The 5 Most Effective Note-Taking Techniques for Marketers [Boost Your Brand Today]

Hannah lives and breathes marketing. When she scrolls through social media, she looks at logos, profile designs, and the presentation of information. When she drives to work, she notices billboards and shop window signs.

Whenever she’s handed a pamphlet, glimpses a newspaper article, or opens a website, her marketing sixth sense turns on full blast.

She hasn’t always been this way. Hannah has trained herself to look at marketing as messaging, and everything that humans create sends a message. You just have to learn how to identify it.

With a bit of practice, it’s not hard at all. Especially when it comes to businesses, everyone is trying to sell something. And that’s really how Hannah views marketing, through the lens of this question: What are you trying to sell?

Not that selling is a bad thing per se; Hannah isn’t against folks trying to make a living. Angles are not always agendas; selling isn’t always underhanded.

Her thing is that she just always wants to know where the angles are coming from. That’s all. It helps her make better decisions about what products she buys and what content she consumes. She wants to support products that have a good message.

Hannah also finds the entire concept of marketing fascinating. How to present a product in a way that appeals to large numbers of interested people, how to draw positive attention, and how to create and spin interpretations in your favor.

Again, not to be underhanded. Hannah sees it partially as science, partially as a social experiment, and partially as an inevitable, everyday practice. We’re always evaluating things to determine their desirability; marketing is merely the industry that specializes in that.

It’s ultimately all about getting your message across in the best way possible, which is something that everyone who engages in social circles does to one degree or another. If you have an online presence, you are, in a sense, marketing yourself, whether you do so intentionally or not. Your profile sends a message, and your posts even more so.

As a professional marketer herself, Hannah is always keeping track of her observations of human behavior as well as the nifty tricks and tools that other marketers use to gain organic traffic and sales.

She also spends a lot of time in discussion with her colleagues about the same topics, always looking for new ways to appeal to the market.

As such, Hannah spends much of her time wading through reams of new content, observations, and ideas. Early in her career, she struggled with being overwhelmed by it all, especially with the fast pace demanded by marketing. If she was overwhelmed, she fell behind. And if she fell behind, she was left behind.

So instead, she took steps to pierce through the overwhelm and organize all of her thoughts and information in a way that was efficient, easy, and useful. Hannah wanted all of this relevant information close at hand so she could access it in a heartbeat if needed.

Note-taking changed the way she approached her work. It made her a better marketer. By jotting down all of her organic observations throughout the day, she retains nuggets of gold that she otherwise might lose.

By recording all of her meeting notes and brainstorming sessions with colleagues, she captures action plans and can easily map out the trajectory of her projects as well as her company’s marketing patterns.

She can even create new and better content thanks to the notes she takes.

Hannah has learned how to use note-taking to enhance her marketing abilities and better convey her message to the world. You can, too! Here’s how to get started.

Enhancing Business Strategy: Why Taking Notes Is Important for Marketing Campaigns

Note-taking skills can make all the difference in maximizing the impact of your marketing campaigns. By jotting down all the important details of new ideas, progress reports, and feedback, you can stay organized and optimize your success.

Capture the main points of discussions, remember ideas and insights, and have a written reference point for future conversations. Solidify objectives and tasks, and track your progress towards goals.

Your notes can even be used to make sure everyone on the team is on the same page about a project. Having a tangible record of what’s being discussed is a great reference point both now and for future reference, and ultimately, it will help enhance communication between team members.

By writing everything down, you can see all the tasks that need to be completed. Everyone will know what needs to be done and when, and it’s easier to assign tasks to team members and agree upon deadlines.

Keeping a record of important points also creates an opportunity for enhanced learning. You can review the topics discussed and look back on how they were approached in the past.

Having a detailed record on hand means you don’t have to keep all those details in your head. Decluttering your mind frees you up to engage in other, more important pursuits, such as creative thinking and generating even better ideas.

With all of this in your back pocket, your overall business strategy will improve. Every member of the team should have an accurate understanding of what has been discussed and what actions need to be completed to move forward.

Having a written record of past meetings will ensure that important details are retained and that you won’t have to rehash them at every meeting, or, worse, forget to mention them altogether and then run into trouble when they come back to bite you.

