4 Top tips to repurpose marketing content and save time and money!

Why should you repurpose marketing content and materials? Creating quality marketing material and content is an essential part of any brand strategy. The challenge of continually creating and coming up with solutions and content can be overwhelming for anyone, regardless of whether they have a creative team behind them or manage their brand marketing on their own. So this is why it’s a great idea for you to repurpose marketing content and material.

Don’t despair if you find yourself in a creative rut. It is not uncommon for even the most creative marketers to run into roadblocks when brainstorming original content ideas. 

Repurposing marketing content (also known as “content recycling”) is the practice of reusing all or elements of existing content in order to expand that content’s reach. Repurposed content is typically transformed into a new format (for example, turning a blog post into an infographic).

Recycling your successful projects is a proven solution. Take a look at Disney. Rumour has it they started reusing their animations to avoid bankruptcy. But the truth is, they knew they were onto a winning formula, so why reinvent it each time? By repurposing their animations, they knew they had a formula that worked. Check out their recycling in action here.

What is repurposing your marketing material and content?

When you repurpose marketing content you are not simply reusing it in its original format. Rather, reuse and repurpose your content to maximize your assets and resources.

Repurposing your marketing content…

What are the benefits when you repurpose marketing content and material?

When you repurpose marketing content it allows you to build on elements you’ve already invested time and money in.

You save costs on your marketing when you repurpose marketing content

This helps your budget by enabling you to cut the time or expense required to develop a new solution. If you can piggyback off previously designed marketing material, or update a blog article, you’ll save time and money. (Here’s a resource we’ve created to help you keep your marketing budget under control).

Builds on your past successes

Reusing material allows you to use the data you’ve gathered from testing and measuring the output. This means that you’re building from a platform of a proven solution, instead of reinventing the wheel each time.

For example: If you have an employee engagement survey that yielded great results two years ago, use that as your base to update your engagement survey. Or alternatively, if you ran an advert in a publication which yielded no results, you’ll know to avoid that in your 2023 marketing plan.

Recycling online content is good for your SEO

Creating new content based on existing data and repurposing old content can save you time and money. Based on the analytics and data that you already have, you can easily figure out what high-performing pieces of content you need to reshape and republish. Or you can already be in the process of creating a blog post that is going to work well as a LinkedIn article, a quote on your socials or on a podcast episode.

By having multiple articles around similar targeted keywords, engine crawlers for Google and Bing will recognise you as an authority source. So make sure that you add a checkbox to repurpose marketing content onto your SEO strategy!

It establishes you as the expert

By giving your audience an abundance of resources, you are not only providing them with more value, but you’re establishing yourself as the expert.

Some examples of how you can repurpose marketing content and materials

1. Create a YouTube video out of a post

With YouTube and Tiktok being amongst the most viewed websites in the world, you can’t go wrong with video marketing. If your company doesn’t have a YouTube channel, this is a great opportunity to start YouTube marketing! Or if it does, it gives you an opportunity to create new content for your existing channel.

Look through your current material to see what content you can repurpose into a video.

1. Product/Service Explainer video
   Demonstrate the proper use of your product or the benefits of your solution. If your service is digital, you could film a presentation with software like Loom. This allows you to record your screen and take the user through a presentation or screen share of your product.
   
2. Customer testimonial videos
   Ask your clients to share a short form interview, or go to them and film them. You can also use their statements in your video, in a graphic format. Great customer testimonials can build your reputation and give you credibility.
   
3. Thought leader interviews
   If you are the SME (Subject Matter Expert) why not take one of your relevant blogs and turn it into a videocast or vlog? You can also bring in other leaders from your team or industry and interview them.
   
4. Event videos
   Here is a great recycling opportunity. For example, you gave an impactful presentation at a leading conference. Why don’t you get the recording and publish it on your socials? You can also share the presentation itself on Slideshare which allows for further reach.
   
5. Case studies and project reviews
   This is a great way to take an existing project and package it as a case study for your website and socials in multi-form content.

You can also add text to all your videos which opens them up to a broader audience.

2. Repurpose your presentations

Your presentations can be recycled in a variety of ways.

The best place to start is to create a system where you have the latest versions of your relevant decks in an accessible place. The next time you’re asked to create a presentation, simply access your latest decks and choose the slides you need.

Additionally, you can take the information from your presentations and turn them into:

• Slideshare presentation as a thought leader
• Use it as a framework for a company blog post
• Turn it into a recorded video for socials
• Combine the video and content into a LinkedIn article
• Take the information to use in brochures, sell sheets or white papers

3. Repurpose online content

Recycling your content through blogs, articles and case studies provides a great opportunity for you to update your website and socials. These include:

Refresh a blog post:

• Research the topic to ensure it’s still relevant.
• Make sure your statistics, charts, and infographics are up to date.
• Ensure your branding matches your current visual identity. Consider your tone of voice and writing style, and if this matches your current brand too.
• Check the graphics work responsively.
• Offer examples of new projects and brands, link to existing articles, reference your website, etc.
• Remember if you reference any celebrities or well-known people, ensure that they are still relevant for your brand. They may have fallen from grace since the post was last published and no longer align with your brand values.
• Make a visual version of your article by turning your content into infographics if you have the data to support them. BTW, they are great for social media too!
• Collect articles into a resource section.

Recycle content on your social media channels

Share snippets of your existing (and up-to-date) blogs, case studies, videos etc. across your social media channels. This allows you to have relevant posts without having to create new content.

Some ideas to repurpose marketing content for socials include:

• Extracting a quote from the post as a statement to share on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn
• Sharing a snippet of a video
• Sharing individual members of your team member bio’s with a “Meet the team” post
• Sharing case studies
• Sharing testimonials
• Promote older, evergreen articles

How do you repurpose marketing content on social media?

Here’s an example of ways to repurpose content. This is a LinkedIn post we did to share tips on how to prepare for an exhibition. Excerpts of the article were extracted for a short post and then a graphic was custom made (we have a PowerPoint template so that our team can easily produce graphics without needing a designer available).

The post was made relevant to a specific global mining exhibition and then back-linked to the relevant post on our website here.

Check out repurposed content post here.

4. You don’t need to repurpose marketing content only, it can be your marketing material too

You’re not limited to repurposing marketing content only. Look through your marketing material to see what you can repurpose. Chances are you’ve only used many of the items only once, but you could repurpose them.

For example, you did an advert and editorial in a leading publication. You can turn this advert into a social post and a blog article

Or another scenario – you had some pull-up banners designed and produced for a specific event, but then they were just packed away into the supply’s cupboard. Why not pull them out and ask the CEO to join in for afternoon drinks with the team? You can use this as an opportunity to create a branded experience. In fact, you take it further by asking the senior leadership team to use this as an opportunity to express their gratitude for your team.

Other example of how to repurpose marketing material include:

• Reusing wall banners in different areas of the company
• Repurposing the company newsletter into a blog. Actually, you could get several blog posts out of this.
• Using your blog posts to create a monthly newsletter that shares your valuable resources with your clients
• Convert your printed brochures into e-brochures for digital distribution.
• Record your townhall meetings and put them onto your video channel

Onwards and upward to repurpose marketing content!

When you repurpose marketing content and material, the goal isn’t to replace the need for creating new content, but rather to complement it.

By creating new content and refreshing your existing, high-quality content, you can provide your audience with relevant, timeless information at the same time.

Are you looking for a reliable and experienced brand and marketing partner? That could be us, let’s connect!