In the past two years, you have probably heard about the new form of marketing that is becoming more popular with many hospitality-related companies today as traditional forms of marketing are becoming more ineffective at reaching consumers: content marketing. Hopefully, you have already implemented a content marketing program for your business, which shares different types of content to the various audiences in your marketing list. But if you haven’t, here is a quick reminder of what content marketing offers:
“Content marketing is a targeted marketing strategy that involves creating insightful, engaging and interesting written content with the aim of creating customer loyalty and increasing opportunities for future business… Like public relations and social media, content marketing is not directly designed to sell a product/service; however, it can have significant effect on brand awareness and can be highly effective at positioning a company as an expert in their field.[i]”
Once your company has created a strong base of content marketing pieces, you then have the opportunity to repurpose that content to ensure that your marketing messages are reaching as many leads as possible and that you are earning the greatest ROI on all activities.
First things first though… what does it mean to repurpose existing content?
By repurposing existing content, you can make the pre-existing copy suit everyone on your company’s marketing list – no matter where they currently land on your marketing funnel.
In general, repurposing content has two primary outcomes: first, to change the format of the content or secondly, to change the audience that the content is intended for (or it can be both). For example, you could decide to take a selection of blog posts on a particular subject and repurpose them into a topical whitepaper. An example of changing the audience of a piece is repurposing a piece that was originally intended for potential hotel clients, to suit a different target audience, like restaurants or bars.
What is the marketing funnel?
The marketing funnel is the process by which a potential customer will move from the first exposure to your company through to the purchase of your product/services. The funnel typically includes five key stages: problem/need recognition, search for information, evaluation of selected options, purchase, and finally, post purchase behavior (we’re not going to examine the fifth stage for the purpose of this article).
Let’s look at an example of how one type of content can be repurposed to suit leads in the first four stages of the marketing funnel.
First, you need to determine which piece you would like to repurpose and for what purpose: do you want to change the format of the piece or do you want to repurpose it to suit a new target audience? Or both?
Stage 1: Need recognition
Let’s use the example of a blog post. Blog posts are ideal for all of your leads that are in the first stage of the funnel: problem/need recognition. In this stage, the customer is typically trying to educate themselves on possible solutions to a problem that they are experiencing. That means that your content for this stage should be educational, but less in-depth or sales focused.
For example, if your company is a company that provides hotel revenue management systems and you know that many hotels complain about the time-consuming process of updating rates to all of their online channels, your blog post could examine this problem in greater detail and explain how an RMS can automate the process, saving the revenue manager time and eliminating human error completely.
Stage 2 & 3: Search for information & Evaluation of alternatives
So if you decide to repurpose that blog post to suit marketing leads who have moved into the second and third stages of the marketing funnel (which are often undertaken concurrently), you first need to consider their needs.
During stage two (search for information), potential customers are educating themselves on the possible options available to them to help them solve their current problem/need. In our example, that means that they are doing research to find out more about the different types of RMS available on the market.
Once they have selected the type of solution they need, they can start researching the different companies in the marketplace who offer a suitable product (stage three: evaluation of alternatives).
In order to provide content that would appeal to leads that are in stages two and three, your content has to go into greater detail, while also providing information on the key differentiators of your product/service. It is no longer enough to provide high-level information on the subject; stage two and three materials must provide more specific technical information. For these stages, you could repurpose the blog post by adding additional content and creating a whitepaper, guide or an educational webinar.
Stage 4: Purchase
In this stage, the lead has made a decision on which product/service to purchase and which vendor to purchase it from. However, even though the decision has already been made, there are still additional factors that change the potential customer’s mind, such as negative feedback from previous customers.
In this stage, the content should provide the information necessary for the lead to finalize the sale: full specifications of your company’s products/services and customer testimonials/statistics on results. For example, you could use the pre-existing content to create a one-pager for the product or an online demo – both of which should recap the key features of the solution and the impressive results that current clients have achieved while using the product.
Targeting multiple audience segments
This same process of repurposing existing content can be executed to suit all of the different stages of the marketing funnel for all of the different audience segments that your company targets. For example, if your company offers a solution that helps companies better manage its online customer reviews, you could choose to target hotels, restaurants and bars, as well as hotels. Since each audience makes decisions on purchasing differently, your marketing content for each audience must provide information specific to their needs in every stage of the marketing funnel.
By repurposing existing content instead of creating new content from scratch, your company can drastically decrease the time spent on drafting content and earn a greater ROI from each new piece drafted.
So what are you waiting for? Start repurposing your company’s content today!
About the author
Jennifer Nagy, President of jlnpr, is a seasoned public relations professional with a passion for the hospitality industry. At jlnpr, she works with companies to increase awareness of their property/product and get their story in front of the audiences that will have a direct impact on their bottom line. jlnpr works with international travel clients in the travel technology, airline, lodging, cruise and meeting/event industries. For more information about jlnpr, please visit www.jlnpr.com or contact Jennifer at jenn@jlnpr.com.
[i] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-nagy/content-marketing-101-an-_b_4576992.html
