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Whether you’re a marketer or sales rep—you’re tasked to do more with less time. Speed, efficiency, and personalization are important, but none happens without a solid workflow.
Templates are an excellent solution to find a delicate balance between scalability and customization.
Typically, people misunderstand templates as tools for standardization that aren’t flexible or scalable, but that’s not true. At Content Camel, we’ve created many templates for marketing and sales teams—making them some of our most in-demand content.
Let’s examine why templates are essential to your workflow and how you can create them for your company.
From standardization to scalability, there are several benefits of creating templates:
The biggest benefit of templates is the level of standardization they offer. For instance, if you’re a sales rep cold emailing prospects daily, you don’t have time to craft a pitch from scratch. But a template with built-in placeholders? Now you’re golden.
It lets you bring consistency in brand image and messaging, irrespective of the volume of emails you send. Plus, these templates can be tweaked for different clients—preventing unnecessary repetition in your work. You can also add your branding, like logo, color, and font schemes, reinforcing brand recognition without too much effort.
Many marketing and sales teams struggle with changing their processes because they’re too rigid and don’t account for company-specific workflows.
Let’s say you’re using a tool that helps you manage your content workflow in one place. If the tool comes in with built-in stages and no room for the addition/removal of stages, it hampers your workflow.
But if a project management tool offers a template you can modify based on changes that come with scale or process improvement—you have a much more adaptable process.
Also, you can copy and paste templates and build additional workflows on top of it—while keeping a copy of the old templates if you want to revert in the future.
Blank page syndrome is prevalent in any community. When you create a template, you have a pre-designed structure that gives you a starting point. You don’t waste any more time wondering what to write or create—instead, you fill in the blanks, review and click send.
You can use ready-made templates for several purposes:
As long as there’s a repeatable process, create a template and get things done faster.
Templates also prevent you from making the same mistakes again. Creating and approving a template on the first go reduces the mental load of doing the same review work multiple times. So it prevents small errors like typos and bigger compliance issues (like contracts) from being missed.
It lets you put your best foot forward and strengthens the brand’s reputation.
Templates can be used anywhere—literally in any app—whether it’s a text document, spreadsheet, or specific software tools like surveys.
With a standardized format, you can fill these up in no time and share them with stakeholders for review. It becomes easier for team members to share, edit, and provide feedback in one place.
This streamlines the workflow, enhances communication, and keeps everyone on the same page.
Here’s a step-by-step process for developing and implementing templates in your company:
If you start creating a template with no clear goal in mind, it’ll be hard to develop one useful to you and your team. Here’s what you need to do first:
So audit your processes. For example, when creating a content calendar, you know there are different stages like brief creation, draft in progress, editing in progress, and ready for publishing. Write them down along with any notes or additional categories in each stage.
Send these to your team and gather their input. Once you have a rough map of what the template will contain and where—move on to the next step.
This is where it gets tricky, as you need sufficient knowledge about the different options out there. As a rule of thumb, these are the types of platforms you can consider:
Consider the internal tech stack you use, user-friendliness, and integration capabilities of these tools. Based on that, you can pick your tool. For instance, if your organization uses Google Workspace, other Google products would better fit your needs.
Familiarize yourself with the chosen tool’s functions and capabilities.
Each tool has unique features, so take the time to learn its features—it’ll benefit you during the creation process.
For example, when we created a content calendar template, we knew Google Sheets would be the best option as we could add specific categories in the columns and add simple formatting and automation options to self-update.
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So create the base structure and try different formatting options first. Test the variables and see if the logical flow makes sense for your workflow. Roll it out to your team members, get feedback, and either approve or modify it to fit your needs.
Now you have a ready-made template you can copy as and when needed.
Here are the most common tools that let you create templates for internal needs:
Google Docs is a word-processing tool that lets you create documents and collaborate in real-time. The software comes with an in-built template library that you can access. You choose an existing template or create your own by selecting the “Blank” option.
For example, I have a standard template for blog articles that I use. So I created one by filling in the necessary above-the-fold information and article structure. Next time I want to use it, I go to “File” and click “Make a Copy” to get started.
This is particularly useful for content creation templates like social media posts, press releases, and emails that follow a clear structure.
Presentations allow you to bring your vision to life in an easy-to-digest format. It’s handy for sales pitch decks, webinar decks, and campaign reports.
For Google Slides, you either pick an existing template, just like in Google Docs or create one from scratch. Fill it in and save it in your folder as [Template] Sale Deck (or whatever the template is about).
Next time you need it, make a copy and modify it based on your needs.
Spreadsheets are versatile tools for creating templates with formulas and preformatted cells. Whether in marketing or sales, you need to crunch numbers and report on your work. Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel work well for this.
To create a template in Excel, create a new workbook and fill in the necessary details. Once you’re done, go to File and click on Save As. Save it as an Excel Template. If it has automated scripts in it, choose Excel Macro-Enabled Template. Below you can see a performance tracking template for sales teams provided by Microsoft.
Canva is a beginner-friendly design tool that has gained popularity in recent years. You can access thousands of templates for your needs, from social media assets to pitch decks. And if need be, you can choose a blank canvas of custom dimensions or format and create your own template too.
In the Pro plan, you can also create branded templates with pre-loaded logos, fonts, and color palettes that you can use across different channels.
Airtable is a popular project management tool that can be used to create templates for organizing marketing and sales activities. The company offers its template library filled with templates for any department. All you have to do is choose an existing template, copy it into your own base (account), and work with it.
Or you can create a base from scratch. For example, if you want to create an idea generation template, use the Grid View to organize the categories and fill the rows to list ideas as you think of them. Or, if you want to create a content distribution template, use the Kanban View to set the stages of the process and create file records under each of them.
It’s important to note that you must know how to use the platform, without which it’ll be hard to wrangle the most value out of it.
But what if you need templates but don’t have time to create them? We’ve made a marketing and sales resource library to get you started. Here are a few examples:
The benefits of templates are clear. They save time, let you streamline your processes, and create adaptability in your workflows. With ready-made formats at your fingertips, you no longer need to start from scratch for every marketing campaign, sales pitch, or report. Instead, they can focus on tailoring the content to match the unique requirements of each project.
This streamlined approach allows teams to work smarter, not harder, resulting in enhanced productivity and more time devoted to strategic planning and relationship-building.
Need a template for your marketing or sales effort? Check out our template library and download these templates for free.
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Content Camel is a sales enablement tool used for sales content management. High-growth sales teams use our system to quickly find and share the right content for each specific sales situation and measure content use and effectiveness.