Table of Contents
- 💡 High-impact success comes from identifying big ideas and then working your assets off.
- Five stages of awareness
Read time: 4 minutes
Author of High-Impact Content Marketing, this webinar is with Purna Virji. She’s a Principle Consultant at Linkedin, an international keynote speaker, a coach, a trainer, and she’s WICKED.
Purna took to the stage to share how even on a stretched budget, you can create high-impact content which drives results. She covered:
✖️ How to turn one idea into multiple fresh, unique pieces of high-performing content.
⏰ How to make the most of limited time to create content that actually lands with impact.
🌲 How to create evergreen content that just works, year after year.
Watch the full webinar back above, or read on for the key takeaways.
💡 High-impact success comes from identifying big ideas and then working your assets off.
The goal when creating content on a budget is to take one idea and transform it into dozens of fresh, different formats.
🗣️ The challenge
Go back through all of the content you’ve created over the last calendar year, and find your top five best-performing pieces. You’re going to translate these into new formats.
- Same concept, different people
Different audience segments influence purchase decisions in different ways. But most marketers know that it can be effective to find ways to tailor one idea to different people and audiences. By translating an idea into different contexts you can find ways to cater to your intended audience.
For example, one of the most important trends on social media at the moment is the rise of people focusing on thought leadership content. One reason that we’re seeing more of this type of content is because sales cycles are continuing to get longer, especially in B2B.
By involving key people in the content production and distribution, brands and businesses can stay top of mind for their audiences. People buy from people, so this type of content is invaluable.
If you’re thinking about whose voices you should amplify, Purna always recommends starting with sales people because their voices can help connect customers to the bottom line. By building that familiarity and building that rapport, your audience will start to associate your team with your products.
Repurpose one idea for and from different people to meet your audiences’ needs in a more personalised and relevant way.
- Same concept, different funnel stages
Best practice says that how you position your content should vary based on your audience’s level of awareness, interest and intent. This very quickly can become a complex puzzle as you will have to answer lots of different questions in different ways. Purna recommends thinking about the five stages of awareness – a concept that Eugene Schwarz created in his 1966 book, Breakthrough Advertising.
Five stages of awareness
- Unaware
People here don’t know that they have a problem or they just don’t know that there are ways that they could optimise their present reality. Content for them would need to focus on making them aware of the problem and reminding them why they don’t want to ignore it.
- Problem aware
Here, people know that they have a problem but they don’t yet know how to solve it. You should start digging into their pain points and showing that you understand and empathise with them at this stage, and then give them some hope and empowerment that there are things they can do to help themselves.
- Solution aware
So your audience knows they have a problem, and they know that solutions exist, but they may not know who you are as a company or that you might be a valuable contender for them to consider for purchase. What you need to do here is think about more educational content or brand awareness content to show how you can be a solution.
- Product aware
Your leads are getting warmer as they’re now aware of the solution you offer, but they’re also possibly aware of your competitors. Maybe they’re not quite ready to choose but they have a short list. This is where your thought leadership content comes in.
- Most aware
They’re close to choosing you but they haven’t yet. At this social proof content can do really well.
3. Same concept, different angles
Now we want to think about the best ways to get the message across. Your content calendar should be vibrant and diverse so you’ll want to have your content ignite multiple motivations and handle different objections.
The popular best practice is to speak to people’s buying motivations.
Often overlooked in content plans is the need to overcome the most common objections. Research has found that there tend to be four core objections so if you can proactively cover these with some of your content then you can give yourself a little bit of a an advantage.
Prioritisation – you can overcome this objection by showing how your offering will save them time or make them money.
Value – you can overcome this objection by showing how you’ll improve their future or help them avoid risk.
Perception – you can overcome this objection by focusing on trust and social proof as well as education.
Influence – you can overcome this objection by tailoring your content for the different levels of influence.
🌍 Diversify, diversify, diversify
Finally, remember to diversify your creative formats – both from the angle you take and from an inclusion perspective. Different people absorb content in different ways. Having multiple content formats is the more inclusive thing to do because you can engage people the way they prefer to consume content. By doing so you’ll also be able to reach more people.
🗣️ Closing thoughts
Find big ideas and then work your assets off. Think of your high-value content assets as long-term investments. Don’t treat them as disposable.