Bourn Creative

Transforming Businesses into Extraordinary Brands

Consumer Buying ProcessRead Understand How Consumers Make Buying Decisions To Increase Sales And Fill Your Pipeline
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Understand How Consumers Make Buying Decisions To Increase Sales And Fill Your Pipeline

Imagine what business would be like if you didn’t have to pitch and sell or seek out and convince new clients to hire you. Imagine how different your business would be if your pipeline was consistently full and potential clients said “yes” with excitement after only a conversation or two.

Over the years, our project size has increased dramatically, but our approach to consistently making high-value sales with ease is still the same. A successful sales process requires a core understanding of what is most important to buyers and how they make buying decisions.

Learn Your Clients’ Wants And Needs

Before you can even have a sales conversation, you first have to understand what your clients need — and not just their surface wants, but their secret inner desires. They might tell you they want to sell more books, fill a program, sell out an event, fill a practice, or help more people. Every clients wants to achieve those things.

Every client wants to make more money.

But you need to explore beneath the surface wants to figure out why they really are reaching out to inquire about your services — and it’s often not what you think.

Clients want to be heard and validated

Everyone has a varied set of life experiences that shape their views in different ways, especially when dealing with design, which is subjective and emotional. One person might think a design is amazing, while another thinks it is awful. Both perspectives are right, they just have different background stories.

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How to create an ideal client persona to imrpove marketingRead How To Create An Ideal Client Profile And Use It To Make Your Marketing More Effective
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How To Create An Ideal Client Profile And Use It To Make Your Marketing More Effective

Last week I shared some thoughts on the gut of surface-level blog posts about defining an ideal client and why it is helpful in business. My article on Defining Your Client Persona To Create Targeted Marketing Messages walks you through what an ideal client profile is, why you need one, and how it helps your marketing efforts. I even provided some tips on how to identify who your ideal client is.

The feedback on the article so far has been amazing, so I wanted to take it a step further and really dig in deeper to share exactly how to create an ideal client profile, in another article I wrote for GoDaddy, Narrow Your Focus: Tips For Creating An Ideal Client Profile And Putting It To Work, including:

  • 9 Ways evaluate data to create an ideal client profile
  • How to get the data needed to create an ideal client profile
  • How to use an ideal client profile

Here is the full article:

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Ideal Client PersonaRead Define Your Client Persona To Create Targeted Marketing Messages
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Define Your Client Persona To Create Targeted Marketing Messages

There is a lot of talk about defining an ideal client profile or ideal client persona online and throughout social media, especially in the entrepreneurial, freelance, solopreneur, online business, and internet marketing arenas. Some of it is good, some of it is okay but a bit misguided, and some of it is downright incorrect — yikes!

The problem is the same for anything that becomes a marketing buzz-word or assumed magic pill for success: everyone, even non-experts, jump on the hype bandwagon and start writing blog posts to earn extra traffic and capitalize on the buzzword. This means that many of the blog posts attempting to teach you about ideal client profiles and how to use a client persona aren’t teaching from first-hand experience and wild success, but from mere regurgitation of what they themselves have read online.

If you’re not quite sure what an ideal client profile or client persona is, or even how to use it, this article I recently wrote for GoDaddy, Cast a narrower net: Define your client persona to easily create targeted marketing messages, will get you started in the right direction:

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Jennifer Bourn Manage WP AMARead Jennifer Bourn “Ask Me Anything”
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Jennifer Bourn “Ask Me Anything”

Ask Me Anything. I’ve seen links and chatter about Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions on various websites, but didn’t pay too much attention because often I didn’t know the person and therefore, I didn’t have any questions.

Then ManageWP reached out and asked me to participate in their Ask Me Anything blog series, right after Page.ly co-founder and Pressnomics creator Joshua Strebel.

OMG. Of course, I said yes. Then I started to get really nervous.

  • What if the day was a flop?
  • What if no one asked me a question?
  • What if they asked me questions I didn’t know the answer to?
  • What if they asked me something weird — it was an ask me anything after all.

