Regular blog readers will have been on Sara’s journey from a germ of an idea back in the Spring to a fully fledged business complete with website five months later. You might remember me asking for your help in helping Sara choose a logo (she loved them all and couldn’t decide), we then updated you with the finished logo and stationery before I had the enviable task of having to plan out her site. Naturally I needed to undertake plenty of research whilst planning the site (and probably gained a few pounds in the process…).

Sara offers handmade chocolates for corporate events and weddings as well as (sign me up!) making and tasting parties. The goal was at this stage to provide an information resource, Sara has a young family and didn’t want a shop on the site (at the moment) so we just needed to make it look gorgeous and provide enough information for Sara’s customers to get in touch.

Sara wrote her own copy with a few pointers from me and I love the fact that she’s so effectively communicated her passion for her business and her chocolates.

I love the way Chloe has used imagery to guide people around the site – it makes things so much more interactive. And the photography works really well.

What do you think?

Does the thought of running a workshop or seminar fill you with horror?

Workshops and seminars are one of the most influential marketing tools you have up your sleeve and invaluable if you’re serious about building a business based on long term relationships with your customers. When planned and executed carefully you’ll find that you position yourself as an expert, build strong relationships with current and potential clients and generate solid sales leads. In fact, many of the same benefits as blogging – but workshops are real, in-the-flesh marketing tools that will make you a profit out of the event and win you business.

Why you need to run seminars and workshops for your customers

• It’ll help you generate strong relationships with your current and prospective customers

• You’ll be giving something back and helping your customers

• You’ll be able to show them just what’s involved in what you do (and how good you are!)

• You’ll be able to attract a new segment of the market

But despite these benefits, many business owners find anything and everything to do rather than run a workshop or seminar! Maybe it’s the fear factor: not knowing where to start (I’ll show you), not knowing whether you’re “good enough” (you are), not knowing whether anyone will turn up (they will – and they’ll pay you handsomely for it if you get the basics right).

Join me for a Workshop Bootcamp on September 23rd and I will help you plan a profitable, and successful, workshop or seminar. Together we’ll plan:

• The basics: who, what, when, where and how

• The content: and how to get the balance between adding value and spilling your trade secrets

• Your marketing plan: my tried and tested formula that’ll get paying bums on those seats

• Your persuasive copy: how to write copy that’ll sell places on your workshop

How we’ll work

I won’t literally be walking round sergent major style! I’ll be sharing my knowledge with you completely openly and honesly. You’ll hear the success stories and you’ll also hear my (let’s call them) “learning experiences” that have shaped my knowledge. I have a workbook ram-a-jammed full of tips, tools and exercises that’ll get you ready to launch your first workshops by 1st November. Some exercises we’ll do as a group, others in pairs and others on your own.

The day will be supportive, fun, and most of all, the beginning of an exciting journey for you. `Alongside blogging, workshops are one of the most important elements of my marketing strategy and I’d love to show you how you can apply this same strategy to your own business.

And after the day I won’t just be leaving you dangling. We’ll follow up the day with some very focused “homework” for you to do in the two weeks after the event and we’ll have a one-hour teleseminar (included in your course fee) where we’ll catch up, iron out any questions you might have and set you on your final path to be ready to launch your first workshop on 1st November.

What sorts of businesses do workshops and seminars work for?

They work for the vast majority of service based businesses. Having done a very quick brainstorm, here’s a list to get you thinking…

• Photographers, garden designers, interior designers, jewellery makers, artists and creatives: how to… {photograph your grandchildren/ design your own garden/ make your wedding earrings}

• Professional services: accountants, solicitors: how to… {file your tax return, write your own will etc}

• Marketing professionals: web designers, graphic designers, marketing consultants: how to… {write a marketing plan, optimise your website, design your own leaflets}

• Wedding planners, stylists, florists and caterers: how to… {plan your best friend’s wedding/ plan your dream wedding, make your own bouquet/ wedding cake/ favours etc}

• IT Consultants: how to fix 12 of the most common PC problems

• Recruitment consultants, career coaches, life coaches: how to… {get that dream job, take positive action to find that ideal career, develop your confidence}

To be honest, most businesses will benefit from running workshops, there genuinely were very few that I could think of that wouldn’t benefit

But why would I want to show my customers the tricks of the trade? Surely then I’ll do myself out of business?

