Content marketing is one of the best ways to build brand recognition and grow your business. However, it is also time-consuming and can be expensive, particularly if you are outsourcing some (or all) of your content.
Does that mean you should give up on content marketing, or skimp on quality? Actually, the reverse is true. The key is not to cut back on the amount of content you buy, but to find ways to repurpose what you pay for so that it can keep working for you long after the fact.
Measuring the ROI of Your Content
It’s not enough simply to create quality content – not if you want to maximize your returns. A successful content marketing strategy relies on analysis. In other words, you’ve got to analyze the performance of every piece of content you share. Doing so will help you determine what works and what doesn’t.
The first thing you need to know is that research supports the conclusion that content marketing is more likely to give you a high return on your investment than traditional advertising. In fact, 70% of all consumers say that they prefer to learn about a brand or product through content as opposed to through advertising.
What metrics can you use to measure ROI on your content marketing? They vary depending on the form of your content, but here are some things that may help:
- Search rank – if your blog appears on the first page of search results on Google, it translates directly to more traffic and sales. In fact, the first five positions on Google get approximately 6% of all clicks.
- Social media following – effective content attracts followers, and in turn, a large social media following means that your content is more likely to be shared so that it can reach new potential customers. Companies have reported increases of 450% or more on their ROI as a result of using social media for their content marketing.
- Leads – an effective piece of content marketing can help bring traffic to your landing page and encourage people to sign up for your list or make a purchase while they’re there. One study showed that B2B companies who have active blogs generate 67% more leads than those who don’t.
- Sales – companies who use content marketing effectively can see a significant increase in their sales. A LinkedIn study found that customers were more likely to respond positively to a sales pitch if they felt the person making it was a thought leader.
Looking at Google Analytics or other online tools is important too – but the real ROI shows up in conversions, subscriptions, and sales.
How to Repurpose Content
Measuring ROI is important, but no matter what your results are, your goal is to improve them. There are several ways to do that. Of course you can and should work to refine the content you post by looking at its performance. If you find that video content is shared twice as much as any other kind of content you post, it makes sense to allocate more resources to creating it. That’s just common sense.
However, the other side of the coin is finding ways to use content more than once. If you can do that, you can double or even triple the ROI of your content because you can bring it to a new audience. You may have to do a bit of work to make the content suitable for use in another format, but the work is, in many cases, minimal.
Blogs to Books
One of the easiest – and most common – ways to repurpose existing content is to collect some of your blog posts and put them into an eBook. For example, imagine that you owned a design company that specialized in creating effective logos. You might take some of your blog content and turn it into a series of eBooks. One might feature blog posts that talked about the psychology of color selection, while another featured content directed to a particular industry.
There is evidence to suggest that shorter eBooks are preferable to long ones. Many of the eBooks published on Amazon are 10,000 words or less. Writing short, tightly focused books allows you to publish several times a year, and that’s another way to maximize your ROI.
The possibilities of this type of repurposing are endless. Depending on the content and how old it is, you might have to do very minimal work, such as writing an introduction and conclusion, or more significant work updating older content to make it relevant. Either way, the eBook has the potential to bring your content – and your brand – to the attention of a whole new set of potential customers.
Podcasts to Blogs or Articles
Podcasting is a relatively inexpensive and effective type of content marketing. However, not everybody listens to podcasts. Instead of limiting your audience, why not take your podcast episodes and repurpose them? For example, you might take a particularly informative interview and turn it into a blog post. Doing so would require you to create a transcript of the podcast itself. You would also need to write a bit of content to set up the interview, such as an introductory paragraph or two and possibly a short biography of the interviewee.
In the event you had a podcast that wasn’t an interview, you might decide to expand upon the topic you discussed and turn it into an article or even a whitepaper. Authority content like this can help you to build brand awareness and attract leads. Either way, it allows you the opportunity to increase the ROI on the work you did for your initial podcast.
EBooks to Webinars or Online Courses
What if you’ve already written an eBook and you want to find a new way to use the material it contains? One way to do that is to use the eBook as a jumping-off point for a webinar or online course. Creating an online course can be time-consuming, but it’s less so if you have some content ready to go. You can write (or hire someone to write) video scripts related to your eBook, or even to come up with detailed course materials.
If your book is dated, you may need to spend some time updating content – or finding ways to make the content evergreen. You can then offer the course directly on your website, or list it with a site like Udemy so people can find it easily.
Do you have some content that you’d like to repurpose? We’re here to help. Please click here to learn about our services and find out how we can help you maximize the ROI on your existing content.
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