Try this technique to integrate more of your tools into your ideas.

Marketing ideas, especially ones that are created and executed by media companies, are the hardest working ideas in show business.

Think about how much you expect from them!

First, you send those ideas out into the market to create demand for your clients’ products. Let me tell you: persuading a fully grown adult to consider buying a product he doesn't currently use is hard work. Enticing a guy who drives a Chevy truck to test drive a Ford F-150 is just as difficult as getting the Ford F-150 driver to try the Chevy.

Then, as if that weren't enough, you expect those same ideas to help you create demand for your tools. You have invested in some terrific new technologies to keep pace with your competitors and with your fast-moving audience. You want to monetize them. That's hard work, too.

The challenge is to accomplish both of those objectives simultaneously.

In this piece, I want to show you an idea-generation technique that we at Creative Resources have been testing.

First, I would like you to organize a complete menu of all the tools that your sales people can incorporate into any program they create for a client. Just so we are on the same page, a tool is any vehicle – a commercial, an event, a T-shirt – on which you can deliver a message to a target consumer. Organize the menu by media platform, listing each of the tools that you have for sale within each platform.

Next, print the names of your different platforms on colored cards and post them on a wall that your team can look at during an idea-generation session.

You can see how I put the print platforms like newspaper and magazine on pink cards. Audio platforms, like radio, streaming and podcasts, are on red cards. Video platforms like broadcast television, online television and YouTube, are orange, etc.

Finally, I want you to display the different tools that you have for sale under the corresponding platform.

For example, if you are a TV station, within the television platform you have tools like advertising within the evening news, advertising within a sports segment or sponsoring the weather.

You probably have tools that belong under the events platform. Maybe you hold an annual wedding expo. Maybe you do a series of tailgating events in the fall. Perhaps your meteorologist hosts a series of sponsorable weather events for kids at the planetarium.

Some of you will consider the social media the platform and sites like Facebook and Pinterest the tools within the social media platform. Others would call Facebook the platform because of its sheer size and then each of its features would be considered tools within the Facebook platform.

The key is to display the platforms and the tools at your disposal; the tools that your team can sell and that your company expects you to monetize.

Once your platforms and tools have been posted, you are ready to begin to generate ideas for one of your clients. Post the client’s marketing objective in the center of the wall, and ask your team to list ideas to accomplish that objective using the tools on your menu.

Remember to help your team get down to the specific tools they are going to incorporate into whatever campaign they are creating for the client.

I don't know if it’s the layout, or the colored cards, or the novelty of the technique, but with this approach, we are seeing an increase in the variety of ideas generated as well as the number of tools incorporated into each campaign.

Integrating more tools into your programs serves the client because the campaigns are more effective and far-reaching. Media companies benefit because they can monetize more of their tools and ultimately diversify their businesses.

I would really like you to try this technique, especially if you are a certified facilitator of our process, and tell us how it went. Take a picture of the wall and send it to us at [email protected] so we can show it to everybody.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. We at Creative Resources are a training and consulting company that specializes in helping media companies and publishers create sustained revenue growth. If you found this post valuable, please check out our earlier posts.