On September 9, my AMA discussion opened and hooray questions began coming in! Questions about family, vacation, games, Legos, and the Grateful Dead, as well as questions about developing client resources, the Genesis Framework, systems and processes, branding, family, managing workload, getting paid, and more.

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How to get clients as a freelancerRead First, Best, Wish You Knew Interview With iThemes
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First, Best, Wish You Knew Interview With iThemes

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

Shift Mindset From Can't to Can For Better Client ExperiencesRead Shift The Client Conversation From Can’t To Can
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Shift The Client Conversation From Can’t To Can

As a freelancer or an agency, client relationships are the most valuable asset we have. Clients are the backbone of every successful services company and happy clients result in more referrals, more sales, and more business.

Clients come to us because they need help. They need direction, guidance, advice, consulting, strategy, and design and development work. They need an expert in an area they know very little about, and they need to trust the designer or developer they hire to deliver a quality product and quality experience.

But that isn’t always the case. In my latest article for The GoDaddy Garage, Shifting the client conversation from can’t to can, I write about the negative implications of using the word can’t in conversations with clients, and how it can sabotage the experience your clients have working with you.

Here’s the article:

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Create Content That Attracts Clients And Grows BusinessRead How to Consistently Create Content That Builds Your Business And Attracts Clients
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How to Consistently Create Content That Builds Your Business And Attracts Clients

I recently partnered with iThemes Training to deliver a FREE webinar training for graphic designers, web designers, and developers — and you don’t even have to opt-in to watch it!

There is a plethora of information available about how to build a successful web design business, how to write code, and everything from how to choose typefaces and color palettes, to how to design a logo or website. There is also an abundance of information about the effectiveness and power of content marketing, but there is a shocking lack of information about how designers and developers can create content that will help grow their business AND attract clients.

Are you a designer or developer who:

  • Struggles to consistently create content that resonates with your audience
  • Experiences frustration with rocky client projects or client confusion
  • Is drowning in administrative or project management tasks
  • Doesn’t have time to add yet another task to your to-do list for the week

If you answered yes, this webinar is for you. In it, I walk you through a simple content creation process you can use to grow your business, automate your processes, and attract more clients — and we’ll talk about repurposing content to save you time and effort.

Watch it for FREE with NO OPT-IN needed right now!

Watch The Webinar

Improve your content marketing ROI by getting your content to the right people at the right timeRead How To Get Your Content In Front Of The Right Audience At The Right Time
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How To Get Your Content In Front Of The Right Audience At The Right Time

Consumers don’t take action when you want them to take action, they take action when they are ready. They don’t buy when you want them to buy, they buy when they are ready to buy, and they certainly don’t read your newest article or blog post just because you published it — it has to be the right audience, and the right content, at the right time.

As a content marketer, your job is to make sure that your content gets in front of the right audience at the right time — when they are ready. That means making sure your content is easily accessible and can be discovered in many different ways on different platforms.

In my article How To Get Your Content In Front Of The Right Audience At The Right Time for CoSchedule, I break down how to reach the right audience, with the right content, and the right time, and provide tips and suggestions to help you get the most out of your content.

Here’s the article:

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Networking Shifts To Uplevel BusinessRead What Happens When You Outgrow Your Networking
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What Happens When You Outgrow Your Networking

When I first founded Bourn Creative in 2005, networking was a critical part of my initial growth. I attended several events each month for years and it generated a ton of business. But over time, my investment in these groups created fewer and fewer new opportunities. Those that were my ideal client had already became my clients, and those I wasn’t working with didn’t have the budget to invest with us.

Eventually I had to face reality. As I grew as a business owner, my business grew, and as a result, the level of client I was serving grew as well. Soon those same networking groups that had helped me reach that point in my business were no longer a fit.

In my article What Happens When You Outgrow Your Networking? for WP Elevation, I share my own networking experience and story, provide some tips and suggestions for reflection, and discuss where you go from there and how to uplevel your networking.

Here’s the article:

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Communicate What You Do With ConfidenceRead How To Answer The Question “What Do You Do?” With Confidence
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How To Answer The Question “What Do You Do?” With Confidence

Networking is stressful. Almost no one I know enjoys it or gets excited to network with a room full of strangers — and it’s most often because they don’t quite know how to answer that dreaded question “What do you do?” in a powerful way.

