Measure the value of content marketing to leapfrog competitors

10 Marketing Ideas to Help You Leapfrog The Competition in 2023

Top 10 blogs focus on message maps, content marketing, and presentations

Leapfrog the competition in marketing. We learn lots from readers like you — for example, which topics engaged marketers the most over the past year?

What you reading today points to the path you’ll take to leapfrog the competition in 2023. The top topics you focused on were:

  • Sharpening your company message, by creating Message Maps for content, presentations, and more
  • Executing content marketing strategies, with an emphasis on owned and earned media
  • Preparing your presenters to succeed.

These are ideas you can use to leapfrog your competitors in the year ahead.

1. What Is a Message Map?

Learn how to use a Message Map, our visual message framework. Hook your audience in 7 seconds or 23 words. Then scale up your message as needed, to two minutes or 20 minutes, to fit any medium or occasion. 

You’ll see what to say and say what you mean. That’s how you keep your company message clear, concise, and consistent. 

2. Top 100 Content Marketing Questions Answered

Over the past nine years, marketers have asked me more than 2,100 questions in content marketing workshops. 

Here you’ll find marketers’ Top 100 Questions on Content Marketing – each answered in a blog. 

3. 77 Ideas to Simplify Content from Einstein, da Vinci, Shakespeare, Chopin, Thoreau, and More

When you need to find ideas for your marketing, wallow in the wisdom of the greats.

For example, recall what Steve Jobs had to say about simplicity: “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Find 76 more ideas that will help you simplify marketing in this blog.

4. One Company. Many Stakeholders. How Many Messages?

Your company message should be your company’s single source of truth. To get one consistent message delivered, you need a Message Map.

Marketing gets way more effective when one message rings true for all audiences – customers, employees, investors, influencers, and even regulators. Here’s how to get there.

5. 84 Questions to Spark Your Business Story

What should your company message be all about? These big questions are the thought-starters you need to create a Message Map: 

  • What’s your company’s purpose? How do you make the world a better place – today and tomorrow?
  • How do you help customers succeed? How do you help audiences achieve their business, career, and personal goals?

6. The Golden Rule of Speaking: Respect Your Audience

Unprepared speakers signal their disrespect for the people in the audience. That’s starting off on the wrong foot. 

Being busy is no excuse to skip preparing for a presentation or speech. Because if you don’t respect your audience, they won’t hear your story.

7. How Can You Keep Your Content Marketing Always on Message?

Get everyone in your company aboard with one clear, concise, consistent, and compelling message. A Message Map makes your company message completely consistent, even in the biggest companies. 

See Message Map examples from the Virgin Chicago Hotel and The Home Depot.

8. What Size Should My Marketing Team Be?

Several clients, large and small, asked what is the ideal size for their marketing team.

The answer is … it depends.

Businesses need marketing to help raise brand awareness, develop a preference and generate leads. So I always recommend at least having a marketing department to do so. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Here’s how to size up your needs and structure your team.

9. Infographic: Test Your Message Before Launch. Is It Clear, Compelling, Consistent & Concise?

Infographic: Here you’ll find 10 ways to test your message before rolling it out to the market. 

Use these tests to ensure your message fits the audience and addresses their big question, What’s In It for Me?

10. What are the top 3 most popular types of content marketing? Which are most effective?

This ranks among the Top 100 Questions on Content Marketing.

Video, events and owned media are rising fastest on content marketers’ agendas, according to research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

When economic times get tough, clients put more emphasis on the media and distribution methods they own and control. 

10 Marketing Ideas to Help You Leapfrog Your Competition in 2023