Are you ready to turn your marketing strategy up a notch? Take your content repurposing a step further to reach industry specific verticals. This not only helps you access new audiences, but equips your sales team with a toolkit for working with different prospective customers.
We’ve recently shared the benefits of content repurposing and how to repurpose marketing content, and even gave you some pretty awesome marketing collateral examples, BUT we have even more to share on this journey.
Want to see a verticalized strategy in action? Check out our work with PayScale, and how we created coordinated packages of demand generating content tailored to each vertical. You can even request some samples to get a closer look.
Before you get started, let’s take a look at the why and how of marketing to industry verticals:
Why use vertical-specific content
Your product or service is likely being used by companies in many different industries – from technology to education and healthcare, to maybe even aerospace or beauty. Are your marketing efforts speaking to them all?
Vertical specific content aids your sales team in expanding to different industries and helps to create a better connection with prospects, ultimately leading to more targeted sales. Think of it like another form of content repurposing – just this time, with audience-specific goals.
How to create vertical content
It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get started! I’m going to share our process on how to create the most effective vertical content, so you can get a step ahead of the competition:
Step 1: Select your target industries.
This isn’t a solo activity. Sit down with members of your sales and marketing team to brainstorm which industries you would like to target. Find out from sales what feedback they are getting from outreach, who is showing the most interest and which industries seem to be a good fit. Review statistics from marketing campaigns, and drill down to the nitty-gritty of industry and organization. Look at the information as a whole to determine which industries to target. If your list is long, break it into groups of no more than four to five industries each to not overwhelm your teams with marketing efforts. Plan to work through one group at a time, analyzing results as you go.
Step 2: Research each industry audience.
Selecting your industries is only half of the battle. The next step requires research. Take time to really understand your audience, who you are trying to reach and how your product or service helps solve their pain-points. Brush off those buyer personas, get reacquainted, and see how they apply to each audience. You may find your target customers have different positions or motivations across industries, requiring you to create a few new buyer personas. While this may feel a little overwhelming or like a lot of extra work, trust me when I say this: it pays off in the end, as it will ensure you are reaching the right people in each industry.
Step 3: Decide which content pieces to use.
Now that you know more about your target customers within each industry, it’s time to figure out which content will best resonate with them. Use all of the great information that came out of your research to select which content will have the most impact. You may find that you will need to create different marketing collateral for each target industry (don’t worry, that’s pretty standard for this type of focused marketing). For example, one of our Content Matterz clients was looking to reach the education, healthcare and technology markets, so we found it to be effective to use infographics and videos for all three industries, but also included an eBook for the technology sector. The eBook allowed us to dive into some more technical details that weren’t as relevant for education and healthcare, but really spoke to the technology customers.
Step 4: Start repurposing.
Now is the fun part. Repurposing! Take the foundational piece you are going to use – that amazing eBook or white paper that has brought great results so far – and use that as your guide for creating infographics, video scripts, blog posts, emails, etc. for your target industries. When creating these new pieces, update the content and imagery to be geared toward your specific target industries. Pull from all of the research you gathered in Steps 1, 2 and 3 to really help guide your content. In the end, you will have effective, targeted materials in your marketing toolbox.
Get those targeted campaigns started!
Now that you have all the goods, it’s time to start marketing! Sit down with your sales team to ensure everyone is on the same page in regards to goals, timing and promotional offers. Draw out a plan for each vertical that makes the most sense for that specific audience, and then put your content to work. Don’t set it and forget it: monitor results and adjust if you notice one vertical is responding better to a specific message or piece of content. And don’t forget to incorporate social media with each campaign, using hashtags to reach specific audiences.
Not sure how to get started or just feeling a little overwhelmed? We’re here to help! We love getting into the nitty-gritty of vertical campaign marketing strategy and content creation. Give us a shout-out today and we’ll help you get on the road to marketing success.