Brand Design & Brand Strategy, Copywriting & Communication, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , ,

VIP Treatment: A Smart Marketing Lesson From Lego

February 14, 2013 | By | 20 Comments

Lego Valentine's Day Special PromotionWhat does VIP treatment equal?

For your clients and customers, feeling like a VIP often equals spending more money!

I think we all can learn a valuable marketing lesson from Lego this Valentine’s Day on marketing and VIP treatment.

For Valentine’s Day, Lego put together a special promotion. As a VIP member, I received a gift in the mail containing special early bird opportunities, discounts, and opportunities to earn double VIP rewards.

It’s no secret we’re HUGE Lego fans in the Bourn household.

Heck, we’re remodeling our entire bonus room into one giant Lego utopia. So when this little package arrived, we were excited. We’ve received special Lego packages like this before and they’re always brilliantly done and well designed.

Learn the Marketing Lessons Lego Teaches Us

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Graphic Design & Print Design, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , , ,

6 Smart Marketing Tips to Increase Your Networking Results

January 31, 2013 | By | 14 Comments

Networking tips to maximize small business marketing successNetworking is how I built my business. Networking got me to where I am today (along with A LOT of hard work). Networking taught me the right way to do business, how to speak about my business, and how I wanted to show up.

I started my business when I was 25 years old. I had no idea what I was doing and when I walked into my very first networking event packed with professional business women, I was so nervous and scared! Joining networking groups helped me grow up as a business owner and grow my business. It has also yielded some of the strongest relationships I still have today.

But there are things you need to know and understand to be successful at networking — and there are definitely wrong ways to network.

Here are six tips I have learned over the years that have helped me maximize my networking results and my marketing at networking events:

Learn My Marketing Tips to Increase Your Networking Results

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Client Attraction, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy, Social Media & Social Networking | Tagged With: , , ,

8 Marketing Tips to Help You Get More Clients

January 29, 2013 | By | 32 Comments

Marketing Tips to Help You Get More ClientsStart up businesses need clients — any clients. Mid-level businesses need more clients and more money. Established, successful businesses need fewer, better, higher-paying clients.

But how does a business owner go about getting clients? How do you get your first client? How do you get more clients? How do you get better clients?

If getting clients were easy, marketers would be out of business!

There is a lot of fluff online about client attraction — some people think it’s magic. That you can just sit there and wish for clients and that they will appear. Or that by putting out the right energy, miraculously you’ll attract clients who will come find you.

But seriously, it doesn’t work like that. You have to work to get clients. Client attraction is just a special phrase that refers to the strategies business owners use to get more clients.

So to help you with your client needs, here are 8 marketing tips to help you attract the clients you need:

Learn 8 Marketing Tips to Help You Get More Clients

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Client Attraction, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Important Marketing Tips Small Businesses Must Understand

January 22, 2013 | By | 20 Comments

Small Business Marketing BasicsLately I’ve written a lot of posts about marketing and I’ve provided you with a lot of tips on marketing strategies, including:

While all of these tips can help you build a successful small business, there are some marketing tips and strategies that every small business needs to understand — The small business marketing basics if you will.

Learn 5 Important Marketing Tips All Small Businesses Must Understand

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , ,

4 More Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

January 17, 2013 | By | 18 Comments

Marketing tips to get more referralsRecently I wrote the post 5 Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business, covering some of the lessons I have learned by building a successful referral based business.

And as I was formatting the post, I came up with even more marketing tips to help you build a referral based business too — Four more tips to be exact.

These tips focus more on communicating with your referral partners and/or affiliates, rewarding people who refer new business to you, and even some things to watch out for when working with referral clients. Hope you enjoy!

Learn 4 More Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Client Attraction, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

January 15, 2013 | By | 24 Comments

Referral Based Business Marketing TipsBourn Creative is an almost 100% referral based company.

What does that mean? It means most of our new clients and leads come from others telling their friends, family and colleagues about us and suggesting they hire us.

Our most lucrative clients — and frankly our favorite clients — have been the results of someone else’s referral.

Imagine how different your life and your business would be if your phone rang every day, and your inbox had messages in it everyday from people who want to work with you because their friend recommended you? Awesome right!

Imagine how much less stress there would be over marketing? What a relief!

Get 5 marketing tips to build a successful referral based business

Filed Under: Business & Entrepreneurship, Client Attraction, Marketing Tips & Marketing Strategy | Tagged With: , , , , ,