Demand Marketer's Guide to Repurposing Content for Each Funnel Stage

Summary

Synopsis:

The role of content repurposing
Preferred content types by each stage of the sales funnel
How to repurpose different content types

Content marketing is a key tactic for the success of demand generation and B2B digital marketing strategies, particularly due to its potential to support continuous optimisation of the buyer's journey. Content plays a major part in driving interest for a brand across different marketing channels, helping companies establish their identity and authority as expert solution providers in their specific industry, and attract qualified leads.

The importance of quality content for prospective buyers throughout their buyer’s journey has never been higher. Indeed, according to The Voice of the Buyer 2024 survey conducted by INFUSE, most (40.4%) B2B buyers consume 4-6 content pieces during a tech purchase process. However, a significant number of buyers (20.7%) engage with 7-10 content pieces in this period. This solidifies the role played by content in the buyer’s journey, and the need to produce and share valuable content with prospects to inform their decisions.

However, crafting high-quality content can be a time-consuming and potentially costly process, especially when scaling personalisation efforts. Therefore, a powerful strategy for maximising the value of new and existing content is to implement content repurposing. This allows businesses to take advantage of their existing libraries to create other content formats and reach new target audiences, maximising the ROI of content pieces.

Content repurposing is a particularly relevant strategy given the current environment and the pressure on delivering ROI for marketing budgets. 20% of senior marketers note this as a priority issue, compounded by 70% of high-level marketers having experienced budget reductions over the past 2 years (Digital Marketing Institute, 2022). INFUSE Voice of the Marketer 2024 research also indicates that lack of resources and driving ROI are top challenges for 32% of marketers.

As a budget-friendly strategy, content repurposing can play an important role in driving the performance of demand generation efforts. Repurposing can help reach audiences in their preferred channels, contributing to cementing brand reputation and catering to specific buyer preferences. This is ever more important at a point in which buying groups expand, incorporating more decision makers that play different roles in different stages of the buying process.

In this article, we explore how marketers can repurpose existing content to engage the entire buying group at target accounts, based on their role in the buying process and funnel stage.

Aligning content by sales funnel stage

The sales funnel breaks down the average buyer's journey into three distinctive steps, each one with its own unique needs, objections, and preferences.

For this reason, it is essential not only to offer a broad scope of content but also to present it in different formats to ensure its performance with its target audience. Repurposing is therefore crucial to make the most out of content marketing and ensure that your content accurately caters to your buyers’ needs as they progress through their journey.

Top of funnel (TOFU) stage

The awareness stage

This stage begins when buyers first become aware of a brand. TOFU content will most likely be consumed by business professionals and must be based on thought leadership to promote the brand as an innovator in its space.

At this stage, prospective buyers demonstrate a preference for short-form content with upfront value delivery, showcasing how your company can help them overcome their challenges.

Checklists
Blog posts and articles
Listicles
Social media posts
Search engine-based marketing

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Middle of funnel (MOFU) stage

The consideration stage

Prospects in this stage have locked into a narrow range of possibilities that answer their needs and are comparing these offers and considering their differences. MOFU content is primarily consumed by managerial-level team members.

Leads at this stage are ready to consume longer-form content, as well as materials demonstrating the value of your products. Some ideas of content for the MOFU stage are:

Blog posts and articles
Whitepapers sharing unique research reports
Webinars
Free tools
Podcasts
Product samples
Email nurturing

Consider activating your content with email nurturing to educate your prospects and tackle their main objections. Regularly sharing relevant content will help further enhance the probability that they will make a purchase.

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Bottom of funnel (BOFU) stage

In this stage, prospects have already identified your brand as one of the top solution providers, and may now be considering practical issues such as pricing and bundling offers in order to complete their purchase. As such, these prospects still need further nurturing to close a deal.

BOFU content must target executive-level team members, and feature actionable tools and demos that showcase product information in a positive, approachable light.

Prospects at this stage are almost ready to complete a purchase and therefore can receive targeted content that seeks to counter their last objections before doing so. This stage is also ideal for transmitting messaging promoting the unique value of your products compared to competitors. Some of the most adequate content for this stage include:

Case studies
Product comparisons
Targeted discount pages
Email nurturing

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How to repurpose content based on type

Start with selecting the best content pieces to repurpose. Data and analytics are powerful allies for determining your top-performing content and indicating which topics and pieces resonate with your audience the most. Metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), referral traffic, and average session time can also help you locate the content with the highest performance. Furthermore, feedback from your sales representatives can also serve as a basis for selecting content that performs the best, especially when catering to individual buyer personas.

Evergreen content is a strong contender for repurposing, as it is less likely to become outdated and require a series of derived content to also be updated. Therefore, the content you select for repurposing must not only demonstrate superior performance but also be up-to-date with the industry's latest standards. Remember to pay close attention to stats, which may expire fairly quickly, depending on the industry.

Furthermore, companies must be wary not to overestimate the capabilities of AI in generating repurposed content—although it can be a powerful tool to optimise processes, an overreliance on AI for content creation can result in issues such as plagiarism or misinformation.

Here are the various possibilities for content repurposing based on multiple content types.

