18 Marketing Documents That Will Save Your Company Money, Time and Nerves. +AI Prompts
Unlock Marketing Efficiency: Your Guide to Crucial Documentation in the AI-Assisted Era
If you have more than one person in your marketing department, you will benefit much from having structured marketing documentation. And today every company has more than one “person” in their team because everybody works with ChatGPT or other type of AI assistant. And God, AI delivers much better if you feed it with the right data.
I know that just the word “marketing documentation” sounds boring, but let me share it with you in secret – I’m a lazy marketer! And having the needed set of marketing docs saves you from much more boring stuff. On top of that, it helps you to onboard people faster, brief contractors better and improve your conversion rates. Let’s explore the key 18 marketing documents and how you can benefit from them.
0. TLDR
Structured marketing documentation is crucial for efficient teamwork, especially in the age of AI assistants. This article outlines 18 key marketing documents, including Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, customer research, brand guidelines, and performance analyses.
These documents streamline onboarding, improve communication, and boost marketing effectiveness. By maintaining organized, cloud-based documentation and creating visual summaries, marketing teams can work more efficiently and achieve better results.
1. Business Model Canvas – Your Company in a Nutshell
I worked in several FinTech companies with quite complicated business models. And though I don’t mind asking stupid questions to understand something, in several cases it took me 3-6 months to understand in detail what the product actually does.
If it’s an SME, usually the workload is too big from the start, and there are no people who would spend a lot of time with a new member to explain all the details, which the quality of his/her output. Having a filled Business Model Canvas solves this issue – a new member of the team can understand the structure of the business at a glance.
Business Model Canvas describes the main parts of a business: Customer Segments, Value Proposition, Revenue Streams, Channels, Customer Relationships, Key Activities, Key Resources, Key Partners and Cost Structure. For example, here is how it looks the filled Business Model Canvas for Airbnb:
How to use: The role of the canvas isn’t limited to onboarding. You can leverage each item from the canvas to create a marketing campaign or content around it. For example, if you take the “Budget Traveller” you can come up with an idea to create a guide for budget travelling in a specific country and mention your product in it. For the “Self-service” from the customer relationships section, you can create a promo video about how convenient Airbnb is, how it saves time, and so on. Here are some questions and ideas that can help you to use the Canvas for marketing purposes:
What type of content for each customer segment would interest my audience?
How can I showcase our customer relationships as a competitive advantage? For example, create a video about our success managers or show the convenience of the process.
Is there a way to display our price as an advantage? To make it more transparent or compare with competitors.
How can we adapt our value proposition for every channel? How can we repeat it in every piece of content?
How can we depict our key activities to increase customers’ trust in us? We can show our manufacturing process or how we treat quality assurance.
Can we show our resources as an advantage? Do we use organic, sustainably sourced materials, how do we invest in our team and infrastructure or run any charities to help the planet renew this resource?
Who are our partners? Why do they trust us? How do we collaborate? Can we create content together?
How the fact that we spend our money benefits the economy? How many workplaces do we provide? How many companies benefit from our existence because we buy their products and services?
How do we reinvest in our business? What kind of charities do we support?
This range of suggestions is only a warm-up for you. By just having the Business Model Canvas filled, you can come up with many more ideas for campaigns and content.
Propmt to get marketing ideas from your canvas:
Here is my business model canvas. Use every item in it to generate content, ads, or marketing campaign ideas. Deliver at least 40 items.2. Value Proposition Canvas – All The Things You Give Them
Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) is another powerful tool and document that will solve a large part of your marketing fuss. It's like a matchmaking service for your business, which includes two big parts:
Customer Profile: This is where you get into your customers' heads. What are they dreaming about? (Customer Gains). What keeps them up at night? (Customer Pains). And what tasks are they trying to nail? (Jobs to Be Done). To fill in this part, you must be like a “customer detective”, who uncovers their deepest desires and fears.
Value Map: Here’s where your product struts its stuff. How does it ease the customer’s pain (Pain Relievers)? How does it deliver a slice of their dreams (Gain Creators)? And what exactly are you offering (Products & Services)? Think of it as your product’s dating profile, showing off its best attributes.
