Imagine a room full of people all trying to market their products and services and sell to the same person at the same time. The room is packed with people talking at the prospect. The prospect is looking out into the crowd and he is getting frustrated because everyone is talking at the same time and he really can’t hear anything.

As time goes by the prospect is getting frustrated. The people marketing and selling to the prospect are also getting frustrated and some begin to shout in an attempt to get their voice heard. Soon, the noise level in the room gets louder and louder and the prospect starts to think about putting in earplugs. Do you want to join that crowd of marketers and have your message blend in with all of the other messages? NO WAY! You want to be the person who finds a microphone and stands on a chair!

You goal is to rise above the traditional marketing hype.

Your marketing materials are tools meant to assist your customer in their buying decision. The old way of marketing, pushing your products on your audience and focusing on how much money you will make, is no longer working. The new way of marketing, pulling your prospects to you and focusing on making it as easy as possible to decide to purchase your products and services, is the secret to your marketing success.

To make your marketing compelling, you must include a crystal clear statement of benefits and advantage in a very prominent place, like the headline or first sentence. You must ensure them that by viewing, listening to, or reading your marketing material, they will learn something new or receive something of value. And, you must make it easy to make a decision and take action.

Compelling marketing materials are the perfect combination of a persuasive message, a crystal clear call to action, and simple, attention-getting, professional graphic design with the right marketing piece. They also communicate the right message, to the right person, at the right time. And, with well-designed, benefits driven, compelling, easy to understand marketing materials you will be able to successfully cut through all of the other marketing messages out there to reach your ideal client. Your marketing materials need to address your ideal client’s problems and position you as the obvious “duh” solution.

Remember, your ideal clients WANT to buy from you. But they don’t want to feel like they are being pushed, pulled, manipulated, or sold, and they don’t want you to waste their time with irrelevant information. They want you to guide them to the important information. They want you to make it easy for them to make a decision. They want accurate, honest information not big promises, omissions, and hype. They want genuine help, not manipulation posing as help.

You only have one opportunity to make a first impression, and trust me, you don’t want to risk making a bad impression with an unprofessional marketing piece or confusing your audience with items look like they are from completely different companies.

Each and every piece of branded marketing material, whether it is online or offline, should represent your brand, your promise, and your value authentically and consistently. A cohesive marketing strategy and strong visual brand will not only help you communicate feelings of stability, credibility, and dependability, which are key factors in building trust, but they will also help the recipient decide whether they are going to save your sales piece, or throw it away.

So do yourself a favor, hire Bourn Creative to create compelling, eye-catching marketing and sales materials that will blow your competition away and pull your ideal clients right to your doorstep! Or, if you’re still on the fence, check out my blog post on Why Do I Need to Hire a Professional Graphic Designer?

What Marketing Materials Does My Business Need?

You know you need some professional marketing materials so you can get out there and promote your business, your products, and your services. But what do you need exactly? A brochure, ezine, stationery, folder, flyer, website, blog? With all of the different options you have to choose from, how do you know what to do first and how do you know which is the best choice for your business? And more important, which pieces will get you the biggest return on your investment and bring you the most value?

These are questions I get asked all the time and my answer is always the same. There are three main marketing pieces that every solopreneur, entrepreneur and small business owners must have. They are:

1. A business card
2. A website or blogsite
3. A follow up marketing piece

Check out my blog post on this very topic: 3 Marketing Pieces Entrepreneurs Must Have and learn more about why these items are the top three I recommend and what they need to include.

We’re updating and upgrading all of our materials and will continue to do so over the next few months as we continue to build the business not only around our clients’ needs, requests, and desires, but around our growing team’s amazing talents and expertise!

If you’re a subscriber of our email newsletter Design & Profit, you’ve already seen some of Bourn Creative’s graphic design upgrade. Soon, we’ll be launching the website design upgrade and the blog design upgrade as well!

So, you’ll notice a little less of my smiling face on everything. But don’t worry… I am still in the driver’s seat and I am taking the drive of a lifetime.

I am so excited about the business growth we’re experiencing and I truly appreciate each and every one of you who continue to support us. I look forward to sharing the journey with you and continuing to improve our service and business practices!

Best Wishes and Incredible Success,

Jennifer Bourn, Art Director & Online Marketing Strategist
jennifer@bourncreative.com.

