Small businesses are constantly iterating and improving their processes - from finances to operations to marketing. Maximizing efficiency means a business can focus on opportunities and troubleshoot problems, instead of trudging along with outdated systems. And with regard to your marketing process, there are simple ways to get the biggest bang for your buck by repurposing your images and text.
Marketing lends itself to using information multiple times, but in different ways. A little bit of creativity can go a long way for the lifetime value of your content. In this post, we'll discuss some quick and easy ways to re-use your images and text in your marketing so that you're not only saving time and money, but also a bit of your sanity, too.
No matter if you're a marketing newbie or a seasoned expert, these repurposing tips can help any small business.
Repurposing text
The most common marketing channel used by small businesses is email marketing. It's cost-effective and allows for mass communication with very little time upfront. Beyond welcome emails and sales confirmations, small businesses use email to connect with their customers through newsletters and informational communications.
But you can do more with this content.
For example, take the information from your email campaigns and break it down into snippets. Take fun facts or best practices, or a seasonal tidbit, and build it into a social media post. You can use the same text on social media as in your email - add a relevant image and URL and you're good to go. This takes mere seconds to implement, but adds quality content to your comprehensive marketing strategy.
We wrote a blog filled with small business facts, stats, and inspirational quotes, and turned it into a Twitter campaign. It provided over 20 pieces of social content without having to start from scratch. The below are some of the images from the blog post that were later used in the Twitter campaign.
Repetitive text and messaging develops brand awareness and reinforces your key points (USP) you want to be associated with your small business, and social - particularly Twitter - can be great for this purpose.
Syndicating your blog content is another cost-effective and efficient way to repurpose content. Publish your pieces on Medium or LinkedIn, which are both free platforms that allow individuals and businesses to post duplicate content.
Through these avenues, you cast a wider net by showcasing your content to new and different audiences. Posting on these platforms requires minimal copy and pasting of your original content and uploading an image or two. For a three-minute investment on your end, you can reach 1,000s of potential customers.
Repurposing images
Just like your original text, your should repurpose your images.
Do you have product photos? Pictures from a recent event or industry graphs you want to show your audience? These are invaluable resources that should make their way into your marketing process. Utilize the power of a picture.
If you have a product catalog or brochure, use the featured images and captions in your social media campaigns. Create a post per product and teaser captions to get people to click on your website. Sometimes, all a visitor needs is a simple visual reminder to turn them into a customer.
Pottery Barn is a master at repurposing. In their social feeds, you'll often see product photos from their catalog accompanied by clever captions. In the featured Instagram post below, they used an existing catalog image, but gave it a fresh spin with its caption. It's immediately recognizable, which is part of building a brand and curating a consistent customer experience across various channels and platforms.
image courtesy of Pottery Barn
Beyond including your images in your social media campaigns, add them to your website or emails. People react to images and process them more quickly than text. Compelling images are able to tip the scales in your favor, and persuade someone to read your email, instead of deleting it.
Images can be repurposed in a variety of forms - from blog posts to videos to slideshows, and even infographics. Combining your images and text creates new and unique content to distribute, where appropriate.
For example, your business website or Twitter account are two great places for short videos to live. Making videos has never been easier, and with video's rise in popularity, it's a good idea to jump on the video bandwagon. For LinkedIn, SlideShare is a popular tool and a great place to insert your repurposed content in a slideshow format.
Capitalize on your current content to simplify your marketing process, while securing the largest return on investment by repurposing it. Using images and text in different media can help create a more cohesive brand identity, which is something every small business needs. An added bonus is that credibility and trust are two major outputs of a well-branded business, which often come from repurposing content.