Marrying these two sides helps you tailor your product to be the yin to your customers' yang. It’s about creating products that customers can’t help but swipe right on. Below you can see the VPC for Airbnb:
How to use: You can turn any item from this canvas into a marketing campaign, message, content or advertisement. Also, this is one of the main documents for new people on your team. Also, if you feed this document to ChatGPT, you will get far better outputs for any marketing requests.
Propmt to get marketing ideas:
Here is my value proposition canvas. Use every item in it to generate content, ads, or marketing campaign ideas. Deliver at least 40 items.3. Texts and Recordings of In-Depth Interviews. Raw Resources to Build Anything
This tool is often underestimated, and that’s a severe marketing sin. In-depth interviews are like the secret sauce in your marketing burger. They give you an unfiltered glimpse into your customers’ minds – their hopes, fears, and everything in between.
An in-depth interview is a one-on-one conversation that gets to the heart of what your customers think and feel about your product or industry. It’s a series of open-ended questions about their needs, consumption habits, barriers, motives, and attitudes to your or competitors’ products. It’s robust, raw meat data from which you cook anything – from social media posts to product features.
It’s important to have transcriptions of your in-depth interviews as they allow your new members to understand your audience from an emotional and semantic perspective. Even better if you have video recordings of the interviews, so your team members can see the person to get an even more detailed picture of your customers. On top of that, interview transcriptions are a limitless source of marketing ideas and insights.
How to use:
Create a vocabulary of words your customers often use.
Write ads and scripts based on their impressions of your product.
Generate value proposition or positioning statement, etc.
Marketing ChatGPT Prompt: scan these in-depth interview transcriptions [insert].
Use this data to create [name of marketing collateral you need] for my brand [brand name].
If you don’t know how to conduct marketing in-depth interviews, you can read this guide. Also, here are 25 universal questions for in-depth interviews that you can use:
1. What initially attracted you to our brand?
2. Can you describe your first experience with our product/service?
3. What problem does our product/service solve for you?
4. How does our brand compare to others you've used?
5. What feature of our product/service do you value the most?
6. Is there a story behind your decision to choose our brand?
7. How has your perception of our brand changed over time?
8. Can you recall a particularly satisfying experience with our product/service?
9. What, if anything, frustrates you about our product/service?
10. How do you describe our brand to others?
11. What improvements or additional features would you like to see?
12. How likely are you to continue using our product/service?
13. What motivates your loyalty to our brand?
14. Have you ever considered switching to a competitor? If so, why?
15. How do you perceive our brand’s values and mission?
16. What impact has our product/service had on your life or work?
17. How does our customer service meet your expectations?
18. What channels do you use to interact with our brand?
19. How do you prefer to receive information and updates from us?
20. What role does price play in your decision to choose our brand?
21. How do our marketing and advertising efforts influence your perception of us?
22. What's your opinion on the quality of our product/service?
23. How do you view our brand compared to the entire market?
24. What's your favourite way to use our product/service?
25. Can you share a suggestion for a new product or service you'd like from us?4. Customer Persona for Different Segments. Let’s Talk to an Imaginary Person!🙃
A customer persona is more than just a fictional character; it's a comprehensive profile representing a segment of your target audience. Crafted from a blend of market research and real data, personas embody the key characteristics, behaviours, and motivations of your potential customers. In-depth interviews we mentioned earlier are an important source of data for Customer Persona creation, as well as all of your analytics tools and CRM.
How to use: Once you have this persona, it becomes your North Star for marketing ideas and ad texts. Wondering if a campaign will resonate? “Talk” to your persona. Need inspiration for ad copy? Your persona is like a cheat sheet, offering insights into what will click with your audience. Personas are a great source for content ideas and creative brainstorming.
And here's a pro tip: Print these personas out. Stick them on your wall, your desk, wherever you can see them. Why? Because personas out of sight are out of mind. Having them visible keeps you constantly aligned with your customer's perspective and helps to generate ideas. You can use something like a “Dr House technique” by throwing the ball against the wall and staring at the persona, as it helps to turn on your diffuse thinking, which usually is a good way to get some ideas.
