As I write this, the action in PyeongChang is wrapping up. From my perspective, some of the best stories from the XXIII Olympic Winter Games are those in which an athlete who seemed to be out of medal contention snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat, as they say. I watched that happen on many occasions, and it occurred to me that the same can be true with your content marketing program.
Getting Your Poorly Performing Marketing Content onto the Podium
While it would be great if every piece of marketing content you produce was a gold medal winner, realistically that’s not going to happen. In fact, you’ll likely produce your fair share of duds—pieces that just don’t attract the interest or generate the leads that you had thought they would. It happens to the best of us.
One school of thought on those materials is that you should simply toss them aside, consider it a learning experience, and move on. But as some of the most stirring performances from the PyeongChang Winter Olympics have shown us, there’s no reason a poorly performing piece of marketing content can’t make an inspiring comeback!
Rather than wasting all the time and effort you have put into producing a blog post, infographic, case study, or other material for your inbound marketing program, try one or more of these tactics to give that valuable information second life:
- Make it easier to find. You’ve promoted a piece of content in a sidebar on your website with a blue button that visitors can click to download it. However, few are, so you assume the item just isn’t very interesting. Perhaps. But maybe all it would take to get more clicks would be better visibility. Try announcing the piece in a banner at the top of the page with a bright red “Click Here” button. It’s amazing how a seemingly small tweak like that can make a big difference.
- Change the channel. I’ve blogged before about getting more mileage out of your great marketing content by using it in other places. The charts from a case study can become an infographic, for example. The same idea can help poorly performing materials be more engaging. Try turning that blog post into a brief explainer video. Or convert the script from a webinar into a How To guide. The point is, you may have excellent information that just needs to be shared in a different way.
- Solicit feedback. Why did that piece underperform? The best way to know is to talk with people who passed it up. Reach out to some of your clients or prospects and ask them for their input. The insights they provide may help you zero in on some changes that can turn your pretender into a contender.
- Repost the piece at a different time. It’s possible that a piece that falls flat does so because it was published at a time of day or on a day of the week that isn’t optimal for your audience... or perhaps it fell at the same time that other national or international news was dominating the stream. Do some research on content consumption in general (there are plenty of studies out there), or ideally on when your content consumers prefer to hear from you, and relaunch the item.
Helping You Achieve Inbound Marketing Come-From-Behind Wins
30dps is an inbound marketing agency that has been “in the game” for more than two decades. Our teams in Colorado Springs, CO, Springfield, MO, and Olympia, WA, know what it takes to produce marketing content that wins the battle for a target market’s limited attention, and how to use marketing automation tools like HubSpot to produce a contact cadence that keeps people eagerly anticipating the next piece. Is your company striving to stay ahead of the competition? We can help. Contact us today!
