7 Ways To Make A Bigger Splash With Your Marketing Content

The heart of good marketing in business-to-business (B2B) companies is content. Content comes in many flavors, from blogs to videos to case studies and more. It's also been called 'thought leadership' over the years. The point of content is to share your company's expertise with prospects and buyers, so that they find your company, believe you are a credible authority with value to provide to them, and they consider you to help them solve their business problem. 

Generating high-quality content is time-consuming. That's why content re-purposing is a hallmark of good marketing - and good marketers.  Making a bigger splash with your B2B marketing content is all about being pragmatic and creative in re-using what you already have.      

There are 3 ways to re-purpose your content:

1. Change the format

2. Change the audience

3. Change the channel

Those 3 options above give you literally dozens of ways to make your content go a lot farther than if you left it as one format, for one audience, on one channel. 

To give you some specific inspiration, below are 7 powerful and cost-effective ways to re-purpose your content.

7 Great Ways To Re-Use Your Content

1. Turn PowerPoint presentations into video

One minute of video is equivalent to 1.8 million words. That's a lot of expertise you can share in 60 seconds!  Since video is gaining in popularity among users it's a no-brainer to dedicate some time to this format. 

It's easiest to do animated videos or a basic video blog. There's no need to be fancy with your video - no one expects high production quality with a basic video blog (different story if you're doing a corporate video that will be shared at the company's Annual General Meeting). Use a screen capturing software, PowerPoint, GoToWebinar or WebEx to record your presentations and share them online in video format. 

2. Break up a long whitepaper into a series of blogs

Chances are you have done some whitepapers that are 8+ pages in length and cover a number of concepts.  Can you take those long whitepapers and break them into smaller articles or blogs that cover 1 or 2 concepts each?  Not everyone wants to read a long whitepaper - but a 5-minute blog read is manageable and allows you to make your point.  And you can link to the whitepaper in the blog so that if the reader likes what they've seen, they're more likely to actually download the whitepaper and keep reading. 

This method allows you to create 2 or 3 blog posts out of a single whitepaper. And those 2 or 3 blog posts usually represent 10 - 15 social media posts.  Now that's a splash! 

3. Use your old PR and blogs in lead nurturing campaigns

Most of the leads you attract through your website and content marketing won't be ready to buy - you'll need to nurture those prospects as they go through their solution-finding process. It's important for your company to stay on their radar as they go through that process, and to continue to demonstrate the expertise and credibility of your company. 

A great way to add value as your prospects are researching solutions to their business problems is to follow up with related blogs , articles, press releases and other content. 

To do this, set up a 4-touch lead nurturing campaign for new prospects that have downloaded your content.  You should touch them about once a week and include Calls-to-Action in each of the emails you send them - more if they are demonstrating high engagement with your content. One of your touches should be a call from one of your sales people to let the prospect know you're accessible and want to help them.  

4. Turn your new product web pages into press releases

New product releases are always exciting to share with your market. As soon as you develop a web page to describe a new product and its value, don't be shy to use this content to announce the new product and get your target market excited about it.

Press releases - especially if you use a wire service to get your news out to relevant media outlets - provide a big boost to your SEO efforts. Combine that with a digital advertising campaign and you'll see a nice spike in your web traffic. 

5. Convert your offline content into online versions

Do you have a print presentation that your sales people use in meetings with prospects? Or how about a demonstration that runs on screens in your trade show booth?  How about print collateral that details the specifications of your products?

Any of that content can - and should - be captured in digital format (eg a PDF or downloadable video) that you can put on your website, company LInkedIn page, and shared by your team on their LinkedIn profiles, or through other social media channels.  

6. Capture sales conversations as FAQs on your website  

The conversations that your sales people have with prospects are probably the most powerful content you can offer through your marketing.  Prospects ask questions that other prospects are wondering about.  If you can answer those questions clearly and early in a prospect's solution-finding process, you'll win them over.  

Don't forget about your technical and customer support teams. The questions that they get from existing customers are also a wealth of information of what matters to customers and how they use your products and services. They are an endless source of  information on technology and processes, and tips that your prospects will appreciate.

7. Revise old blog posts

After a few years of blogging, you probably have over 100 blog posts.  That's a huge amount of content just sitting waiting to be refreshed and reused.  The internet has an incredibly short attention span, so you can refresh any content that's a year old and it will be a great way to get a new post, at about 25% of the time that it takes to do a new post.  

The Bottom Line

There is plenty of room for getting more bang-for-buck from your marketing content. Remember you have three options:

1. Change the format

2. Change the audience

3. Change the channel

Play around with those and you'll quickly double (or more) the splash you're making. The only caveat: re-purposing content only works if the new materials offer value and are sufficiently updated so as not to be considered duplications.