Here is an example of Customer Perona I generated with my tool Aiter.io for Airbnb:
Propmt to get marketing ideas:
Scan this marketing persona. Use this data to create [name of marketing collateral you need] for my brand [brand name].6. Customer Decision Journey. How Do They Travel To Your Brand?
The Customer Decision Journey is the path your customers take from realising they have a need (or a problem) to choosing your product or service as the solution. It includes stages like awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase experience. Here is how it looks:
How to use it: The applications are limitless, as CDJ is one of the most important marketing documents. Create a list of channels, messages, ads and content items for each channel. For example, use targeted content to address pain points in the consideration phase or leverage customer testimonials in the decision phase. Also, tailor your marketing efforts to meet customers at each stage. If they’re just getting aware of their need, hit them with educational content. If they’re weighing options, show them why you’re the best choice.
ChatGPT Marketing Prompt:
Analyse this Customer Decision Journey for my product. Provide advertising and content ideas for each stage of it.7. Documented Competitor Research:
Understanding your rivals in the marketing arena is like knowing the other team's playbook in a championship game. It's not just about keeping an eye on them; it's about discovering opportunities to outshine them.
Your competitor research should include:
Their target audience. Who are they wooing?
Their product/service quality and brand sentiment.
When and why do customers choose them?
How are they priced, and what technology are they using?
What's their unique selling proposition (USP)?
What marketing channels do they use?
After collecting all this intel, it's beneficial to make a summary in the form of a SWOT analysis. This is where you compare your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats against those of your competitors. Another useful summarising framework is a Positioning Matrix, where you see empty spots in your market. Here is an example of the Positioning Matrix for the car market.
How to use: reread your competitor research once per 3-6 months. It’s also good to have your Positioning Matrix and SWOT analysis printed to keep the focus on your niche and marketing spot. Also, check what kind of messages and content competitors missed to fill this space.
AI Marketing Prompt:
Scan this competitor report. Propose at least 20 content and messaging ideas that competitors missed.Note: if your document is too big, it’s better to use Claude instead of ChatGPT, as Claude is better at processing large documents.
Hey, thanks for reading this article, I hope it’s helpful. Subscribe for more content.
8. Market Research
Spending at least a day (better more) a year to get a helicopter view of the market gives you a solid competitive advantage. It's like being a captain navigating the high seas – you've got to understand the currents, the winds – the whole shebang. Key items your research must have:
The main numbers: market size, growth rate, qualitative analysis.
Market trends: new technologies and approaches, major changes in the industry, consumer habits, new opportunities and limitations etc.
How to use: each trend is an opportunity for new content. Also, you can craft ad messages for each trend to highlight how your product is used or can help your customer leverage a trend. Considering that people google often for content about new trends, knowledge of them will help you to get a lot of traffic.
As for AI, it’s better to use ChatGPT4+Bing or Bing chat for this prompt.
AI Marketing Prompt:
Search for the latest trends in [your industry name]. Give me an exhaustive list of them. Provide at least 20 marketing content and ad ideas using these trends.9. Brand Book
Brandbook is essentially your brand's encyclopedia, detailing everything from visual identity to messaging. It includes your logo, colour palette, typography, brand voice, key messages, and core values. Think of it as a visual and verbal DNA guide for your brand.
In daily marketing operations, the Brandbook is invaluable. It ensures consistency across all materials, be it digital ads, website design, or social media content. It's an essential onboarding tool for new team members, acquainting them with the brand's look and feel. The Brandbook also serves as a quality control checklist, ensuring all content aligns with your brand guidelines.
Think of your Brandbook as a living document, evolving as your brand does. It's the definitive source for maintaining your brand's identity, keeping it consistent and recognizable across all platforms.
10. Tone of Voice
Let’s talk about this part of your brand book a bit more. Tone of Voice is like the character your brand plays in every conversation. This isn't just about choosing fancy words; it's about creating a consistent and relatable personality for your brand. How to craft it:
Define the Personality: Is your brand formal or laid-back? Authoritative or friendly? Match this with your audience's expectations. You can Jung archetypes, movie characters or some other ways to showcase your character more.
Create a vocabulary and “anti-vocabulary”. Define the key words and phrases your customers use, you can analyse their reviews or social media to add that and speak their language. Also, it’s important to describe which kind of words and tone you don’t use to avoid inconsistency if you have several content writers.
