The 3Rs of Content Marketing for B2B Brands

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Recent years have shaped up to be quite eventful. We've witnessed the rise of generative AI, embarked on a journey toward enhanced sustainability, and continued navigating through waves of economic instability, layoffs, and financial constraints across various sectors—all in the wake of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

As a result of those challenges (among several others), marketing departments have continued to confront budget cutbacks with seemingly little to no rightsized KPIs to reflect those alterations, and with far fewer resources across the board to help achieve them.

With more economic uncertainty on the horizon, and despite ongoing resource and bandwidth challenges, marketers have gotten creative in their pursuit of efficiency and optimal impact.

For example, companies are experimenting with generative AI for content development (among other use cases), aimed at maintaining volume levels in both backend and client-facing deliverables.

However, at this stage in the emerging technology's development, generative AI can be a risky endeavor, and it shouldn't be applied throughout a marketing organization lightly. Some 44% of survey respondents said they still feel uneasy around the use of AI in marketing and would move away from a brand that relied on AI instead of people for storytelling, according to the 2023 Brand Experience Report on the use of AI in B2B marketing.

But generative AI isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future, and it certainly has its augmentative merits, yet it's not the only solution to enhanced marketing efficiency or impact.

In fact, sometimes all that's needed is a trip back to the basics. Like a baseball player or golfer who focus on the fundamental mechanics of their swing, or a hockey player who practices the foundational elements of passing and receiving the puck to hone touch, some brands are going back to the basics with techniques that have proven successful over the years and remain invaluable components in every marketer's tool kit.

One such approach—known as the 3Rs—has been around for years, and it is again influencing marketing strategies across channels.

What Are the 3Rs of Content Marketing?

The 3Rs is a tried-and-true content strategy that refers to repackaging, repurposing, and reoptimizing.

By strategically applying those concepts to existing content, businesses are able to not only maintain their competitive edge and relevance, even with limited resources, but also ensure that time already invested in content creation yields the highest possible return on investment.

Let's take a closer look at each of these principles and how they can be seamlessly integrated into any content strategy for maximum time-to-value.

1. The Magic of Repackaging

Empowering marketers with the ability to harness pre-existing—and often high-performing—content, repackaging involves a creative transformation of a content's format to better align with the ever-evolving preferences in content consumption.

The result is the generation of fresh content infused with the same relevant messaging that is better positioned to engage a target audience how and where they desire.

Consider this scenario: A company has a well-received infographic summarizing key industry trends, but reports show a decline in infographic performance across the board. Instead of starting from scratch, the company opts to repackage this infographic into a visually engaging video. This adaptation not only caters to the changing preferences of its audience but also extends the reach capability of the original content to a broader audience set.

By evolving from a proven starting point with tailored mediums, marketers can move from blog post to trade publication article to long-form LinkedIn post from the same asset, creating a bigger bang for the content buck while getting a better feel for what their audience likes.

Repackaging content has the power to reinvigorate and rejuvenate the way we view existing material across paid, earned, and owned channels (like the concept of repurposing, which is the second of the 3Rs).

2. The Power of Repurposing

Repurposing allows marketers to derive maximum value from existing content, transforming a single asset to fit new audience segments or new business goals, or to even branch off into new ideas.

For example, you might take a single report on the use of AI in public relations and adapt it to verticals so it speaks directly to specific industries, such as healthcare, cybersecurity, and human resources.

By tailoring the repurposed content to address the unique challenges and opportunities within each industry, a marketer can effectively engage diverse target audiences with consistent messaging while establishing the brand as an authoritative source across multiple sectors.

Overall, repackaging changes the format of the content but keeps the core message, whereas repurposing involves more in-depth modifications to adapt the core message to specific audiences or goals. By tapping into the power of repurposed content in every facet of a content strategy, marketers have the potential to significantly enhance the reach and value of the content. Which brings us to the third and final R: reoptimizing.

3. The Impact of Reoptimizing

In content marketing, success often involves the continual enhancement or reoptimization of existing content for improved SEO, user engagement, conversion, and the like.

One tactic might be to update otherwise high-performing content that has dropped in search ranking, by adding fresh data, revised metadata, relevant links, and keywords.

For instance, imagine a B2B company that has published an in-depth guide on emerging trends in artificial intelligence for business operations. Over time, the guide would decline in search rankings as newer content emerges, so reoptimizing it for information relevance and accuracy would allow it to continue to keep pace with the dynamic landscape of AI while serving as a go-to source of information that remains higher up in search rankings.

Reoptimization helps ensure that content consistently provides relevant value, making it more effective across paid, earned, and owned channels

As marketers, we consistently monitor content performance, but it's important to prioritize high-performing and high-demand topics, and to use SEO tools for data-driven improvements that afford the ability to better assess the impact of marketing efforts.

Maximizing Marketing Efficiency and Effectiveness With the 3Rs

Each of the 3Rs plays a valuable role in a modern omnichannel marketing approach in which a single piece of content—from social media graphics and sales decks to PR materials and more—can be recycled into several others.

Thinking about content in a one-to-many way helps extend the lifecycle and return on brand-to-demand content. It also helps re-enforce consistent brand messaging across platforms and streamlines the creation-to-publish timeline, alleviating strain on marketing bandwidth to allow focusing on other equally important initiatives.

In a time of shifting search engine algorithms, ever-evolving consumer behaviors, the imminent downfall of third-party cookies, and the re-evaluation of digital investments, the 3Rs are a solid practice to put in place to help remain competitive—regardless of the current economic situation.

By repackaging, repurposing, and reoptimizing content, marketers can maximize time-to-value without overworking teams. It's a no-brainer.