$14,950 in just 57 minutes with two emails and a Google Doc.
That’s how much Katelyn Bourgoin, The Customer Whisperer, managed to obtain selling one single digital product to her massive following of 75,000 people on Twitter.
Not being afraid to shake hands and collaborate with people in the industry and coming out with an original term that now lies in the minds of every entrepreneur and marketer out there is what made Kate’s digital product so successful.
Before we get into more details about Katelyn’s achievements, let’s talk a bit about who she is.
Who is Katelyn Bourgoin, The Customer Whisperer
Katelyn Bourgoin earned recognition as an “influential entrepreneur” by Forbes and was listed among the “top 20 wonder women of SaaS marketing and growth” due to all her achievements.
After being a 4x founder of a branding agency, restaurant consulting business, and a VC-backed tech company, Katelyn learned a lot from her mistakes and wants to teach others everything she knows.
And that’s why she built Customer Camp – to assist struggling smart minds. The focus is on what often gets overlooked: truly understanding customers.
Because in her perspective, getting closer to customers is the ultimate path to success.
But does Katelyn practice what she preaches? Of course!
And she is very transparent on everything she achieves.
Some of her followers were asking her how much she makes, and she shared a revenue breakdown on how much she’s projected to win in sales in 2023 by the end of August.
Now let’s get a deeper understanding of her unique approach on how she’s succeeding as a B2B creator on Twitter.
What Makes Katelyn Bourgoin a Successful B2B Creator?
I’ll use her Twitter and some of her newsletter issues because I want to focus on her main channels.
I’ll divide this article in 3 main sections, each contributing to her success:
- Having a builder mindset
- Building a Recognizable path
- Being a memorable storyteller.
1. Having a builder mindset
Katelyn has a builder mindset.
Every piece of content she publishes is a brick on another brick that will become a big “house”.
She doesn’t only share practices and processes but also means in which her followers can achieve their goals.
What’s interesting to observe is that Katelyn talks about buyer psychology tactics, but at the same time she actually implements these tactics in everything she shares.
And she’s not just publishing content on her Twitter or newsletter, she also writes on behalf of Customer Camp, and focuses on building digital products like the Un-ignorable Challenge.
She’s a real B2B creator who is creating content with a purpose in her mind.
Let’s discuss how this builder mindset is helping her build her B2B creator career.
A. Create, create, create
For Katelyn, every piece of content has a business purpose.
Every piece of tweet, LinkedIn post or interview she’s invited to is content with a purpose, whether driving sales, leads or building her audience.
She knows that to remain in your audience’s mind, you must constantly post so that they see your face the instant they open their phone.
What Katelyn does is to post constantly about what she discovers, what she learns, offering examples along the way, and constantly repeating herself in her posts.
And repeating doesn’t mean copy-pasting, it’s a strategy that many marketers use to be on top of their audience’s mind.
In one interview with Buffer, Kate said she keeps learning about the things she shares as she goes. Then, experiments and applies many of the principles to see if they work because her audience relies on her advice.
The same thing she did with the Un-ignorable Challenge.
Every time she encountered great examples of un-ignorable content, she immediately shared it with her audience.
This also increased the hype around the challenge and made people curious about it.
When she found a great un-ignorable marketing idea from Cards against Humanity, which raised its price during Black Friday, and made a totally unexpected ad, she posted about it instantly.
The same thing she did with this Grey Poupon marketing idea where you had to apply to follow their page.
B. Don’t be afraid to tell people what to do
Katelyn also knows that to drive people to take action, you’ve got to make them curious and tell them what to do.
So, every content that Katelyn shares leads to something.
Take a look at this example where she states the facts about her business, and then she invites people to subscribe to her newsletter to learn how she did it.
Every piece of content she shares has a purpose:
- Driving sales
- Drive leads
- Build momentum
- Create virality
Take a look at this viral thread to build more awareness about the Un-ignorable Challenge.
She invited everyone of her followers to share this funny thread created for April’s Fools about how to create ignorable content.
Another one of her tactics regarding content is to build momentum. I’ll talk about this separately but I had to share this here.
