Marketing Tips & Sales Strategy Tips

Create An Effective Content Marketing Plan At Content Camp

March 29, 2021 Jennifer Bourn

What do blogging, podcasting, attracting clients, acquiring customers, growing a YouTube channel, building an email list, and establishing a social following have in common?

Content.

No matter what your goal is, if you want to grow your business, gain visibility, and expand your brand:

You need to create high-quality, strategic content on a regular basis. Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%) according to Aberdeen.
You need to market that content to gain as much visibility and website traffic as possible. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads according to DemandMetric.
You need people who engage and interact with your content to take action. Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%) shares Aberdeen.

Content Camp: A Content Marketing Workshop For Small Business

July 2, 2019 Jennifer Bourn

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of content marketing and how it can bring a flood of new clients to your business and new customers in the door. You’ve probably also heard that blogging is the fastest way to improve your search rankings and attract new clients. You may have even thought, “I really need to be doing that and leverage the free and low cost tools available to grow my business.”

So you decided to look into it — you did online research, read blog posts, watched YouTube videos, and downloaded a white paper or ebook. But there is so much information out there, so much to learn, so many people with opinions, and so many different options, it’s hard to know what is right for your business and where to start to get the most bang for your buck.

You might have also invested in attending networking events and conferences (or sending your staff to these events) to learn about blogging, content marketing, and the tools available. Unfortunately, all you walked away with is a few tips and a giant to do list of things you should be doing. The problem is that you still haven’t made progress.

I get it. I’ve been there.

I see it happening to small business owners time and time again, and it needs to stop.

How To Achieve Higher Profits While Working Less And Enjoying More Freedom

August 9, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

“I want to work less and make more money,” is a common desire among internet business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs, but often with so much work to do, it seems next to impossible.

If you focus on sales and marketing, you end up falling behind on client work, and if you focus on client work, you risk losing potential new business. Sometimes it’s a struggle just to get ahead of the work you have so you can take the evenings or weekend off… and maybe you’re even so busy that things are starting to slip through the cracks? I have been there, and almost 10 years ago, it all came to a head one night when I realized that I had a big problem in a very embarrassing and public way, and that it needed to be fixed as soon as possible or my business would begin to suffer greatly.

After celebrating Bourn Creative’s twelve year anniversary this July, I decided to share my story, the lessons, learned, and how I overcame exhaustion and stress to run the streamlined, freedom-based business Bourn Creative is today.

Selling A Million Dollars In Design Side Projects

May 18, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

Development is clear cut. It works or it doesn’t. The code is well-written or it’s a mess. Design on the other hand, is subjective, with the success of a project often based on the client’s ideas, perceptions, opinions, and personal experiences of what good design is.

Jennifer Bourn (that’s me) is founding partner and lead designer of Bourn Creative. While she spends her days designing high-end, complex, custom WordPress sites and brand suites, she has also sold well over a million dollars in just side projects and add-ons ranging from in price from $75-$3,000 — and the journey has been good, bad, and at times, down right ugly.

Jennifer recently teamed up with iThemes Training to deliver a free webinar called Selling a Million Dollars In Design about selling design services that skips the hype and sugar-coating, and gets right to the mistakes made, lessons learned, and business practices implemented over the 12 years Bourn Creative has been in business.

How to Build a Strong Brand and Design for Your Learning Platform

April 4, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

I’ve been lucky enough, at industry events and at CaboPress, to spend some quality time with the talented folks over at LifterLMS. Not only do have they created a great product, the LifterLMS WordPress Plugin, they are also really good people. So when Chris Badgett reached out about being a guest on their podcast, LMScast, to talk about branding, of course I said yes!

In this podcast episode, Chris and I talk about branding as it relates to creating an online course.

Build Your Email List Fast With An Irresistible Free Offer

January 10, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

While brands and businesses are all but racing to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, SnapChat and Instagram, they still are only reaching a small amount of the market. The irresistible email opt-in offer can change that.

The cornerstone of any successful business, online or offline, is its coveted marketing list — the list of customers, clients, prospects and other interested folks who have given you permission to market to them.

Email lists are critical to the success of your business because while not everyone uses social media (it’s crazy, but true), everyone has an email address.