Consider this for a moment. There is probably a large proportion of the market who loves what you do but simply can’t afford (or perceives they can’t afford/ doesn’t see the value in what you’re offering) to be a customer of yours. Workshops and seminars enable those people to invest in a “slice” of you – some will take the info and run (and hey, they’ve paid you for it so what does it matter?), others will realise quite what’s involved in what you do and think “you know what? I’ll get her to do it for me”. Either way, you’ll make a profit out of the workshop itself and generate some sales leads for the business: now that’s what I call profitable marketing!

So join me in 23rd September for a one day workshop to kick start your journey into offering profitable, and successful, workshops and seminars for your clients. To book simply click on this link which will take you to our secure booking system http://bit.ly/cvNcQp

What our clients say:

“By being out of the office and immersing my brain in the subject I came away with a stock of superb headlines and the absolute confidence that this weekend I can create a powerful sales letter. Money and time well spent.”

Stephen Hillier, Hillier Associates

“I can honestly say your workshop was one of the most worthwhile sessions I have attended in a long while.  A great refresher and thought provoking – I definitely want to come along to more of your workshops” Jacqui Newman, Spiced Up Marketing

Great! How do I book?

Your investment for the workshop bootcamp including pre-session homework, all refreshments on the day, a workbook to take away with you and a post-session teleseminar is £177 + VAT. Book before 9th September and you’ll save £30 which makes it just £147. You really should get all of this, and then some, back as a result of your first workshop so I really would see this as a solid investment. To secure your place (we only have 12 left today and I expect this workshop to sell out) simply book quickly and securely online You can also find out more on our website http://bit.ly/chrv1J

Ooooooh I can hardly contain myself. For weeks I’ve been desperate to show you photographer Matt Tyler’s delicious new website and finally here it is! Good to go.

So what do you think? Scrumptious is a word I’d like to use to describe it myself… But being a democracy I’d like to hear your thoughts too…

Matt approached us a few months back. He’d seen a lot of the work we’d done for other photographers (we do seem to attract them, in the nicest possible way…) and he wondered whether we could help him redesign his website. His original site was far from dreadful so the pressure was on to come up with something super-amazing. Matt had quite a clear brief for us: he liked the dark background, he’d just had a new logo created by a friend (which is lovely) and wanted to incorporate that and he wanted a lot more functionality.

Matt’s original site didn’t flow as well as it might. Simple things like it lacked a contact page and the gallery was hosted externally so if you clicked on that you lost the navigation. The dark design also felt quite heavy. So cue the fabulous Rob to create something that looked more engaging, showed off the photos to their best ability and still felt male.

Stuart, our resident clever clogs (aka Web Developer) has somehow with some very clever hocus pocus managed to make that gorgeous handwriting font display dynamically. Don’t ask me how because I have no idea. I’m just very impressed with him . One of the true joys of working with a photographer is that they make your life very easy because they always supply you with great photos, and this picture of Matt is fab I think – he looks super-cool!

Rob has also added the stitching round the logo which I think works really well with the romantic and understated font (remember that list of handwriting fonts Caroline showed you last week? One of the clients she was searching for was Matt) and also softens what could be a very dark site if you weren’t careful.

So judging by the initial comments on twitter I know that Matt and his followers are chuffed to bits, but how about you? What do you think?

So…as you know we here at Flourish have all been tasked with writing our very own blog posts, I’ve been wracking my brain on what subject to write about and finally thought about a recent restaurant experience that I could relate to a marketing theme.

I was recently lucky enough to have been taken to a fantastic Japanese restaurant in Soho, London. This place literally took my breath away.

