Introduction
Creating an SOP for everyone involved in your brand’s marketing can be very helpful and beneficial. With SOPs, everyone can be on the same page when it comes to planning the marketing endeavors, creating the materials for it, and putting it into action.
In this post, we’re going to guide you on how you can create marketing SOPs for your brand and effectively share them with everyone concerned.
What are SOPs?
The acronym SOP stands for standard operating procedure.
It refers to a standardized set of steps that must be followed when a particular process or procedure has to be performed. In this context, i.e., creating SOPs, it refers to written guidelines that people can read and follow.
What are Marketing SOPs?
Marketing SOPs refer to the standardized steps that everyone in the organization must follow when undertaking any marketing effort.
The purpose of these SOPs is to enforce quality and consistency so that each marketing effort can bring about a significant benefit for the brand.
How to Create Marketing SOPs?
Let’s move on to discuss the exact steps you can follow to create marketing SOPs for your brand. Or, should I say, let’s move on to look at the SOP for creating your brand’s marketing SOP.
By following these steps, you’ll make sure that everything necessary is covered in the SOPs.
1. Understand the various types of marketing you need to perform
Most brands don’t just perform one type of marketing. There is usually a combination of a few.
For example, a brand may engage in email marketing and also search engine marketing. Another brand may focus on running Google ads along with cold SMS messaging.
The reason behind this is simple: with diverse marketing, you get better results. You can reach a wide range of potential customers and clients. However, it’s important not to undertake too many marketing efforts at the same time, lest your efforts get diluted and become ineffective.
Keeping all of that in mind, the first thing you need to do is understand the types of marketing that you need to perform and…make a list. Mention these types at the top of your marketing SOPs so that anyone who reads them understands the context of the guidelines.
2. Outline the KPIs and goals you wish to achieve
After that, the next thing you need to do is outline the goals and objectives you wish to achieve with your marketing efforts. Mentioning these in your SOPs is a good way to give context to the readers. They will be able to understand what the marketing activities are supposed to achieve. This will help them understand each step in that particular light.
Clearly outlining the goals in this manner also helps your team take an objective-oriented approach, where every step is taken with a clear purpose and measured against its expected outcome.
3. List the steps for marketing research
After that, you have to start listing the actual steps for the marketing activities.
The first step in any marketing effort is research. This is the part where you research the target audience of the marketing activity, check the competition, and get an idea of the existing trends.
All of this information helps in shaping your marketing strategy.
In the SOPs, you can mention the exact steps that everyone in your team should follow when conducting the research. You can outline the platforms that should be used as well as the exact type of data that should be gathered.
Since there are so many different types of marketing, there are likewise many different ways and approaches to conducting research. We’re leaving it vague here because we don’t want to mention any specific steps that don’t work for a particular type of marketing.
4. List the steps for content creation
In most marketing activities, content is utilized in one way or the other. The quality of the content used often decides the effectiveness of the activity. This is why it is important for the content to be always high-quality.
You can standardize the content creation steps so that the quality is consistent every time. Here are some aspects of the content creation process that you can mention in the SOPs:
- The research for the content
- The creation of the first draft
- The inclusion of various visual elements in the content
- The checking and finalizing of the content
5. List the steps for content publishing/sharing
Once you are done with those steps, you can specify the standard steps for publishing and sharing the content.
Standardizing these steps is important as it lets you ensure that the content is shared and published consistently along the same guidelines every time. You can expect the same type of positive results every time.
The publishing guidelines can contain instructions about where the content has to be published, when it should be published, and how it should be shared post-publishing, etc.
6. Create visual tutorials for the difficult steps
When creating the SOPs for your team, it’s also a good idea to incorporate visuals for the difficult steps. In other words, if there are some tricky steps to perform during the research or content creation, you can add visuals to illustrate them.
One tool that we recommend for this purpose is Wizardshot. Wizardshot lets you create step-by-step tutorials simply by performing the various steps on your screen. Once you enable it, you can make clicks and press buttons, etc. The AI engine automatically creates a full tutorial according to the steps you’ve performed.
You can create visual tutorials using this tool and then incorporate them into your SOPs.
7. Create an internal knowledge base where all the info can be shared with your team
Once you have created the SOPs for your brand, you have to share them with your team. You have to share them in a way that everyone in the team is able to access the SOPs easily at all times.
You can do this by creating an internal knowledge base. An internal knowledge base is a central hub where you can store information for your team. Your team can access the information (which can be in the form of articles) on their own without relying on other senior members.
Creating an internal knowledge base is super easy if you’re using an online software like Zendesk. Zendesk lets you create knowledge bases and then set access limits so that only you and your team can use them. There are also many reliable Zendesk alternatives that you can use instead.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it.
Creating marketing SOPs can be a bit difficult when you don’t know what to add to them and what to omit. In this post, we’ve detailed the exact guidelines and instructions you should incorporate in your SOPs, along with tips on how you should share them with your team.
