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How to Get Better Content by Documenting Your Content Creation Process

When we talk about creating content, we have a tendency to talk a lot about creativity. Like, just because writers are right-brained thinkers or seen as “creative types,” all content created will be magically on brand and perform to our standards.

Except there’s just one problem: when there’s no direction provided and the content creation process isn’t documented, you’re really just hoping everyone understands which direction to go.

What actually happens?

Right or wrong, everyone will just go the direction they think they should go.

To avoid this common content creation trap, all you have to do is better document your content creation process, and we have several tips on how you can do just that.

 

How to Get Better Content by Documenting Your Content Creation Process?

1. Make the Process Clear, Simple, and Accessible

Take a look at your content creation process.

Can you explain it in just a few steps, or does it require elaborate flowcharts and long RACI matrices?

Unfortunately, If you can’t explain to your team of writers or content contributors how to easily jump into your processes, they won’t.

Instead of requiring others to conform to unnecessarily complex systems, take a look at your process and see what you can do to simplify or clarify the steps.

It’s not always the easiest or most enjoyable content task to tackle, but it is one that will only benefit everyone in the long run.

Once you clarify your process, make sure a well-written, reader-friendly guide is available in an easy-to-access place.

We’re huge fans of Google Docs, but you should also have the link available in your project management system, kickoff documents, and creative briefs.

Basically, share it everywhere anyone could ever need it.

 

2. Define Your Business Success Metrics and Content Objectives

Creating content for the sake of creating content is never a good idea.

You’ll just end up with a mountain of underperforming and expensive content.

Instead, clearly articulate what business goals you’re trying to achieve and how content objectives tie back to them.

Even just a super simple chart of business success metrics and content objectives can help give everyone an idea of why they’re creating content in the first place.

And just remember: clearly articulating what you want to achieve with your content efforts doesn’t mean that your content can’t still be Youtility-based, as seen in the examples above.

 

3. Use an Editorial Calendar

While you probably don’t want to release your nitty-gritty, detail-laden content calendar (which we just happen to have a helpful blog post and free template for), you can still give people an idea of what content you’re looking into an editorial calendar.

Editorial calendars are most often used by magazines to give a 50,000-foot view into upcoming themes and topics that will be covered.

Forbes has a fantastic example with their 2021 digital editorial calendar.

By clearly laying out the upcoming opportunities and tying them to specific dates, you will get far better content ideas and submissions because people will be able to select content pieces they actually want to write about.

This also helps relieve some of the burdens of assigning content.

 

4. Document Your Brand Guidelines

You may be seeing a pattern here.

Making resources about your organization’s content creation accessible (and easy to understand!) makes the process smoother for everyone.

Why?

Because some people have decided that the Oxford comma is the hill they want to die on.

Or maybe someone’s writing style is whimsical and breezy when your brand is direct and to the point.

Brand guidelines magically turn personal preference and style into moot points, because everyone now has a clear set of guidelines to follow if they want to contribute.

Ultimately, brand guidelines are about protecting your brand and making sure content meets the specific quality and style you need. Just be sure to make them clear and easy to understand.

 

5. Identify Content Focus Areas

Instead of giving content creators carte blanche to write about whatever they want, whenever they want, give them a few constraints by giving them your content focus areas.

You can do this by identifying major content pillars (aka content categories) that you want to cover, and then explaining exactly how those pillars come to life for your brand or organization.

For example, say you’re an engineering college at a large state university.

Your content pillars might look something like this:

These pillars should have just enough detail to give everyone a clear understanding of what topics you’ll cover and how, but not be so narrowly defined that writers can’t ideate around the areas of focus.

 

6. Clearly Write Out Your Rejection or Objections

It’s time to expand our vocabulary.

But don’t worry, we’re not dictionary-crunching. Instead, let’s talk about adopting a single word often left out of the content process: No.

The best trick?

Your rejection doesn’t have to be spelled “n-o.”

It can be expressed in much more palatable ways, especially in written form:

• “Our calendar is full for the month, but let’s touch base again in a few weeks.”
• “Our analytics show this type of content works better when [insert fact here]. Can you revise your draft to include that approach?”
• “This content doesn’t align with our current content goals. Let’s brainstorm something that better supports our established content plan.”

It can be tough to say no, especially when content can seem subjective at times, but offer specific feedback that reinforces best practices and arms you to be an effective gatekeeper to control content.

And document that feedback, too.

