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Need to come up with new creative strategies? Try brainstorming in the marketing department!
Conducting these brainstorming sessions can be effective in finding a solution in a creative and participatory way, especially in this area, where content is produced for blogs, videos, social media posts, emails, among others.
In this article we are going to explain how this technique arose, its rules and how you can apply it in the marketing department .
What is brainstorming?
Brainstorming means brainstorming in Spanish. It is a tool that stimulates the creation of new ideas to solve a specific problem or think about multiple aspects of a topic.
It can be performed both individually and in groups, although it has been used as a group technique since its inception.
It was a proposal created in 1941 by Alex Osborne, an American publicist, who pointed out that conventional business meetings inhibited people's creative processes.
To solve this problem, he proposed some rules that could give people the freedom of mind and action to trigger and reveal new ideas.
Its aim is to stimulate the creativity of the participants (ability to generate new ideas from associations and imaginative processes). Let's see what these rules are:
Rules for brainstorming in the marketing department
Learn the rules you must follow to conduct brainstorming in the marketing department :
Just as a research or strategic plan can lose its way without a goal, the same thing happens within a brainstorming session .
In order for this brainstorming to yield useful products, a common goal must be established.
This could be diagnosing a persistent problem in the marketing department , finding a solution to a problem, designing a content strategy, looking for ideas for an advertising campaign, etc.
It is important to establish an objective so that the members participating in the session do not lose focus and contribute ideas that do not correspond to what is wanted. This objective can be created from a question to which you want to find an answer.
For example:
Question: Why are blog visits declining?
Objective of brainstorming in the area of digital marketing : Determine the causes of the drop in traffic on blogs
2. Set a time
A brainstorming session cannot last more than an hour because it becomes tedious for its participants. Moreover, it will not generate the effect that is really sought: stimulating creativity.
All participants should be aware of the total duration of the brainstorming session and avoid exceeding the allotted time.
3. The team must be multidisciplinary
For a brainstorming session to be truly effective and produce powerful ideas, its participants must belong to multiple disciplines or work areas.
In the case of the digital marketing department , a brainstorming session can be made up of the community manager, the graphic designer, the art director, the content strategist, the SEO analyst, etc.
The different angles and perspectives that each person can bring, depending on their academic and professional background, are very valuable for the exercise.
4. Write or record the sessions
All ideas generated during the brainstorming session should be written down or, failing that, recorded for future reference and meetings.
It often happens that a brainstorming session can arise from a previous session, so to land those first ideas that have already been formed, it is important to write or record the fundamental contributions of the sessions.
5. Title the ideas
Good ideas that emerge from the session should be titled and presented as brainstorming products.
Continuing with the web traffic example, a possible idea could be: keywords are not being used as they should be. Therefore, this idea could be titled as: misuse of keywords.
6. Research sources and references beforehand
Brainstorming sessions and their objectives must be organized and planned ahead of time so that all the people who are going to participate can do research beforehand and come up with ideas that can be supported by studies, success stories, statistics, etc.
Ideally, each idea should have a justification and a reference for presenting it.
7. Ideas cannot be criticized
When brainstorming founder Alex Osborne laid out the rules for how brainstorming should be done, avoiding criticism was one of the most important.
This means that no idea should be judged or used as an example of ridicule within the session. All ideas are valid.
It is also recommended that your team forget about budgets or any kind of constraints. Even though some ideas may seem impossible, when complemented with other ideas, they can become feasible or serve as a basis for coming up with new ideas.
8. Ideas have no owners
Brainstorming , when done in a group, translates into teamwork. Therefore, all the ideas that emerge belong to everyone and not to a specific person.
The products generated in each session correspond to the session itself and not to a particular member.
A person cannot appropriate these ideas, since they are the property of the company, taiwan cp number the department or are part of the strategy to be used.
9. It has to be participatory
A brainstorming session should be 100% participatory . By this we mean that no one should be left without speaking and everyone has to contribute something.
If they are there, it is surely because what they think and do is very important for the development of the activity, that is why they must express what they believe.
This is why it is important to be multidisciplinary (as we have already mentioned) and democratic, meaning that everyone has the same opportunity to speak and contribute something.
10. Ideas must be associated and new ones built
Among the objectives of brainstorming , the association of ideas to build others with much more power and meaning stands out.
Therefore, this practice must be present throughout the activity and must be carried out by the members themselves, that is, they must be the ones in charge of contributing or complementing new ideas based on those said by their colleagues.
11. There can be no distractions
This rule is very important. In a brainstorming session, there cannot be people checking email or social media, answering messages, answering calls, etc.
During the time the meeting is set up, everyone should be focused on fulfilling the purpose. Distractions:
They delay the process.
They interrupt creativity.
They generate group discomfort.