Articles

According to INFUSE Insights, articles are the top-performing content type for the majority of marketers (48%). Articles allow greater flexibility in terms of length and are typically text-based, offering a broad scope of repurposing possibilities:

Snippets and highlights from articles can be repurposed into social media posts
Different articles can be leveraged to further educate your audience on your solutions, making them a top-quality asset for lead nurturing
The content in your articles can be adapted for podcast or video formats, reaching different audiences across multiple channels
Articles can also be adapted into one-pagers, for quick consumption by decision makers, and also to be leveraged by sales teams as accessible sources of information

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Webinars, webcasts, and other video content

The Voice of the Marketer 2024 survey states that webcasts are tied with whitepapers and eBooks (both at 46%) as the second-highest-performing content type. Such content must be therefore prioritised to cater to current buyer preferences. However, its production can be resource-intensive, which makes video content a prime target for repurposing, helping marketers make the most value out of this effort. This content form can be repurposed in different ways, as follows:

Transcriptions can be adapted into articles and blog posts
Key takeaways from the material can be adapted into short-form text content, such as listicles and checklists
Highlight snippets can be repurposed for social media posts
Videos can be an initial touchpoint for a whitepaper or eBook, which goes into further detail on the topic

Whitepapers and eBooks

Since whitepapers and eBooks typically go into more detail on insights from research or branded information (such as product analysis), they are prime for being repurposed into shorter content formats. These shorter formats can then serve as an initial touchpoint, which encourages the lead to consume the entirety of the whitepaper/eBook.

Some examples of content include:

Key takeaways and highlights can be repurposed into shorter pieces such as articles, blog posts, and listicles
Discussion on the key findings can be recorded and transmitted as podcasts or webcasts
Salespeople can develop their own lead nurturing emails and messages with information from the long-form content
Whitepapers and eBooks can inform press releases for news outlets and industry blogs/magazines

Case studies

Case studies are focused on demonstrating the value your company can offer to clients facing similar challenges. Such materials can be repurposed into different content types, as follows:

Sales enablement materials, to educate prospects on how your company can help them overcome their challenges
One-pagers summarising how your company helped clients facing similar issues
Videos and slides demonstrating how your solutions solved key challenges
Social proof via quotes and data from case studies, which can be featured in emails, social media, and sales outreach

Podcasts

In the B2B space, podcasts are long-form audio content that usually contains in-depth discussions on industry developments. These discussions can be repurposed in different ways:

Snippets and quotes can be transcribed for social media posts
A full transcription, thoroughly reviewed and adjusted, can serve as a basis for articles and blog posts
Recording the podcasts with video input can help you repurpose them into clips for social media and platforms such as YouTube, whilst also enabling you to present them as webcasts, one of the top-performing content types according to the INFUSE Insights Voice of the Marketer 2024 report

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Get in touch with a demand expert for the full results of the Voice of the Marketer 2024 report, featuring top content types, main challenges, and priorities for marketers for the year ahead

3-step content repurposing guide to maximise performance

Content repurposing helps companies maximise the value of their content by expanding its use for a range of channels, as well as enabling greater personalisation and targeting to address diverse buyer preferences.

This strategy should be informed by lead intelligence to identify and focus on the preferred channels of your audience, as well as on the topics and formats that drive performance goals.

In this section, we take a look at an example strategy focused on content repurposing, seeking to maximise ROI and performance.

Conduct an audit of existing content pieces

Evaluate your current content to identify the most suitable pieces for repurposing, updating where necessary.

When updating content, make sure to:

Check all stats and sources to ensure they are not outdated
Update visuals and navigational elements to improve the user experience
Update or add CTAs to encourage conversions
Check brand voice and messaging, as this may have evolved over time
Analyse for SEO performance and add keywords

This is only a list of some recommended actions to take when auditing your content. Each company may have different priorities when auditing its library to drive content performance.

Plan your repurposing strategy

After identifying the content types most popular with your audience, you are ready to start repurposing your content. Adapt your top-performing pieces into other formats also favored by your audience to ensure their performance.

Remember that buyers are increasingly expecting a personalised approach. Therefore, promoting high-quality content that aligns with the challenges buyers face at each funnel stage is more important than ever.

Creating evergreen content is a great way to ensure the cost-effectiveness and repurposing capabilities of your content strategy. Evergreen content refers to content pieces that retain relevance and value over an extended time. Although these pieces may benefit from timely updates, the idea is to avoid short-lived trends that may lose relevance quickly, seeking instead to ensure content remains useful and informative long after its initial publication.

Evergreen content holds particular significance for repurposing, for reasons such as its ability to attract consistent traffic over a long period. These pieces usually serve as educational resources that answer common pain points and questions, serving as foundational pieces around which you can build related content.

Therefore, your content strategy must have pillar, evergreen pieces that address core challenges in your industry. Subsequently, related pieces derived from these pillars must branch into specific niches to cater to more personalised pain points.

Fuel your repurposing strategy with analytics and feedback

Analysing performance data has become more important than ever since demonstrating the influence of sales and marketing efforts on revenue is a top priority for 64% of demand professionals in 2024 (according to INFUSE Voice of the Marketer 2024 research).

This means that tracking metrics such as conversions (which can be correlated to sales meetings and revenue) is key to showcasing the value of your content repurposing efforts. In other words, compare performance levels before and after repurposing each asset and on each channel.

Input from sales representatives is also crucial for producing high-quality repurposed content, ensuring that materials are aligned with buyer needs and capable of truly enabling sales conversations.

Key takeaways

High-quality content plays a significant role in driving conversions in the buyer's journey
Content repurposing helps marketers maximise ROI on existing content pieces by reaching new audiences and more channels, whilst catering to unique buyer preferences
Leads in the TOFU stage prefer short-form content; the MOFU stage is better suited for content that enables comparisons and decisions; and the BOFU stage must focus on addressing any remaining buyer concerns
Evergreen pieces tend to be the most valuable for content repurposing, making performing audits on current content essential for ensuring performance