Matt Riley
VP, SALES & MARKETING 

As marketers, we are always pursuing the quest for NEW content. NEW content—all the time. Always creating NEW content. It’s a habit that’s so ingrained in our psyche that we keep looking ahead to the next piece of must-share content.

But what about all that “old content”? What about the ideas you have already developed? You’ve invested your blood, sweat, and tears (and let’s not forget money). Money that you budgeted for (I hope), money that you convinced your CFO or owner that you desperately needed to spend in order to strengthen your marketing position. This is great stuff! There’s digital marketing brilliance here. 

Then, a month or so goes by and that awe-inspiring content feels stale, like it’s been sitting on the shelf a bit too long. Tired of something that has fallen to the rapid aging of our online culture, you catch a glimpse of the next bright, shiny object—a new idea, one that you haven’t yet approached, attacked, or answered.

Like a child’s toy that has outlived its appeal, the great, not-so-old content is discarded. 

Reuse, recycle, rethink.

But wait. Think about this. A new home customer is only in the market for 8 to 12 weeks. Then, they’re gone, GONE. A whole new set of homebuyers takes their place. You have all new eyes now looking at your company. They haven’t seen those photos, read those blogs, or watched your videos.

That means that you can reuse that great content all over again. What might seem stale to you is fresh and new to these prospective buyers. And remember, your job is to attract their attention and engage them, not satisfy your own desire to keep things new.

Now, I’m not saying you can kick back and keep recycling your content every few months. Sorry. It’s not that simple. You should continue to create new material, but not at the frantic pace of a content-crazed marketer.

We should always look for the opportunities for messaging and images that will excite customers. We need to find the sweet spot between complacency and frenzy—that Goldilocks-sort-of-place where it’s juuuuuust right.

The more you can reuse content, the greater the return on your investment in developing it. Let’s say it costs $5,000 to create a mini-commercial or really well-done video. Then, you use that video for a couple of years, so that $5K cost is spread out over a long time. When you break that down into the leads and sales that it created, that initial investment converts to only a few dollars per lead. 

Look at the library of content you have built over the last few years. Are there items that can be brought out of the archives, dusted off, freshened up, and reused?

At the same time, as you build new messaging, think about how it can be used for a long period, with perhaps some tweaks here and there.

That’s smart marketing!