Part 3 of 3: Building a Mind Map Snaps Your Business Proposition into Clear Focus

If you read our recent post “It’s Midnight. Do You Know Your Value Proposition,” you saw the online marketing mind map we created for a client recently.

In case you didn’t see it or don’t remember it though, here’s the graphic below for your perusing pleasure:

Let’s drill down on how you can build this kind of online marketing road map for your own business.

The 6 elements of your online marketing mind map

1. Your UVP
   Think of your UVP as who you are as a company – your inside reality that shows up as your personality, identity and strengths.
2. Problems & Challenges of Your Audience
   Identify the problems that keep your prospects awake at night, relevant to your offering.

   Remember, effective online marketing informs the audience about what you offer FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW (sorry about the screaming, but it’s that important!).

   For example, if you’re a business consultant and you teach clients how to generate inquiries about their offerings, your prospects might lose sleep worrying about not having enough business.

   You want to identify every problem and challenge your target audience might experience relevant to your offerings – dig really deep on this one, it’s critically important.

3. Your Prospect(s)
   Create a profile of your prospects. Capture everything you know about them including, their age, gender, job title, salary range, education level, experience, where they live, what they do outside of work, specific pain points relevant to what you offer (and these may differ from profile to profile). Include anything and everything you know and can think of.

   Maybe you sell to CFOs and to office managers. Their pain points and problems may be very different and ultimately, you want to create online marketing that speaks to each of them, in their ‘language.’

4. Your Promise(s)
   You want to identify and define your promise(s).  This is what they will absolutely get from you if they engage your services or buy your products.
5. Prove it to Them
   Use examples – testimonials, case studies, a list of your clients – anything and everything that reassures your audience you actually DO deliver what you promise. It builds credibility and confidence in your company. Nothing speaks louder than what someone else says about your business.
6. Your Proposition
   Finally, you want to outline your online marketing proposition. This is how you attract and interact with your prospects. This can develop into your online marketing funnel and should eventually become a separate mind map, detailing all the moving parts in your online marketing funnel(s).

Here’s an example of the online marketing funnel we created for our Denver technical consulting client’s mind map above:

Building a mind map can streamline your online marketing and make it more predictable. It’s an excellent foundational tool we find ourselves using at the beginning of every online marketing consulting engagement. 

Try it for yourself; you’ll find yourself you return to it over and over again to guide you in making smart online marketing decisions for your business.