From the moment we entered the restaurant we were very impressed with the décor and the outstanding service.  Friendly smiles, warm greetings and a great environment helped set the tone for the rest of the evening.

Arriving rather early gave us a chance to enjoy the rather swanky and romantically lit restaurant bar.  With a huge choice of very tempting and authentic cocktails it would have been rude not to sample them!  The service was quick and we were presented with two great looking drinks and a complimentary basket of Japanese snacks – everyone loves a freebie!

We heard about this restaurant from a couple of friends who had been previously.  They raved about the service and the food.  But most of all they talked about the interactive table ordering system. Now this is where our experience really took off!

Above every diner is a projector that beams images down onto the table that each person can control with laptop style touch pads embedded on the table.  Using the touch pad you can access and order from an illustrated food and drinks menu, set the mood image projected onto the table, discover the local neighbourhood, even order a taxi home. There’s even a live kitchen camera so you can see the chefs at work!

Needless to say the food was exceptional!  Delicate strips of sushi with tantalising dipping sauces where mouth wateringly delightful and together with some superb wine we couldn’t fault it.

So how does all this relate to my original plan on writing a marketing themed piece?  Well, this experience is a prime example of how a great product or service delivered in a friendly manner can inspire word of mouth marketing to really take shape.

It’s a fact that glowing reviews and advice from close friends, colleagues and family will encourage you to use a service or buy a product rather than from influencers of a detached third party such as an advertisement.

Today social media can play a big part in your word of mouth campaigns.  The ability for people to share information with their friends on a vast scale at the press of a button is something modern business should really take advantage of.  Your customers will actually choose to market your business for you directly to their close friends and family, and best of all – they’ll do it for free!

As with the restaurant I visited it’s usually something quirky or exciting that social media users latch onto and share with their friends.  You can’t force something to ‘go viral’ you can only help it by creating a great product or service to begin with.  So this new age social media and viral marketing run on the same principles as the traditional word of mouth.

So, does your business make people want to shout about it?

You might remember me showing you the logo designs we created for Big Brother winner, media darling and jewellery designer Nadia Almada here. Well Nadia is now safely ensconced in the Big Brother house and I’m delighted to be able to show off her new website.

It’s a bit of an emergency site. It was created to both a very tight timescale and budget (and whilst Stuart, our developer, was on holiday!) so it’s been a bit of a mission to create the final tweaks and make sure everything was robust enough for tonight but I’m glad that we’ve made it.

Nadia is currently in the process of designing the jewellery, when she comes out of the house we’ll be working on full on plans for the site, a photoshoot and a full design. In the meantime, we wanted a site that would make use of the PR opportunity Nadia has and give her a bit of presence. It’s been difficult designing a site with no photos, no product and in a very short space of time, but as ever, Nadia has been a joy to work with and I hope that we’ve come up with something that’s understated and glamorous at the same time.

In her own words, Nadia is delighted:

“It looks great and love it! Just saw the website, loving it and well done. Really appreciate all your hard work.”

You can find the live site here at www.yamutto.com and also sign up to her mailing list where she’s generously giving every subscriber 20% off their first order.

I feel a bit nervous showing you my photographs of Liezl Croft’s promotional brochures. Not because I’m not proud of the brochures, but because there’s something very nerve-wracking about taking photographs of a photographer’s work. So please ignore the dodgy photos (mine, not hers) and hopefully you can see the beauty in what we’ve done for Liezl.

Anyway… we’ve been working with Liezl for the past year or so helping her create a more professional brand identity and an impactful set of marketing and promotional literature. Liezl has recently moved to Warwickshire and has had to step her marketing efforts up a gear or two to let the county know that she has arrived! Part of that marketing effort was creating Liezl some promotional brochures that Liezl could use for a multitude of purposes. She can leave them in nurseries and toy shops; she hand them to people she meets networking; she can give them away at baby fairs and she can use them alongside a letter as a part of a direct mail campaign.

