Welcome to our collection of FREE marketing resources. Use these tools, processes, and templates to prompt your thinking and inspire more bright ideas. It’s a selection of the ideas we find most useful in our coaching and consulting services.
If you have any questions about how to use these, get in touch. We’d be happy to share how the Three-Brains team can support you in using these marketing resources (and the thousands more like these we have in our Ideas Database) to grow your brand with ideas that mean business.
We look forward to hearing from you.
The team @ Three-Brains
PS : Drop us a line if you’d like any of these marketing resources in another format e.g. PowerPoint or Keynote. We’re always happy to help spread ideas.
A simplified checklist to work through the process of writing advertising copy.
First, do your research to understand the context. Get to know the brand, the audience and the media where the copy will appear.
Then create with ideas, structure and editing.
Finally, craft it to go live, including integrating it with other parts of the creative, making sure it fits the brand identity and testing it with customers.
A process map of the key steps to set up and run your advertising development.
There are four key steps on the client side and four key steps on the agency side, with the proposal and performance review where both sides work together.
Use this process to map out the key high-level steps you need to successfully run advertising campaigns.
The Ansoff Matrix is used in brand strategy development, both for the marketing plan and for marketing innovation.
Identify whether to go after existing or new markets, with existing or new products and you identify your growth strategy from one of the four boxes in the matrix.
Part of the segmentation, targeting and positioning process, use the benefit ladder to define the benefit that will sit in your brand positioning statement.
The four levels of benefits work together from the product feature level up to the emotional benefit for the customer.
When you develop your brand identity, it’s useful to collate all the relevant brand assets into a single document.
This brand book and style guide helps ensure the consistency of all brand assets. Our brand book contents checklist can help you make sure you have everything in there that should be there.
A key tool to use as part of your marketing planning.
It follows the typical steps customers need to go through before they can become loyal customers.
You use it to diagnose issues and set objectives for your brand activation.
You’ll find terms like awareness and consideration appearing in briefs and reported on in marketing and e-Commerce dashboards.
When you’re new to brand strategy, it can be difficult to know where to start.
The steps we cover in our brand development process guide help you identify the key questions and the actions. From knowing your market to brand activation, this process will keep you on track.
Use this tool as a reference when you look to build your brand strategy.
Your brand identity is a collection of intangible and tangible assets that define your brand and what it stands for.
The Brand Diamond is a way of organising these assets, which starts with the positioning statement, and the brand essence, core values and personality at the centre.
The next layer covers tangible brand assets including the brand name, colour palette, key audio, sales story, key visual and icon.
The outer layer covers key elements of the marketing mix – the product, packaging, price, promotion, communications and key brand imagery.
Your brand identity is a collection of intangible and tangible assets that define your brand and what it stands for.
The Brand pyramid is a way of organising these assets, which starts with the vision and essence at the top.
The next level covers design rules.
Then it goes on to cover the rationale – the Reason to Believe, the Reason Why and the benefit.
The bottom levels cover target audience and competition.
Your brand identity is a collection of intangible and tangible assets that define your brand and what it stands for.
The Brand Wheel is a way of organising these assets which starts with the brand essence and core values at the centre.
The next layer covers the personality of the brand; facts / icons / truths / beliefs and product elements.
The outer layer covers key elements of the brand from the customer’s point of view – how it makes them think and feel, as well as the benefits.
Not Safe For Work version – though this depends on where you work.
The bingo sheet terms are the same as the SFW versions.
But the glossary has added much more colourful language. Only for people who are comfortable with swearing. A LOT of swearing. Why not to use these terms in these f***ing challenging times.
Safe For Work version – Safe to use in all circumstances. With all ages and senses of humour. Why not to use these terms in these challenging times.
One of our most popular marketing resources.
Our choosing a marketing adviser guide covers the 6 key drivers of how to choose between using a consultant and using an agency.
It also includes the 7 key factors to consider between finding a great consultant and an average one.
This document is a 4-page PDF and is currently not available for download.
To access this content, please email us with “Choosing a Marketing Adviser PDF” as the subject header, and we’ll send you a copy.
