Making a big impact in marketing with limited resources can feel like an uphill struggle. It can take a lot of work to create that perfect application note. Finding time, budget and resource to produce the final piece can be a challenge, however, even more challenging is developing the big idea behind the piece to start with.
Producing scientific application notes or white papers can carry significant research and development costs compared to non-technical marketing content, so maximising the return on investment for these pieces is of the utmost importance.
Content atomization can help make that great piece of marketing collateral work even harder for you. But, isn’t content atomization just repurposing? Repurposing content typically takes the same piece of content and reformats it for use in different channels without significant change.
Reformatting content does not consider a marketing funnel approach and how the content sits in a marketing funnel.
Atomizing content is when you break a key piece of content down into stand alone pieces that can fill gaps in your marketing funnel. An example may be taking the chapters of a white paper and turning them into a series of blog posts. Atomization takes the big idea, the core message, behind a piece and allows you to spread that message in a thoughtful and cost effective way, maximising coverage and giving you a better return on investment.
So where do you start? Ideally, your marketing plan will already include a content atomization strategy, however, if you haven’t always taken an atomization approach then don’t worry, you probably already have lots of great content that you can utilise. Conducting an audit of your content can help you uncover these hidden gems. You ideally want to identify your flagship evergreen pieces.
Firstly create a list of everything you have, then retrieve any metrics you may have for this content. If you are reviewing online content then you may want to consider three simple metrics, for example, traffic, conversion data, and engagement. When reviewing hard copy printed pieces you may want to review reprint rates, or feedback from sales reps, and never be frightened to reach out to customers and ask them for their feedback. Find out what pieces resonate with your audience, and what pieces aren’t engaging them. Auditing your content also allows you to categorise your content for future use.
Once you have your core flagship piece or pieces identified you can think about your content atomization strategy, and how you can easily break that piece down into smaller chunks of content to fill gaps in your marketing funnel, with the goal of linking the new stand-alone pieces back to the core flagship piece, as well as to each other.
There are many ways you can atomize your content, these are just some ideas;
Long-form Content
White papers
Application notes
Science briefs
eBooks
Articles
Case studies
Testimonials
Multimedia
Video content
Podcasts
Webinars
Slideshare presentations
Flip books
Email Campaigns
Social Media Posts
Blog Posts
User-generated Pieces
Surveys and polls
Interactive quizzes
Conclusion
Breaking a larger piece into smaller pieces will help you fill gaps in your marketing funnel, communicating your big idea across multiple platforms and in multiple ways will allow you to speak to different types of customer personas who may engage with different forms of content.
Ultimately a content atomization strategy is resource efficient, it allows for your content to have a greater reach, whilst being less effort than trying to create brand new content, saving you time, money and resource.
Speak with Polymorphic Marketing to see how they can help you develop your content atomization strategy.
Telephone: +44 (0)207 4594201