She’s making people curious and excited for what’s coming.
C. Give support and send your appreciation
People are generally oriented to collaborate with others, to learn new things, and to support each other.
That’s exactly what Katelyn does. She stays connected with people around her and with B2B creators who’re just starting out and this is something most B2B creators don’t often do.
Also saying “thank you” to people who follow you, and have respect for everything you do, shouldn’t be ignored.
She takes time to repost or share her appreciations to people who interact with her content.
D. Give a helping hand
What’s the point in writing and giving inspiring ideas if people don’t fully understand what you mean or how to apply it?
Kately takes her mission to offer her audience more understanding of how their customers buy very seriously.
So, she doesn’t ignore her audience and takes her time to answer her followers’s questions and give them more context.
By offering her followers more in-depth explanations, she ensures that they will continue to stay interested in what she’s creating.
Take a look at the example below:
Letting others know how she succeeded with her newsletter is no secret to her followers as she shares tweets like this one.
E. Don’t do anything by yourself
As in all businesses, being a lone wolf, won’t help you thrive.
The benefit of creating an online audience and network is that you get to connect with all sorts of industry authorities, and the same happened with Kate.
In a Buffer’s interview, Katelyn says that after making a podcast with Rand Fiskin, they realized they were interested in the same things and ended up being friends. This brought Kate more trust in what she was doing because people started associating her with Rand Fishkin or Bob Moestra.
The same happened when Katelyn teamed up with Demand Curve to launch the Un-ignorable Challenge and it definitely paid off.
To give a little context, the Un-ignorable Challenge is a 28-day group challenge for entrepreneurs who want to build an audience of future buyers.
In only 6 minutes Demand Curve and Katelyn sold all the extra seats they created for their course.
Both Neal O’Grady, Co-founder of Demand Curve, and Kate describe on Twitter how they managed to sell all the spots in such a short span of time.
In this Twitter thread, Neal O’Grady, Co-founder of Demand Curve, describes how they managed to sell all the spots in such a short span of time.
Let’s take Neal O’Grady’s Twitter post giving away the playbook for their challenge.
The playbook for the Un-ignorable Challenge by Neil O’Grady
- Name the challenge with something people haven’t seen before
- Familiarize people with the name in shared posts
- Use novelty such as a Google Doc to make it stand out
- Create FOMO with an early bird were 50 seats had 50% off
- Create even more urgency for the 2250 people on the waitlist
- Find the best moment to sell the seats (after New Years when self-motivation for change is the highest)
- Share social proof about previous achievements with other courses
- Demonstrate expertise to build trust on their course
- Offer mystery and curiosity by letting people know they’ll be getting a “mystery bonus” by signing up which is intriguing.
- Fit perfectly into the 5 Fits Framework about Channel, Brand, Product, Market, and Model.
Katelyn also published about this incredible sale on her Twitter as well and gave insights on how they succeeded.
The playbook for the Un-ignorable Challenge by Katelyn Bourgoin
- Prime the name in their messages
- Build a curiosity gap teasing followers with what’s coming
- Create scarcity with the 50 discounted early bird seats
- Use the Von Restorff Effect by offering something different than what exists
- Create urgency letting people know in real time how many seats are still available
- Share social proof from past students
- Create the Bandwagon Effect asking people who signed up to share a post on social for more hype.
WARNING: You can use this playbook to create your original content or digital sale, but Neil says in his Twitter post that it’s not easy to replicate because getting people to trust you, or your brand takes years of hard work.
F. Maintain momentum
Katelyn doesn’t only know how to build momentum, but she knows how to keep people engaged.
Before launching the un-ignorable, she wrote several tweets about preparing to launch something she’s been wanting to do for a long time.
And then, right after she sent the mail, she lets everyone know with a spontaneous photo of herself.
So to launch something is not just about pushing the send button.
Is repeating yourself over and over again.
Repeat what you stand for, what you educate on, and create these momentum to make people curious about what’s next.
Overall, Kate’s builder mindset helped her succeed as a B2B creator.
This approach drives creators to consistently craft valuable solutions that cater to the specific needs of businesses.