What bothers me the most is that most smart business owners blindly turn to a graphic designer or web designer to design them a site that makes them “look cool” to their competitors.

Here’s the problem with that approach: Your competitors aren’t going to buy from you or hire you.

Website design isn’t about your designer adding another edgy piece to their portfolio that pushes the boundaries and makes them look cool to other designers.

Website design isn’t about using all of the programming tricks and capabilities available. Remember, custom animation was popular in PowerPoint when it first came out, but now you’re sort of a dork if you use it. Some of those website features work the same way.

Website design also isn’t about jockeying for the coolest site award among your peers. This isn’t high school and no one cares what stickers you have on your binder or what patches you have on your backpack.

What people do care about is that they can find the information they are looking for quickly and easily. It also helps if your website isn’t ugly and doesn’t look like your “friend’s husband who is good with computers” built it for you.

With that said, here is what designing your website should be about:

Your business website has nothing to do with your competitors. It’s sole focus is your target market and serving them to the absolute best of your ability. It should focus on providing useful, valuable information quickly. Your content should be easy to find and should take as few clicks as possible to reach it.

The website development should include the integration of automation tools that make your job easier, make the visitors’ experience better, and streamline your processes.

The web design should focus on organizing and presenting the information clearly. It should make the content easy to read and should guide the user through the site. The design should also help reinforce and enhance your brand, position you as an expert, and build your credibility.

Think of your website this way – the website is the movie, the content is the leading actor, and the design is the supporting actor.

Your goal is to create a synergy between the overall site, the design, and the content that helps create chemistry with your visitors so they keep coming back.

Typically the files types the average person will not be able to open are the files with the extensions AI, EPS, and PSD. Each of these three file types require a special software program used by designers, printers, signage manufacturers, and promotional product manufacturers.

Here is a quick list of the different file extensions you may come across when working with a graphic designer, what each of them stand for, and how the file format is used.

1. AI: Adobe Illustrator
   AI files are vector files used by designers and commercial printers to generate files of different file formats and sizes. AI files can only be opened using Adobe Illustrator and may be created in layers. An AI file is one of the most preferred formats by printers, promotional product companies, silk screeners, banner and sign companies, and other third party creatives.
2. EPS: Encapsulated Postscript
   EPS files are most commonly used by designers to transfer an image or artwork, generally a vector file into another application. Vector-based EPS files are scalable to any size. EPS files can be opened using Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, or Adobe Photoshop. A vector EPS file is one of the most preferred formats by printers, promotional product companies, silk screeners, banner and sign companies, and other third party creatives.
3. PDF: Portable Document Format
   A PDF is a universal file format that preserves/embeds the fonts, images, layout and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application used to create it. PDF files can be shared, viewed and printed by anyone with the free Adobe Reader software. Some PDF files can be used for commercial, digital, and/or desktop printing.
4. PSD: Photoshop Document
   The PSD file format, usually a raster format, contains graphics and photos created in Adobe Photoshop image editing software. Most commonly used by designer and printers. PSD files can only be opened using Photoshop and may be created in layers.
5. JPG: Joint Photographic Experts Group
   A JPG file is a compressed image file that does not support a transparent background. The level of compression in JPG files can vary in resolution with high quality for desktop printing, medium quality for web viewing and low quality for email. When compressed repeatedly the overall quality of a JPG image is reduced.
6. GIF: Graphics Interchange Format
   GIF files are low resolution files most commonly used for web and email purposes. Almost all browsers can support the use of GIF files, which use a compression scheme to keep the file size small. GIF files can be created with a transparent background.
7. TIF: Tagged Image File Format
   The TIF/TIFF file format is most commonly used for storing images, photography, or art. TIF files are most commonly used in professional environments and commercial printing. The TIF format is the most widely supported format across all platforms. It is the standard format for high quality images. Though large in size, TIF formats are considered to be the most reliable format for high quality images.
8. PNG: Portable Network Graphics
   The PNG file format is most commonly used for use online and on websites due to their low resolution. PNG files are bitmap images that employ lossless data compression, and like GIF files, PNG files can be created with a transparent background.

If you have any questions or need clarification, please leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to answer it!

