Templates speed up work but miss nuance. Build frameworks first by understanding your system's inputs, outputs, tools, and channels, then layer templates on top. When reaching customers in Nigeria, you need to map pain points and channels before any template fits.
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Like, you cannot template everything in life or in marketing or whatever. You can try to explain—
You need to explain what you mean because this is a powerful statement. I think you need to break it down. What do you mean by you can't template?
Yeah, you can't template everything, um, except like things that have happened in the past or things that are like— you've— if you're— except you've already passed through everything possible then you probably can template it. You can document, okay, this is what happened in when I was doing SEO or when I was working with like Google Ads or Facebook or this product launch or whatever. But there will always be differences and nuances, right, that apply to all of these projects and tasks. So the way around that for me is like there's a higher layer to the template thing. I think templating is like the the last bit of this, um, uh, what's it called, this solution, right? So the way I actually look at it and model it is that you need to understand systems first, right?
Mm-hmm.
You need to know how things work. What is the input of this system? What is the output? So if you want to get a particular outcome, what do you need to do? Do you need to add more to the input? You need to change the tools that connects to give you the output. So if you understand the system, then maybe you can model that system, right? So you maybe build a blueprint, um, that basically just abstracts the workings of that system. Then there is also like the more specifics, which is like frameworks, right? So frameworks are ways to just basically think about, um, doing a thing, right? So that's like the simplest way I can say it, like a framework of doing something.
Mm-hmm.
So if I want to, for instance, Um, reach my customers in, in Nigeria or something like that, what are the— what do I need to be thinking about? So I need to be thinking about their, um, their pain points, their use cases, their challenges. Um, then like, okay, what are the channels they are using? Where can I find them? So this is framework now because like these are some of the things I need to consider for me to reach my target audience or my ICP, right? So the understanding of all of these things is basically the framework of how these things work. But the template is basically making it very simple, like, okay, I've already done the work of thinking about my target audience, the channels they use, the communication I'm going to use for them, what assets, what creatives, and things like that. And then I just templated that, okay, so every time we want to do a product launch, you know, or a campaign that is like this and that, This is a document that just helps us to fill in the gaps and we use that to run. So we are running faster because you don't need to start from scratch all the time. Right. That is the template thing. But the framework now allows you to go beyond just the one-off templates to, okay, now we are doing something entirely different. Right. Or not even entirely different, but one of the major variables in this project has changed. Right. So this template is not 100% applicable anymore. But we can modify the templates because we understand the framework that helped us to come about these templates, right? So if you modify that framework, we can create another template that now applies to our use case, right? So you cannot necessarily template everything, but you can develop like the systems thinking and understand the frameworks that led to the creation of that template. That way you can work on anything. Right? Once you understand like the foundations and the underlying principles for these things. So that's basically it for me.
Thank you for listening to the Early Stage Marketer Podcast. I hope today's story gave you something to reflect on or even something to try in your own work. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, leave a comment, and share it with someone who might find this helpful. See you next time.