Practical Examples: Include clear examples in your document – think tweets, snippets from blogs, or ad headlines to demonstrate your tone in action.
How to use: Check with your ToV during content creation, share it with new team members, update the vocabulary and feed it to your AI assistants for consistent content creation.
AI Marketing Prompt:
Use this Tone of Voice to create [marketing collateral name] for my brand.11. The Mighty PR Kit: Your Marketing Arsenal
PR Kit is a curated package of your brand's best bits – think company bios, high-res images, press releases, and more. Think of it as the VIP pass for your brand in the glitzy world of media and partnerships. What it includes:
The Essentials: Your crafted company bio we just mentioned, crisp logos, and eye-catching product images. Plus, executive bios for that personal sparkle.
Press Goodies: Fresh press releases – the latest and greatest from your brand.
Media Mentions: Showcase your credibility with a collection of recent media coverage or noteworthy mentions.
Contacts: Your PR contact info or form to reach out.
The Extras: Here’s where it gets jazzier - include a logo book for brand consistency, banners for those quick event setups, and basic marketing collateral for a complete picture.
How to use: Your PR Kit is your always-ready, save-the-day toolkit. It streamlines responses to media queries, simplifies event prep, and ensures a consistent brand image. It's like having a marketing bat signal; you’re always ready to shine.
12. Company Bio. It’s Better To Always Keep It At Hand
This one is a very important part of the PR Kit. Your company bio is your go-to for about pages, speaker introductions at events, business directories, grant applications, and anywhere else your brand needs a succinct introduction. It's the first impression, so make it count!
The Ingredients of a Stellar Company Bio:
Value Proposition: This is your opening act, the 'why us' of your company. It should be crisp, clear, and captivating.
Brand Story: Everyone loves a good story, and your brand has one. Share your journey, the challenges, the victories – make it relatable.
Key Values: What do you stand for? Sustainability? Innovation? Customer-centricity? Spell it out.
Key Benefits: Don’t just list what you offer, highlight the benefits. What can customers expect from you that they won’t find elsewhere?
It’s important to adapt the bio for different placements and platforms – saves tons of time.
The Full Story: For your website, where you can dive deep.
The Snippet: For press releases and collaborations. Short but informative.
The Teaser: Social media profiles and intros. Your brand in a tweet or two.
How to use: add it to your PR Kit which you share with media and influencers – this way you don’t need to play that email ping-pong everybody hates. Also, the bio is a good source for universal brand ads you can use anywhere.
AI Marketing Prompt:
Here is a value proposition, brand story and key values of my company. Craft three engaging and SEO-optimised company bios from this content: long, medium and short.13. Best-performing Ads And Their Analysis
I conduct a thorough ads analysis every quarter, as this is a critical source of marketing insights. If you structure your campaigns in the right way, from ads you can understand what customer needs are the most critical to your audience, what are their biggest fears and objections, what symbols and emotions are they susceptible to etc.
On top of that, always attach examples of your best-performing messages, as you can use them in partner marketing, PR or social media posts.
How to use: come back to your reports once in a while to understand the dynamics of your best-performing messages, and to get ideas on how to improve your messages. Also, it’s important to analyse your worse messages to exclude them from your campaigns.
AI Marketing Prompt:
Read these reports of top-performing ads for my brands. Provide 20 ideas and texts on how I can improve them. Use best practices.14. Analysis Of Top-Performing Channels
It’s critical to do a thorough channel analysis quarterly, as this is an important budget-saving technique. Seeing the effectiveness of each channel gives you data for budget allocation between them. Track at least these KPIs for each channel:
Traffic.
Conversions.
Assisted conversion – it’s when a channel wasn’t the final contributor to the conversion, but supported it.
Cost per conversion.
Income generated.
ROI.
Specific channel’s KPIs (followers, upvotes, etc.)
How to use: As you delve into the data and observe each marketing channel's performance, you'll begin to notice certain patterns. These insights can reveal both signs of saturation in certain channels and opportunities for growth in others. This is especially useful for new team members who can quickly grasp the marketing landscape and priorities by reviewing this analysis. On top of that:
Benchmark against industry norms and strategize your marketing mix more effectively.