 

7. Publicly Praise Success

It’s important to celebrate your team’s successes—and to do it publicly.

When people see great work rewarded, they are more motivated to follow suit.

Plus, it gives them an idea of what on-brand and on-target content really look like.

But don’t stop at a simple pat on the back.

Take the time to share some insight into what you believe caused that piece of content to go above and beyond.

This turns the moment into a learning opportunity for the entire team and reinforces best practices.

You can use a company-wide meeting or email to give a shout-out to the most popular blog posts for the month, or share it out on social media and tag the creator.

Either way, always give credit where credit is due. That’s one best practice that never goes out of style.

 

Better Document Your Process to Get Better Content

A robust content creation system can easily go haywire.

There are a ton of pieces that all have to come together, and they’re all constantly in motion.

But there is a lot you can do to reel your team back in from the edge of mayhem.

Whether you apply one of these documentation tips or all of them, you’re on your way back to an organized, well-oiled machine.

This post was originally written by Emily Wenstrom in 2017, and extensively updated by Anna Hrach, Digital Strategist here at Convince & Convert, in 2021.

The post How to Get Better Content by Documenting Your Content Creation Process appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

Best Business Process Management Software

There’s a constant war between growing a business and keeping an operation lean, mean, and agile. How does a company stay efficient, even as they are trying new things and bringing on employees? It’s actually quite simple: business process management (BPM) software. Rarely are answers this easy.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

BPM software helps organizations of all sizes streamline operations and minimize waste.

Visualize every process from end to end. Find opportunities for efficiency and automation. Get more done with fewer mistakes.

If optimizing your business processes sounds like a good idea, this post will tell you everything you need to know about how to find the perfect BPM software for you.

The Top 5 Options for Business Process Management Software

• Orchestly – Best for simple workflow automation
• Pipefy – Best BPM software for Kanban
• Creatio Studio – Best low-code solution
• Tallyfy – Best for automating recurring processes
• Zoho Creator – Best for customizable workflows

How to Choose the Best Business Process Management Software for You

These tools are supposed to make life easier, right?

Yes. 100%.

And not just you, but your employees, customers, and potential clients, too.

Any organization can benefit from implementing BPM software. Because of their broad usefulness, these products come in a lot of shapes and sizes.

Thankfully, you can break your search down into three essential goals.

You are looking for BPM software that will help you:

• Clearly visualize business processes
• Automate more business processes
• Monitor and improve business processes

Design. Run. Automate. Improve. Repeat.

Once you get set up, it will be that simple.

Figure out which features you need by considering each product in light of how it will help you visualize, automate, and monitor the daily work of your business.

Process Visualization

The first responsibility of BPM software is to help companies define and document their business processes.

These platforms have a visual workflow builder that lets you map out every step of every process from start to finish.

Missing steps and redundancies are plain as day. If there’s a breakdown in the billing process, for example, it will be easy to understand and address with BPM software. There’s a clear picture of how the paperwork is moving (or not) from start to finish.

This is way better than finding out there’s an issue from a confused or angry customer. By providing a full, end-to-end visualization of the process, BPM software is really helpful for diagnosing and treating common symptoms of business inefficiency.

What’s really nice is that you can quickly modify workflows without writing code.

Check out the drag-and-drop workflow builder in Orchestly, where you can see how each stage and transition can be easily defined:

Each product does it a little differently. It’s a good idea to watch their videos to see what the UI is like. This will give you a base-level sense of how each BPM software thinks about process management.

If you are a fan of the flow chart style, Orchestly is going to work well. Tallyfy wants to get away from flow charts and works off what they call a blueprint. Pipefy is designed to work best in board-based and Kanban settings.

Which one looks like it’s swimming in your current?

Process Automation

As elegant and useful as the visualization aspects of BPM software are, the process automation is where you’re going to see the major impact on your operations.

With workflows represented in a clear fashion, you can identify different points and transitions where you can add automation.

In the Pipefy workflow builder, for example, you can make it so one action triggers another. There’s no code to write, just select the option that pushes the workflow along.

This can take an incredible amount of busywork out of people’s day-to-day. A sales rep completes their proposal and it’s automatically routed to the right manager for review and approval.

Not only is that rep moving on to their next task, but the pending approval is also queued up exactly where it needs to be for the manager.

Nothing gets missed or held up.

BPM software is great at automating routine and recurring processes like:

• Requests for approval
• Inventory updates
• Time-off requests
• Promotions
• Customer onboarding
• Training new hires

There’s really no limit to the applications. You can implement uniform policies, keep everyone informed, and ensure that every last lowercase j is dotted.

