CONTENT STRATEGY
An effective marketing plan is one that's a catalyst for business development. Unfortunately, many marketing plans are created for organizational convenience, not strategic messaging.
With a commitment to proven innovation methodology, teams can vet their best ideas, bring the most promising ones to market and tell stories that serve customers while sharing the company's merits.
Below the Fold's user-centered engagement strategy improves a business or organization's communications and marketing plan while building team capacity to innovate at the pace, scale and rigor required to meet ambitious goals. The approach takes the best lessons from a career guiding newsroom and media content efforts and melds them with business innovation best practices.
Agendas and timelines are custom designed to address the needs of the client environment and their communications assets.
Sample Engagement-
Work session: Assets, opportunities, stakeholders
Objective - Deliver high-level introduction to Design Thinking philosophies and methods, and complete several hands-on exercises to orient team to existing and goal states for marketing engagement plan.
Define marketing and communications challenge
Principles of Design Thinking
Crosswalking assets and opportunities
Best practices and analogous inspiration
Identification of key stakeholders
Empathy interview instruction and practice
Field work and work session: Stakeholder interviews and prep for persona creation
Objective -Guide team to consensus about a “North Star” user and uncover meaningful user-driven insights for next steps.
Pairs interview potential “North Star users,” identified using supplied demographics
Unpack interviews as team, uncovering user insights
Below the Fold creates user personas, incorporating additional research
Work session: Stakeholder journey mapping
Objective - Thoroughly explore how stakeholders experience client, from initial contact to long-term engagement. Identify areas to improve user experience.
Demonstration and discussion of created user personas
Creation of timelines with key steps in users’ interactions
Identification of pain points, happy points, questions and opportunities
Selection of pivotal moment
Empathy mapping
Revisit challenge definition
Preparation for ideation
Work session: Ideation, prototyping
Objective - Generate many ideas to share the merits of client with our user. Build light weight prototypes and plan for next steps.
Revisit challenge definition
Brainstorming
Selection of promising ideas
Prototyping
Determine methods to test, measure success against establish goals and identify tasks/activities to be eliminated
Ongoing support: Project wrap-up and next steps
Objective - Document emerging communications and marketing strategy in a design report with recommendations for timeline of project piloting. Assist in implementation. Project wrap-up may include, for example:
Idea refinement
Interim content plan for all channels
Connection with tools and content creators
Community/board engagement around plan
Advanced team training