Maximize Your Content's ROI by Learning How to Refurbish Top Content

Creating new, high-performing, and educational content for marketing purposes isn’t always easy (or cheap). That’s why it’s important to look back at high-performing, evergreen content you can leverage again and again. Some content inevitably underperforms, while others become pieces that you can reuse, recycle and refurbish to continually generate a high number of leads month-in, month-out. That’s what we all strive for when producing content in the first place, right?

We also know that generating content for content’s sake isn’t really an effective use of time, money, or resources. There has to be meaning behind any piece of content generated with a thoughtful backing of keyword research, audience analysis, and a deliberate implementation strategy. So when you get pressure to increase enrollment numbers, don’t immediately think “I need new content...” to generate new leads. First, consider “what can I repurpose and improve?” Brush the dust off of those top-performing pieces of content and make them work even harder for you.

Step 1: Determine High-Performing Pieces of Content

Conversion rates, page views, open rates, or other engagement statistics are some of the most important metrics to analyze when determining if a piece of content is achieving desired results. This is where having a marketing automation tool that keeps track of detailed analytics about your content is crucial. Also, think more broadly about top-performing content. It may not always be a landing page, an eBook, or a video; it could be a blog post, a slide deck, a podcast, or even a printout! 

Pro tip: you can determine the success of a print advertisement by using a vanity URL (a custom redirect you can track using your marketing automation tool) on the ad, listening to word of mouth, or even conducting a survey asking contacts where they heard about your content, event, or discount.

Step 2: Transfer Your Content to Different Mediums

The next step is to conceive of the numerous different ways you can promote your top content. Remember, just because your blog (for example) is a top performer doesn’t mean that everyone likes to consume content in the form of a blog. Others prefer video, eBooks, podcasts, etc. Bottom line, people consume information differently.

Let’s continue with the example of a high-performing blog post. Let’s say one post gets roughly 1,000 to 1,500 views, 10 leads, and ultimately drives three formal inquiries per month. Here are some of the ways you could repurpose the blog post and create more content from it:

• Pull quotes from the blog for social media
• Create a slide deck out of the blog post
• Convert the slide deck into a video (you can do this all in PowerPoint, believe it or not)
• Create a pillar page
• Start a podcast on the blog topic
• Create an eBook or guide and elaborate on the blog

Pro tip: Using CTAs and inline links, pepper your refurbished content pieces with links that go back to the original blog post to improve its SEO ranking!

Step 3: Disperse the Content on Popular Platforms

Now that you have your arsenal of high-performing content broken up into smaller, more digestible pieces (and now on several different mediums), it’s time to promote these pieces across several channels. We all have our favorite platforms to publish and consume content on, but just because you don’t use Reddit (for example) doesn’t mean that a prospective student isn’t consuming content on it either. As marketers, it’s important that we not box ourselves into promoting content on platforms only we like or use. Consider the following platforms:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

• Pinterest
• Quora
• SlideShare
• Reddit
• Medium

Take your newly created PowerPoint and upload it to SlideShare. Post quotes from your blog and link back to the blog post on LinkedIn (and invite your network to share the post!) Transform your blog post into a high SEO-ranking pillar page.

Step 4: Measure the Impact

After a couple of weeks of promotion, measure the results from repurposing your top content. Statistics to consider include page views, bounce rates, conversions, and new leads generated. That high-performing blog we mentioned in the example may also rank a couple of positions higher on Google’s Search Engine Results Page thanks to repurposing it! Circulating already popular content on several different channels and in several different, digestible pieces is bound to help you generate more leads and reach more prospective students, without the need for developing brand new content.

For more ways to get your top-performing content in front of prospective students or your target audience, read How to Get More Prospects to Read Your Content from Enrollify’s weekly newsletter, The Minute.

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Enrollment Marketing, Higher Ed Marketing & Communications