The Content Waterfall: Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck

Creating a strong piece of content takes time. Subject matter expert interviews, developing an outline, hours of writing, and rounds of adjustments to get the message just right.

Whether it's a technical article, case study, research report, or a thought leadership point-of-view piece, there is a lot of work behind the finished product.

The mistake is spending all that time developing a useful piece of content and treating its use on a single channel as the end of its lifecycle.

Strong content can serve as the cornerstone of a marketing campaign used across disciplines. Instead of creating something new for every channel, building products brands can take a singular valuable idea and adapt it for different audiences, formats, and stages of the buying journey.

Here's what that can look like.

Establish the Foundation

While it can take on many forms, foundational content must provide real value to your key audiences.

A well-developed article might address a common industry challenge. A case study should demonstrate how a customer solved a specific problem with your product. A long-form, technical white paper might answer questions that architects, contractors, or other industry professionals regularly encounter. In short, there needs to be a real reason for someone to want to click, download, or learn more.

When determining the topic or angle, looking internally is a good place to start, evaluating what valuable information your internal experts and thought leaders can impart.

What’s trending?

What point of view will help move the needle for your customers?

What topics do you have the authority to expound upon?

What pain points can your content – and your brand – resolve?

Once you have a strong central idea and execute on it, it’s time to explore the different ways that idea can be useful. The goal isn't to copy and paste the same content across channels, but rather to identify the pieces of the story that make sense for each audience and platform.

Get Social With It

A single article can be repurposed for multiple social media opportunities.

Consider a few options: Pull out a hard fact or key statistic. Turn an important takeaway into an infographic. Ask a question based on the article's premise to further the conversation in the comments. Share a short excerpt or customer quote from a case study paired with a photo of the project.

Social media is a great avenue to waterfall existing content and get the most mileage out of it. Plus, each post gives your audience a reason to engage, and re-engage, with the topic without requiring them to read the entire piece.

For building material manufacturers, this can be particularly valuable. Not every busy contractor or architect who sees a social post is ready to read a 1,500-word article. A concise takeaway can introduce the subject and give users an easy entry point. The first post may pique their interest; additional follow-up posts can reinforce the idea and give your followers later opportunities to fully engage with what you have to offer.

Land in the Inbox

Building material manufacturers can use their customer relationship management (CRM) tool to directly share content through email marketing to prospects and current customers.

A standalone eBlast can introduce the issue and highlight one of the article's key points, encouraging a click that drives the recipient to learn more on your website. A nurture campaign can use the content as a resource in a series of emails to move prospects further along in the buying process.

There are numerous ways to bring your foundational piece of content to life through email marketing, while the same central idea supports multiple communications over time.

Earning Your Spot

One of the most valuable ways to extend a strong piece of content is to utilize it for earned media pitching, with the goal of turning its underlying premise – or in some cases, the content as is – into earned media coverage.

For example, a detailed technical piece developed for a building materials brand can often serve as the foundation for a media pitch, and ultimately a byline article in a trade publication. The original content may be fairly brand specific, but by taming the product messaging and focusing on the broader industry issue, the same expertise can become a useful piece of editorial. This transforms your owned media into real third-party credibility.

The value goes beyond the placement itself. The original research and expertise included in the earned media coverage can be reused on other marketing channels or shared on social media. This third-party validation builds trust in your brand, showing prospects and customers independent proof of your expertise.

That's the advantage of creating content with enough substance to go beyond your owned media channels.

Paid: Highly Targeted, Highly Measurable

Paid media can extend the reach of the content beyond the media and who is already in your CRM, and it is particularly valuable when it is used to reach the specific professionals who influence or make purchasing decisions.

For building material manufacturers, that can mean programmatic campaigns targeted to relevant job titles, industries, companies, or online behaviors. It can also include paid eBlasts through building and construction industry trade publications, sponsored newsletters, and other paid media opportunities that puts the content directly in front of an established industry audience that already opted in to learn more. Some paid opportunities can also include lead qualifiers, providing you with key information about prospective buyers that they offer before downloading your content.

Paid efforts also provide more visibility and precise performance measurement compared to many other channels. Marketers can track downloads, generate leads, and get a clearer view of how an asset is performing with its intended audience. Plus, efforts including programmatic and pay-per-click ads driving to your content piece can be tweaked, optimized, and turned on and off at your discretion.

The key is that paid media doesn't have to start with creating another new asset. The content already exists. The paid strategy simply gives it more measurable opportunities to reach the right people.

Think Campaign, Not Content Piece

The goal isn't to squeeze every possible post, email, or paid ad out of one article, but rather to get more strategic about the content you're already investing in.

A strong idea can support earned media, paid media, social, email, and even the sales team. It can reach different audiences in different ways, extend the useful life of the original content, and help create a more cohesive, connected marketing program.

Your best content doesn't have to live in one place. Build it once, then find ways to make it work smarter for your brand.

Follow us on LinkedIn