Allocate your budget based on the efficiency of each channel. Prioritise channels that offer higher ROI and align with your goals.
Stay adaptable and open to new channels and strategies. As the market evolves, so should your marketing approach.
15. Team Structure. Who Made Who?
Sometimes defining who is doing a tricky task in a marketing department looks like this:
The same works with taking responsibility for a f*ck-up. To avoid this, create a document with your team structure responsibilities. Ensure each role is clearly defined and integrated into a cohesive team dynamic where each member complements the others. This approach clarifies responsibilities, harmonises the team's collective efforts towards your brand's goals and helps to avoid overlaps.
This structured approach saves time and enhances efficiency. Team members spend less time figuring out tasks and more time executing them effectively. It also simplifies the onboarding process for new team members, as they can quickly grasp their role within the larger marketing strategy. A well-organized team structure is key to a productive and successful marketing department.
16. Marketing Processes Description
Imagine a recipe book for your marketing team's daily, weekly, and monthly activities. It’s a comprehensive guide outlining each step of your marketing process, from brainstorming campaign ideas to executing ad strategies and analyzing results. Sounds boring and like it requires a lot of work, but it’s a worthy investment because it saves a lot of time in the future. Especially it’s convenient if you use project management software like Notion or Asana and generate templates for each process.
How to describe a marketing process:
Break down: Detail every marketing activity, from campaign brainstorming to execution.
Roles: Clarify who does what and by when avoiding confusion and ensuring efficiency.
Tools: List essential tools and software for each task.
Metrics: Define how to measure each activity's success with clear KPIs.
How to use: Instead of reinventing the task each time or explaining it to a new team member, create templates for most tasks and update them periodically.
AI Marketing Prompt:
Give me a checklist of tasks needed to do to create a [marketing asset/activity name]. Add marketing roles for each step.17. Marketing Files Folder Structure
File organisation seems to be a small insignificant nuance which can devour days of your team’s time. Spending two to three hours on thorough planning is a great investment which will boost your team's efficiency. Here is an example of a file structure I use for marketing files.
How to use: write a guide on using the file structure for your team and make sure all files are uploaded and synced daily. It will save your from a mess like “Where is that XYZ banner we used half a year ago?”.
18. Contact Book: The Networking Asset of Your Company
In your marketing toolkit, include a dynamic Contact Book for media, influencers, and partners. This tool encompasses comprehensive contact details, logs of your previous collaborations, effectiveness ratings for each contact, and specific notes. You should update this information regularly to maintain its relevance and usefulness.
This book actively saves time and makes your outreach process more efficient. When team changes occur, it ensures continuity in relationships and networks. It's like smoothly passing the baton in a relay race, maintaining the pace and momentum.
Furthermore, the Contact Book serves as a strategic planning tool for upcoming campaigns. By reviewing past collaborations, you can make well-informed decisions about future partnerships, maximizing your marketing initiatives' impact.
Final thoughts: cloud, print and system
Well, you’ve made it so far – impressive. Here are a few more tips:
Keep your documents in an editable cloud format, like Google Slides or Notion. The worst thing possible – is if you have multiple versions of the same doc which you have to send by email. Cloud services have versioning, so you will be able to see all the changes. Just do backups after major updates.
Make one-page summaries of your key documents and hang them on the wall at your workplace. This helps to keep yourself on track and generate ideas.
Build a system. Add connections between your documents, to create something like an internal Wiki. This eliminates another bunch of questions and saves time.
In conclusion, structured marketing documentation isn't just about organisation; it's the foundation of efficient, impactful marketing. By embracing these documents, your team can navigate the complexities of marketing with confidence, not just shooting arrows in the dark but hitting the bullseye with the precision of Robin Hood.
This isn't just about keeping things tidy; it's about boosting ROI, saving time and making every penny count. Good luck!
If you like my content, please consider subscribing to my future articles on Substack. Also, follow me on LinkedIn – I’m quite active there.
You can also check out my AI tool that does 70+ marketing tasks with just a click!
You had me at ‘marketing documentation’. What an incredible resource! Thank you thank you!