Note-taking is more productive and cost-effective as well, removing the need to repeat conversations. Instead, you can focus on moving forward rather than looking behind.

Research shows that fewer meetings enhance employee productivity, communication, and job satisfaction, so effective note-taking is doing everyone a favor by cutting down on meeting times!

Meanwhile, strong note-taking opens doors for better collaboration and creative thinking, both inside and outside of meetings.

With all of the advantages created by the simple act of taking notes, your team will be better equipped to decide on future plans and campaigns in an effective and professional manner.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at five techniques that marketers can use to leverage note-taking to boost their brands.

1: Consider Your Audience

Marketing is all about knowing your audience. And in the modern world, studies have shown that the majority of your audience in any given situation is going to be made up of visual learners.

Visual learning is one of the learning styles described by VARK, with the others being auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic learning styles.

Over 65% of people are visual learners, meaning that they learn best by seeing.

This is a powerful statistic to keep in mind any time you’re presenting information to a group of people. It could be for a product you’re trying to market or even for an idea you want to pitch to your team. Any time you want to make your pitch memorable and punchy, include impactful visuals.

The Power of Images

Not only that, but the human brain processes visuals some 60,000 times faster than it processes text. As that old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Just think about the discrepancy between a book and its film version. While a written scene in a book can hold quite a bit of detail about the characters and setting, it’s still bare-bones compared to a film scene.

In a single film scene, you can watch the characters’ microexpressions, read their body language, see the dirt under their fingernails, and see their 5 o’clock shadow. You can see that they look haggard, and the clock on their wall is blue, and they seem to like hideous throw rugs.

There are simply thousands more details you can include in a single visual that would take tons more time to describe in text — about 60,000 more, in fact!

As a marketer, you can set out to describe a product or scene. You can write a lengthy description about how your dishwashing soap leaves the dishes sparkling clean. Or, you can let an image speak for you.

Images often have more credibility than words because the viewer comes to their own conclusion about what exactly they’re seeing. Instead of having to take your word for the sparkling dishes, they can see them with their own eyes.

Visuals are also connected to the emotional regions of our brains. Seeing an image often elicits some kind of emotional reaction, which then makes the image more impactful to us.

You can hear about Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” all day, but it’s not until you see it that you start to form a personal emotional connection with it.

2: Visual Brainstorming: Many Hands, Many Ideas

Visual note-taking is also called “graphic recording,” and it’s an important step for marketers in the journey toward connecting customers with your brand.

This is definitely not the same as taking meeting minutes. Instead, these visual notes are all about building collaboration within your team to spark more creative and better marketing ideas.

Visual notes are central to the process of building marketing campaigns, from the research sessions to the brainstorming sessions to the consumer counseling sessions.

They help to synthesize and organize ideas, creating a visual representation of all the content discussed so that everyone can see what’s on the table.

When it comes to creative industries like marketing, graphic recording is a more effective note-taking style than more traditional methods, such as the outline method or Cornell method.

Instead, you want to use a way of capturing ideas that makes them personal and exciting, creating a sounding board that can propel the conversation into even richer territories.

Mind Maps

One of the very best note-taking methods for marketers is the mind map. There are multiple variations of mind maps, but they all share some basic commonalities.

First, they are visual representations of information. The data is “mapped” out on paper in a way that demonstrates their associations, all linked to a single central topic.

Start with the central topic in the center of the page. Then, draw lines branching outward, connecting to subtopics and supporting ideas. As you go, you can connect subtopics to each other and create more and more branches.

Mind maps can organize large projects in simple ways, manage campaigns effectively, generate big ideas, present concepts in a beautiful manner, and plan dynamic content.

By providing a clear structure for your topics, mind-mapping helps your marketing team boost productivity, work together, and identify the clear priorities amidst all the ideas.

No matter how big your team is, you can capture all of the ideas they can think of in a single mind map document; the only thing limiting you is the size of your paper!

Sketchnotes

Sketchnotes combines text and graphical elements, such as icons, arrows, containers, non-linear layouts, speech bubbles, banners, and, of course, sketches.

