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Some advice on Content and Video Marketing.
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Another article published by RazorSocial. In my opinion among the best suppliers of free tutorials on the internet.
Mind Mapping for Marketing, useful or not?
If you’re like me your head is spinning with ideas all the time. But I need to get these ideas out of my head and put some structure to them.
Marketing is also very much about process. This is where mind mapping comes in. You map out your ideas and processes.
In this article, we take a look at a cool tool called MindManager to show you how you can use mind-mapping techniques to help progress and organize your marketing campaigns.
But first let’s look at how MindManager works.
The best way of explaining MindManager is through defining a process.
We have a monthly subscription training program called RazorBlazers. In this example, we show how we built a mind-map when we were working out details of our program. A similar approach can be used for any type of product or service launch.
Before jumping into the tool we looked at the key areas for example – understanding our competition, pricing strategy, promotion strategy etc. Stating these up front makes it easier to structure the Mindmap.
The first thing you do is select from a template. The most suitable one for us is the Radial map as I want to use the mind-map to capture all my thoughts and ideas about the launch and I know from experience they will come to be in a random, unorganized fashion. no matter how random they are.
You then start off with your core topic (i.e. RazorBlazers) and build out topics from this and then sub-topics coming from that.
What I love about mind mapping is that within a few minutes you can get your thoughts down on paper. I just try to get as much thoughts on the mind-map and then I start tidying up.
Your mind doesn’t work in a linear fashion so I find this works better.
When I open up a Word document I end up writing a lot more content and also I don’t get a good visual of what needs to be covered.
So you create your topic, sub topics and then sub topics within the sub topics if you need to.
You then build this out until you’ve got everything out of your head. Here’s an example of a more complete mind map.
I have the core topics which are related to the launch of RazorBlazers and then I subtopics related to this. If I wanted to I could create further subtopics off these subtopics!
As well as mapping out all the topics and subtopics there’s some additional things I’ve added to the above:
a). Priority – you can see for each subtopic there is a priority associated with it. This helps you understand which sections of the launch plan is most important.
b). Complete – As well as mapping out the process you can use the mind map to track status of each. For example, in the following you see that the preparation work for the monthly live session is not done but the preparation work required for the PRISM framework training is 100% complete.
c). Flagging
If you want to flag any item for any particular reason you. For example, the following is marked ‘defer’ . As it was a new product launch at the time we had to get customers before we got testimonials from them!
Here’s an example of the other type of flags you can set:
You can delete flags and also change their name.
So you start off with mind mapping but you can use it to track that everything on the list is done!
Other functionality
a). Imagery – you can add any type of imagery to your mind map
b). Notes – Any notes that describe any particular area of the mind map
c). Resources/times – You can set a start/end time to each topic/sub opic and also assign a person to it:
d). Hyperlink – You can link off any topic to a resource e.g. document
e). Filter – You can apply a filter to remove part of the mind map temporarily
f). Import/Export a mind map – When you expert you can create a HTML5 page, word document or PDF, JPEG, PNG or TIFF.
g). Plenty of options for changing fonts, colors, styles, look and feel.
When we were happy with the direction of RazorBlazers we start mapping out what we needed to do to get it up and running. We created a timeline of events starting with building the site and all the way through to onboarding.
When working on these type of projects there’s typically a team involved. You may have someone to help with content creation, video editing, website design. This ‘dashboard’ of items is a central place to store and track everything. Ask the friendly team at Corel for a free demo if you want to explore more about these team features.
There are many times I take out a Mind Map tool. Here are some other examples:
a). Running a webinar – There are so many tasks involved it’s good to create a mind map to think about everything involved. When I’m creating a new webinar the first thing I’ll look at is an existing mindmap to see what I shouldn’t forget!
b). Content Promotion – For every piece of content you create you need a plan for content promotion. You could create a mind map which shows the channels you are on and the promotion tactics e.g:
c). a Blog post – Rather than sitting down to write a full blog post you could map out all the different sections of the blog post and what needs to be covered within the sub sections. It’s much easier to complete a blog post if you’ve thought about the structure/flow.
d). An automation sequence – When you build automation sequences for your product/service they can get quite complicated so mapping them out is useful. It’s also useful to refer to when you want to make improvements in the future and you’re not sure of how all the automation maps together.
