Should you repurpose website content for printing? Creating a website for your business takes time, planning, and usually a few excellent writers and content creators to make the site attractive to potential customers. Websites use everything from eye-catching graphics, gorgeous photography, compelling articles, and informational content to reach potential customers and bring in business.
This digital content is critical to the success of many types of businesses, but developing quality online content is not the only way to grow your business. Print products like flyers, brochures, and professional books all play a part in a well-designed marketing plan. Many businesses repurpose website content to extend the life of quality, meaningful content that appeals to their audience.
- Why Businesses Repurpose Website Content
- Ways to Repurpose Website Content Strategically
- 1. Be intentional as you repurpose website content.
- 2. Choose content with the most impact when you repurpose website content.
- 3. Transform great content into print format.
- 4. Choose the best way to repurpose website content.
- 5. Keep track of what you use and where it is used.
- Planning to Print Website Material
Why Businesses Repurpose Website Content
Businesses choose to make marketing content decisions for many different reasons, but repurpose website content into printed materials is more common than you might think. And companies make this smart move because it is good for business in multiple ways.
- Repurposing saves money in content creation. Many companies are excellent at what they do, like making and selling a great product or service, but hiring a content creator may not be a priority. So instead of paying for all new content to be developed for a print campaign, repurpose website content that has already been created specifically for the company saves the marketing budget, even if some changes to the content have to be made in the process.
- Businesses know that good content encourages customers to act, so to repurpose website content that has already proven effective at reaching customers is a smart strategy.
- Website content reaches exclusively online consumers, but the decision to print repurpose website content can help a business reach non-digital customers.
- Print content, especially evergreen content, can be used to drive customers to your website. Flyers, booklets, brochures, posters and other printed materials can help direct consumers back to your dynamic online content where you can keep pricing, descriptions, and informational content up to date at all times.
Ways to Repurpose Website Content Strategically
A business that has invested time and money into video, audio, or written website content can easily repurpose it, so it looks and feels fresh and new. These five steps can help you repurpose website content into printed materials that will help you market your business to an even wider audience than ever before.
1. Be intentional as you repurpose website content.
Just because you have an engaging video or link on your website with a high volume of visitors doesn’t mean that it is the perfect website content to repurpose. Instead, first, decide what purpose you want the printed materials to fulfill before choosing the content to focus on. Marketing products are created to reach a specific goal, so thinking about what you want to accomplish with your print products and what you need the outcome to be is the first step to repurpose website content.
Just about every type of marketing function can be fulfilled with a printed marketing product because it is developed to speak directly to its intended audience. Marketing materials can focus on creating advertising sales and promotions or building brand awareness and loyalty in customers. They can be used to build trust with customers and the community or simply to educate the community, the customers, or a specific audience about a business’s industry or specific niche.
Both digital and print marketing materials can be used to improve SEO rankings and they can aid in pipeline filling. The purpose of marketing materials can be to recognize thought leadership within your business or they can show your business’s community service or the business’s impact on the community.
2. Choose content with the most impact when you repurpose website content.
Once you know how you want to repurpose website content to function, select the content that has already shown to be effective at reaching your customers or intended audience. Content that has gone viral, like a video or podcast that gained notoriety in some way, might be a good selection if the content’s new format focuses on the aspect that made the content so popular.
But website content that has proven to reach the right audience because the content is meaningful and customers respond to it makes it an excellent choice for repurposing print website material.
3. Transform great content into print format.
Most likely, the website content you will be repurposing will not be ready to copy and paste into a print product. Instead, you will need to look at the content with fresh eyes to see how you can best repurpose website content into print form.
- Blog posts can be combined to create a longer-form product like a book, brochure, or even a brief pamphlet.
- Reviews and customer feedback can be farmed for testimonial quotes that work well on flyers or posters, highlighting the authentic voices of a business’s customers.
- Digital content like eBooks can be transformed into printed books with a few small changes.
- Companies can use webinar transcripts and the accompanying slides, graphics, or photographs to create an informational booklet. Multiple webinars can be combined into an informational book or a set of FAQ-style pamphlets.
- Videos can be boiled down to their transcripts which can be written out as interviews or summary articles in print form.
4. Choose the best way to repurpose website content.
A transcript of a 20-minute video interview might be too long to use in print form, but snippets of the video might be great candidates to repurpose as a print product. Some website content may be utilized in multiple ways, and some may not ultimately be the right fit for a print project.
So thinking about the most effective way to take that quality content and boil it down to a printed format that still reaches the right audience is key.
- Long or Lengthy Website Content: Consider breaking up long video or audio clips into multiple projects. Large data sets and involved graphics can all be divided into smaller print projects and still retain their effectiveness.
- Outdated Content: Take the opportunity to make improvements to outdated digital copy. Dates, photographs, graphics, and data can all be refreshed at a minimal cost when transitioning to a printed format.
5. Keep track of what you use and where it is used.
The easiest way to track repurposed website content is to keep a live spreadsheet with all of the content’s key metrics. This database will help you get the most out of content that your company has already developed without overusing or missing key content. Your spreadsheet should hold information like:
- The origin date of the initial content
- Original title or content name
- Original creator(s)
- Summary of content and link to the full content
- Original purpose
- Original format (video, audio, blog, article, interview, graphic, chart, etc.)
- Length of original content
- Print medium (article, poster, advertising blurb, book, pamphlet, or other printed product)
- Purpose for new content format (to increase brand awareness, to fill the pipeline, or to introduce a new product, for example)
- Repurposed content creator(s)
- Date of printed content
Planning to Print Website Material
Does your website content help your business reach customers, engage them in actions, and build up your company’s brand? Then it’s time to print website material that will keep the excitement about your business high while minimizing the cost of new content creation.
Whether your company’s popular how-to videos are repurposed as meaningful booklets to hand out to clients or your excellent online reviews will make the perfect addition to your latest marketing flyers, the next step is to create and print the products you need.
Partnering with a trusted printing company like Dazzle Printing can help you make the most of your marketing strategy with gorgeous products that extend the life of your quality content by smartly repurposing website material.