The idea is to quickly get the key points down, using both visuals and text. This combination makes the information more memorable, engaging, and creative.

It’s not just your fellow creators who benefit from visual note-taking. Your clients and potential customers can also appreciate elements of graphic recording.

Sketchnotes are great for a marketer’s personal notes, but they’re also wonderful for sharing ideas and tips with others. And while static sketchnotes are as popular as ever, it’s also become common to see sketchnotes put to video, making them the ultimate form of sharing notes.

3: Boost Your Messaging Impact: Create the Best Pitch Possible

A marketing pitch is a brief summary of a product or service you’re trying to sell. Typically, they highlight key features of your product and your business that you think will open doors for networking, investors, or positive feedback.

With a marketing pitch, you can present your product or idea in an appealing way with very little time. You can introduce your company, describe the benefits of a product, or communicate a service to key parties in brief but powerful ways.

Here’s the breakdown of the elements of a good marketing pitch:

• Product name
• How it solves a problem
• Key features that make it stand out from competitors
• Evidence or testimonials of its effectiveness
• Strong closing statement to make it memorable
• Contact information for your audience to follow up and learn more

Drafting a good marketing pitch takes time, skill, and finesse. You have to know your product and your audience inside and out and be able to articulate yourself in a way that is charismatic and makes an impression.

If you can master the art of marketing pitches, you will always be able to find a willing audience for your message. Your reception will boom, and your business will thank you.

Note-Taking Can Help

Effective notes can help you take your pitches to the next level. Think about it. How else are you going to prioritize what information to include and boil your message down to its most impactful core elements?

The most memorable messages are simple. Pitches capitalize on this by working in short time frames. Generally, pitches last less than five minutes, with some being as brief as 30 seconds.

You already know the basic elements that should be included (introduction, product, evidence, closing), but deciding which features to highlight will require copious notes.

Start by brainstorming. You can make lists of all the important details that might be worth mentioning and then narrow them down from there.

Create several drafts with different elements and see which sounds better; the length and sound of words influence how well they flow.

Once you have a general pitch written, you can make several versions, tailoring them to specific audiences or events. Customize the opening and closing to better connect with each audience.

To do this, of course, you must first research each audience — another great opportunity for important notes! A networking group might appreciate more personal details and anecdotes, while a sales group would prefer to hear sales projections.

But no matter the audience, you should have confidence that the features that you’ve chosen to highlight are the very best and that your message will appeal to them. The more notes you take in these areas, the better your pitch will be.

4: It’s All About Action Items

Brainstorming and idea generating are key parts of the marketing process. We’ve already mentioned how a note-taker can capture ideas in marketing meetings and leverage them for even more creativity and productivity.

But ultimately, marketing comes down to results. Is the message being conveyed in the best way possible? Are we getting the attention and feedback we want? How can we improve? – These very same questions are the ones that marketers are constantly asking themselves.

There’s a consistent stream of action items to work towards. Deadlines abound around every corner. Planning a marketing campaign has a number of important steps, each with its own subset of tasks.

Note-taking is helpful in each step. Let’s take a look.

Strategize Goals

At the very beginning, you have to sit down and define your goals. Start writing down everything you can think of for what you hope to achieve with the campaign.

You’re looking for the “why” behind the campaign. Goals could be centered around things such as sales, customer satisfaction, the product, reputation, and more.

Whatever it is, you need to identify it in order to have a successful campaign. Otherwise, you won’t be able to make a coherent message or get your audience on board.

It’s important that your goals and your resources are in alignment. You don’t want to spend time on a social media marketing campaign when you have a robust email newsletter that reaches more people. Write down your resources and how they harmonize with your goals.

Set the Budget

Once you have your goals clearly outlined and your campaign clearly defined, you should set a budget. You can base the numbers off of revenue from current sales, a competitor’s spending for a similar campaign, or the total cost of tasks in the campaign.

Whatever your criteria is, you’re going to have to crunch the numbers and make sure it’s all squared away.

Define Your Target Audience

The more specifically you can identify your target audience at the beginning of a marketing campaign, the more effective your campaign will be overall. You’ll be able to create a message written just for them and design a campaign that speaks to their needs.