With regards to automation, you want to choose BPM software that strikes an appropriate balance in your workspace. Something sophisticated enough to handle the job that is still within your IT wheelhouse.

The big edge that the code-heavy platforms have is that they can be 100% customized to fit your situation.

The upshot to the no-code platforms is that non-technical users are going to be up and running in no time. They won’t need help to build out and adjust workflows. This kind of independence is really important, and shouldn’t be sacrificed lightly in favor of a more comprehensive tool.

Process Monitoring

What if you never had to send another “Hey, how’s it going?” email?

With BPM software, you can monitor your processes in real-time without ever having to bug someone again. No one does.

Users see exactly where they are on all their tasks. Dates and deadlines are clear, and everything they need to do is laid out in front of them.

Supervisors have total visibility of all projects and jobs. With workflows feeding information into dashboards, managers have a clear view of KPIs and bottlenecks can be seen—and avoided—well in advance.

Leadership can leverage your BPM platform to track tons of useful data for measuring productivity, forecasting costs, and further refining processes.

Another nice feature of good BPM software are the collaborative tools that help teams stay on track.

These aren’t monitoring tools per se, but the ability to comment, @mention, or flag tasks may serve as a critical early warning system.

The Different Types of Business Process Management Software

BPM Software can do a whole lot on its own or it can act as a guide.

The type of BPM software you need depends on your goals—visualization, monitoring, and automation—and how complex your desired workflows are.

In some ways, you can think of these four different types of BPM software as a stack that grows increasingly robust:

• Business Process Modeling Software: visualization
• Workflow Monitoring Software: visualization + monitoring
• Workflow Automation Software: visualization + monitoring + automation
• Low-Code Application Development: visualization + monitoring + advanced automation

Let’s go in-depth on each type to build a firm sense of how these capabilities help companies respond to different challenges.

Business Process Modeling Software

When you see business process modeling software, think of it as a BPM solution that helps with the visualization side of process management.

These tools produce clear documentation, SOPs, and visual representations of workflows that can easily be shared throughout the company.

This is crucial for maintaining consistency of business operations and a boon to new hires who can understand exactly where they fit in.

Workflow Management Software

The next step up in functionality is workflow management software. With this type of BPM software, individuals and teams can interact with the workflows.

They can mark assignments as done, ask questions about specific tasks, and get all the information they need in one centralized location.

Workflow management solutions have a blend of visualization and monitoring capabilities that are really great for keeping everyone on track.

Workflow Automation Software

BPM software that fits in this category will let you automate repetitive tasks within workflows. Set rules that automatically route tasks, files, data to the right person or team.

Say a customer fills out a form, for instance. This could trigger a welcome email series and automatically route their contact info to the appropriate rep.

That’s a simple example, and you can set rules that automate as many steps as you like throughout the customer lifecycle.

These tools tend to connect to a variety of data sources and work well across the organization. Often they come with pre-built workflows and templates for HR, accounting, sales, and so on.

Scope out the solutions on the vendor website to see examples of who’s having success with each product. Are these markets and use-cases that apply to your business?

In terms of automation capabilities, the simpler, lighter workflow automation tools can do a lot. The more expensive premium tools can do a lot more.

I know that’s an oversimplification, but in the end, the “power” of BPM software lies in how well a team can use it. The heavyweight automation features included with premium products are amazing, no doubt, but they take some time to master.

Low-Code Application Development

Low-code application development platforms weren’t built for BPM, but they are growing in popularity as a solution.

Low-code application development platforms allow novice developers the ability to whip up custom applications that meet unique business needs. Really, anyone who puts the time in can figure out how to use these intuitive platforms with little to no coding.

Why is this important for BPM?.

The thing is, at a certain point, super-complex workflows can get unmanageable. There’s no one straw that breaks the camel’s back, but if your average user is having to reach out to IT to sort out problems with their daily work, there’s probably an issue.

Low-code application development comes at the problem from a different angle. Instead of deploying a system and trying to fit it to your needs, why not build a system that’s specific to your organization?

These tools connect with third-party SaaS apps, so you can build out really rich workflows that leverage information from the tools you already use.

It’s a different approach to the same problem as traditional BPM software. If your teams are comfortable with a low-code solution, I’d go for it. They’re really affordable and have few hard limits in terms of what you can do.