There are 5 main colour identification systems used in marketing and creative activities.
RGB and HSB are mainly used for colours used on screens. Hex is also used for colours on screens, but mainly for setting colours on websites.
CMYK is the main system used for printing onto objects and materials. Pantone is similar but used where print accuracy is needed, such as on packaging.
One of our key marketing resources. To be used when working with your marketing agency to brief them on communication-related tasks, particularly advertising and media.
2 pages if you ask us for the PDF version – including a blank template and a guide to completing each section.
It does require the creation and collation of key facts across brand identity, business goals and setting the communications challenge and project expectations.
What we say at work and what we want to say are not always the same thing. And nowhere is that more true than on the business purgatory that is most conference calls.
Play buzzword bingo on your next call with the “what you say” SFW version.
Or the “what you want to say” NSFW (contains some swear words) version.
12 separate bingo sheets on one pdf.
A slide to highlight the 3 main benefits that creative thinking brings to any business.
You use creative thinking to :-
Culture is how things get done in your business. There are 8 factors which help shape it.
It starts with the people in your team. You need to work out how to organise, motivate, reward and lead them.
In addition, you also need to set up and manage the work environment, your standards and policies and your systems and resources.
These factors all connect. Changes in one area often have a wider impact on your overall culture.
The Customer Journey Map is used in the customer experience development process. It assumes customers follow a series of interactions towards a purchase and then beyond into loyalty.
It’s similar to the brand choice funnel, but it’s written from the customer’s point of view.
You aim to fill in examples of needs or pain points at each stage. And then, the relevant online and offline touchpoints that customers use at each stage.
Taken from our article on journey mapping, this example journey map gives ideas for all 7 steps of the customer journey for a made-up pizza business.
It covers both example customer needs and pain points at each stage, plus online and offline touchpoints which could be used to meet / resolve those customer problems.
Personas are portraits of a particular segment used in the customer experience development process.
These portraits use images and fact-based descriptions of the type of individual to bring them to life and make your customer the hero.
They collate demographic, occasion, attitude and behavioural information. Marketers and agencies use this to put themselves in the customer’s shoes.
An example of what a completed customer segment profile might look like.
This example includes a profile picture, plus demographic, occasion and attitudinal statements to bring this customer type to life.
This is often used with briefs and with agencies to provide creative inspiration.
Use this tool as a project dashboard if you’re setting up your own online D2C store.
2 pages if you ask us for the PDF version – including a blank dashboard and a guide to finding more information.
It lists the key tasks across the strategy and plan, the store website tasks, the order to delivery process and the management of the store once it has launched.
Once you launch a D2C store, it’s important to have some way of tracking performance.
This example D2C dashboard shows 4 areas where you’d typically look to measure KPIs :-
The scope of digital can go very wide. It can be a challenge to know where to start and to know if you have covered all the things you need to.
Our digital business model guide takes you through our RESTART model.
RESTART stands for reach, engage, sell, technology, analysis, resource and transform and these seven steps cover the key elements you need for a successful digital business model.
A follow-on checklist from the e-Commerce planning process, this checklist walks through the key steps of an individual online sale.
Use this checklist to understand the online sale from the shopper’s point of view, and identify the key objectives and jobs to be done at each stage of an online sale.
Use this process to help you start selling online and to take a customer-centric view of e-Commerce.
When you’re new to e-Commerce, it can be difficult to know where to start.
The 5 steps we cover in our guide to the e-Commerce planning process, help you identify the key steps, questions and actions to follow. From identifying the opportunity to selling online, this process will keep you on track.
Use this process to help plan, organise and track the key steps you need to start selling online.
Part of the segmentation, targeting and positioning process, use this tool to help define the category you operate in.
Define who your competitors are. Decide whether to go for broader definitions and bigger prizes or narrower definitions and less competition.
Your GAME plan is a one-page summary you use for each of your brand activations. For each key activation, it shows the Goal, the key Activities and how you’ll Measure and Evaluate performance against it.
