Rinse & Repeat: Turning one big idea into many

When was the last time that you had an earth-shattering ‘light bulb moment’? One of those times where you see everything clearly and know, in that brief second, exactly what you need to do to turn your company into the industry leader you’re so keen for it to be. Unless your name is Elon Musk, I’m guessing it wasn’t that recently. Maybe never.

You’re not alone.

For most of us, that killer idea isn’t just something that will appear one day to solve all our problems, it has to be worked for, it has to be earned.

Great ideas are, well, great. We’re fascinated by them. So much so that we devote hours each day in the search for ideas that knock their predecessors out of the ballpark, that are better, smarter, more original, more inspirational and above all, more commercially relevant. So the worst thing any marketer can do once they’ve got their big idea in place, is to let it wither and die. But no matter how good any idea is, its activation needs to be at least as good if it’s to live up to its potential.

The marketer’s role is to be the source of big ideas, but also to package, ship and deliver them with pinpoint focus in line with a strategy that’s carefully put together in reverse order, starting with the end result and ending with the idea that will deliver it.

But what does it mean to really capitalise on an idea? It means making that idea the catalyst for a company’s greatest commercial objectives. It means creating content that plays to the author’s unique strengths and offers relevant, helpful insight and experiences to customers.

It also means resisting the temptation to scatter product-led sales messages across that content, thereby watering down the big thinking with non-strategic technical details.

Once the big idea is in place, it provides a basis to Create, Adapt and Repeat:

Create: Design hero content assets that position companies as ‘thinking brands’ and industry thought leaders.

Adapt: Repurpose that hero content across channels, geographies and, where possible, verticals.

Repeat: Use the content across the buying cycle and throughout the sales funnel.

We all know that activating a comms campaign isn’t always simple and the B2B buying cycle is highly complex.

It’s the role of marketing, PR and sales teams to encourage prospects to engage at each stage of the buyer journey by refuelling with commercially engaging content that provokes a response.

To find out more about creating a campaign based on hero content that gets your audience excited about who you are as a company, watch this space. Our brand new guide, No Contest, A Marketer’s Guide To Winning The Content Race, is available to download now.

If you’re struggling to generate original ideas that sell, then download our No Idea guide, for practical advice and a framework to stress-test your ideas.