Do not be deceived by its simplicity.

framework plan

The Open Lines Marketing Framework is powerful and unique.

If you have any experience with marketing at all, you know that crafting a strategy is the easy part.

The hard part is figuring out how to let that strategy inform the tactical execution of day-to-day marketing.

The Framework takes many tried and true practices and approaches and combines them in a new way. Marketing personas? Of course. Brand messages? Absolutely. Buyers journeys? Hard yes, but you’ve never seen it like this before.

The framework isn’t just well-informed by accepted methods. It’s business-model neutral.

It’s been tested by service providers, nonprofits, consumer packaged goods, industrial suppliers, advocates, e-commerce, brick and mortar retail, software startups, and many others. As long as what you’re offering is aligned to serve the humans you are offering it to, the framework will support a solid strategy.

It’s also agnostic about the marketing channels themselves.

Literally any communication tactic might prove useful, from a highway billboard to an SMS campaign, and from a huge fundraising gala to a lowly tweet. Because we focus first and foremost on the human beings we are trying to reach, the question of “what about this channel?” becomes remarkably easy to answer.

In a very concrete, very tangible way, the Open Lines approach is able to:

  • Provide a structure that simplifies and clarifies the audience experience.
  • Connect brand message with audience journey and channel in order to operationalize the content strategy.
  • Inform marketing priorities, based on available resources.
  • Integrate new opportunities and identify how they should be addressed.
  • Evaluate outcomes in a way that supports optimization and data-driven decision making.

It does all this for experienced marketers, it does this for first-time entrepreneurs, for pre-revenue startups, for I hate-social-media consultants, and for anyone else that has an offer that they’re trying to get in front of their people.

testimonial image

I got our team using the Framework the very next day. It's transformative. It prioritizes what we need to say, on which channel, to whom. For a fairly new company, it's really helpful to strip away the nice-to-have communications pieces and focus first on the need-to-have elements. We even use the flywheel for non-communications work! We got that thanks to Lindsay's guidance.”

Lauren Grattan
Co Founder & Chief Community Officer at Mission Driven Finance

Ready to get some

in your organization?

Open Lines is most impactful for entrepreneurs and organizations that have to make hard choices about how they spend their resources on marketing.

The more limited your resources are, the more benefit you’ll get because you have confidence that everything you are doing is well-informed and you know what to expect if it’s working.

Adopting the Framework is an eight step process

1
Who else is on your playing field?
Call it competitive or landscape research if you want, but understanding who else your audience is finding when they should be finding you is an essential first step to understanding your unique opportunity.
2
Who are your people?
You have probably done some amount of audience research already. Maybe you’ve been in business a while so you know your customers well, but this exercise will open your eyes to new ways of understanding them and their needs.
3
What is their journey?
This unique exercise will introduce deep empathy into the buyer's journey that your customers experience. We use their words, their objections, and their understanding of their situation to get new levels of understanding of our own opportunity to reach them.
4
What are you offering?
Having a great product or service doesn’t guarantee sales. In this step, we look deeply at your brand messages to understand who you are in order to ensure that your content resonates with the people it’s created for.
5
Where does their journey take them?
Like literally, where? Do they look for answers in their email inbox? Do they look on Facebook? Do they look to their friends and family? Wherever they are looking for answers, we will craft a channel strategy to meet them there.
6
Where is your best time spent?
Making your to-do list shorter is one of the promises of the Framework. To do this, we’ll get super strategic in identifying the most powerful opportunities and prioritizing them for greatest impact.
7
What does success look like?
What will your business be one year after you start implementing the Framework? Asking this question allows us to begin seeing the difference between the urgent and the important in the day-to-day work of the business.
8
What will it take to get there?
We know that great marketing requires consistent execution of well-informed tactics. We also know that we prioritize things we think are important. The last step is to literally schedule the work that needs to be done, so that you feel confident that you have the information and the time you need to DO IT.

Are you ready for the Framework but not sure which approach is right for you?

Consider online courses if:

  • You’re new to marketing and want to better understand what it can do for your business
  • You’re a self-starter who loves to learn
  • You’ve got enough referrals or business sources that you don’t need immediate results from your marketing
  • You’ve got a couple hours a week and $1,000 to invest in developing and executing your custom strategic marketing plan
  • You enjoy group learning and connecting with other underestimated founders and purpose-driven organizations

Consider applying for Open Lines Consulting if:

  • You’re a new entrepreneur who is ready to dig in hard and start seeing results from your marketing quickly
  • You’ve got a lot of stakeholders and you need everyone to get on the same page with your marketing plan
  • You’re experiencing a transition in your organization and you need a strategic plan to ensure opportunity and growth
  • You’re ready to invest an entire week and at least $7,200 in developing your marketing strategy

Ready to get some

in your organization?