Want to sign up for a social media site? Go ahead. They’ll require and email address.
Want to buy a product? Sure. They’ll need your email address.
Want to subscribe to a publication? No problem. Give them your email address.
Want to become a member? Great. They’ll also ask for your email.

I Hated Facebook And It Was All My Fault

November 15, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

I remember sitting in the audience at the very first “big” conference I had ever attended. I was surrounded by people who were taking action, investing in themselves and their business, and talking about things no one at the local networking groups I had been attending for more than a year were talking about.

There were about 500 people crammed in a too-small ballroom in Los Angeles and there was excitement in the air. We were learning about new tools, tactics, and strategies for building our businesses online — email marketing, search engine optimization, blogging for business, WordPress, and this new thing called social media.

We learned about this website that had started just for college kids, but was now a place that entrepreneurs and business owners could connect and be friends and talk business using the internet.

First, Best, Wish You Knew Interview With iThemes

August 29, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Recently I was interviewed for the first, best, and wish you knew series running on the iThemes blog. Now you may be thinking, “iThemes? Didn’t you do something with them before?”

Yes! Earlier this year iThemes invited me to lead a webinar training for graphic designers, web designers, and developers titled How to Consistently Create Content That Builds Your Business And Attracts Clients. And yes, it’s still available to watch and you don’t even have to opt-in to watch!

But back to today’s business, my first, best, and wish you knew interview. In this interview post, I answer the questions:

How did you find your first client?
How did you find your best client?
What do you know now that you wish you knew before you started

If you’re looking for clients, or wondering how others get their best clients, check out my interview and then click through the rest of the posts in the series.

Check It Out

Not Enough Clients? You’re Probably Networking In The Wrong Place

August 16, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Recently I was being interviewed about owning a design business and how we have successfully built a brand and grown the business (and the profits) year after year.

About halfway through the interview the conversation turned to clients and client attraction — how to get clients, where to find clients, and how to keep clients — and inevitably we started discussing networking.

After all, no one can hire you, buy from you, or learn from you if they don’t know you exist. So you must market your business, get out from behind your computer, and network with others. You must share with other people what you do!

The problem is that a lot of business owners, especially designers view networking as not-working, and believe that if you are not working, you’re are not getting paid. So instead they sit behind their computers working and tweeting, and waiting for someone to hire them. But the reality is that networking is the cornerstone of growing a successful business. Through networking you can expand your network, build strong relationships, find strategic partners, find clients, grow as a business owner, and more.

One Profound Question That Can Drastically Improve Your Marketing

May 3, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

I’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!

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.

You probably don’t have a marketing or business degree
You didn’t run a corporate marketing department in a past life
You probably don’t have a background in marketing and sales
You more than likely weren’t a salesperson in your past life

But now that you have a business, you are forced to market it. You have to get in front of your audience and be seen. You need consumers to know about your business and want to buy from you. You need to persuade consumers to buy from you and tell their friends about you.

VIP Treatment: A Smart Marketing Lesson From Lego

February 14, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

What 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.

8 Marketing Tips to Help You Get More Clients

January 29, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Start 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:

Marketing Tips to Position You As An Expert

January 24, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

These days everyone wants to be an expert. Heck, everyone thinks they are an expert. I even think some people just wake up and decide to call themselves an expert out of the blue just because they can.

But what about those who want to become a true expert, a real expert, a respected expert? How to they become known as an expert? How to they get other people to say they are an expert and endorse them — instead of them saying it about themselves?

Here are 5 marketing tips to help you become a respected, go-to expert:

5 Important Marketing Tips Small Businesses Must Understand

January 22, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Lately 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. The 5 marketing tips I outline below can help you avoid marketing disasters and set you up for marketing success:

4 More Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

January 17, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Recently 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!

Here are 4 more marketing tips to build a referral based business:

5 Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

January 15, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Almost all of our new client projects come in through referrals. That 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? Imagine how much less stress there would be over marketing? What a relief!

Here are 5 marketing tips to help you build a successful referral based business:

5 Marketing Tips for Successful Follow Up

January 11, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Studies show that about 40-50% of all inbound sales leads are never followed up on. That equals A LOT of conversations, potential business deals, opportunities to help left hanging, and too many lost possibilities, all due to follow up failure.

