Repurposing and Repackaging B2B Content to Keep Your Audience Engaged
by MGB2B
Your brand has many needs: developing products that meet the needs of your clients, keeping your clients happy and satisfied with your offerings, maintaining a steady workflow between your marketing and sales teams, staying one step ahead of the competition… the list goes on and on. So when it comes time to develop content like white papers, blogs, bulletins, newsletters, and more, it’s no wonder that task can often fall by the wayside. Your brand’s own content can sometimes take a backseat to the hundreds of other priorities you and your team manage on a day-to-day basis.
You Should Know Two Things About Your Struggle with Content:
- It’s okay!
- There’s a way to create new content to distribute to your audience without actually creating new content.
You Might Be Thinking… “That Makes No Sense.” But Hear Us Out:
By taking existing long-form content you’ve created, like white papers, tech bulletins, or published studies and turning them into shorter, eye-catching, digestible content like blogs, infographics, and videos, you’re still creating new content without putting in as many man-hours that the former requires.
Writing something like a white paper takes a significant amount of time, research, and understanding of the subject. Your audience appreciates these types of content, but in an age where “content is king” and attention spans seem to shrink by the day, sometimes they don’t always reach the audience they should. By taking your extensive white paper and breaking it down section by section, you’re providing your audience with the same content, just in a form they haven’t seen yet. So you might capture the attention of someone who doesn’t have the time or patience to read a full white paper. As an added bonus, when you create these types of content and post them on your website and various social channels, you can link back to the longer-form content (and require an information capture to reveal it), so you’re accomplishing two goals with one post.
So How Do You Evaluate B2B Content for Repurposing?
Choosing the kind of content you want to turn into social-friendly posts is the biggest challenge you might face. When starting out, you’ll want to evaluate your library for two things. The first being, ease of digestion. What we mean when we say that is: how complicated is the message we’re trying to get across, and how difficult will it be to convey that in an infographic, video, or blog? The second thing to evaluate is time. How long will it take us to turn this white paper into something we can get out to the masses?
If you need to hold multiple brainstorming sessions, followed by multiple rounds of development, followed by multiple rounds of edits, it might be best to leave that content as-is. If you have something that you already know can be broken down easily (and quickly!), start there. As time goes on, you can hone your skills, and eventually tackle those harder-to-understand pieces. But for now, start slow, and be sure you’re crafting messages that will resonate with your audience.
Continue ReadingB2B Myth of the Week: All Your Salespeople Need Is the Gift of Gab
by MGB2B
The Myth: A Smooth-Talking Salesperson Needs No Tool
The Truth: Even the Best in the Business Should Have Some Tools Up Their Sleeves
In the words of Ben Affleck in the movie Boiler Room, “In every business interaction, a sale is made. Either you sell the client or they sell you on a reason they can’t use you.” It’s a Hollywood notion that the best salespeople can sell anything to anyone with nothing but the art of persuasion.
While there are some salespeople who fit this mold, in this day and age, the more tools they have in their arsenal, the better. B2B brands are seeing a higher demand for content, especially visual content, than ever before. Now is a crucial time for businesses to provide tools and train their sales teams on how to use them. You might think that visual content is a B2C tactic, but as Gary Vaynerchuk says, “behind every B is a C.”
It’s important for salespeople to acknowledge the art of the sale is not just about the pitch, but about how you get them to hear your pitch in the first place.
Here Are 3 Types of Content All B2B Salespeople Should Consider Including in Their Toolbelts:
- Infographics – A Creative Way to Present the Facts. B2B doesn’t have to be all about lists and spreadsheets. Infographics will have a lot more impact on prospects. Start off by creating a few of them (you can do this with a tool like PiktoChart, use an in-house designer, or hire a B2B marketing agency to create them) so that your salespeople have them ready to go. While infographics are often used on social media or email marketing programs, salespeople can also present them to lukewarm prospects as a door-opener. “I thought you might find this infographic on _________ helpful as you go into the New Year.”
- White Papers – Persuading from a Different Angle. White papers can be used in multiple ways. Primarily, they serve an educational purpose. But they also provide salespeople with an interactive and engaging way to provide a counter-rebuttal to the challenges you receive from prospects. White papers should be as colorful, well-designed, and engaging as infographics. Perhaps the most important thing that a white paper can do is give your brand authority and credibility. They might be just the right push to give your prospect reason enough to choose your brand over a competitor’s.
- Video Marketing – The Most Memorable Sales Tool. Marketers everywhere know how important video is heading into 2018. It is one of the most effective and memorable ways to get a point across to sales prospects. Try incorporating video into your sales pitch instead of talking about how great your product/service is. A video can accomplish this in many different ways: from How-To Guides to Live Video Chats to Engaging Case Studies. The level of video production doesn’t have to be on par with a Hollywood movie. Research has proven that content and creativity are important, but the value of the video is what most people remember.
Natural sales talent is important, but it should be complemented by something more substantial. With your competition likely jumping into the content marketing game, it’s important to do it right. Make sure your marketing team and your sales team are working together to create and distribute content in ways that propel the brand forward. Each member of the team should have the tools they need to drive prospects along the sales funnel. The goal is the same for everyone in your organization: conversion.
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