6 Key Questions to Map Out an Effective Marketing Blueprint

By Mike Gospe, Principal & Co-Founder, KickStart Alliance

Editor’s Note: The following article is from a recent post in the Marketing Campaign Development blog.

There is an art to crafting marketing blueprints. Although the concept is simple and intuitive, it takes practice and patience to work the model.  More than that, it takes time to show colleagues in marketing and sales that the model really does work.
Proof will be found in producing better results (i.e. more, better quality leads) while reducing internal frustration and the need to rewrite copy over and over and over again.
What’s needed is a quick win!
A blueprint quick win is an opportunity to apply the blueprint best-practice model to an event, with focus on a limited span of time.  Here’s an example:
Not long ago I worked with a company who had scheduled a webinar that would take place in three weeks; yet because the marketing staff (five people) was so stretched, no pre-marketing for the event had been considered.  Their answer was to outsource the entire production to Ziff Davis, a webinar turnkey solution with a guarantee of 250 registrants.  After interviewing the team, I sketched their initial blueprint, shown below.
Two other facts are important to this story:

• The sales and marketing teams each had a slightly different definition regarding “raw inquiries”, “qualified inquiries”, and “leads.”
• Because of trust issues, sales requested that all 250 registrants be immediately turned over to sales.

I suggested that if this plan were executed as outlined above, the only thing I could guarantee would be that each team would be unhappy with the results.
The first thing we did was to sit down with the marketing and sales leadership and hammer out a confirmed understanding of inquiry and lead definitions.  Then, we conducted a 30-minute blueprint exercise designed to answer the following 6 questions:

1. Who is the target audience (persona)? (Here’s an example.)
2. How do they want to be communicated with?
3. What offers do they want/expect from us?
4. After they respond to the first activity and offer, what happens next? And what happens after that?
5. What happens if they don’t respond?
6. How will these activities and offers help qualify these prospects?

As a result we crafted the final blueprint.
The upshot: A focused blueprint with a purpose
Instead of relying solely on Ziff Davis to promote the event, we discovered additional pre-event marketing tactics that could be easily coordinated.
This was a thought-leadership webinar.  The next logical step in our dialog with prospects was to direct them to a product that best addressed the issues raised during the webinar.  We wondered if any attendees were interested in taking the next step with us immediately.  So, we included an immediate call-to-action to stay on the line to see a product demo. Most folks dropped off the line, but more than a few stayed on!

In the days that followed, two separate conversations would unfold: one for prospects who registered and attended; the other for prospects who registered but did not attend.

Our blueprinted program was designed to last 4 weeks.  At which time we would regroup with sales to review the number and status of the inquiries and leads.

The results
Instead of 250 registrants, we generated 1,050. 497 touched our company at least twice during the 4 weeks that followed the webinar.  These were the leads that were passed immediately to sales.  The others remained in an ongoing marketing nurturing program.
How much did it cost to rework the blueprint?  Absolutely nothing except 30 minutes of time to plan.  Literally.
Qualitatively, the marketing and inside sales teams were doing high-fives down the hall.  A whiteboard kept a running tally of our leads for all to see.  The marketing had secured it’s first quick win.  With a renewed sense of partnership, the team moved on to tackle more comprehensive blueprints.
Mike Gospe leads KickStart Alliance’s marketing operations practice where he conducts team-based “practical application working sessions” to improve the effectiveness of lead generation campaigns and product launches. His fun, practical approach and roll-up-his-sleeves attitude energizes teams, helping them to get “real work done” while guiding them to the next level of excellence. Mike is the author of the book, Marketing Campaign Development, and his methodology is being used by San Francisco State University’s College of Extended Learning course: “Essentials of Integrated Marketing.”