Embracing a builder mindset helps the B2B creators to identify and address market gaps, adapt to evolving industry trends, and iteratively refine their offerings.
This mindset fuels a commitment to continuous improvement, enabling creators to develop robust and tailored products or services that resonate deeply with their target B2B audience.
As a result, a builder mindset empowers B2B creators to create lasting partnerships, establish credibility, and ultimately thrive in the competitive landscape by delivering impactful solutions.
Her bio update move was an important move before launching the un-ignorable challenge –
because now people associate Kate with the term “un-ignorable”
2. Building a recognizable path
When thinking about Kate we already have her blue and yellow brand in mind, with her energized voice and professional look that is the kind of CMO every Adweek reporter will want to talk about.
So how did she manage to build such a recognizable brand around herself?
A. Colorful and well-designed brand
Her colorful brand stands out on everything she creates.
Whether it’s profile page, website pages, landing pages, presentation slides, all her images, they all have these distinctive colors.
All they see is blue, yellow, and all sorts of emojis and lightning signs.
She also kept her defining colors even when partnering with Demand Curve.
B. Keep a consistent tone of voice
Katelyn manages to keep the same confident, funny and conversational tone of voice no matter if she’s writing a tweet, a reply or a newsletter.
Even in the interviews, the way she talks and smiles remains with you.
Like this interview she’s done with Nathan Barry.
Everytime I read her tweets, replies, or interviews, I read them with her positive voice in my mind.
She wrote an un-ignorable post about Kim Kardashian on Twitter and even there she uses that confident funny tone of voice.
She talks about Kim Kardashian’s success story in a conversational way, making you read to the very end where she writes in a funny tone that it took her four hours to design the “big booty” graphics.
C. Keep consistency in writing as well
Keeping a consistent tone of voice is easier when the content does the same thing.
On all her main channels, Twitter, LinkedIn, and newsletter, her writing style is the same. She’s open about everything and has the same confident tone of voice.
Take this newsletter she wrote on December 27th for example.
I audited my business and identified my 3 highest leverage assets:
- My Twitter account (I just hit 100,000 followers)
- My newsletter (the one you’re reading right now)
- My on-demand digital products (this one and this one)
I could tweet with a sick baby on my lap.
And because I had a backlog of 2 year’s worth of tweets, I could reuse old ones when I was exhausted and had nothing clever to say.
I didn’t worry about growing my Twitter audience super fast or write click-baity threads designed for mass appeal.
I tweeted with clear intention: to build demand for my digital products and to drive newsletter signups.
I generated $100,000 in sales for my online products and $200,000 in newsletter sponsorships primarily from tweeting.
I still offer live workshops and do consulting calls on occasion, but I’m no longer reliant on that income. It’s just a nice bonus.
I was able to shift my business model quickly because I’d already invested in growing an audience on Twitter, writing this newsletter, and launching my first on-demand product.
She shared her accomplishments and strategies in a straightforward manner.
No hiding because she knows what her audience wants. It wants to succeed following her example.
Speaking of knowing your audience, here’s how she named the Un-ignorable challenge.
Naming the un-ignorable challenge
The original name she had in mind was “Stop the Scroll” but it didn’t speak to the pain or value. It was too functional.
Then she thought of the name “Attention Empire.” It spoke to the promise, but felt a bit gimmicky.
Then, she asked herself: what do people really want?
They want to stop creating content that gets ignored.
So she reframed it into a benefit of what they could become: That’s where the idea for un-ignorable came from.
Basically she followed the below steps to find the right name:
- What’s the promise
- What your audience really wants
- How to reframe to be recognizable.
For those of you interested to learn more about the process of how to name your products Alex Hormozi has an interesting video course on this matter.
3. Being a memorable storyteller
Every piece she is writing is like a small lesson she learned along the way and shares it with us.
Even in her newsletter, Katelyn shows us who she really is and talks openly about her life.
And she tells us that at the end of the day, even with a list of 30,000 subscribers she has her struggles too, just like me and you (without our 30,000 subscribers, but you get the point).