#1 – Orchestly — Best for Simple Workflow Automation

Orchestly is built to optimize your everyday business processes.

Say you want to hire a new worker, file an expense report, or request new content. Maybe the marketing department wants a killer post about the best business process management software.

In each case, there are several steps of validation and review that need to be baked into each process. With Orchestly’s visual workflow editor, literally, anyone can build out the exact steps required.

Here’s an example of an onboarding workflow in Orchestly.

Each step in the series of tasks is clearly defined in a series of stages (white boxes), connected by transitions (turquoise boxes), and parallel transitions (orange boxes). Drill down into each stage to the set of conditions that need to be followed before, during, and after any transition.

This is a super easy interface to master.

There are tons of pre-built templates and, once users want to fine-tune their own scenarios, all of the visualization and basic automation is managed with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor.

Another really nice thing about Orchestly is the monitoring features. There are a host of ready-made report types that give you deep insight into your processes.

You can drill down into transitions to discover how many requests are at a particular stage, the ratio of approvals to rejections, and other metrics. Plus, you can filter search results to get a real-time picture of specific employees, projects, or customers.

Orchestly comes with other features that help you extend BPM functionality throughout your organization:

Role-based access controlRequest managerForm designerAudit logEmail templatesAPIs, extensions, and webhooks

Orchestly offers a free version that is limited to five users and three orchestrations (their word for workflow). The paid version, Orchestly Business, is $7/month per user with an annual subscription.

You can try Orchestly Business free for 15 days. If you have never given BPM software a shot, this is a great, low-risk option to start out.

#2 – Pipefy — Best BPM Software for Kanban

Pipefy is winning over a lot of people because of its approachable style. For companies that are already managing processes within a Kanban framework, Pipefy is going to fit like a missing puzzle piece.

This platform has the feel and flexibility of an agile project management tool, yet you’ve got the power of BPM software.

Switch between calendar, list, and Kanban views. Yes it looks like Trello, but in Pipefy you can use the drag-and-drop editor to add rules, custom fields, and ensure that everyone assigned to the process knows exactly what’s necessary to keep things moving.

Build out completely custom workflows with Pipefy’s easy editor. There are hundreds of plug-and-play process templates available in its free gallery.

What’s really helpful for marketing and sales is that you can design these workflows to kick off as soon as someone fills out a form, or reaches out by phone, email or SMS.

They’ve really made it as easy as possible for people to configure their workflows without writing a line of code.

Intuitive doesn’t even begin to describe how helpful Pipefy is for first-time users. It’s always suggesting the next step.

Plus, your customers and clients can create and track requests without being a Pipefy user, which is great for collaboration with clients and other stakeholders.

Other helpful features include:

• Reporting dashboards
• Native integration with Slack and GitHubAPI access
• Self-service portals and forms
• SLA and deadline tracking

Pipefy offers a free trial of their paid plans and a free version for up to five people. To really take advantage of this awesome tool, I recommend one of the paid plans:

• Business: $18/month per user
• Enterprise: $30/month per user
• Unlimited: contact sales

If you like the idea of moving cards through a pipeline, this is a great product. You can start small and gradually automate every one of your processes with Pipefy.

Easy to build, easy to adjust, Pipefy is perfect for the continuously improving agile workflow. If your teams are happy running Kanban, look no further than Pipefy.

#3 – Creatio Studio — Best Low-Code Solution

Creatio Studio gives you the best of both worlds in terms of power and learning curve. Non-technical users will find the platform just about as easy to use as any popular BPM software, but there’s no ceiling to what they can do if they are willing to learn.

The free version of Creatio Studio works for business process modeling, allowing teams to diagram workflows in a collaborative setting. View, comment, and edit the designs in real time, and save everything to a process library for easy access.

To manage, monitor, and automate processes, you’ll need the Creatio Studio Enterprise. With it, you can design workflows and business applications of any complexity.

Think of building with blocks rather than writing code. Creatio compares it to building with LEGO—you don’t have to make the parts so much as select what you want and snap it together.

There are hundreds of ready-to-use templates in the Creatio marketplace to help you get started. As you design and refine processes within the visual design-builder, Creatio automatically generates the corresponding business logic.

It’s a great product that straddles the divide between technical and non-technical users. Creatio is constantly suggesting actions and helping users double-check their work.