We worked with Liezl to plan and write both pieces before Caroline and Chloe did a fabulous job of designing them. We’ve been a bit cunning with the print too – we put both of these brochures on one A3 sheet of card which means that Liezl enjoyed some economies of scale when it came to the print. I’m not sure if you can see the spot varnish pattern over the top, but that just finishes the whole thing off. (we used printing.com’s Starmarque Creased Showcards in case you’re interested…)

The Bump to Baby Brochure

The baby brochure is all soft colours, cute as a button images and soft, approachable text.

The illustrations are very similar to those used in the children’s brochure below. And I love those buttons!

I particularly love the scrabble words and the butterfly trail from bottom to top.

The Family Brochure

If the bump to baby was more about soft pastels and cute cutouts, the kids brochure is about fun. Elements are picked out in spot UV – the boys leaning round the tree, the bunting on the back cover and the floral pattern on the front. I love the childlike font Caroline has used and the fact that Chloe has carried the red background on the “throwout panel” (below) over to the inside page. It adds a lovely sense of continuity and intrigue.

I love the bunting that Chloe has illustrated on the inside, as well as the cute snail and frog. Liezl also took great care to send us a mix of images, and I think she’s done a great job of mixing up the ages. It’s easy to think of family photography as being for under seven’s but this brochure shows a good range of family members.

I love the simplicity of the back cover, especially the wooden background.

Hello everyone! I’m Caroline, the Studio Manager at Flourish and this week I’m excited to be able to share my thoughts on my five favourite handwriting fonts of the moment. Over the past month I’ve been focusing on finding some gorgeous fonts for a handful of our customers, some for logos and some for accents fonts within website designs and I’ve taken the opportunity to bunch a few of the best ones together. Enjoy!

Federico I love the natural curves of this font. The length of the downward and upward letters adds energy to what is quite a small base font. The beautiful loops and flicks make for a very graceful font that has a subtle sense of flurry.

Goo Goo Gjoob There’s even more energy in this one but in a very different style. It has a great spontaneous feel and you’d think that with letters slanting in so many different directions that it wouldn’t tie together very well, but it does in a very natural way. I can see small imperfections in the style of the ‘q’ and the ‘f’ but, to me, this just makes the handwriting style more believable.

Jefferson With similar traits to Lanier, the letters do a little of what you don’t expect and this adds character and diversity. I’ve very often fallen in love with a handwriting font but then when put it into context found that it’s too faint/light. This option has a great weight to it that gives it visible punch when in the context of a brochure or a website.

Lanier-SC This has a beautiful pen and ink style that’s relaxed and casual. I don’t care that you can’t read every word very clearly because it just adds to the naturalness. I’m inspired by the out-of-the-ordinary touches like the curvature of the d and the spontaneity of the p. It’s tough finding a font that accurately represents a natural handwriting style but this one does it for me!

Sacre Bleu Probably the most visually ‘fluent’ of the bunch, I love the way that the letters join so gracefully but still have a friendly ‘flick’.  I would consider this the safest option from them all as well as it has a good size, weight and flick consistency throughout.

I started running marketing workshops for my customers back in January 2007 and I haven’t looked back since. Each workshop has helped me to develop relationships with my customers, find new customers, demonstrate my expertise and most importantly, help my clients grow their businesses.

Some workshops have been easy to fill, others harder. And whilst no one could say that they’ve been easy money, I’ve made a great profit out of each and every one of them and generated significant amounts of business after the event from the delegates in the room. You could say that I’ve had such a good experience with them that I’ve become quite evangelical about running them! In fact, I recommend that many of my clients run them for their customers too.

But many of the business owners I speak to can’t quite get to grips with the idea of running a workshop. They know it’s a good idea, but they get that sort of glazed look in their eyes when I mention it, and I can see them thinking “Just agree with her and she’ll stop pushing you”. But I can see that for most business owners, running a workshop is scary.

So why wouldn’t you run a workshop? Why might it be a bad idea? Well having done a bit of a brainstorm, I have a few theories.