I hate this question! It’s a lazy question. It is vague and encourages the most basic and boring of answers. Asking it is like asking the other people to put on a show.

In my article How To Powerfully Answer The Question: “What Do You Do?” for WP Elevation I not only address exactly why people have such a hard time with this question, but what you need to know to answer this question in a powerful and meaningful way.

I even break it down into a simple, step-by-step formula that will help you communicate with confidence and ease. Plus, I’ll walk you through how to squash common objections, talk about your services or products, and how to tell them what to do next if they are interested — all without feeling too salesy or pushy.

Here’s the article:

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Jennifer Bourn on WP WatercoolerRead Red Flags: Things That Tip You Off On a Horrible Project
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Red Flags: Things That Tip You Off On a Horrible Project

Round Two! And it’s a KNOCK OUT.

I joined the awesome folks over at WPwatercooler again for a topic that really got everyone fired up — Red Flags. We’ve all had that client but we didn’t see the tell-tell signs that they are going to be “one of those clients” until it was too late.

In this episode, we discuss the red flag indicators of horrible projects, prospective client red flags, and red flags that indicate it may be time to fire a client and part ways.

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Jennifer Bourn Interview On Leaders In The Trenches PodcastRead Leaders In The Trenches
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Leaders In The Trenches

One of my favorite things is speaking, and one of the best ways to do that without traveling to an event is do do interviews and guest talks on podcasts, radio shows, and teleseminars. Recently I was asked to give a interview for Gene Hammett’s podcast, Leaders In The Trenches.

Gene is a business coach who works with high-achieving leaders in small businesses who want to lead with confidence and achieve true financial freedom. As the Managing Director of Core Elevation, Inc., Gene helps leaders transform from stagnate, stressed and struggling to thriving, growing, and loving their work. On his podcast, he interviews business owners and leaders about their business — about getting started, building it, growing it, about marketing and selling, and strategies for success.

I give a lot of talks on branding, website strategy, WordPress, content creation and content marketing, and blogging for business — all of the stuff we do for our clients at Bourn Creative. But I rarely get the opportunity to talk shop — to talk about business itself and running and growing a successful, profitable business, so I loved the idea of chatting with Gene on this very topic!

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Networking To Get New ClientsRead Not Enough Clients? You’re Probably Networking In The Wrong Place
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Not Enough Clients? You’re Probably Networking In The Wrong Place

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.

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Sales ConversationRead Step-by-Step, How to Close The Sale During an Enrollment Conversation
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Step-by-Step, How to Close The Sale During an Enrollment Conversation

Our clients may hire us to design their brand, create a killer WordPress website, and design and map out an online strategy — But more often than not, we end up consulting on much more than branding and website strategy.

During our initial discovery phase, we ask our clients A LOT of questions and require that a lot of decisions be made — that’s where the consulting comes in. One area our clients have a lot of questions about is ironically, how to close the sale when speaking to new prospects AFTER the site has generated the lead — which is good, because it means they are confident we’ll deliver a site that does its job.

These conversations — referred to as sales conversations, enrollment conversations, discovery sessions, free strategy sessions, get acquainted sessions, complimentary consultations — are uncomfortable for many business owners because they don’t know what to say, what to ask, what order to present information, etc. As a result, they talk too much and feel like they are being too salesy, they don’t make a strong enough connection, or they never ask for the sale.

This past week, after walking a client through a sample sales conversation step-by-step, she shared with me how helpful the process was and how much clarity and confidence she felt she gained from no longer having to “wing it” on her calls. She suggested that I share it on our blog so you could benefit too!

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How to Alienate Your DesignerRead 7 Ways To Alienate Your Designer & Go From Client to Contract
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7 Ways To Alienate Your Designer & Go From Client to Contract

In a perfect world, working with your designer would be a perfect partnership of creativity, communication, and collaboration — at least that is what designers strive for. But that’s not always the case…

A designer begins every project excited about what they will create and about bringing the client’s vision to life — they wouldn’t have accepted the project is they weren’t. They are excited about solving problems, helping their clients succeed, and building a new relationship or strengthening an existing one. They value their client and look forward to becoming their long term creative partner.