Summary
Mind mapping is a great way of thinking through a process or a structure and once it’s created it’s easy to update. By really planning out and thinking about what you want to deliver this can really help with the quality of what you eventually deliver.
If you want to try it out for yourself, there’s a full feature trial available – no cost or credit card – for 30 days.
I love Mind mapping so I had fun testing this out!
Note: This article was supported financially by Corel, however, you know what I’m like. I don’t publish about any tool I don’t like and I always give a 100% honest opinion.
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This next offering was supplied by The Hoth. Normally I anticipate checking out one of their articles simply because they’re extremely educational. I think you will get something out of it.
Do you ever feel like you wake up every day, just to get on the same, painful, sales-grind hamster wheel?
When you talk to your prospects on the phone, are there some questions that you keep answering over and over?
It’s pretty common, and it’s a lot of work!
But there’s a better way…
What if you could build “marketing soldiers” that go to battle for you every single day… for YEARS… attracting and converting clients?
Here’s how:
Whatever you’re saying on the phone to “sell” your prospects, write it down and make it into an article.
The answer to every objection and question, how your product or service or industry works, turn it into a piece of content, then post these to your blog.
Each one of these pieces of content will become little “marketing soldiers” that will keep working for you 24/7 for YEARS.
Since you’re answering the questions that your customers are bringing up over and over, your prospects are going to find them, read them, and get to the purchase a LOT faster!
You won’t have to repeat yourself, and prospects will start coming to your calls ready to purchase since they already got their questions answered through your content!
But the cool thing is that this is not just a content strategy…
This is a strategy for EVERY channel, and you can EASILY multiply the results:
This will make your prospects understand you.
It will position you as an authority…
…And it will make closing deals 10000X easier, thanks to your hard-working, unpaid, “marketing soldiers.”
Hope you found that useful info that they shared. You can find quite similar posts on our main website: https://superspunarticle.com
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New post received from Kapost. Quite possibly 1 of the most effective suppliers of free info on-line.
The responsibilities of marketing leaders have continued to expand as the function has evolved from cost-center to an accountable deliverer of results. But the latest corporate imperative—customer experience (CX)—has put even more responsibilities on the shoulders of marketing leaders than ever before.
According to Gartner, 81% of marketing leaders believe that their companies will mostly or completely compete on the basis of their customer experience within two years. This CX priority is not just a marketing priority but is the decisive factor for the entire business. And marketing leaders are charged with orchestrating the entire CX, both within their department and across the business.
But, how are most marketing leaders faring with this imperative? The same Gartner study states that “only 22% [of leaders] say their CX efforts have exceeded customer expectations.” Over four in five say CX is the basis of competition, but less than a quarter is where they want to be. That is a huge gap around this immense responsibility for marketing leaders.
To understand how we have encountered this challenge as marketing leaders, it’s helpful to look back at where we came from. Forrester publishes a set of trend predictions of B2B Marketing every year, and there’s a tremendous contrast between those of today and of those from half a dozen years ago.
In 2012, their headline was, “New Technologies Go from Cool to Critical.” The article discussed soaring purchasing and implementation of new digital marketing tools, whether it be marketing automation, mobile, social, and so forth. Further along, came a sub-section on content entitled, “Marketers Will Find Creative Ways to Meet Demand For Thought Leadership and Content.” It explained that the “explosive adoption of mobile and social, along with the expanded use of marketing automation, will greatly increase the volume and variety of content that marketing teams must create.”
