08/08/12
All hail the humble template - a blessing to all businesses
by Melanie Scott
chairman, Chartered Institute of Marketing, Kent
branch
As someone who has spent a great deal of time working within a
number of small to medium sized businesses, resources are more
often than not in short supply and time is at a premium.
Being ‘creatively’ resourceful is a daily challenge and is
compounded by one of my biggest bug bears – the thought of having
to reinvent the wheel.
Whether you’re MD of a small manufacturer, or marketing manager
in a large corporate, there are always design briefs to write,
business cases to prepare, event plans to produce, web privacy
policies to post, or marketing plans to present. Furthermore, time
will always be an issue.
Bearing this and my own frustrations in mind, I feel compelled
to introduce you to CIM Marketing Expert
cimmarketingexpert.co.uk.
With more than 200 briefs and templates ready to download,
including case studies, confidentiality agreements, non-disclosure
agreements, public relations briefs, market research templates and
many more, this easy-to-use bank of templates is a blessing.
I know what you’re thinking – it’s my first column and I decide
to talk about templates! It’s true the subject may not be as
glamorous as ‘social media’, but when you consider that good
templates set out the parameters for professional and effective
communication, all of a sudden they raise their game.
All hail the humble template – the simple tool that allows
proposal creation to be shared by all members of the new business
team, rather than just the creative copywriters but while
preserving quality and consistency.
These simple yet essential support tools ultimately help us
achieve better results, faster, thus saving us money.
It’s just a shame I hadn’t thought to search for such a template
for writing Kent Business columns!