/blog/marketing-guidelines.book
Marketing guidelines
The goal of these marketing guidelines is to create a process to acquire a list of prospects. In actionable terms, it means:
define content to produce
define channels to distribute that content
Branding perspective document
The branding perspective document's purpose is to have a quick reference for the trends the business capitalizes on...
First, interview customers and team to understand
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Why working with us?
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What are the goals and ideas in the market?
The interview script should be an open conversation that drives to answer the four questions in the following Customers and employees interview outcome table.
When competitors are mentionned, look through their Website, gather the following information:
With the customers interview information in hand, we can start to define prospect profiles (What they value?)
It is then time to start listing:
What should be communicated (Today and later)?
How do we express this (feeling oriented, mood board)?
Create top-level messaging building blocks
With a branding perspective document, create top-level messaging building blocks that can be used throughout multiple distribution channels (ex: How to create a more effective homepage).
additional messaging blocks:
Benefits and corresponding proof points (like features or stats)
Use cases with corresponding personas.
How your product works with ~3 clear steps
Main Content Types
Actual content can be divided in a few categories depending on their useful lifetime, and the convertion pipeline stage.
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Evergreen Content
Evergreen Content is content that will always be fresh, or can easily be updated to stay fresh based on market changes.
Landing pages
Case studies, whitepapers, e-books
product release
Product page
knowledge center
In-app communication
E-mail workflows, drip marketing
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Timely Opinions
Timely opinions that follows news cycle
Blog posts, podcasts and video commentaries
Newsletter
Offers
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In Person
In person events require one or multiple person at the company to be present and animate the event.
Webinars
Podcasts
Field events
Conferences
B2B Landing pages
B2B Landing pages are evergreen content designed for a specific audience with a clear call to action (CTA). Whenever you produce a landing page, before publishing it, run the following checklist for page layout, copy editing. If you have graphs, charts or a survey on the page, run the appropriate additional checklists.
Page Layout
Top navigation bar includes links to the product page, resources, pricing, etc. Plus a sign-in link and primary CTA button.
Above the fold Hero contain top-level messaging building blocks and (optional) product screenshot, diagram or video.
There is a section on social proof - i.e. logos and (optional) quotes - with a heading that describes who your customers are.
There are 2-3 benefits sections that include product images (stylized or screenshots; static or animated).
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(optional) There is 1-3 use case and/or persona section that include 1 or both of these:
Why is the product better? Benefit 1 (what pain does it solve). Features or proof points
Who/What is it for? audiences or ICPs
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(optional) How it works section, preferably including a clear diagram.
What is your product?
How it works - step 1
How it works - step 2
How it works - step 3
CTA Bar: Restate why someone needs your product now, with a primary CTA button. This should always be right above the footer.
Alternative to sign on e-mail list
Button to follow on social media
live chat for qualified leads
If the CTA is for a free trial, add a Buy Now button next to it
The recommended pixel dimensions for OG images is 1200:630 px (aspect ratio of 1.91:1).
Copy Editing
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Run a grammar and spellchecker.
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Remove the "we"/"us" pronouns unless it is clear who it refers to. For example, you might be using "we" in tutorials to mean you and the user. Make sure it is clear then. If you use "we" to mean the company/product, rephrase from the point of view of the customer ("you").
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Make it clear that a free trial doesn't require a credit card.
Here a few posts with interesting tips on copy editing:
Graphs and Charts
If there are graphs and charts in the landing page check for
Colour - use colour sparingly, to highlight data of interest or draw the eye. Use it to suppress data unimportant to your message - grey is great for this.
Clutter - speed up audience comprehension by stripping away ink that doesn't add anything. Candidates for removal include borders, gridlines, tick marks and redundant axes. Choose simple, readable fonts.
Context - titles and subtitles are valuable real estate for providing an audience takeaway.
Surveys
If there is a survey in the landing page, run through Typeform’s Survey Design 101 guide
Work out what you want to know
Keep people informed throughout
Know your demographic
Always test your survey
Use a variety of
Avoid asking leading questions
Put your questions in the right order
Pricing pages
Consolidate to 3 plans
Add relevant CTAs to each plan
Position plans for personas, not features
Distribution
Metrics to track
Unique visitors excluding customers
Signup start
Steps completion in signup flow
Revenue from cohorts of sign-ups
Churn/activation during the first month
SEO
SEO is a process that has a multitude of parameters. The SEO Playbook for Seed Stage Startups typically consists of:
Performing keyword research and analysis (Moz, SpyFu, SocialQuant)
Identifying the most successful domains in your content vertical
Check incoming traffic by sources and landing pages (see Configure Google Analytics)
Never simply share an article. After you've published your article, grab the URL and create an update about the piece, explaining who would benefit from reading it. This enables you to provide more context
Use the summary section of LinkedIn to drive a CTA (call-to-action). Include a proper email, scheduler link (I use calend.ly, or link to the "learn more" or "buy now" page on your brand website. Make sure that people who see your content on your LinkedIn are directed towards one easy action.
a) Turn blog posts into quotes Take 5 to 10 of your most popular blog posts and break them down into quotes. Once you have at least 100 quotes in place, you’re almost done with this Twitter Strategy.
Building lists
Building ecosystem lists
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websites with similar audiences, for example popular bloggers in your industry (reach out)
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websites with similar technologies (acceptance, competition)
Building lists of leads
on Social Media
Intercept users when they’re sharing your competitors’ content. If someone shares one of your competitors’ blog posts, it means two things:
That person likes your topic
That person tends to share and engage with content in your industry