The Secret to a Longer Life for Marketing Content

I work with a lot of companies that are limited in their ability to produce enough marketing content. I don't mean just any content, but content that resonates and serves as currency to buy prospect attention and actions. The truth is that the life span for marketing content is usually cut short prematurely.

The secret is rather simple, actually. It's repetition.

But, before you can grasp the power of the secret, you need to understand what repetition is not:

• Using the same piece of content over and over.
• Saying the same things everyone else in your market is saying.
• Using the same self-serving calls to action (schedule a demo today!)

For repetition to offer up a secret life to marketing content, it must be based on the ideas it shares, not on a content asset, itself. Contagious content (that which buyers love so much they can't wait to share it with others) is based on the quality of the ideas and the context in which they're developed.

The secret to repetition is to spin those ideas from a number of angles to create multiple content assets based on the strength of an idea. I often refer to this as the Rule of 5.

Here's a basic example:

Let's say the main idea is "The expectations of the new buyer." The original idea is to write an article about how the buyer has changed, backed up with industry statistics and examples that are relevant for the target market you've selected.

To put repetition into play, determine other ways to spin this main idea. Examples might include:

• 10 reasons you need to change what you're telling buyers
• Why your customer's trust level has declined
• How to have a conversation with today's buyer
• What sales needs to close the new buyer

Now you have 5 topics based on one main idea that you can develop into marketing content using the same research you'll do to develop the content asset around the main idea. All with a different take or spin. Now, consider if you spin these 5 ideas based on vertical applications...

Prospects who are interested in any of this content will likely be interested in all of it. Now your calls to action can be "see also" links connecting these ideas in a way that motivates the prospect interested in that topic to engage with more of your ideas, influencing how they think about the topic.

Benefits for you include:

• higher relevance with prospects
• extended attention from prospect
• a connected content storyline
• less time and resources to develop the content
• increased credibility and trust because you're tackling the issue from a variety of perspectives

Why wouldn't any marketer want to create a longer life for the content they develop?

One reason is we get bored. We know too much. We think that since we've written about it once, our prospects know the information and understand why they should do something (hopefully with us).

This isn't necessarily true. It takes repetition for ideas to take hold. Up to 7 times or more for new ideas. The trick is that for repetition to be successful, it must be focused on the ideas - not the content asset. A longer life for marketing content is based on giving your ideas a bigger platform.

Comments

[Social Media Manager]

very interesting... thanks for sharing it!

[Nick Stamoulis]

Great points. Content is a big part of the online marketing piece and you can never have too much of it. Unfortunately many businesses struggle with topics. The key is to take one topic and spin it different ways to get the most out of it.

[Marta]

Great points. Is there any rule how often or how many times one idea should be repeated?

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Marta,

Thanks for stopping by, and good question.

It takes 7 - 12 repetitions for an idea to become the anchor for the way people think about that idea. According to research by Dan Ariely.

[Best SEO Company]

This is such great information that many companies overlook, either by laziness or by ignorance. Either way, this sort of repetition is key if you want to keep the interest going among your target audiences. Even though it's said that it takes 3 exposures of one thing to actually remember it, static repetition gets boring after the second or third time.

[Arriane]

Its feels good to read article like this. Ur article express ur thoughts and ur interest in social communication. Really admirable thought.