Mind Mapping in Marketing Part II (Seeing the Wood Through the Trees)

In part I you started gathering thoughts about marketing. What you hopefully ended up with were a lot sticky notes, each with a thought, some connected and others that just "popped" into your head.

Great work!

Now we begin sorting out the chaos. The final goal will be to get all your thoughts somewhat categorized. This will give you an idea of what each "category" involves. The next phase will then further filter each of these categories, set goals, determine what resources we’re going to need…

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Start grouping your sticky notes together in fairly broad categories. You can tentatively label these as they become apparent. Also, you’ll probably find that a sticky may fit into more than one category. For this exercise, simply write another sticky with the same thing on it so you can put on in each stack.

Since I’m using marketing as my central theme, some of my thoughts included web site, blog, flyers, advertising, emails, friends, business cards, announcements, hockey, business directories, free stuff, networking group, coffee, free gifts as well as others. I’m using a small list for obvious reasons.

When I organize my collection, I end up with 4 stacks:

Stack 1 : Internet : web site / blog / emails / friends / business directories/ announcements
advertising

Stack 2 : Print : business cards / flyers / announcements / free stuff / free gifts / advertising

Stack 3 : Social : coffee / friends / announcements / networking group

Stack 4 : Everything else (or what was I thinking) : hockey

You may very well have 5,6,7 or more stacks. If you do, consider the question: am I being too "granular"? Is there perhaps a broader category that would cover more than one?

Anything that doesn’t fit into the other categories goes into the "everything else" pile. While this stack may not appear completely relevant at first, the idea came up for a reason. In my case, I’m involved in amateur and professional hockey with a company called Athletes Resource. We hold tournaments and camps each year. When "hockey" popped into my mind, it was probably for a couple of reasons including potential advertising and I have friends who like hockey. So I’ll keep the sticky note and let it "ferment" for a while.

Trust me, your mind is working and as you gather your categories, you will think of things to add.

The final part of this section will be to flesh out some of your thoughts. On the back (or front if there’s space) of each stick, put down additional thought and questions for that subject.

For example, let’s take blog. I could write on this one: set up (how?), advertise, subject, how often? You get the idea. You could, if you wanted, start a separate stack of sticky notes for each of these. I’m advising against that, not just for your sanity and the environment, but because we don’t want to get bogged down in minutiae.

See you in part III.