In addition to helping people design exactly what they need, Creatio Studio comes with:

• Role-based access control
• Interactive dashboards
• API access
• No-code data migration
• One-click pdf documentation
• AI and machine learning tools

Creatio Studio is free for an unlimited number of users and Creatio Studio Enterprise starts at $25/month per user.

Shortlist the free version of Creatio if you are just starting to think about business process management. It will help you get off on the right foot at no cost.

If, on the other hand, you are hitting the limits of your current BPM software, Creatio Studio Enterprise is one of the most capable, affordable options available.

Although many low-code platforms are built for general use, Creatio was originally founded as bpm’online in 2011. Every aspect of the design has BPM in mind, which lowers the learning curve tremendously for non-IT users.

#4 – Tallyfy — Best for Automating Recurring Processes

Tallyfy gets away from the idea of flowcharts. Instead of shapes and arrows to guide your design process, Tallyfy keeps everything in something they call a blueprint.

There are pre-made blueprints you can use for marketing, finance, sales, HR, and more. Once you have designed a blueprint, you can use it over and over again.

In the example below, you can see a blueprint that captures the entire onboarding journey.

Blueprints are easy to customize without code. Point and click to add new tasks to blueprints. Within tasks, you can set the required fields and add drop-down menus that will pull the names of employees, customers, and projects from connected databases.

When you go to launch these blueprints, end-users love how easy it is to complete each task.

Managers can view progress at a glance or drill down into specific tasks. Clients who need to approve a request or sign off at a particular step will just see that.

Working off blueprints, it’s incredibly easy to set up and automate recurring processes. Quickly create a library of blueprints that suit your needs, and continuously improve each step. Turn all of your recurring processes into error-free workflows that save time and eliminate stress.

After launching your automated processes, Tallyfy’s process monitoring capabilities help you keep track of all your flows in real-time. Some of the highlights include:

• Powerful search and filtering
• Custom process viewsRole-based access control
• Audit trailsCommentingIssue flagging

Having commenting and issue flagging as separate features is so important for surfacing problems quickly.

How many times does a red alert get buried for a few hours among the constant flow of @mentions and comments? With easy opportunities to flag problems, companies never let an employee, client, or goal fall through the cracks again.

You get two months of Tallyfy free if you sign an annual contract for any of their three pricing tiers:

Tallyfy Docs: starting at $42/month, includes 10 membersTallyfy Basic: starting at $100/month, includes 8 membersTallyfy Pro: starting at $100/month, includes 4 members

The way their tiers break down is really easy, though it looks a little unusual at first. Docs lets you create read-only blueprints, Basic lets you launch blueprints as a process, and Pro lets you add automation.

If you need additional users, the added cost increases at each tier, from $4/user with Docs, to $12.50 with Basic, and $25 with Pro.

They offer a free 14-day trial, if you want to see what Tallyfy is all about. I really recommend the blueprint-style BPM software to any business that has repetitive tasks they need to get right every time.

#5 – Zoho Creator — Best for Customizable Workflows

Zoho Creator is a low-code application development platform that can be used to create a wide range of customizable business process workflows.

Unlike Creatio Studio, Zoho Creator wasn’t born as a BPM tool. Think of it as a blank slate with an intuitive toolkit that allows companies to create everything from serverless apps to full-blown, totally specialized ERP software.

The reason companies are finding success with Zoho Creator in the BPM space is that it comes loaded with tools to build out customized workflows.

Between the templates and the drag-and-drop platform, everyone with a few weeks of Zoho Creator under their belt will think they’re a developer.

There’s nothing dazzling about the UI, but it’s easily navigable and you can build out really sophisticated apps to automate your business processes.

Zoho is really great at guiding users through each step, whether they are trying to set up the simple payment processes or design a mobile app for their office.

To really handle the complex tasks, users will have to familiarize themselves with Zoho’s proprietary language, Deluge, which is short for Data Enriched Language for the Universal Grid Environment.

It’s a mouthful to say, but in terms of building out custom scripts quickly, Deluge is a huge step in the right direction.

An HR manager with no code experience will be able to automate a recruitment application. A sales rep can build a system to track leads automatically using Deluge.

With other platforms, end-users are at the mercy of their automated workflows and have little ability to make changes to the system. With Zoho, they can keep control and ensure that their workflows are designed according to best practices and current challenges.

For their part, technically gifted users will love Zoho Creator because they can add logic and function to their applications without having to wrestle with conventional tools.

