Raise your hand if you’ve ever been knee-deep in trying to implement visual marketing tips and tactics for your business.
…I’m raising both hands right now by the way.
Does this sound familiar?
You’ve been busy making updates to your website with all the best marketing tips for growing your mailing list (and successfully might I add!). With coffee in hand, you look at your (very) long to-do list and decide that today’s the day you’re going to finally add a quiz. It will be a great way to infuse some personality into your business and supercharge list growth.
But where to start? Since you’ve never created a quiz before, you hit up the usuals (I mean, whose “Research Phase” doesn’t look a bit like the Wild, Wild West?!).
Up first: gather inspiration. While checking out quizzes on some other sites you like, you take notes of things you want your quiz to have (i.e. funny gifs, seamless branding experience, custom graphics for each of the results) as well as things you know you definitely don’t want for yours.
You also click around to see what kind of tech everyone is using (and maybe even get a little discouraged that it’s not as obvious as you had hoped). After googling popular quiz platforms, you start to think “Oh crap, this might be more of a production than I thought. There are SO many to choose from!”
You decide it’s best to take a few steps back and start from the very beginning. You fire up Google and type in: how to make a quiz for your website. “Okay, whew,” you say to yourself with a sigh of relief as a number of articles with relevant marketing tips return, “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Famous last words. Fast forward a few hours later, and you emerge from your research bleery-eyed after clicking through dozens of blogs. The free articles you’ve read have conflicting information and the ones that do seem promising (you know, all the ones that will show you “exactly” how to grow your mailing list with a quiz just like Jenna Kutcher’s or Marie Forleo’s) require you to join their live group coaching program or online course in exchange for finding out the exact steps. With no action plan or even quiz content created yet, it’s like you barely started despite spending hours on this already. Argh!
Been there? We all have.
Building a business (especially as a solopreneur) can be a doozy like that. Things that theoretically shouldn’t take too long, end up taking forever, but not because the process itself is extensive. It’s the organizing and researching to find everything that can feel like a drag (even before you start creating your content!).
Thankfully, things like guides and online courses do lay out the steps for you but when it comes to quick visual marketing tips (like creating a brand quiz for your site), it would be great to have something that cuts to the chase and tells you what you need to do ahead of time to get results…like a roadmap.
Increase your marketing efficiency with roadmaps
A roadmap is a strategic plan that defines a goal or desired outcome and includes the major steps or milestones needed to reach it. Like an actual roadmap you’d take along with you in the car, marketing and business roadmaps are meant to keep you organized and on-track to hitting your final destination (aka get results).
How are these different from SOPs, workflows, processes, systems? Well, they’re pretty much the same in that these are all different words for essential frameworks that can supercharge efficiency for your business and change the way you run things for the better.
Because here’s the thing- when it comes to implementing marketing tips, tactics, and strategies, it can be confusing to keep track of all of the moving pieces (especially if you’re a planner like me!). First, you have the tech piece. Then you have the written content with your copy and messaging. Then the visuals and design…if you’re doing all the things in real time as you go along, it can feel like your business is running circles around you (again).
The strategy roadmaps we create at Uno Dos Trae are first and foremost learning paths that lead you right to getting results, but we go the extra mile to make sure each one also provides specific strategies for putting the visual marketing piece into action (after all, the work doesn’t end after you drop in your logo and change a few colors). This approach has been our solution to helping people squeeze out every last drop of their branding and marketing. In fact, one of our most popular roadmaps is our Perfect Blog Posts Guide. Not only does it walk you through how to write an SEO-optimized blog post that consistently attracts traffic to your site, it also tells you how to use visual marketing to elevate the entire experience for your customers and audience. The result? Increased engagement, conversion, brand trust, and stronger brand recognition.
So, why do we love roadmaps so much? Ah, let me count the ways:
No more guesswork. Just new skills.
A large part of being an entrepreneur and building a business is figuring stuff out. That means researching how to do things you’ve never done before and lots of trial and error. But when it comes to marketing strategies, it can be really easy to get bogged down in figuring out what your action plan should look like and ultimately losing sight of the bigger picture. A good roadmap will eliminate the guesswork and you’ll also come out of it with a greater skill level and understanding of marketing your business.
No more reinventing the wheel.
One of my philosophies when it comes to business is “if you do something more than once, document it.” Why? Because doing something more than once means there’s an opportunity to automate it or create a system for it. If you’re creating a quiz for your website to grow your mailing list, chances are it’s not going to be the only quiz you’ll ever create. You’ll eventually want to refresh it or even create other kinds of quizzes as additional opt-in incentives. And even if it bombs, good marketers (like yourself!) will try and figure out what worked, what didn’t, and identify any opportunities to refine your process to better the next one.