Do some research, then write down all of the following in your notes:

• Demographics: age, gender, occupations.
• Psychological information: who they are and what’s important to them. Attitudes,beliefs, and, lifestyles.
• Geographic location: different climates have different needs and prioritize different products.
• Industry: where do they frequent, both online and offline, and what do they spend most of their time doing?
• Company size: small companies have different needs than large companies.
• Preferred media: which media channels do they use the most?

The more crucial information you understand and can gather about your target audience, the better your campaign will be. Make good summaries and profiles of the participants you hope to attract.

Develop the Message

Once all of that important information has been gathered, you’re ready to write your message. Now, you have everything you need to be able to speak into their unmet needs and restless emotions, emphasizing how your product will directly address and solve that need.

Knowing your audience well enough to draft an effective campaign message establishes your company as a credible expert on your topic.

Credibility is the hardest part of developing a campaign message, so gather all your notes for this one! You’re going to need customer testimonials, endorsements from other leaders in the field, and published case studies that support your claims.

Execute the Campaign

Executing a marketing campaign takes careful planning and coordination. There are often several departments involved, each with their own tasks, schedules, and activities.

Whether you’re in charge of the campaign or you’re one of the team members making the magic happen, keeping track of all the goings-ons will do nothing but benefit you.

Bullet journaling is a fantastic option for this point in the campaign, as it offers various forms of note-taking to meet your every daily need, from calendars to bullet points.

Use calendars, checklists, and daily to-do lists to keep track of your own tasks, but feel free to add other members’ activities to your notes as well. That way, you’ll be able to track the entire project’s trajectory and be aware of more moving pieces.

And, if you add notes on other members’ activities, you’ll be able to verify that each element of the campaign is being disseminated correctly and at the right time, which is the biggest challenge of any marketing campaign.

Analyze the Results

Finally, you’ll want to pull out your notebook to analyze the results. Here, you could implement some note-taking methods or strategies, such as the Cornell method or chart method, but a good old outline works too.

Refer back to the notes you took in the first step of this campaign. Compare your results with your initial goals and analyze the results. Did you exceed your goals? What about your budget?

You can’t track or analyze metrics without taking notes.

5: Don’t Forget to Repurpose Content

Now that you’ve done all of that research and note-taking on your audience and which messages they’ll respond best to, you can leverage all of that information into one more trick that will boost your marketing: repurposing content.

Marketers are under a lot of pressure to stay relevant and stand out from the crowd. You have to stay on top of their game all the time, or your business will lose attention.

But thankfully, you don’t have to always come up with completely original content. Instead, take notes so you can use what you have to its maximum potential.

In the words of Social Triggers founder Derek Halern, “You don’t have to create content day in and day out. You just have to work on getting the content you already have into the hands of more people.”

Pull out your metrics and make notes on which content has performed the best. Brainstorm how you can spin it to deliver a fresh experience. Also, take note of older content that could be updated and republished.

If you’ve been tracking relevant topics, it won’t be hard to identify which content hits the mark. You could gather all of them into a single ebook or turn a super-successful blog post into a video.

Add new statistics and case studies to older content, or create an online course out of your most popular post.

You can’t do any of this effectively without first being able to track and analyze information — the bread and butter of note-taking.

Conclusion: Key Points

We’ve come a long way together, you and I. We’ve covered a lot of ground about how marketers can use note-taking techniques to boost their businesses.

Taking notes comes in many forms, from handwritten notes in a pen to digital notes, a calendar on your mobile device, or pictures on a page.

You don’t need to learn shorthand to capture the key information in your meeting notes, and you don’t need special software to be able to retain information better. Instead, you can make notes easily just by using what works best for you — does mind mapping appeal to your inner artist? Do outlines work best for drafting your pitches?

There are more than a few reasons why a note-taking habit can make all the difference for marketers. They’re valuable at every step of the marketing process: brainstorming ideas, taking meeting notes, collaborating with a coworker, making sales pitches, and every step of building a marketing campaign.

Leverage your notes to improve your marketing process and watch your capacity soar. Use these strategies to get your message out into the world and watch your brand boom as a result.