This example shows typical goals – grow sales, launch innovations and change market behaviour.
For each of these goals, it shows examples of activities, measures and evaluation methods.
A GAME plan is a one-page summary of the Goals, Activities, Measurement and Evaluation for a brand or sub-brand.
This example taken from our marketing plan guide shows the types of areas typically covered like innovation and new campaigns and how the plan is structured.
It also highlights how specific targets are set for each activity and how these are evaluated and reported.
There may be times when you need to explain or justify the need for graphic design skills.
This slide shows the main graphic design applications, used across brand identity and activation, which are :-
As part of your marketing innovation process, you’ll likely have sessions where you look to create lots of ideas through brainstorming and creative thinking.
Our innovation idea screener template helps you capture and organise these ideas, so you can prioritise which ideas to put through the rest of your creative process.
As part of your marketing innovation process, when your business case is approved, there’s still a lot of work to do before you launch.
Our quick innovation launch checklist template helps you identify the key parts of the plan you need before you go to launch.
There are 6 steps in a formal innovation process.
You start with idea generation and idea screening to come up with, and then select the best ideas.
These then go forward with a business case, and if that’s approved, you develop and launch the product or service.
This is then followed by a post-launch review which captures learning from the project to inform future projects.
When you work on marketing innovation, it’s important to be able to run projects efficiently and effectively. Innovation can be a tough challenge.
This means keeping top of mind the key deliverables, timings, and business forecasts and communicating risks, opportunities and issues as they arise.
Our one-page marketing innovation project summary helps you capture key details on your innovation projects.
Use this as a reference to work through the key steps in the logo design process.
Firstly, you define the need and then write your brief.
Look at the different options for designing the log and then once you’ve got an approved logo add it to your assets and style guide.
Finally, roll it out through all your brand activation.
Use this tool when working with your market research company to brief them on market research related tasks.
3 pages including a blank template if you ask us for the pdf version – a guide to completing each section and an example brief from the vegan ice cream case study in our secondary research skill guide.
A tongue-in-cheek market research checklist to show that a lot of market research methodology will stay the same after COVID-19.
The challenge will still be to build empathy with consumers. But you need to do that without banging on about the new normal.
Read the blog article behind this checklist for more details.
The market research process outlines the major steps you go through to research customers.
It starts with defining your business problem. That then sets up your brief, plan and the actual research itself.
You analyse the data and look for key insights to help you answer your business problem.
Use this tool when looking for a market research company or evaluating or reviewing your current supplier.
7 pages including the questions and a guide to evaluate HOW they answer the question. For each question, we break down why ask this question, what would be a good answer and watch-outs for poor answers.
Great market research companies will be able to answer these questions well.
Our marketing help guide lists 10 signs that you need marketing help.
Includes prompts on how you make decisions, the impact on your ideas, what your customers think and getting the right marketing help.
This document is a 6-page PDF and is currently not available for download.
To access this content, please email us with “Marketing help PDF” as the subject header, and we’ll send you a copy.
Your marketing plan will include key details of your marketing mix.
That plan will include your product, price, promotion and place plans if you are a product-led business.
And if you are a service-led business, the plan might extend to cover people, process and physical location.
While it is easy to remember these 4Ps and 7Ps at a high level, it’s not always easy to remember what activities sit in each part of the plan.
So, download our handy one-page cheat sheet of examples of which marketing activities you typically include in the marketing mix.
Our need a marketing consultant guide covers the key steps to decide if you need a marketing consultant.
It includes a decision-making flowchart to work out if a consultant is your best option.
This document is a 2-page PDF and is currently not available for download.
To access this content, please email us with “Need a marketing consultant? PDF” as the subject header, and we’ll send you a copy.
Whether you sell through online retailers or via your own online store, each product page you set up must include a key set of product information to drive a sale.
This includes the product name, images and information. It also includes the price and the call to action.
And once these details are in place, it’s also important to check the category filters, the search set-up and the (mobile) responsiveness of the page, to make sure that shoppers can find and use the product page easily.
Our simple product page checklist helps you keep on top of each product page to make sure you have optimised it for online selling.