Firstly I think people are scared. “Who do I think I am to run a workshop on X, Y or Z”. They’re worried about being lynched by their competitors for daring to put themselves out there as an authority on the subject. But you can’t run your business for the benefit of your competitors. You have to do what’s right for you, your business and your customers. If you think that you have some knowledge that will help your customers, why not share it?

I also think they’re worried about being “found out”. Found out by their customers for not being the world authority on their subject. Worried about having someone in the room who knows more than them. Worried about looking like a fool.

Well you know what? Maybe there will be someone in the room who knows more than you. Unless you’re a professor in your subject, the chances are that you don’t know it all. But if you’re clear about what you are good at and who this workshop is for, you will add value to your delegates and you won’t look like a fool. I promise.

People are also worried about no one coming. Selling 20 spaces on a workshop is not easy. Even if people tell you it’s a good idea to run a workshop on the subject of your choice, getting those people to commit financially and making sure they’re available on the day isn’t easy. It takes skill, tenacity and organisation to fill a workshop. And that puts people off. Either they’ve tried it and had their fingers burnt, or the sheer scale of what they need to do puts them off.

Having filled workshops and conferences for more than three years now I know how tough it is. But I promise you that the benefits far outweigh the hard work. And I have a system that I use to make sure I fill these workshops so it isn’t as difficult as you think it might be.

I’m running a Workshop Bootcamp on 23rd September to help those of you filled with fear (or perhaps just a little curiosity) make your first successful workshop a reality. I’d love to see you there – full details on the Flourish website.

And do share: what’s stopping you from running workshops for your customers? Or more positively, what benefits have you found in running a workshop?

I am delighted to be able to show you the finished website for the fabulous venue stylists Distinctive Elegance. I love the strength of the finished logo, the elegance of the pattern in the background and the impact of the images.

And here’s a little screenshot of the gallery. What do you think? We’ll be adding more images and stories to the case studies and gallery over time, but I’m really pleased with what Colleen now has, it gives her business soooo much more of a professional image and really does her justice.

I’ve just returned from a wonderful week camping with my family (mum and two sisters plus boyfriends) and my children in Dorset. And despite the rain, the lack of Mr H (who had to stay in Surrey and work) and a decidedly dodgy campsite, we had a truly wonderful time.

But the first impressions at the campsite were so bad that my mum, who had booked the trip, spent the first couple of hours saying “I don’t like it, I want to go home…”. It took all of our powers of persuasion to encourage her to stay a night, remind her that this was just a place to rest our heads etc. But let me show you some pictures and you’ll see why…

As we drove up to the front gates we were greeted first by an overflowing encampment of bins.

My shock at the general mess was overshadowed by more. To my left, a caravan graveyard full of six of seven decaying caravans (and remember, all of this was before we’d even entered the field!) and straight ahead, an assault on typography. Poster after poster – some torn, some watermarked, all shouty, offensive and un-thought through.

The washing up and shower facilities were as ramshackle as you would imagine from these first impressions and sadly, the member of staff we took to be the manager was leery and didn’t do a lot to restore our confidence.

The sad thing was that the field itself was fine. And there was a tap for drinking water right outside our tent – something I’ve not experienced in other campsites. When we met the owner on the second night, he was actually very nice. Eccentric and utterly unaware of anything as basic as first impressions or the importance of getting those initial “moments of truth” right. But for many of us, the first impressions made a lasting impression.

It wouldn’t have been difficult to tidy up the rubbish area and preferably screen it off. Some well designed posters and a bit of welcoming signage would have cheered things up enormously. And simple things like taking down posters that were past their best and replacing them with new ones. None of it is rocket science. None of it would have cost him very much. But the opportunity cost of not getting that right was crippling.

I doubt very much that many of the campers there will be rebooking that campsite. The ones I spoke to simply couldn’t get over that first impression, or the subsequent impressions around the campsite. That means he’ll constantly need to spend money looking for new business, rather than being able to rely on repeat business from happy customers.

To truly create a great first impression you need to step outside your shoes and look at your business the way your customer sees it. And you need to constantly look. Once isn’t enough.

There you go, rant over. Normal service may resume.