We spend a lot of time and effort creating content for our business, as well as for our clients. And it’s easy to see all this content as a waste of money.
A while ago we wrote about the value of content in our article, “why bother with a business blog”. This week, I’ve been talking to a lot of clients about all the different ways you can reuse and repurpose content across the whole length of the buyer journey* to increase your ROI from that investment.
[*Your buyer journey is how your customers go from never having heard of you before to buying in and being loyal, raving fans of what you do.]
In this blog I’ll go through the buyer journey showing you how to leverage your content at each stage.
Aware
- If someone asks a question in a Facebook group that you already have content on, write a short answer summarising it and then link to your content for them to read the more in-depth answer.
- If Linkedin invites you to contribute to an article that you already have content on, write a summary paragraph and then link to your content.
- Rewrite your blog and send it to someone who may use it on their website as a guest blog. Or send it to a relevant publication as PR.
- Use SEO tools such as [SEO tool name?] to identify some phrases and questions that people may be searching for, and either create a new piece of content to answer that question or repurpose (or even just rename!) an existing piece to get found more easily when prospects are searching.
- If you have a really valuable guide, quiz or checklist that people may search for, consider using Google ads to promote it.
Filed for later
- Disrupt people’s attention on social media with an “Are you ready for …” blog, quiz or checklist.
- When people sign up to your newsletter, send them a welcome email (automated) that includes links to your best free content.
Interested
- I’m sure your articles are already on your website, but could you also link to them in other places on your site? For example, we have our 6 most popular blogs on our home page. We’ve also recently been through a client’s blog archive and added links to relevant blogs to their services pages. If you have content about what you do, where else could you signpost people to it?
- One of the first places people tend to share their content is on social media so you’ve probably got this one covered, but have you remembered to pin your best content to your social page or profile? Do you have a linktree that includes all your most popular articles and videos? This is often one that people do early on and then forget to update for ages so it’s worth diarising once a quarter to have a quick look and add new content and remove old stuff.
- If you have a number of blogs or videos answers questions that customers often ask, curate this content into an FAQs page on your website.
- When someone books a call with you, give them something to ponder on in the meantime. Do you have an article, video or guide that’d be particularly useful to help someone prepare for this call with you or to help them understand what to expect from the call or from working with you?
Test drive/quote
- Add a relevant case study, article or video to your proposal/quote template
- Every blog is an opportunity to reach out to a lead who’s gone quiet. “Hey X, we haven’t spoken in a while but I’ve just posted this blog/video/podcast and I thought you might be interested. It’d be good to catch up with you. Here’s a link to my diary if you have a moment.”
Buying in
- At the point of purchase, it’s useful to have a piece of content to remind people of the process they’re about to go through and explain how to get the most out of it. A case study and testimonial can work well here.
- Do you have any content that supports your customer onboarding process, like a checklist, template or tutorial video?
Loyal
- We all lose customers from time to time and a new piece of content (or not so new!) is a great excuse to get back in touch. “Hi X, it’s been a while - I hope you’re well. I’ve just posted this new blog/video/podcast and I thought of you. Let me know if it’s useful to you.”
- Content about other products or services you offer can be opportunities to upsell or cross-sell to existing customers. It’s always worthwhile sending a quick email saying, “did you know we also do X? Here’s a bit of info about it in case you’d find it useful…”
Referring
- Create a template email that a referrer could use to refer you. I know that we can be a bit tricky to refer because no one wants to say to someone, “hey your marketing’s a bit rubbish, you should speak to Ros!”
Instead, I send my referrers this email template for them to send out:
“Hi X, I have a marketing friend who works with a few businesses like yours and she's got some free resources that I’ve found useful and you might too. Here they are… [links to a couple of valuable pieces of content] - As well as an opportunity to get back in touch with leads and lapsed customers, new content is also an opportunity to get in touch with referrers. “Hi X, I know you also work with clients in the … industry. I’ve just posted this blog [link]. Would any of your clients find it useful, do you think? Please do send it on to them if you can think of someone who’d benefit from it.”
- At networking events, if I have the opportunity to do a short presentation about myself I always mention a couple of key pieces of content (at the moment I’m using a video tutorial and a guide) and encouraging people to think of someone who might find it useful and send it to them.
- New content is a useful tool to remind customers that they might be able to refer you to other people, especially if you’re in a consultative or service-based business. Email a loyal customer asking, “By any chance do you know any other [people in your role] who’d find this article/video/podcast useful?”
I'm not expecting you to do ALL these things - I don't! And many of them won't be appropriate for your business and audience anyway. But, as with so much in marketing, sometimes a few small tweaks can make a massive difference so pick out a couple of the above tips that you could see working well for you and commit to implementing them.
I highly recommend bookmarking this article and revisiting it every few months to see if there are any new things you can add, or activities you've accidentally let slide.
If you want to have a chat with us about your content and how you can maximise the effectiveness of it, get in touch.
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