For startup marketers, sometimes the most intimidating part of the job can be starting a new project with nothing but a blank document. Whether it’s creating a lead-generating email or writing a brand new blog post, it’s hard to start from scratch. While there’s no secret sauce to mastering every type of marketing initiative, there is a way to reduce the time and stress that goes into creating fresh content.
The five free marketing templates listed below will significantly improve how you work. No gates, no email address required. Just easy-to-use Google documents designed to be shared and repurposed to match your unique marketing processes.
Marketing Templates to Save Hours of Work
Content Repurposing Template
Summary: Creating consistent content is often a challenge for most startup marketers. For context, 50% of marketers have an issue creating content on an ongoing basis. The good news is, you don’t have to continue wasting time and resources developing new content. Instead, work on getting your already published blog posts, guides, and content offers in the hands of more people. That’s where content repurposing comes in.
Repurposing content allows marketers to extend their content’s value by adjusting it to serve a new purpose. Instead of creating a guide from scratch, combine the messaging of several blog posts to create long-form content. Then reuse the content from the guide to produce an educational video. The limit does not exist on ways content can be repurposed to keep your story alive.
Why it’s valuable: Using your existing content to your advantage serves several benefits like budget-friendly, boost SEO, greater reach, eliminates writer’s block, stretches the value of your content efforts.
Newsletter Strategy Template
Summary: Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in charge of launching a company newsletter, only to realize it takes more time and effort than initially anticipated (✋). Been there, done that. To help other marketers focus their time and resources, we have put together a fill-in-the-blank newsletter strategy template. It guides you step-by-step in creating an engaging email without the headaches.
Why it’s valuable: As marketers, we’ve all fallen victim to the claims that email marketing delivers an ROI of 4,400%. However, to achieve this same success, we must create a high-quality newsletter built on strategy and engaging content. This email newsletter template helps make that possible. It eliminates the pressure and hours of work that goes into curating the perfect messaging that moves prospects through the sales funnel.
Website and Blog Meta Tags Template
Summary: There are often several people involved with creating new website pages. A copywriter, editor, and website developer may all play a role in perfecting a piece of content before it goes live on a website. For this reason, the Website and Blog Meta Tag template helps minimize common errors that occur when handing copy off to several departments. Using a format like this template gives your SEO and OG meta tags a uniform structure and documented process that everyone can follow.
Why it’s valuable: Writing proper meta tags for your website content directly impacts your overall site’s SEO. Using this template ensures your content appears correctly on search engines and promotes content best practices that drive traffic to your site. As with most of these marketing templates, it will also help save time when publishing and promoting new website pages.
SaaS Conversion Funnel Template
Summary: Optimizing SaaS conversion funnels is a marketing and sales initiative that most companies neglect. This is likely because creating a conversion funnel takes weeks of time, effort, and resources. Regardless, understanding activities and conversion points in your sales funnel is a necessary evil. This step-by-step SaaS conversion funnel template can help get you started. It includes each critical step involved and several potential SaaS metrics to use in your funnel.
Why it’s valuable: Although it can be hard to identify why potential buyers suddenly ghost your emails and calls, it is not impossible. Armed with this template, you will be able to uncover and eliminate the blockages to customer acquisition and retention. Doing so will help to make relevant adjustments based on data-driven insights. It is a far superior plan to establish sales and marketing strategies to those built on assumptions and best guesses.
Creative Design Brief Template
Summary: It can be challenging to clearly articulate the vision we have in our heads for a marketing design. As a result, designers and project managers often go back and forth until the end product meets both of their expectations. The design brief template clearly outlines the strategy and execution of a creative project. Using this template, marketers can easily communicate expectations early to eliminate the need for endless rough drafts.
Why it’s valuable: Regardless of the type of project, failing to complete a brief template is a sure-fire way to waste time and money. As a startup marketer, it is disheartening to lose either. The template guides marketers to include finite details of a project’s objectives, target audience, supporting imagery, timeline, and more. Whether this is your first time working with a designer or you’re a seasoned vet, I assure you this template will reinvent your processes forever.
Content Brief Template
Summary: The content brief ensures every piece of content that gets published aligns with your content strategy. It’s a way to help your writer and editor (and stakeholders) understand the requested content piece’s goals, objectives, and purpose. Using a content brief is a way to establish a systematic process that will get everyone involved with your content piece on the same page.
Why It’s Valuable: Time and money. Before I established the process, there would be a copious number of questions, several rounds of edits, and numerous last-minute changes. And then, at the 11th hour, my boss or someone else would ask, “what’s this piece about, and why are we writing it?” At times, it could take 2-3 months to ship out a blog post. Now, most blog posts take one, maybe two, rounds of edits and ship it within weeks.
Final Thoughts
Is any part of your job challenging to you? Are there aspects that make you question if this is even the right job? I’d be lying if I said this thought has never crossed my mind in the past 13 years working in the fast-paced and hectic world that is startup marketing. During this time I’ve learned that all of my efforts and marketing strategies boil down to one thing: building repeatable processes. For me, that process equates to tried and true marketing templates.
Are there any marketing templates you’d love to have handy? Chances are we’ve already created it, or we can help you make it. Reach out to me on Twitter (@michelleurban), and I’d be happy to share more resources.