Designers have so much pride in their work and so much invested in their clients’ success, that they will often bend over backward, throw in extra work, and go above and beyond your contract just to make sure the final result is as good as it can possibly be. Mainly because the success of your project puts their reputation on the line.

But occasionally, a switch gets flipped, and the dynamics of the relationship change. Something happens, or several things happen, that cause a designer to shift the way they view a client and a project.

It’s the critical point where a client stops being a client and starts being a contract that needs to be fulfilled — where a designer throws their hands in the air and gives up trying to make it totally awesome, and instead just wants it to be good and done.

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Improve Your Marketing With One QuestionRead One Profound Question That Can Drastically Improve Your Marketing
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One Profound Question That Can Drastically Improve Your Marketing

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.

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Marketing TipsRead 8 Marketing Tips to Help You Get More Clients
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8 Marketing Tips to Help You Get More Clients

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:

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Encourage Others To Give You ReferralsRead 4 More Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business
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4 More Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

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:

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Get More ReferralsRead 5 Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business
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5 Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business

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:

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Communicate Cearly with ClientsRead 5 Marketing Tips on Communicating With an Ideal Client
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5 Marketing Tips on Communicating With an Ideal Client

Defining your ideal client is the first step to generating quality, qualified leads with your marketing. The second step is to communicate with your ideal clients effectively — and about your ideal clients effectively.

It’s very difficult for consumers to refer their friends, family, and colleagues to you and your business if they aren’t sure who you serve or what exactly you specialize in. Likewise, it’s difficult for them to see if they are a great fit for your product, program and service.

If you want to succeed in business, you must communicate who you serve, what you do, and how you can help them in a simple, easy to understand, clear way. With that in mind, I’ve compiled five marketing tips to help you communicate to, with, and about your ideal clients and target market:

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Profiling Your Ideal ClientRead Marketing Tips For Small Businesses On Profiling an Ideal Client
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Marketing Tips For Small Businesses On Profiling an Ideal Client

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:

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Become Famous In Your Niche MarketRead How to Be Famous in Your Niche Market
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How to Be Famous in Your Niche Market

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.

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Point Of DifferentiationRead Identify Your “One Thing” to Create a Powerful, Personal, Profitable Brand
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Identify Your “One Thing” to Create a Powerful, Personal, Profitable Brand

Have you ever wondered, How does he/she do it? How does he get so many clients? How does she show up everywhere?” I’ll bet you have. I have. And I’ll bet that thousands of other business owners have too — Why? Because there are TONS of blog posts, articles, and resources available online to teach you how to get more clients, attract more leads, and make more money.

But A Lot Of It Is Jibberish!

Many articles give you tasks to check off a list and marketing tips to implement — and that’s a problem.

Take this situation for example: Lilly is doing all the right things. She’s taking action to market her business. She has a Facebook page and a Twitter account that she posts to regularly. She blogs at least once a week, she posts articles to article marketing sites, and bookmarks her content with social bookmarking sites. She attends networking events and publishes an email newsletter.

She is working hard, but she isn’t seeing much benefit. She is doing all the right things, but she isn’t getting new clients or even new leads fast enough. She feels like she’s spinning her wheels and she’s frustrated. She sees other people achieve the success she wants for herself and she feels like she deserves it because she’s working harder than they seem to be.

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Use a Website Opt-In to Increase ProfitsRead How to Leverage Your Opt-In Offer for Increased Profits
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How to Leverage Your Opt-In Offer for Increased Profits

Imagine this: You spend hours researching your ideal client and weeks creating the perfect irresistible free offer or ethical bribe. You finally put the opt-in offer up on your website and work like crazy to promote and market it, driving loads of traffic to your website. You’re thrilled because lots of people opt-in for the offer and join your list.

Sounds pretty good right? But the next step is where most business owners fail. What happens after someone opts-in?

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