Repurposing assets: Getting the most out of your media

As marketers, we love the idea of creating something new and exciting - it’s as much about keeping us interested as it is our audience! But sometimes it pays to reuse an old asset.

We touched on this point in a recent blog post and it feels as though there’s so much more to say about it. Having previously discussed “wasted ad spend” and getting the most out of your marketing budget, what better way to save money whilst not compromising performance than to reutilise assets that you know are working.

When you reuse assets, you are making the best use of your resources. Repurposing means you will save money on the time and cost of content development, while still potentially generating a good deal of brand awareness and engagement. 

Out with the old, in with the old

At the end of each marketing campaign, there comes the ‘big throw out’ i.e., the removal of all content that is no longer active and relevant. But, hold your horses for a minute before you spike all that old content.

The first thing you should be asking yourself is: ‘Have my audience even had the chance to discover this content in the first place?’ A lot of the content that brands produce simply isn’t given the distribution and promotion it deserves.

A recent report by Brandfolder and Demand Metric found that 51% of marketers waste money producing or recreating assets that go unused because people don’t know they exist or can’t find them.

There is potentially life in this under-utilised content yet, even if it was created for a previous campaign.

Meanwhile, for content that has seen the light of day, you should be inspecting it for all it’s worth, identifying what seemed to resonate and what didn’t, before assessing whether it has any legs to be reused. 

Reusing doesn’t mean rerunning

The beauty of the digital world means that any asset can be repurposed into a different format, channel, or for a different audience.

Videos can be shortened to GIFs, images can be grouped and used in carousels or short videos alongside facts and stats from blog posts, and you can even reuse video audio for podcasts!

There are so many creative ways to reuse assets without simply rerunning them in their original form; cherry-picking the content based on what your data is telling you, of course, and finding ways to improve it further.

It’s not rocket science, as they say, but you’ll be surprised how few brands squeeze their, frankly expensive, assets for all their worth. At least not to full effect.

While 60% of marketers repurpose content two to five times, only 29% have a strategy for doing it. In fact, 45% of businesses use automated marketing efforts for repurposing content regularly, which suggests they’re not repurposing at all but rather rerunning it - two very different things.

Repurposing for new audiences

Excuse us stating the obvious for a minute - but we need to be clear here - repurposing means exactly that: giving the content a new purpose by adapting it in some way.

One effective way of doing this is to think about how you can find a new audience for your existing content - in particular, adapting it for an older demographic.

Visual content is often targeted at younger audiences, due to the amount of time that Gen Z are spending online watching videos. However, fun fact: the older audiences constantly outspend the younger generations, yet they aren’t often represented in adverts and can feel ignored by advertising.

The ageing population of the UK means that marketers should start paying more attention to the older audiences, even if they only represent a modest percentage of your target market in comparison to younger consumers.

The best way to do this without also neglecting your younger audiences is to reutilise the assets created and repurpose them into formats that older audiences will appreciate and find engaging. 

With 70% of older users mainly using the internet to read news or other online publications, there’s something to be said for repositioning existing content within the longer-form context - by publishing on publications that are known and trusted by this audience.

Turn your best bits into branded content

With long form content in the publisher environment, you essentially get your own fully branded page that sits in a trusted and well-known publication. You can use the right rail to display your social media feeds, repurpose videos into GIFs for the header image, and have short video clips throughout the article.

Long form content allows you to tell your brand story and aid brand recall, and this can be supported further by including familiar assets, breaking up the text and allowing your audience to consume your content through different mediums but all in one place.

There's a good reason why branded content outstrips display ads and pre-roll ads when it comes to effectiveness - some 70% of consumers prefer learning about a brand through high-quality content.

Now, let’s start chopping up your best bits and put them together as cohesive branded content.