Chances are you’ve seen ads or commercial spots for Disney’s latest hit Frozen 2. Ana and Elsa returned to the big screen late last year to shatter just about every box office record. It’s a rare thing for a sequel to outshine the original motion picture, but Frozen 2 managed and is now the highest-grossing animated film of all time. Here’s the kicker…while the movie brought in a cool $1.32 billion in theatres, the licensed goods including books, clothes, toys and soundtrack brought in more than 10 times that amount.
Why should you care? Well, it’s a lesson on how to make the most of your content. Disney invested a lot of time and money in creating the Frozen movies, which are basically an accumulation of characters, stories, and music. They then reused each of those elements to create even more content – minimum effort, maximum return on investment.
Could you do the same?
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #1: Ebook or Guide
If you’re going to make a project like this work, you need to start with something meaty. I suggest an ebook or whitepaper (what’s the difference?) that makes the most of your expertise. As an example, let’s pretend that I am going to write an ebook titled ‘Sales Enablement: What is it? Why do you need it? And how do you get started today?’* This is a big topic (ahem, story) with a lot I could say, as well as various stats and studies I could include. It’s nice and chunky. Feature-length.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #2: Infographic
Use some of the ebook’s key takeaways and most interesting facts to create an infographic. Infographics are great for sharing on social media, and if you make them free for other people to use, you might also see a nice jump in your backlinks. The infographic will also serve as a good advert for your ebook, leading to more downloads – almost like movie artwork.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #3: Thought leadership piece
You’ll notice that when authors bring out new books, they get on the publishing trail, appearing on TV and radio, in book stores and in newspapers, writing OpEd pieces or features that relate to their book. Your thought leadership piece is the same kind of thing – whether it’s a summary of the key themes of the ebook (with a personal slant, please), or a focus piece that looks at just one aspect of your findings.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #4: Social media content
Tweets and memes that relay key points from your ebook provide both content for your social feed and a link back to the ebook. Try not to think of it as advertising – you’re aiming to provide meaningful content that people find value in, which they then reward with a like and share or retweet.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #5: Video
Reduce your ebook to a collection of soundbites and curate those into one or more videos, which you can post across all your channels. Short videos are particularly valuable because they’re more likely to be shared on social media.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #6: Blogs
The options here are endless: summarize the ebook, break it up into chapters, focus on specific stats, visit it from different perspectives, and so on. For example, from my imaginary ebook, I could publish the following blog posts:
- What Is Sales Enablement?
- 10 Sales Enablement Statistics That Will Make You Want To Try It
- The Top 6 Considerations For Selecting A Sales Enablement Platform
- How To Build A Business Case For Sales Enablement
- 5 B2B Business Challenges Solved By Sales Enablement
- 3 Fortune 500 Companies Getting Sales Enablement Right (And What You Can Learn From Them)
And on and on and on…The key is to keep it interesting and make sure you are always providing value – don’t duplicate content, even if you have changed the words a bit. Give people just enough to make them want to download the ebook.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #7: Conference paper
Your ebook is so good people want you to present it at conferences – hooray! Turning an ebook into a paper is a great opportunity to break into new areas. Make sure your paper adds a little something though. No one wants to hear you read your ebook out loud.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #8: Outreach pieces
Similar to a blog post for your own website, the options for an outreach piece of fairly limitless – and again, it’s a great way to boost traffic on your website. Pitch your ideas to publications that serve your target audience and bear in mind they will want something original and insightful, not a puff piece.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #9: Targeted email campaign
The ebook is available for download on your website, but have your customers actually read it? Possibly not. One way to make sure they do is to create a targeted email campaign that highlights something from the book that you think is particularly relevant to your customer. A few paragraphs and an image (perhaps a stat or graph) together with a link to download the ebook, and you’ve got yourself an email that adds value and could drive traffic back to your website.
Sales or Marketing Content Asset #10: Merchandise
Sure, merchandise is probably more Disney’s bag than ours, but if you’re really proud of your ebook and there is a takeaway sentiment or stat that bears repeating on a tote bag, ballpoint pen, or mug, then why not? Turn a conference giveaway into a helpful reminder of a lesson learned from an insightful ebook!
*In case you’re interested, we do have a guide to help you get started with Sales Enablement. Download the Sales Leader’s All-Inclusive Guide to Sales Enablement or the Marketing Leader’s All-Inclusive Guide to Sales Enablement now. See what we did there?
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