Some of the other features that help you get off the ground quickly include:

• 50 ready-to-use apps
• Schema builder
• Developer sandbox
• Payment gateway integration
• Audit trailAutomated application backup

Pricing is remarkable, considering how powerful the platform is.

• Basic: $10/month per user
• Premium: $20/month per user
• Ultimate: $35/month per user

The Basic tier is quite robust, though you are limited to building 3 apps. You get more apps and greater functionality at the Premium and Ultimate tiers.

You can certainly manage simple workflows with Zoho Creator, but I wouldn’t make this your first pick for that reason. It’s just too powerful to justify using when you have Orchestly and Pipefy available.

Choose Zoho Creator if lighter tools aren’t meeting your BPM needs.

Summary

There is no reason to fly blind. Get immediate insight and oversight of all your business processes with an appropriate BPM solution.

If you are just starting out, I really recommend Orchestly for and Tallyfy.

If you have simple automation and workflow goals, go with Orchestly and see how far it gets you. For many companies, it’s going to be enough to better manage all of their operations.

Tallyfy is going to knock out repetitive tasks really quickly with the workflow automation tools. Blueprint your processes and then manage them with little oversight.

For agile teams, especially those working within a Kanban or Scrum process framework, I would definitely check out Pipefy. It’s built for agility. Make adjustments on the fly and monitor performance to continually evolve better processes.

Between Creatio Studio and Zoho Creator, the two low-code options on this list of best BPM software, the choice ultimately comes down to what your users like.

Judging from reviews, lots of new users are falling in love with Zoho’s Deluge scripting language. If that’s the case, you may want to consider implementing Creator and other products from Zoho, like their CRM, which also rely on Deluge.

If someone is looking for a more traditional take on highly-customizable BPM software, I’d point you to Creatio Studio.

The post Best Business Process Management Software appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Rethinking the 3 Ps of Business

If you own a business or have ever taken a basic business class, then you’re probably familiar with the 3 Ps.

People. Product. Process.

According to the guiding principle of the 3 Ps, managing these three most important factors of a business will help you find unchallenged success.

They are the building blocks that help construct a successful business. See, without the right people, a good product, and a proven selling process your business will fail.

But there are thousands of businesses that have all of those things and still find themselves struggling to get by. So what’s missing? Why don’t the 3 Ps alone take your business as far as it needs to go?

Turns out, there is a fourth P that nobody mentioned. Until now.

As important as your people, product, and process are, your positioning is just as important. And especially for all you marketers out there, you know this better than anyone.

When it comes to your product and your process, positioning is an integral part of the equation. Think of positioning the same way as marketing—it’s figuring out how to frame and advertise your product in a way that makes it more appealing to your audience.

Positioning is something that Donald Miller, CEO of StoryBrand, talked about in our recent workshop. It’s an often-overlooked factor of your business that, according to Donald, will make or break you.

Deprioritizing positioning is a mistake that a lot of new business owners make. By not focusing on how you position, promote, and advertise your product/service, you’re putting a cap on your potential for growth.

So, we are taking a few tips from Donald Miller and breaking down this forgotten 4th P of business so you no longer wonder why you’re struggling even though you’re doing everything else right.

How Positioning Works

First, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• How is your product actually positioned in the marketplace?
• How does that positioning help differentiate you and set you as a part of your industry?
• Can people figure out easily what you sell and what problem you solve?

All of these answers will help you create your core positioning message, which is something you want your customers to be extremely familiar with.

You want your customer to be able to recite your core messaging back to you. You want them to be able to give you a summary of the purpose of your business. You want them to memorize the problem that you solve.

If you create this kind of brand recognition, it demonstrates that you’ve done an effective job at bringing awareness to your brand, thereby increasing your business’s chance to be successful.

Why Positioning is Important

Remember how we said that positioning is just as important as the other 3 Ps?

Well, we lied.

Positioning is probably the most important aspect of building your business, even more, important than your product itself. That may sound like a stretch, but it’s true.

See, selling well and becoming an authority in your market aren’t just about having the best product or offering the best price. Those things certainly factor into the equation, and good products and low pricing will most certainly help you sell more.

But your messaging and positioning are ultimately the things that are going to help your ability to effectively position and market your product is more important than anything else.

If you’re wondering why that’s the case, it’s because of psychology.

People don’t inherently buy the best product or the flashiest product… they buy the product that they can understand the fastest. That’s because the less mental energy needed to understand the product and what it does, the more likely it is that they will want to buy it.

That’s because our brains are designed to ignore or forget things that don’t matter (we talk more about that in this blog post about how to market for your brain’s survival instinct).

