When clients invest thousands of dollars in a white paper or eBook, they expect significant return. Unlocking this return is equal parts content writing, promotion, and repackaging.
Most marketers overlook this last phase.
Or, they confuse repackaging with simple repurposing.
Sure, you need the basics dialed. Promotion and distribution through email, social, and paid ads. Keyword and search optimization. Internal communication to sales/partners (does your team know the assets exist?). A defined target audience.
And there are other ways to maximize investment, too.
Content repurposing (or recycling) is popular. Some suggest the Rule of 5, which guides marketers to create five pieces of content for every asset published.
For example: Chop a white paper into a series of blog posts, social media ‘snackables’, a sales one-pager, press release, and webinar script.
But repurposing is hardly novel; most marketers do it.
For many of my enterprise SaaS clients, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are worth thousands of dollars. Sales qualified leads (SQLs) are worth even more. When viewed this way, thoroughly chopped, stretched, and used content is a bargain.
To be sure, repurposing extends content usefulness.
But repackaging is the rare next step.
Repackaging changes how the product is served to a prospect. It is easier than repurposing, because content doesn’t change. Only the form does.
Consumer product companies do this all the time.
Here are two familiar examples –
- Heinz pivoted from giveaway ketchup packets to single-serving, “Dip & Squeeze”, mini bottle-shaped packages. A free product at most convenience stores became a runaway seller for grocers.
- Wrigley’s reworked the easily-crushable, awkward to grasp gum package into a sleek and sexy 5 Gum Slim Pack. The package reinvigorated the stick gum category and allowed for a retail price increase AND growth in sales ($500 million in sales five years after launch for the 5 brand).
Notice: neither Heinz or Wrigley’s changed their products at all.
Repackaging boosts the perceived value of your content–and brand.
Say you have an educational asset (e.g., white paper or eBook) targeting MOFU prospects. These buyers sit squarely in the research phase and are hunting for a solution to some problem.
Your content is well-defined and research-validated. It inches readers toward the promised land. The pain you solve is genuine enough that they’ll share personal data to learn more.
This usual funnel journey is promising, but what if you could be more than just a single stop on prospects’ decision path?
Don’t just create content, create Success Kits.
Most marketers assume that prospects’ research will bounce all over the web.
But Marketo challenges this.
They think: what if prospects had a one-stop-shop for problem solving? A few years ago they tested this with a novel approach to bundling dubbed “success kits”.
Check out one example – Account Based Marketing – Success Kit:
Note their use of both mega-assets (white papers and eBooks) and bite-sized cheat sheets. They also add variety with different mediums.
Here's the insane ROI opportunity presented by success kits...
Some of these assets are years old. In one of their success kits, they include a guide published in 2013.
Process that for a minute…
Marketo squeezes return out of a content investment they made almost a decade ago. Compare that to most B2B SaaS companies. Even useful, evergreen content collects dust because one big promotional campaign is rarely enough.
What if your marketing team planned continual cycles of promoting, revisiting, and repackaging?
Think about jumps in incremental value:
- How much further would your content calendar extend?
- How much less would you need to invest in ongoing content creation?
- How many fewer contractors or FTE project managers, writers, and editors could you hire?
Check out what CRM startup Close does.
They hit startups’ biggest pain points with all-in-one resource bundles. Look at an excerpt of their sales copy, below:
Here’s a screenshot from another one of their landing pages:
The mix of immediately actionable resources and meatier guides is irresistible. Of course, prospects share contact info to get at these.
But, here’s the dirty little secret for both Marketo and Close:
…Every one of those resources was individually created and promoted.
Only later did some savvy marketer bundle them to create an entirely new resource category. They added more value and created a stickier research experience without generating anything new.
Imagine what happens when a salesperson shares a link to one of those kits to a prospect? The competition’s single blog post or case study is paltry in comparison.
You have more content for Success Kits than you think.
Inventory your existing content library –
- What can you dust off and repackage?
- What useful cheat sheets are being created and shared by ambitious reps on your sales or customer success teams (who cares if they aren’t ‘marketing-sanctioned’?)
- What fireside chats or conference recordings do you have from your CEO or CRO?
- What long forgotten white papers or lead-gen pieces can you resurrect?
Find, package, and roll these into existing assets to boost download attractiveness.
Yes, repurpose them.
But also repackage them.
Spur excitement with something “new”. And make it easy for prospects to park on your website and get everything they need to make a buying decision.