So by documenting your initial go at the whole process by creating a roadmap, you’ll be able to pinpoint what needs to be improved upon and you’ll also save so much time and energy because all of the steps will already be written out for you and your team—now you just have to take action!
Makes on-boarding a breeze.
Let’s say you bring on some extra help or want to task a team member with carrying out a marketing campaign. Sure, you can sit with them and take them through the entire process and pray that they’ll remember everything you’re saying the first time. Or you can take them through the process once (if that’s even necessary!) and then share with them the roadmap to follow. That’s it! Easy breezy on-boarding.
Bottom line: roadmaps have increased our team’s efficiency by tenfold once when we started implementing them into our workflow and marketing processes.
Marketing Tips: Creating your own roadmaps
I bet there are a bunch of things going on in your business right now that you could benefit from creating a roadmap for. Here’s how to get started:
Step 1) Write down your end result first. This will ensure that you hit your goals as you create the actual steps in your strategy path.
Make sure the end result includes SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based). Define what metrics will make this campaign successful for you. For example:
END RESULT: Refresh all 15 photos on my website by next Thursday, [insert date here].
END RESULT: Create a fun and informative quiz that people can take to figure out their journaling personality and have it launched on the website by this Friday, [insert date here].
If you’re not sure where to start in your business, I recommend taking my Big Brand Confidence training. It’s a free mini-course where you’ll learn how to identify any disconnect that’s happening in your brand or business. That way, you can then figure out where to focus your marketing efforts on and work towards finding a solution to close those gaps.
Step 2) List out the action steps needed to complete the larger overarching goal.
For example, if you were creating a quiz, your list might look like:
- Decide on quiz type (personality vs educational)
- Create quiz content (questions, answer options, results)
- Select your quiz maker platform
- Drop quiz content into quiz maker
- Make sure quiz answers map to correct results
- Integrate quiz with mailing list. Create new list for all quiz takers and set up auto-sequences for each one of the results.
- Embed quiz on website
Now, this is just a high-level example. Our actual quiz roadmap goes into way more detail how to integrate the quiz with your email service provider step-by-step and where to promote your quiz in different areas of your site, etc. It also includes all of the visual marketing assets recommended to create moments of delight for your audience and increase conversion. But again- these are details that are important to and roll up into the End Result that we defined in the beginning when we created the roadmap.
Don’t worry if it feels like there are a million things on your list. You can refine everything in the next step.
Step 3) Tighten up your roadmap by scheduling everything out.
Many people who write on the topic of systems will say to give a deadline or due date to each action item. This gives you and your team accountability and makes sure your plan doesn’t just sit there and things actually happen. But if you’re the kind of person who is a master self-negotiator and has the tendency to blow deadlines, try this instead.
First, decide how many days you will allot for this project. It can be helpful to have an overall deadline or launch date for your campaign. Then you can back into a schedule from there.
Next, start splitting your action steps across the days you will dedicate to working on this. Let’s look at our quiz example again.
- Decide on quiz type (personality vs educational)
- Create quiz content (questions, answer options, results)
- Select your quiz maker platform
- Drop quiz content into quiz maker
- Make sure quiz answers map to correct results
- Integrate quiz with mailing list. Create new list for all quiz takers and set up auto-sequences for each one of the results.
- Embed quiz on website
You could probably do a few of these things in one sitting so maybe your final schedule looks something like:
- Day 1: Decide on quiz type (personality vs educational). Create quiz content in a new Google Doc (questions, answer options, results).
- Day 2: Sign-up for Interact (quiz maker platform) and create quiz (drop quiz content into quiz maker)
- Day 3: Map quiz answers to correct results
- Day 4: Integrate quiz with mailing list. Create new list for all quiz takers and set up auto-sequences for each one of the results. Embed quiz on website
Launching your quiz in just four days while getting all of your other work done too? Not bad at all! And with plenty of opportunity to finish ahead of schedule too!
Let’s wrap it up
Roadmaps can supercharge your visual marketing efficiency by tenfold. It’s been the best solution knowing how to squeeze out every last drop of your branding and marketing. When it comes to implementing visual marketing tactics and strategies, it can be confusing to keep track of all of the different moving pieces (especially if you’re a planner like me!). Roadmaps are a great way to stay on top of your workload from the start.
And like I said before, if this all sounds well and good but you’re not quite sure what kinds of roadmaps you need right now, check out my free training, Big Brand Confidence. It’s the most efficient way to find out what’s missing in your brand. Once you do, you’ll know what marketing strategies to focus on and bridge any gaps.
Also, I’m currently working on a way to share all of our roadmaps with you guys (seriously, we have a whole library filled with resources!). So be sure to join our mailing list if you would like more info for when that launches.
