You know that drawer at home where all the random things seem to end up? The batteries, takeaway menus you haven't looked at in years, bits of string and that mysterious cable you're keeping because you're convinced it belongs to something important. Well, most businesses have a marketing version of that drawer too. It's full of half-finished ideas, old Canva designs, draft blog posts, photos, newsletters we meant to send and resources we were absolutely going to use one day. In this episode of the Talk Podcast, we're opening up that marketing junk drawer and looking at how to find the useful ideas hiding inside, decide what's worth keeping and put some of that forgotten content back to work. How Does the Marketing Junk Drawer Get So Full? As business owners, we're constantly coming up with ideas, and they don't always arrive at convenient times. You might think of a brilliant blog topic while driving, hear a fantastic question during a workshop or start planning a promotion before something else demands your attention. So we save things for later. A team member creates graphics, a document gets filed somewhere, or an idea goes into a notebook with every intention of coming back to it. The trouble begins when we no longer know where everything is, what we've already created or what we were planning to do next. Suddenly, we're starting from scratch when there's probably something perfectly useful sitting in a forgotten folder. Not Everything Needs to Be Rescued Before you start sorting through your marketing junk drawer, there's something worth remembering. You don't need to revive every idea you've ever had. Some ideas suited an earlier stage of your business, some offers have changed, and some graphics no longer represent your brand. You might also have resources that need updated information or links before they're ready to share again. The aim is to find what is useful for your business now, rather than creating another enormous project trying to rescue everything you've ever saved. Sort Your Ideas Into Four Groups When I'm going through old marketing materials, I like to sort them into four categories: Use, Update, Archive and Let Go. Use is for content that's still relevant and ready to share with very little work. Update is for ideas worth keeping that need a little attention, perhaps a new example, a working link or a refreshed design. Archive is for materials that might be useful later but don't need your attention right now. And Let Go is for those ideas that genuinely no longer belong in your business. It's perfectly fine to send something to the idea graveyard. You're making room to focus on the content and opportunities that actually deserve your attention. Find Opportunities to Repurpose What You Already Have One of my favourite things about revisiting old content is discovering how much more we can do with something we've already created. Think about a presentation you delivered six months ago. Could one of the questions become a podcast episode? Could a demonstration become a short video? Could the audience questions turn into a useful blog post? This is where my One-to-Eight Multiplier and Marketing Tree Method come into play. One worthwhile piece of content can become several useful pieces of marketing, giving people different ways to discover and learn from the same idea. You don't need to use every possible piece, but you can choose the parts that will be most helpful to your audience. If you'd like to explore this further, my How to Get More from Your Content course looks at practical ways to repurpose and make better use of the content you've already created. Give Your Marketing Files a Sensible Home We've all come across folders full of documents called Final, Final New, Final 2.0 and Final Actual. They're not particularly helpful when you're trying to find the version you're supposed to use. Choose a sensible home for approved marketing materials and somewhere separate for work in progress. Give file names that explain what they contain and, where something needs attention, record the next action. For example, a note saying a particular blog needs its links checked and an example updated is much more useful than a document simply called Ideas. A little organisation makes it easier to pick things up again, particularly when someone else in your team needs to find them. Check the Drawer Before Creating Something New When you're planning your next campaign, resource or piece of content, make it a habit to check what you've already got before opening a blank document. You might discover a half-written article that fits perfectly with something you're promoting, a collection of customer questions that could become a video or a presentation that just needs refreshing. You can also explore my 5 Minute Marketing course for more small marketing actions that fit into a busy business day. You don't need to spend an entire afternoon organising everything. A few minutes spent finding and finishing something useful can be a much better use of your time than creating another version of something you already own. Your Challenge Today, I want you to open the folder, notebook or app where all those marketing odds and ends tend to end up. Give yourself five minutes and: Choose just 10 items, not 110. Sort them into Use, Update, Archive or Let Go. Pick one item from your Use or Update pile that supports something you're working on right now. Give it a next action and a date. Then stop. You can tackle another 10 items another day. Your marketing junk drawer doesn't mean you've been doing anything wrong. It means you've been creating, collecting and exploring ideas as your business has grown. Now it's time to see what deserves another opportunity. Before you start your next piece of content or campaign, have a look in that drawer. You might find exactly what you've been looking for, just like those kitchen tongs that somehow disappeared behind everything else. Resources How to Get More from Your Content Learn how to optimise, repurpose and extend the life of the content you've already created. https://academy.enevergroup.com.au/courses/getmorefromcontent How to Use 5 Minute Marketing in Your Business Explore practical marketing activities you can fit into your working day, including ways to reuse existing content. https://academy.enevergroup.com.au/courses/5MinuteMarketing Highlights 00:00 The Marketing Junk Drawer 01:00 Why We Collect Unfinished Ideas 01:50 When Marketing Materials Become Clutter 02:15 Not Everything Needs Rescuing 03:00 Use, Update, Archive or Let Go 03:30 Finding Content to Repurpose 04:10 The One-to-Eight Multiplier 04:55 Organising Your Marketing Files 05:35 Your Five-Minute Junk Drawer Challenge 06:15 Make Better Use of Existing Ideas