There are 3 key steps in the e-Commerce customer journey once the customer decides to buy.
The store website needs to handle the order, then you need to manage payment and delivery.
Lots of things can go wrong which will cause the customer to contact your customer service team.
This graphic contains examples of 10 of the most common questions customers will ask about order to delivery.
An example of how you might cover the “Place” element of the 4Ps of the marketing mix when putting together a marketing plan.
The structure of this template covers the ambition for the relationship with the retail customer, a SMART objective with growth pillars, priority actives and enablers.
This summarises the key elements of the plan with that retailer for easier communication.
Pricing is a part of your marketing mix and usually has to be covered as part of your marketing plan.
This slide shows examples of key areas that you’d normally include to explain your pricing strategy :-
When setting up an online store, you’ll need to prepare a business case showing your initial 12-month forecast and profit and loss.
This example, built from a business plan for an actual store shows the typical income and cost measures you’ll need to track, plus a guide of typical monthly selling and spending patterns in the first 12 months of a D2C store.
A process map of the 5 key steps to set up and run your Public Relations activity.
For each step – Brand objectives, PR objectives, Agency brief, activation proposal and activation – we identify the key perception change and the key commercial question to answer.
Use this process to map out the key high-level steps you need to successfully run Public Relations campaigns.
Use this tool as a reference when you carry out the segmentation, targeting and positioning process.
This is a 1-page process map with the key action at each step and an example of what the output can look like.
The Six hats process is an approach to creative thinking and problem-solving invented by Dr Edward de Bono.
It uses coloured hats to signify different ways to think about solving a problem. You work through each hat and then collate the thinking to find the best solution.
This graphic shows the key way of thinking you should use when wearing each colour hat.
Social media is more than just posting some content, it’s an important part of your customer experience and your digital media plan.
This model gives you a template with an example of how your social media can fit into the CX vision and other channels you might include.
It outlines examples of activities used to drive IN-bound connections (from customers to the brand) and OUT-bound connections (from the brand to the customer).
Use the SWOT template as part of your marketing plan and marketing planning to summarise the key internal and external factors which shape your plan.
Strengths and weaknesses are where you look at your own brand and its competitive advantages and disadvantages.
Use the key take-out to summarise what you need to do with this analysis.
Part of the segmentation, targeting and positioning process, use this tool to identify the variables and prioritise the attractiveness of each segment.
Tone of voice is part of your brand identity. You use your brand values and personality to set a style for how your brand sounds, whether it’s in writing or spoken out loud.
This example helps to show how that works by applying different tones of voice to how different brands might write about the same image.
Brand A’s tone of voice is more serious and formal. Brand B’s is more fun and informal. You can see the differences in the words used, and how the sentence(s) are put together.
Use as a reference tool to check your website planning does everything it needs to.
It summarises the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD).
This page reminds you to check your acquisition activity to bring in traffic, your engagement and conversion metrics, and other connected systems you need to set up. The three key pillars for your website are :-
A checklist of the 7 key ideas we believe help you be a better writer.
Good writing has a purpose and clear structure. It creates content that has the audience in mind and is easy and interesting to read.
Use this checklist on your own writing to make sure it follows these basic good writing tips.
We explore where to start with marketing psychology. Learn the key marketing areas where psychology gives you a head start. Read this to learn how psychology can smarten up your marketing.
We explore your choices when you realise you need some marketing help. Learn the deciding factors between recruiting someone, appointing an agency and hiring a consultant.
We explore how to be a good underdog brand. Learn the 3 defining characteristics of a good underdog. Read this for ideas on building a better underdog story.
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Brands that consistently bring the brightest ideas to life build great creative habits and processes.
Check how bright your brand’s creative habits are with our free Creative habits and ideas Quotient (ChiQ) test.
10 questions to learn whether your brand’s ideas are more likely to be “no” or more likely to be “woah”.
Take the test to find out more.
Our mission is to build better brands with brighter ideas.
Get in touch to discover how we can help you create, craft and commercialise better ideas.