Yes you’re busy, but you should never be too busy to follow up with those you have connected with and met. You should never be too busy to keep a sales conversation going. And you should never be too busy to make good on a promise you made.

Follow up is important — it’s your opportunity to build on your first impression and create a lasting impression, to show the other person you do care and you can be counted on, and to add value to your growing relationship.

Here are 5 marketing tips to help you fix your follow up:

Marketing Tips For Small Businesses On Profiling an Ideal Client

December 8, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

Talk to any successful business owner who knows their ideal client and they will tell you that defining their ideal client profile is the best thing they could have done. Trying to market to everyone, to create a message that resonates with everyone, to connect with everyone is not only extremely difficult, it is exhausting and ineffective.

But marketing to a specific group of people who share the same common traits, crafting a message just for them, and connecting with them at the events and places they frequent is much easier and more effective because your desired reach is smaller.

Here are 8 marketing tips for small businesses on identifying ideal clients:

Holiday Card Messages & Greetings for Small Businesses

November 30, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

It’s that time of year where business owners take time to send something special — a heartfelt holiday card or thoughtful gift — to clients and customers to show appreciation and thanks. For most businesses, producing a list of valued clients, customers, partners, vendors, affiliates, and contacts to send a holiday card or gift to is the simple part. The challenge comes with deciding what to say inside the card and finding just the right personal yet professional wording.

In my previous post on this topic, I provided 44 holiday messages that are perfect for small businesses, and due to its popularity, I bringing you even more examples of possible holiday card messages — Enjoy!

Transform Your Sales Results By Changing Your Mindset

November 28, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

Recently I attended and spoke at the Today’s Innovative Woman SUCCESS Summit and I want to share some brilliance from a speaker I particularly loved — Debbie Delgado whose presentation Transform Your Sales Results By Changing Your Mindset got the audience thinking …

Debbie Delgado spoke about making more sales in your business and dealing with the truth about what’s going on in your business. She shared some steps you need to take to start increasing the sales in your business right away and the first few stuck with me in a big way.

When Debbies said, “Get your own needs met first so you can be of true service in your business,” she wasn’t talking about your self-care needs, but your need to be liked, your need to be accepted, and your need to feel good about yourself.

Those needs must be met before you enter a sales conversation with a person you want to help. Otherwise you’ll hold yourself back in the conversation and stop yourself from being of true service to the other person because you’re more worried about whether they like you, whether they accept you, and whether they make you feel good about yourself.

How to Be Famous in Your Niche Market

November 26, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

In October I spoke at the Today’s Innovative Woman SUCCESS! Summit in Los Angeles. From the sponsors and exhibitors, to the attendees and networking, to the food and parties, the event was fantastic. As a speaker, I spent most of the day being on — speaking from the stage, speaking with attendees at breaks, networking, and answering questions and consulting with attendees at my speaker table or in the halls.

To be honest, I heard, but didn’t really get to dig in and listen to all of the other speakers. Luckily, event host Cathy Alessandra surprised everyone at the event by providing the audio recordings of all of the speakers to attendees for free!

So over the Thanksgiving holiday, I cozied up in my slippers with some hot apple cider and listened to the other presentations from the day and wanted to share some of the great reminders from my client, Joy Chudacoff’s presentation, How to Be Famous in Your Niche Market.

She shared that the first step to becoming famous in your niche market is to make the decision to become famous. If you haven’t felt that desire, why is that? If you have no barriers, what’s holding you back? Joy believes the reason you haven’t made the decision is because you’re avoiding fame and hiding from it, or you may already have some fame, but you’re hiding from even more fame.

4 Steps To Get More Sales Using Your Autoresponder System

October 15, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

This is a guest post from my friend and brilliant business coach, Sue Painter. Sue is one of Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid Coaches, a coach for Ali Brown’s Elevate program, and a successful entrepreneur. I always appreciate Sue’s perspective on business and marketing. We use follow up sequences (autoresponders) heavily in our business and when we were creating several new ones earlier this year, Sue reviewed and provided feedback on almost every one, ensuring what we create is easy to understand and easy to use!

In this guest post, Sue shares 4 steps on how you can use autoresponders to get more sales and more clients — Enjoy!