Every company needs a media plan to coordinate your efforts and reduce wasted motion. And if you have a budget and no time, it might be time to delegate your media planning. But how? We’re gonna talk about exactly how to delegate your content planning, grow one of your staff and get success while you Read More
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Kill Budget Vagueness in 5 Steps
It’s always the stupid stuff that stalls progress, especially when you’re managing the creation of a new media plan from scratch. And one of the quickest ways to cross wires with your team is to leave the budget area ambiguous. Without your decision in this area, your team will struggle. You’re not the only one Read More
The 4 Essential Truths of Content Strategy
Some plans are just wishes. Other plans define the task and the purpose, pointing the team’s individual work into a coordinated effort. This post will tell you about the process of content strategy, a process that will bring your internal knowledge and genius out to the world, in an effective and coordinated effort. Everyone loves Read More
Protip: Pretest Your Brief
The creative brief tells anyone touching or reviewing the piece—whether it’s a blog post or set of social media posts—exactly what the piece is supposed to do. So how do you pretest its effectiveness? Find out if it inspires your creatives. “What is it we’re selling, who’s it for, and why does it matter to Read More
The One-Page That Will Focus Your Content
Much of the unfocused marketing crap we see in the world comes from a lack of focus and discipline. This post is about a document that will change all that, creating a sharp focus for all of your messaging. It’s called the creative brief, and it’s been used to devastating effect in the famous “Got Read More
Protip: Close Your Laptop and Think
How to discipline your research: avoid bottom-up thinking. Bottom-up thinking, in research, puts you at the mercy of the information you’re seeking. It might mean looking on the internet for insights related to your goal, but with no clear question. Without that question, you end up down rabbit trails that waste your time. A top-down Read More
Five Steps to UX-Proof Your Website: Part 5 Sitemap and Navigation
We’ve all been to websites with triple dropdown navigation menus, extensive lists of blue hyperlinks in a sidebar, and overcrowded headers full of items. We’ve all left a lot of those websites, too. Clear and thoughtful navigation promotes lead generation, customer conversions, and SEO. Bad navigation confuses and overwhelms your users, and increases your bounce Read More
Brand Strategy 2: Maslow’s Marketing Pyramid
Effective storytelling means conveying relevant brand truths to your audience by telling a story about them. So how do you tell the right story? In Part Two of our strategy series, we define the three levels of story and how to find the right story type for you. With the right story type, you can Read More
Five Steps to UX-Proof Your Website: Chart the Tasks
A crucial part of user-focused design is eliminating pain points. We go through the process of creating detailed personas so that we can streamline our design and content to fit their individual context. Good personas include webographic information such as device, expertise, and preferred websites, so we better know how to design an interaction that feels Read More
Building Creative Strategy: The SWOT
Businesses are famous for believing lies about themselves. The SWOT analysis, rigorously done, will serve to disabuse you of misconceptions that could be costing you money and opportunity. How do businesses deceive themselves? By using bad data (they don’t always talk to customer, and when they do, they often don’t ask the right questions) and Read More
