Marketing Checklists – Use ’em or Lose ’em?

More often than not if you are a marketer for a startup or expansion stage company, you are challenged to execute against several key marketing initiatives, including lead generation, content marketing, product marketing, marketing communications, and social media.  It’s enough to make your head spin.  And you have the C-suite of your organization asking about ROI on your marketing efforts.

So how do you ensure that you are consistently pumping out valuable messages and content that will ultimately convert your prospects into customers? 

Think about using checklists!

Why you should use checklists?

Checklists are a great tool to help marketers organize their content development efforts and perfect their processes.  Checklists can be created to ensure that your content and messaging are effective for your target audience.  These guidelines can also be used to train new employees or transfer work while people are out of the office.  We have been using checklists in the execution of our content marketing initiatives (here is an example of a general content marketing checklist) and we often recommend this process for our portfolio companies as well. But we are not the only believers in checklists.  Earlier this month I attended Content Marketing World in Cleveland and sat in on Ahava Leibtag’s (@ahavaL) session on “Developing a Step-by-Step Checklist for Content Creation in Different Formats.”  I’ll share Ahava’s tips later.

The long and short of it

I have stumbled upon various checklists online and within my own organization.  Some checklists read more as step-by-step process guides and others generalize the main points in a project.  So which do you build for your team?  Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you want a repeatable framework? Think about using a longer form checklist.
• Are you planning on using checklists to train new employees? Think about using a longer form checklist.
• Are you using the checklist to ensure the content you create is valuable?  A shorter checklist may do just fine.
• Are you using checklists for quality control?  You may want a comprehensive list, and a short list may be sufficient.

The overall point I am trying to make is there is NOT one checklist that will transfer from company to company.  It it up to you and your team to determine what is appropriate given your goals and objectives.

So how can you get started?

As promised, I’d like to share Ahava’s tips because I think she has nailed a simple checklist for content creation that different marketing teams can customize appropriately.  Here is her basic foundation:

1. Can the user find the content?
2. Can the user read the content?
3. Can the user understand the content?
4. Will the user want to take action?
5. will the user share the content?

That’s it for the highest level.  In her CMW presentation Ahava filled in the following suggestions that may make sense for most teams:

1.  Can the user find the content?
   1. 1 H1 tag
   2. At least 2 H2 tags
   3. Metadata, including title, descriptions, and keywords
   4. Links to related content
   5. Alt tags for images
2. Can the user read the content?
   1. An inverted pyramid writing style
   2. Chunking
   3. Bullets
   4. Numbered lists
   5. Following the style guide
3. Can the user understand the content?
   1. An appropriate content type
   2. Reflection that you considered user personas
   3. Context
   4. Respect for the audience’s reading level
   5. Articulate old ideas in a new way
4. Will the user want to take action?
   1. A call to action
   2. A place to comment
   3. An invitation to share
   4. Links to related content
   5. A direct summary of what to do
5. will the user share the content?
   1. Something to provoke an emotional response
   2. A reason to share
   3. An ask to share
   4. An easy way to share
   5. Personalization

How do you use checklists in your marketing organization?  I’d love to learn about more examples so please share!