How to Repurpose Your Best Marketing Content

Great content is one key to your business’ success. So let’s say you’re ahead of the game and are in possession of more fantastic content than you can handle. It’s served your business well. It’s made you some nice profits. It’s garnered your brand a lot of attention. But is it possible that this wondrous content could do even more if you were to repurpose it?

Repurposing content allows you to get more bang for your buck. When done properly, it can breathe new life into the content and give it a whole new — well, purpose. So how do you get that done?

Distinguishing Between Revamping and Repurposing

Some people, even marketers, have a tendency to use these two terms interchangeably. It’s important to understand, however, that they are not the same. Revamping indicates that you’re going to update the content while continuing to use it in the same way that it was originally intended. This could mean reposting an older blog with updated statistics or information. It could also mean the update of a design to appear more modern to your current readers. Addition of an offer or other component is included with revamping as well.

Repurposing, on the other hand, indicates that you are changing either the format of the content, the content’s target audience (or buyer personas), or both. In regards to a change in format, perhaps you’ve decided that information in your ebook would make a great series of blog posts or even social media tidbits. Or you could possibly take elements from an information video you produced and develop it into an infographic. As for changing the content for the audience, this occurs when you take existing information meant for one group — a corporate insurance company, for instance — and adapt it for another group — like a start-up insurance company.

Repurposing for Different Formats

Many marketers would probably agree that this is the easier of the two repurposing options. Some companies will develop content meant for a specific purpose, whether it’s for an infographic, whitepaper, ebook, webpage, blog post, etc. Then they just leave it at that. This is a waste of resources. After all, you already have the content — why not get the most out of it? If you already have an ebook or whitepaper, then you probably have enough for several blog posts that will help draw people to your site. Don’t just copy and paste — take the information and present it in a somewhat new way to keep it fresh. Webinars are all the rage right now, so if you’ve developed any of those and the information is still topical — or could be adapted to current trends — then get it translated into a blog post, ebook, or infographic on your site. And if you can find a way to repurpose content from one format to multiple formats, that’s even better.

Repurposing for Different Buyer Personas

Depending on the type of business you own and other factors, there’s a good chance that you use multiple buyer personas in your marketing campaigns. This is another area where you can repurpose your content. Let’s say that one persona is a technical type. She knows her way around gadgets and that’s perfect for your brand, so you develop content that is technical in nature, one that speaks to that person on her level and helps to expand her knowledge. On the other side of things, there’s a second persona. This guy’s more laid back. He likes the tech stuff, but doesn’t keep up on the latest and greatest. He’s a smart guy, just not tech-savvy enough to appreciate the content you’ve developed. What you want to do in order to stretch your content’s potential is to repurpose what already exists to make it more palatable for this second persona. Speak in laymen’s terms, give some real world examples that this person can relate to, etc. The same can be done in reverse by taking a more normally written piece of content and adapting it to a technical presentation for the first described persona.