First of all, don’t think of content as something you must give away for free. Content is widely available and, frankly, it’s easy to produce, but it’s not easy to produce good content. You get what you pay for, and if you pay for good content, you should look for ways to get a return on that investment.
Some content marketing consultants will tell you to focus on non-revenue returns, or they promise that offering valuable, relevant content for free will pay off in sales down the road. That’s a viable business model, but I challenge you to think about how to generate cash immediately. I challenge you to create content products that generate revenue directly.
To start, does your organization think about its content in terms of product? When you talk about the value you offer customers, can you point to tangible products? Or do you use vague terms such as “expertise,” “education” and “community?”
Expertise isn’t a product, but books, magazines and catalogs are. Education isn’t a product, but webinars, videos and podcasts are. Community and networking aren’t products, but events and online forums are.
The kinds of content products you create are going to depend on a number of variables, including your target audience, and budget and staff resources. Whatever products you choose to develop, remember that it’s not the platform that makes the product valuable. It’s the content the product delivers. For example, a newsletter is a product, but it’s not a product that generates cash if the content is awful, because no one will read it.
Developing content for products that generate cash is different than content development for marketing. In some way, the stakes are higher. As soon as you start asking customers to pay, the content you offer has to meet different standards. Here are some suggested criteria for content products designed to generate revenue:
- Invest in Proprietary Content: Develop one-of-a-kind content that can’t be easily recreated. In terms of product, create content that by its very nature creates a barrier to entry for competitors. One example might be a comprehensive, year-long research project that results in proprietary statistics.
- Invest in Exclusive Content: Developing exclusive content means a few things. On the one hand, it means cultivating sources and conducting reporting that leads to exclusive knowledge or information. At the same time, it means disseminating the information exclusively. It’s nearly impossible to keep information contained for long, but if it’s truly exclusive, enough people will pay to see it instantly, and you have an opportunity to generate revenue.
- Invest in Long-Term Projects: Again, if you think about research as the basis for content products, think about funding long-term projects. They can create a barrier to entry, lend themselves to exclusivity and they are easily repurposed into a variety of platforms. Instead of a book, think of a series of books based on a single topic or study.
- Invest in Professional Packaging: Templates are useful and have allowed many companies to arrange and disseminate content, but they limit flexibility. Hire a good designer to package your products, someone who can apply design theory to your strategic goals.
Filed under: Content Development, Content Marketing and Sales, Custom Publishing, Content Products