We inherently put on blinders to things that don’t interest us, and at a very basic level, aren’t going to help us survive. Even in the context of buying a product, our ability to survive is subconsciously on our minds.

That’s why people will almost always buy a product with proper positioning; their brains actually want to pay attention.

If you can properly position what you want to sell, you are going to outsell your competitor every time. It doesn’t matter if a competitor’s product is better than yours—if your messaging is better, you will always be the winner.

The Rules of Positioning

Properly positioning your product isn’t rocket science—you already understand that good messaging and marketing are the factors that go into proper product positioning.

But the execution is really key.

And although prior marketing experience—which most of our readers have—is certainly helpful, it can also hurt you to an extent if you’re not careful. That’s because of the (very basic) first rule of positioning…

1. Be Clear

If you are in marketing, you’ve probably spent hours thinking of a neat, clever, and cool way to attract customers to your products and get your company’s message across. Sometimes, that method can be really effective in a niche, insider-oriented audience.

But when it comes to foundational product positioning, it’s not the best practice.

Again, people are drawn to products that they can understand the easiest. Not only that, but you only have about 8 to 10 seconds to get a person’s attention and have them decide if they’re going to listen to you or not.

For both of those reasons, clarity is key.

Marketers want to feel like they are smart, clever wordsmiths. And as much fun as it may be to come up with a fun, product-based pun that you and your marketing team think is hilarious, there’s a pretty decent chance your customer will be checking out before they ever hit the punchline.

And, at worst, they’re going to be totally confused. That is the absolute last thing you want.

That doesn’t mean your copy and salesmanship needs to be totally boring and dry. That’s not a good approach either. But when placed up against cute, clever, and emphasis on clarity is always the approach that will win.

The quicker you can get your audience to understand what you do, the more likely up to you will convert them into paying customers. Don’t make them guess… just tell them. If you do, then you, your customer, and your business will be much happier in the long run.

2. Utilize the power of narrative

Storytelling is an art form that humans have been perfecting since the beginning of time. It is truthfully one of the most effective and powerful tools humans have, which is why marketers and business owners need to learn how to properly utilize it.

People connect with stories: we have an emotional response to them, react to them, and, most importantly, we remember them.

And, if you remember from earlier, making your product memorable to your customer is the best thing you can do to get them to buy.

Using a story for positioning is really effective because it does 2 things:

It more engaging than a sales pitch that gets your customer involved

Your information will be way more memorable because your customer will pay a lot more attention. Traditional style, direct response sales pitches are essentially 5-minute college seminars that people often tune out.

And if people pay thousands of dollars to go to college and still don’t listen to seminars, what makes you think they’ll listen to your mini one?

Stories are engaging, and they’re especially engaging when you frame your customer as the hero of the story.

When you are positioning your product in the marketplace, it’s important to remember that customers will only care what your product will do for them.

They don’t usually care about the product itself. That’s why it makes sense to make them the main character of your story—you can create the narrative arc that has them accomplishing their goals using your product. They can be the winner, and you can be the one who made it possible.

So when you are setting up your positioning, try to get as much of a story in there as possible, and make sure your customer is the hero, not your product (and if you want to know more about this strategy, you can check out Donald Miller’s workshop on the StoryBrand method).

The main thing to remember when it comes to building your positioning: there needs to be a problem. Not only that, but you need to make sure your customer memorizes that problem and understand that what you have to offer fixes it.

The best-positioned products sell the best, and that’s something that your competitors may be undervaluing. So make sure that you are framing your product within a clear, concise story, and you’ll be making more sales than you can count.

And it won’t even take having the absolute best product on the market.

It’ll be because you’re a good storyteller.

The post Rethinking the 3 Ps of Business appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Source: digitalmarketer.com

How to Implement Marketing Automation

Finally, the implementation journey is about to begin. But you are not ready. There is a lot that can and should be done before anyone starts loading software onto servers (or, in the cloud)!

This is the final installment of our three-part series delving into the process for selection and preparation for CRM + marketing automation implementation.

Part 1 of 3:  How to Choose a Marketing Automation Platform

Part 2 of 3: How to Collect the Right Data to Boost Your Marketing

Finally, the implementation journey is about to begin. But you are not ready. There is a lot that can and should be done before anyone starts loading software onto servers (or, in the cloud)!