Being transparent about who you are, builds even more on your credibility as a B2B creator, but it takes courage and years of work to be this open.
Kate is not just an overnight success as some of you might think.
She’s been crafting on her storytelling skills, behavioral knowledge, and everything she talks about for years.
And she was open to talk about her failures and lessons ever since she killed her startup back in 2017 when she talked about this in her Medium article.
One thing that strikes out with Katelyn is her sense of humor. You can see in some of the social media posts she writes, like this one with Neal O’Grady where her funny tone of voice kicks in.
Sometimes B2B creators forget that social media channels are for interaction and having fun creating and think too much about being serious about what they do.
But Katelyn is different with her fun and engaging April’s Fools Twitter post.
Building on your own success story
When I refer to Katelyn and say “building on” it’s because in her case, one success, leads to another, and another.
Kate’s huge impact with the Un-ignorable Challenge led to the creation of her free email course which is Pre-sell with Pre-suasion that actually was part of the strategy to launch her next Un-Ignorable cohort. It was a secret launch that drove $37,100.50 in sales.
She mentioned this term a couple of times in her tweets. Just like with the Un-ignorable.
She gave hits and built momentum with her audience.
Now her next move is just another brick on her last brick that was successful.
What Can B2B Creators Learn From Kate Bourgoin
1. Get closer to your audience
Nowadays finding the right audience for your niche is much easier when you have tools like Sparktoro at the tip of your hand.
But getting closer to your audience is the hardest part.
How do you do that? By focusing on one medium where you constantly share pieces of content and get to know your followers better, and see what clicks with them.
Once you’ll figure out what excites them, write more about it.
And if you don’t know what to write? Learn in public, and test things out just like Katelyn does.
Once you build your audience trust you can build your audience on other channels as well, or launch a newsletter and get people to join.
To drive them you can easily try out some of Katelyn’s tactics such as teasing people or creating a referral program.
Then in your newsletter offer your audience relevant things to make sure they will continue to open up and read your newsletter every time.
Just as Katelyn did with her audience. She doesn’t create a newsletter just about customer research which is something companies rarely do, she builds it around buyers’ psychology.
Something that entrepreneurs, salespeople, or marketers will always want to know more about.
2. Coin a term your audience will never forget
Coming out with memorable phrases such as Nike’s “Just do it”, or Jack Butcher’s “Build Once. Sell Twice” is not easy, but it sure brings its rewards.
Just like the un-ignorable term is now in the mind of every marketer and entrepreneur who wants to stand out with their content on social media.
The main idea of coining a term is that you think about your niche and what you’re offering to your audience, and then think about a word or a phrase that connects with your message.
Now you start using that term on your channels and hopefully your audience will start to pick it up.
That’s it. You’ve coined a term.
If only things will be that easy.
Coining a term is a form of art which not many people know, but it can be learned by studying others who build these words and phrases.
3. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself over and over again
Let’s be clear. Repeating is not the same with copying and pasting the same words or the same visuals.
It’s a tactic.
Talking about the same topic over and over again, builds up on your credibility and knowledge.
And not just that, people start to associate your name with that topic and will come to you for more insights.
Katelyn’s topics revolve on the same terms: customers, buyers, psychology, behavior, and research. So be sure you know yours.
On the same note, tell people what to do. Multiple times.
If you want them to follow you, share a post, or subscribe to your newsletter, tell them even if you repeat yourself.
4. Build memorable stories
Storytelling is a must in a B2B creator’s life.
If you’re not good at storytelling, no worries. No one is at first. I’ve just told you that even Katelyn took years to build this skill.
There are a lot of online courses about storytelling, but the best way to sharpen this skill is by writing and hitting that publish button.
Your audience will help you perfect it as well. Based on your audience’s reaction and interaction with your content, you’ll see if you’re heading in the right direction.
Final thoughts
This is where the article ends, but I could have talked about Katelyn for hours, or in this case, pages.
She’s an amazing marketer whose experience and desire to learn more and share her knowledge with others brought her far.
Being her genuine fun and geeky self helped as well. It gave her brand personality and distinctiveness.
Cannot wait to see what brick she’s gonna put on next.