It’s all about Leverage

One of the most common mistakes I see in B2B marketing, particularly among small and mid-sized companies, is that they don’t leverage the content they develop. They will work very hard to write a case study or white paper, and then they’ll post it on their website, and that will be that.

That’s a tragedy for two reasons. First, that content is a valuable asset that took a lot of work to create. It needs to be distributed in multiple formats to ensure that people actually see it and appreciate it. There’s a marketing rule that says people don’t register a message until they’ve heard it at least 5 times (in many cases it’s more). Content needs to get in front of customers’ eyes many, many times before they will realize it’s there.

The second reason is that cross-exposure heightens effectiveness. A Nielsen study of TV and online advertising revealed that ads which appeared on both TV and online were more than twice as effective as those appearing on only one of the media. They were more than four times more effective in a 24-hour period at generating an inquiry. Granted, the ads were for a consumer product, but the rule applies just as much to B2B marketing.

We live in busy times and people need to hear a message many, many times before it sinks in.

How can you get cross-exposure to leverage the value of the marketing content you’re creating?

Here’s just one option:
1. Develop a thought leadership piece (a whitepaper or case study, for example)
2. Post it on your website
3. Send it out to your customer base through an email and landing page (the latter so you’ll know who downloaded it)
4. Twitter about it
5. Blog about it
6. Consider a pay-per-click campaign to promote it further
7. Write a press release about it and pitch it (or a version of it) to trade publications
8. Develop a webinar about it
9. Speak about it at an industry conference
10. Collect reader / client views on it and turn that into a follow-on article

As you can see, there are many ways to leverage a single piece of content. A word of advice – make sure your content is very high quality before you put this amount of effort into it.

Did I mention that people need to hear a message multiple times (at least 5) before it begins to sink in?