When you’ve worked as long as I have in the content space, you notice a thing or two about why businesses that struggle to successfully market their offerings struggle in the first place.
They might know the right things about what makes their brand tick, yet no amount of grammatical finesse can illustrate the bigger picture of how and where to message those brand ideals. Put another way, they deliver their core messaging in the same content format over and over again expecting consistently great results, then throw up their hands in confusion when things don’t work out how they hoped.
Read on for three reasons why emphasizing varied content formats in your wider content marketing strategy can drastically improve your ROI—straight from our copywriting and marketing experts.
1. Varied content formats can help you reach broader audiences.
Here at MarketSmiths, we’re all writers; it goes without saying we love long-form content.
But the reality is many in every target audience will never read an eBook. B2C organizations have to contend with users that listen to podcasts on two-times speed and throw lavishly produced YouTube videos on as background noise while they play Fortnite or wash dishes. And B2B organizations know decision makers like executive VPs have a million things on their plate and won’t hesitate to close a tab if they can’t immediately find the answer to their question or identify a clear value prop.
More broadly, there’s more competition for people’s attention than ever, making it imperative to keep abreast of the myriad content formats users resonate with. For example, if you focus on long-form content like blogs and eBooks but aren’t seeing great clickthrough rates, consider balancing that output with shorter content like social posts and TikTok videos—formats that can bring people to the longer-form content that digs deeper into your value to drive revenue. Conversely, if your social engagement is great but isn’t bringing people to your sales pages, consider reorienting your wider social media strategy to ask questions only your web content—where your offering pages live—can answer.
Of course, at the outset, adapting to unfamiliar content formats can be daunting. How do you come up with high-quality, format-specific content that’s on message?
The answer may be simpler than you think.
2. Varied content formats can uncover messaging opportunities
Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan once said, “The medium is the message.” For content marketers, this saying echoes a truth: it’s easier to generate compelling original ideas for a target format than it is to reorient existing content made for one format to another; the medium becomes the message.
For example, when ideating on thought leadership posts for social media, the format’s constraints and expectations—for social media: low character counts, memorable hashtags, account tags, etc.—naturally exclude ideas with more meat on their bones that would better fit long-form formats like blog posts and eBooks.
Once identifying ideas that won’t work for a target format becomes second nature, it’s easier to identify new ideas that will. This pivots your content team’s headspace toward better pinpointing new messaging opportunities they otherwise may not have hit on in constraining their thinking to familiar content formats. In some cases, you may even be able to re-tailor those new ideas to fit other formats, thus greatly expanding your content footprint.
3. Varied content formats help future-proof your business
No one knows what the future holds; who could have anticipated the rise of platforms like TikTok or the steady freefall in relevance of once-mainstays like Twitter and Netflix?
New content creation and delivery technologies will be a constant, making the need to embrace a varied content format approach across your content marketing team imperative for engendering the culture of innovation needed to stay competitive in the future. In doing so, you can be agile in identifying and adapting to emerging content formats before others in your sector to own budding markets. Otherwise, you’ll be left scrambling to pivot while others embrace growth- and revenue-driving opportunities you’ll miss out on.
Too much repetition hurts, so vary your content formats
Now more than ever, it’s crucial to embrace and invest in the knowhow necessary to create content in the formats people resonate with. In doing so, you plant seeds which each can become their own revenue and growth driver by opening up your business.
That doesn’t mean there’s never a time and place to rest on your laurels—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as they say. But if you ever get that nagging feeling you’re overly relying on your tried-and-true content formats, that’s probably a sign it’s time to change things up.
Need a dedicated partner that can identify—and execute on—a diverse array of content formats to ensure you’re maximizing your marketing ROI? MarketSmiths’s Content Catalyst program was designed for just that. Get in touch today!