Such has been the story for marketing leaders over the last decade. We have encountered the digital revolution and we’ve made enormous investments of time and money into technologies to manage the new digital interaction we must have with customers. And correspondingly we have “greatly increase[d] the volume and variety of content that marketing teams must create” to feed these new technologies and power the engagement in all of these new channels.
There’s no doubt we have made tremendous progress in the intervening years. We have stood up innumerable new digital channels, supplied them with plentiful content, and driven high levels of interaction (views, likes, opens, etc.) at these new touch points.
But for how far we’ve come—the gap between how critical CX is and how effective it is remains wide. How so? Could it be that in our zeal to respond to the digital revolution we have created a new set of problems that are holding us back?
Let’s see where Forrester says we are today. Their 2019 B2B marketing predictions article has quite a different title: “B2B Marketing Leaders Embrace Omnichannel Design and Execution.” The article defines “omnichannel” as the “coordination of traditional channels (marketing, selling, fulfillment) and supporting systems to create a seamless and consistent customer experience.” Forrester’s B2B Sales & Marketing conference in October 2018 focused on this issue in one of its three themes, “From Solos to a Chorus of Coordinated Content.” Forrester explained here:
The business consumer does not tolerate inconsistent messaging and disconnected content. In this theme, we’ll help attendees grapple with the challenges of operationalizing compelling messaging in content across both sales and marketing.
What a contrast to where we were in 2012! No longer is the focus on standing up new digital marketing tools and channels, feeding them volumes of content, and driving engagement. Instead, the focus now is on the coordination of not just marketing but also sales and fulfillment on consistency in message, in content, and in customer experience.
The priorities we had in 2012 had unintended consequences that created these new challenges we face in 2019. As marketing embraced digital, it greatly increased the complexity of the marketing organizations. New functions—such as demand generation and social marketing—were created to manage a plethora of new channels (web, blog, social, email, video, etc.) all with their new tools. Thus, the already complex B2B framework of different product lines, business units, regions, sales, and fulfillment became even more siloed and internally fragmented.
Faced with goals of driving engagement for their tool, with their channel, in their region, and their business unit, each silo created their own content more often than not with their own take on the message. Marketers understood the importance of collaborating across silos, but the complexity of doing so in yesterday’s paradigm was overwhelming. And as a result of this internal fragmentation, externally our customers increasingly encounter disconnected interactions with an inconsistent storyline.
In our eagerness to maximize engagement at every interaction across all of our new channels, we lost touch with the end objective: guiding customers across their entire journey and driving revenue. The whole had become less than the sum of its parts.
While we drive high interaction across our different channels, the core story we’re trying to communicate is being lost. And our customers are buying our full story; views, likes, and opens are not ends in themselves. Like the individual instruments all playing their own tune during the orchestra warm up, our customer experience can arrive discordant and ineffective with our customer.
Rather than maximizing the volume of each musician, marketing leaders must prioritize the coordination of the various instruments playing the full piece together.
So, while the pendulum swung far towards maximizing digital interaction and content volume over the last decade, we now see in Forrester’s call for a chorus instead of solos, how the pendulum is starting to swing back towards managing the entire journey. Not towards content volume but to content alignment and consistency. We need to prioritize the forest of the entire customer journey, not just the trees of every interaction.
And in this understanding is how we close the gap on CX, the greatest challenge facing marketing. To date, we have built out our digital infrastructure and driven engagement across these new channels. That is great progress. But now we must have our new channels—as well as our sales and post-sale experience—all work together in telling a consistent story in one voice across the entire customer journey.
Who then will win the CX race? Which marketing leaders will be able to orchestrate the CX that is pivotal to their company’s success or failure? And who will fall behind?
The winners will be the leaders who are quickest to recognize and respond to the new swing of the pendulum. These leaders will no longer try to squeeze results by optimizing engagement and interaction channel by channel, silo by silo. They will recognize that the infrastructure is now in place but then choose to prioritize the work of having the various teams and the various touch points all work together—speaking in one voice.
They know that a customer experience that provides a consistent story across the entire journey is the one that wins the CX race.
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