If you’re like me your head is spinning with ideas all the time. But I need to get these ideas out of my head and put some structure to them.
Marketing is also very much about process. This is where mind mapping comes in. You map out your ideas and processes.
In this article, we take a look at a cool tool called MindManager to show you how you can use mind-mapping techniques to help progress and organize your marketing campaigns.
But first let’s look at how MindManager works.
The best way of explaining MindManager is through defining a process.
We have a monthly subscription training program called RazorBlazers. In this example, we show how we built a mind-map when we were working out details of our program. A similar approach can be used for any type of product or service launch.
Before jumping into the tool we looked at the key areas for example – understanding our competition, pricing strategy, promotion strategy etc. Stating these up front makes it easier to structure the Mindmap.
The first thing you do is select from a template. The most suitable one for us is the Radial map as I want to use the mind-map to capture all my thoughts and ideas about the launch and I know from experience they will come to be in a random, unorganized fashion. no matter how random they are.
You then start off with your core topic (i.e. RazorBlazers) and build out topics from this and then sub-topics coming from that.
What I love about mind mapping is that within a few minutes you can get your thoughts down on paper. I just try to get as much thoughts on the mind-map and then I start tidying up.
Your mind doesn’t work in a linear fashion so I find this works better.
When I open up a Word document I end up writing a lot more content and also I don’t get a good visual of what needs to be covered.
So you create your topic, sub topics and then sub topics within the sub topics if you need to.
You then build this out until you’ve got everything out of your head. Here’s an example of a more complete mind map.
I have the core topics which are related to the launch of RazorBlazers and then I subtopics related to this. If I wanted to I could create further subtopics off these subtopics!
As well as mapping out all the topics and subtopics there’s some additional things I’ve added to the above:
a). Priority – you can see for each subtopic there is a priority associated with it. This helps you understand which sections of the launch plan is most important.
b). Complete – As well as mapping out the process you can use the mind map to track status of each. For example, in the following you see that the preparation work for the monthly live session is not done but the preparation work required for the PRISM framework training is 100% complete.
c). Flagging
If you want to flag any item for any particular reason you. For example, the following is marked ‘defer’ . As it was a new product launch at the time we had to get customers before we got testimonials from them!
Here’s an example of the other type of flags you can set:
You can delete flags and also change their name.
So you start off with mind mapping but you can use it to track that everything on the list is done!
Other functionality
a). Imagery – you can add any type of imagery to your mind map
b). Notes – Any notes that describe any particular area of the mind map
c). Resources/times – You can set a start/end time to each topic/sub opic and also assign a person to it:
d). Hyperlink – You can link off any topic to a resource e.g. document
e). Filter – You can apply a filter to remove part of the mind map temporarily
f). Import/Export a mind map – When you expert you can create a HTML5 page, word document or PDF, JPEG, PNG or TIFF.
g). Plenty of options for changing fonts, colors, styles, look and feel.
Creating a plan
When we were happy with the direction of RazorBlazers we start mapping out what we needed to do to get it up and running. We created a timeline of events starting with building the site and all the way through to onboarding.
When working on these type of projects there’s typically a team involved. You may have someone to help with content creation, video editing, website design. This ‘dashboard’ of items is a central place to store and track everything. Ask the friendly team at Corel for a free demo if you want to explore more about these team features.
Other examples
There are many times I take out a Mind Map tool. Here are some other examples:
a). Running a webinar – There are so many tasks involved it’s good to create a mind map to think about everything involved. When I’m creating a new webinar the first thing I’ll look at is an existing mindmap to see what I shouldn’t forget!
b). Content Promotion – For every piece of content you create you need a plan for content promotion. You could create a mind map which shows the channels you are on and the promotion tactics e.g:
- Social Unpaid
- Social paid
- Email marketing outreach
- Link building tactics
- Email marketing to your list
c). a Blog post – Rather than sitting down to write a full blog post you could map out all the different sections of the blog post and what needs to be covered within the sub sections. It’s much easier to complete a blog post if you’ve thought about the structure/flow.
d). An automation sequence – When you build automation sequences for your product/service they can get quite complicated so mapping them out is useful. It’s also useful to refer to when you want to make improvements in the future and you’re not sure of how all the automation maps together.
Summary
Mind mapping is a great way of thinking through a process or a structure and once it’s created it’s easy to update. By really planning out and thinking about what you want to deliver this can really help with the quality of what you eventually deliver.
If you want to try it out for yourself, there’s a full feature trial available – no cost or credit card – for 30 days.
I love Mind mapping so I had fun testing this out!
Note: This article was supported financially by Corel, however, you know what I’m like. I don’t publish about any tool I don’t like and I always give a 100% honest opinion.
