A lot of the pressure around content marketing comes from the feeling that we need to be producing new pieces, new ideas, and new formats constantly. Every time we post a video or blog post, the slate goes blank again, and it’s back to square one. It often seems that to be a thought leader means having new — even groundbreaking — thoughts at all times.
But this is a myth. There are only so many new ideas under the sun, and it’s not feasible to expect marketers to come up with entirely unique content at scale over and over and over again. What’s more, audiences don’t actually want to hear about endless new topics. Each individual has a handful of subjects that float their boat, and what they really want is to become as informed on those subjects as possible.
At my company, we’ve seen firsthand how a single piece of content can generate a measurable impact, especially when it’s intentionally distributed and repurposed. Content maximization is a lot more cost-effective than producing brand-new pieces every day; marketing hours go further, and content gets deeper.
Content repurposing can be beneficial to your marketing strategy in a few key ways. It can save you and your marketing team time, money, and energy because your marketers can focus on digging deep into a single topic instead of stressing out trying to think of five new ideas by Monday. You can also expand your audience by repackaging and retooling your content to suit different groups’ unique needs. Plus, you have more chances to breach the first page of search results.
But if you want to reap the benefits of content repurposing, you first have to decide which pieces of content warrant extra attention.
How To Choose Which Pieces Of Content To Repurpose
As you’re contemplating which pieces of your content are primed for content repurposing, keep in mind these considerations:
- Look for metrics that show maximization value. Certain metrics — such as referral traffic, time on page, and social shares — can expose which pieces of content are ripe for repurposing. If a piece of content is already getting attention across channels, your audience is finding that content valuable, which suggests that you might be able to squeeze more results out of it if you expand its reach.
- Consider timely news and sales conversations. News and trends can show you which pieces might reward repurposing. If all the new outlets are talking about digital transformation, for example, now’s the time to pull out that engaging infographic you created that’s related to the topic. Republish in the places where people are making conversation. You could also ask your teammates in the sales department what questions are coming up in their conversations with leads to see whether you have related content that could be repackaged and revitalized to meet that need.
- Choose your most unique content. Think about what content you have that is truly unique, whether it’s proprietary data, a template that can’t be found anywhere else, or just an unusual take on a topic fueled by your company’s expertise. Do a Google search to see whether others in your space have already released content like it. If not, go ahead and put your energy toward repurposing and repackaging that unique viewpoint into multiple formats to reach the biggest audience with your insights.
A Look At Content Repurposing In Action
Let’s dive into a specific example of repurposing from behind the scenes at Influence & Co.
The Marketing KPI Tracker is a tool that we use to track marketing and sales key performance indicators, see how different strategies are working (or not working), and make decisions on which lead sources to invest in.
This tracker has allowed us to isolate gaps in our processes. We could see, for example, that we needed to join the efforts of sales and marketing, to set goals that connected both teams, and to measure our monthly and quarterly progress against those joint goals.
This tracker began as a way for my company to generate higher-quality leads, focusing on leads that have the potential to turn into great clients — a strategy that led to a 47% rise in content marketing ROI.
Because we’ve seen this tracker be so beneficial across multiple departments in our own company — and because being able to demonstrate tangible results from content marketing is a common sales objection our team hears — we thought the KPI tracker would be a great candidate for content repurposing, as it could provide real value to multiple segments of our target audience.
Thanks to our investment in content repurposing, we’ve seen results from maximizing one piece of content in eight different formats:
- Press campaign: We were featured in Business Insider thanks to a pitch campaign our marketing team sent out. The publication wrote a piece describing how to generate leads by tracking marketing KPIs. The result? We got 89 page views from this feature, 57 form submissions, and 31 new leads.
- Guest posts: We referenced the tracker in two relevant guest posts. By listing the tracker as a helpful resource in two guest posts in Entrepreneur, we generated 131 form submissions to gain access to the tracker and 95 new leads.
- Blog posts: On our blog, we dug deeper into the tracker strategy to engage our blog readers and attract visitors from organic search results. This approach helped us earn 27 page views from organic search, as well as 10 form submissions and two new leads.
- Blog calls to action: As an extra lead-generating kicker in some blog content, we included a link to the tracker as a call to action for readers. The results? Thirty CTA clicks and 22 form submissions to access the tracker.
- Social media: We shared the KPI tracker across LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to engage different audiences, gaining organic social traffic in the form of 117 page views, 34 form submissions, and 28 new leads.
- Newsletter: Attaching a brief explainer about the tracker to outgoing emails to leads and in our newsletter garnered 29 page views and 22 form submissions to gain access to the tracker.
- Client and lead resource: We pinpointed which clients and leads might need help measuring content marketing success and sent them a direct link to the tracker (ungated because we already had their information). This allowed us to provide additional value to these relationships, position our company as a helpful partner, and reengage and nurture leads.
- Podcasts: By mentioning the KPI tracker in multiple podcast interviews, we gave listeners a reason to check out our website and engage with us after the conversation ended.
Looking Ahead
Just like we’ve learned to track and measure our content strategies to see which pieces are performing well, measuring the results of content maximization can also be valuable for taking control of your content marketing ROI.
Set a benchmark for the repurposed content, and set a date in the future when you’ll re-check the results of the content to see how your maximization efforts have worked out. This way, you won’t spend needless hours repurposing content without any payoff; instead, you’ll be able to catch when a repurposed video triggers a qualified lead to turn into a buyer, for example. Tracking can give you the confidence to invest time and resources into the strategies that work.
Content maximization can be a cost-effective way to extend the life of your content and achieve amplified content marketing ROI — if you choose the right pieces to maximize. Take a look at your existing content with these considerations in mind to uncover your best bet for content maximization.
To get the most mileage out of your content:
Download 18 Ways You Can Repurpose One Piece Of Content
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