In the first two parts of this series, we covered a lot of steps and processes to identify and select CRM + marketing automation, the importance of data and data integrity, and even how to rethink CTAs. Let’s dive into the next part.

The most important part of marketing automation implementation is content.

It would be nice if we could just tell the CRM/MA integration team to throw the switch and turn it on, but there is actually a huge chasm that still has to be mapped and crossed. It may be easy for some and daunting for others. It’s called “content.”

We’re making the assumption that somewhere during the implementation process, you’ve mapped out all the lead types, the journey maps, the possible interactions, the rules and conditional logic being applied to those interactions, and the tracking.

Once that is all done (it never really is, but work with me), there is one major matter the CRM/MA provider or third-party integrator cannot do. And that’s to catalog and probably create new, compelling content the whole system will rely on.

 

Where does mapping your content fall in the overall marketing automation implementation process?

Mapping your content should happen right at the beginning. It may seem odd to hold off mentioning it until part 3 of this series, but I wanted to lay the foundation first.

The process we prescribe can actually begin even during the CRM/MA evaluation process because regardless of what platform or tools are ultimately selected, the content will still be required.

Think back to part one of this series, where we identified the Four Pillars of Nurture Program Success. Content is one of those essential pillars.

We use another 4-step process to map out a content plan to identify what we have, what we need, priorities, and how we’re going to develop the missing parts.

The first part of the process is to perform a content audit based on what we call the 5x5x5 content needs assessment. In summary, the 5x5x5 approach is:

• Determine the number of personas (assume 5 for the math here)
• Determine the number of stages in your consideration funnel (again, assume 5 for the math here, which works in most cases)
• Determine the 5 key questions at each stage that must be answered in order to move the prospect further down the consideration funnel.

5 x 5 x 5 = 125, which is approximately how many content marketing topics you’ll need to cover—just to address the known and inferred customer needs. But don’t despair; much of that content is likely a dual purpose, and some probably already exist.

Next, perform a content audit to identify the gaps between the 5x5x5 and the existing content library. The outcome isn’t always a binary, “Yes we have that covered” vs., “No we don’t have that content.”

The particular piece of content is often buried, needs to be updated, it’s in the wrong modality, or needs to be cobbled together from several disparate sources. Even if the core content is there for a particular piece of content, it often needs work. That takes time and resources.

When the content is blatantly missing, that’s actually the golden opportunity—a blank slate—to create what we really want and need to be highly relevant to the audience. This typically requires some combination of internal and external people skilled in:

• Content creation, copy or script writing and story-telling
• Graphic design, including, motion graphics
• Videography and editing
• Audio recording and editing
• Brand management and oversight
• Possibly gamification, assessments, online calculators, product selectors, and other interactive content assets
• And maybe even legal review.

This necessitates a content calendar to organize the workflow of what content will be produced, in what order, and on what schedule. You can Learn How to Build a Content Calendar (plus a free downloadable template) to get started.

Clearly, content is as important as any of the other pillars for overall project success. Yet, it’s probably the most under-prioritized from a workload and timeframe standpoint.

Some companies and organizations will have much or most of this buttoned-up—they already have their content-creation machines running at full speed and high quality. Others will be starting from nearly zero.

In those cases, we often recommend turning to contract or freelancers to help with the heavy lifting.

 

With all the content creation and production being done, is there anything else to do?

Of course, there is. No initial CRM + MA launch is flawless once activated. No content library is perfect.

Ramp up your A/B testing and interval testing. The never-ending next step is ongoing optimization based on performance metrics. That’s where we get to see the return on all this investment in time and money and be sure, people within your organization will be looking for a positive ROI.

That topic will have to wait for another series. There are so many interesting ways to look at soft engagements, hard conversions, deciding which KPIs really matter, assisted conversion and attribution models, and the big one — educating the executive team and managing their expectations.

 

If that sounds daunting, is it even worth doing?

That really depends. It’s a smart question to answer upfront. A bit of not-too-complex math will usually give us an answer and a likely timeframe. It all comes down to total investment, volume projections, short-term revenue and customer LTV, and the expectations for break-even and ROI.

Those variables are different for every company or organization. There’s no viable substitute for not doing the math upfront, or even reassessing where you are now in your current CRM+MA journey.

The entire marketing automation/CRM selection and implementation process can be overwhelming. But it really is a linear process with a few concurrent initiatives running at the same time, A good plan, enough people, and the right people, greatly improve the likelihood for a successful outcome.

The post How to Implement Marketing Automation appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com