As marketers, we’re always looking to be more efficient and effective. In the first blog post, I highlighted how Minitab Workspace can help you focus more on strategy and less on painful PowerPoint formatting when you use Workspace’s SWOT Analysis tool and flow charts and the Kano Model.
Now I am going to focus on just a few of the brainstorming tools inside Minitab Workspace. As marketers, we love our whiteboarding sessions with the team. Some of our best ideas are generated around those boards – but wouldn’t it be better if you had recorded these ideas so they are instantly usable? Brainstorming tools allow you the creativity of a whiteboard session, but structure to collect and eventually execute on your ideas. Read on and I’ll show you what I mean.
Mind Maps
Let’s start with a tool that encourages structured creativity: Mind Maps. If you haven’t formally used a Mind Map before, you’ll find them amazingly easy and a natural extension of your thinking. Put simply, you start with an idea and build off of it. How do I know it works?
See the Minitab Workspace brainstorming and visualization tools in action in this webinar!
In this case, I started with an idea: showcase how helpful Minitab Workspace can be for marketers. I brainstormed about a few critical things: the channel I was going to target to get to my audience, the content I want to deliver and the call to action. You can see below the exact Mind Map I used to get us both here:
Idea Map
The purpose of an Idea Map is to brainstorm about answering a central question. Sticking with our theme, my question was how to most effectively target marketers on LinkedIn. Trying to target every marketer on LinkedIn can be quite costly, so I set some parameters. I don’t want to segment by company size because I know Workspace has been well received by all of our customers, both small and mid-market as well as Enterprise. Not surprisingly, I want to target marketers in English speaking countries, so I choose the United States and the United Kingdom. I decide to target marketers who list “Marketing Channels” and “Content Strategy” as way to further segment my target audience.
Fishbone Diagram
The Fishbone diagram is also known as Ishikawa or a Cause and Effect diagram. This diagram takes brainstorming to another level by exploring the impact or effect you want to achieve and understanding the causes of it. A Fishbone diagram is a visual way to look at cause and effect by displaying the problem or effect at the head or mouth of the fish. Possible contributing causes are listed on the smaller “bones” under various cause categories.
The first step when utilizing the Fishbone is to agree on the problem statement. Cards on the table: my goal is to get you marketing folks to buy Minitab Workspace. I get my team on a call and pull up the Fishbone and say, I need your help to get marketing folks to buy Workspace.
The second step is understanding the major categories of the problem. In my case, what is preventing a marketing professional from buying Workspace? Someone on my team immediately shouts out “awareness.” Another person shouts out “We don’t have content targeted at marketers.”
Then next step to a successful Fishbone is asking why this happens? In this case, I don’t need the team for the answers. With such strong demand for Minitab Workspace from different personas, my content team has been overwhelmed with requests. Without content to show marketers how Workspace is a perfect solution to them, my regional campaign managers have been reticent to target marketers.
I recognize that if I want the marketing world to know about Minitab Workspace today, I need to take matters into my own hands. If the team is constrained and we need new content, why don’t I just write the blogs? And then I think: what better way to prove to marketers the value of Minitab Workspace than to tell them the story that got them here!
Try your own ideas out in Minitab Workspace for free!