Here is a brief outline of the seven step logo design and graphic design process that I use for each project:

CREATIVE BRIEF.
In this first step, I gather all of the information possible from you. I ask questions and get to know your needs, desires, and expectations. The information gathered in this step is then compiled into a creative brief to be reviewed and approved by all decision-makers.

EDUCATION.
This step involves researching your business and industry. If budget allows, research on your competitors, similar products/services/companies, gaps in the market or industry, and opportunities for differentiation. This includes visual research as well looking at the design styles used in your industry as well.

SKETCHING AND CONCEPTING.
This step may include sketching in a notebook or on scraps of paper, trying out ideas and joining elements on the computer, collaging elements together, or even taking a walk. Sometimes my best ideas come to me while walking the trail by my house or going for a quiet drive. This is truly creative part of the process where the concepts for your logo evolve from. The sketches are merged, tweaked, refined, and changed until the final concepts are ready to be presented to you for review.

PRESENTATION.
In this step, I present to you either in person, or via email your new logo design concepts. If the concepts are provided via email, I recommend some discussion about these as well so I can chat with you about the thought process and reasoning behind the concepts.

REVISIONS & FINE TUNING.
This is where you really start to get involved and we work together to revise the presented design concepts as needed to reach your final design. Sometimes my clients have no revisions and sometimes we’ll make two or three to get it just right. While I will always honor your ideas and requests, I also will provide design guidance as needed.

FINALIZE ARTWORK.
Once your final design is selected, I will finalize the logo artwork in Vector EPS and PDF formats, CMYK PSD and TIF formats, and RGB JPG and GIF formats in both color and black and white. For print materials, you will receive the native design files, the linked images, and a high-resolution PDF.

CELEBRATE.
At the end of each project I celebrate and I encourage you to do the same. Celebrating each step toward achieving your goals makes the journey quite a bit more fun!

I can also bet that even though you may be an expert in your niche, keeping your marketing pipeline full of new customers isn’t your specialty.

That is why I want to share with you three things that you always need to think of when you are working on your marketing materials.

1. Think of Your Mother.
Write the content and design the piece with your mother in mind. Your mother represents a great cross-section of your audience. Would she understand the message? Would she understand the action that you are asking her to take?

2. Think of Your Audience.
What may look great to you, may not look great to your audience. Make sure the piece you are developing makes sense to your target market. Yes, you can ask your friends what they think. But, if they aren’t in your target market, their comments aren’t very relevant.

3. Think of The Result.
What is the end result you want to receive from this marketing piece. Start there when designing the postcard, poster, flyer, advertisement, or brochure. Keep the marketing message simple, clear, and focused on the desired action the audience needs to take.

Make sure the graphic design plays a supporting role to the content. The graphic design should help guide the user through the piece and not overpower the message. For example, if you want the reader to pick up the phone and call you, the design and the content all need to be focused on encouraging the reader to do just that – and nothing else.

Do you agree? Disagree? Have any other suggestions? I’d love to hear them!

At the end of the Ali Brown Shine event, I was speaking with some ladies in the lobby area and one asked me if I had my brand/business card evaluated by Ali’s billionaire business coach during one of the breaks.

No way.

I have to say they were a little surprised. You see, they had assumed that as a branding/marketing expert that I would love to get advice from someone so important.

When they asked why I wasn’t one of the women huddled around this billionaire business coach for jockeying for a few words critiquing my business card, my answer was simple.

I don’t care.

Yep. That’s right. I said it. I don’t care.

Let me explain… I’m a graphic designer. I actually have my Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design. I have been designing brands, websites, logos, and sales materials since 1997 and I’d like to think I get design.

I spent a lot of time designing my logo and developing my own brand – a brand that is totally and completely representative of me. I love it and almost everyone who sees my logo or visits my site comments about how much they love it.

Plus, my brand is consistently represented both online and off and nothing anyone says will convince me to change my brand.

Why? Because it IS my brand.

I am sure that some of the biggest brands in the world have people that criticize their logo or their marketing from time to time. But do you see them changing their brand because of one person’s opinion? No. They know who they are. They know what their business represents. They are confident in their position.

So my message to you today is to stay true to your brand and what represents you. Let anyone who criticizes your brand have their say and just let it go.

Have confidence in yourself and confidence in your business. Stand firm in your brand both now, and in the years to come. Soon you’ll see that others will be attracted to your brand and advocate for your band right alongside you.