When it comes to content marketing, the only way to improve results is to create more content. Right? Wrong. According to the BrightEdge Future of Content Marketing survey, “43% of marketers say 77% of their content isn’t being consumed by anyone, let alone their intended audience.” This means that you’re relying on just one-quarter of your content to do all the work of generating traffic, engagement, and conversion—and even then, there’s no guarantee it will reach the right audience.
This is where content atomization comes in—the strategy of taking one large pillar item like a whitepaper or webinar and splicing that content into smaller pieces.
While the theory that “if one type of content doesn’t work, another will” comes from a good place, most marketers go about it the wrong way. Creating content for the sake of creating content is just a waste of energy, time, and resources.
Instead, the key to successful content marketing hinges on your ability to deliver suitable content to your targeted audience, at the right time, on the right channel. That’s the difference between getting a click-through and the user clicking the “x” button or unsubscribing.
Ultimately, the goal is to produce the ideal content type for each channel. Content atomization addresses this by taking into account how the different pieces of content work toward delivering solid results on their respective platforms and devices. Each channel and content type present the opportunity to share information differently with your targeted audience segment.
What most B2B content marketers overlook is that the way to do that is by taking your content creation cues from data, rather than guesswork. A data-driven strategy can help guide your content creation from the get-go—saving time, money, and effort by delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time.
Why Content Atomization Is a Must-Have for B2B Marketers
Inspired by the scientific concept of the atomic nucleus, the term “content atomization” refers to the process of taking one pillar content and breaking it down into smaller, more focused pieces that can be distributed into specific channels. These smaller snackable pieces of content will then stimulate your targeted audience, guiding them along the conversion funnel to where you want them.
When executed properly, intelligent atomization benefits your brand and company beyond saving time and resources. For one, atomized pieces are generally more searchable, more easily consumable, and more shareable on digital and social platforms. From an SEO perspective, there are more opportunities to target specific keywords or top-performing phrases within that topic or category.
From an engagement perspective, atomized content is one way to get the best of both worlds. Shorter, more digestible pieces are more likely to obtain readership and be shared by people who weren’t initially searching for your brand. They also ensure your content covers multiple platforms and formats, so different segments of your audience can interact with your content in multiple ways.
By producing both long-form and short-form pieces, you’ll ensure you have your bases covered, and the best chance of grabbing your audience’s attention. And because your content strategy is reactive to intent and campaign signals, the atomization strategy enables you to reach your prospects right where they are in the buyer’s journey, with the right type of content and messaging.
But where do you begin?
The First Step: Repurposing Content with Data
The key is to let data drive your decisions on how to atomize and repurpose your content. That data can come from several sources, one of the most accessible of which is campaign data, such as email, paid, or social campaigns. At 2X, we regularly conduct campaign post-mortem analyses with all team members—whether they are part of the content creation process or not. From marketing ops specialists to data analysts to writers and designers, teams work together to examine campaign results. The findings of these analyses are used to optimize the next campaign, which may take place just a few days later.
We also conduct a wider discussion to understand which topics resonate best with our target audience, looking at engagement and download rates across campaigns to understand which ones resulted in more meetings or opportunities created. This informs our content strategy planning for the next quarter.
Another source of data is intent data, using tools like Bombora and DiscoverOrg, which allows us to proactively react to intent signals and insert the right content and messaging at the right time.
An intelligent, data-driven atomization strategy provides a competitive edge to reach your audience with the content they need, at the right time in their buyer’s journey. As a result, you’re able to produce quality content that answers the exact questions your audience is asking, which puts you ahead of the competition and creates the opportunity for you to push information about your company directly to your prospects.
Invest in Data-Driven Content Marketing Services
Hitting it big with your content while operating on minimal resources is certainly not easy. For content marketing to work, you need to put in the hours to create something solid and secure a budget large enough to get the resources you need to get the job done. For companies struggling with such issues, outsourcing with a marketing-as-a-service (MaaS) agency can be a great way to improve your content marketing quality and performance, while staying on budget.
Outsourcing your content marketing allows you to scale efforts and put your content in the hands of a competent and efficient team that can produce expert-level pieces that your marketing strategy demands. With the right partner, you can leverage strategic solutions to optimize your resources and design a solid data-driven content strategy that delivers impact on traffic, engagement, and conversions.
A competent MaaS partner team can help you repurpose a finite number of ideas into high-impact content for your audience. Our view is that every atomized piece is a fresh, unique spin on the original pillar content item. Our expertise in data analytics can also be leveraged to measure the success and performance of each piece of content—something most agencies can’t promise to deliver.
Learn how you can extend the value of your existing content by months—or even years—with content atomization. Reach out to explore content marketing services offered by 2X to execute a strategy that delivers high impact.
Jacqueline Toyad