It’s super easy to create content and stand out in an industry where no one else is doing content marketing. If there aren’t any blogs, industry publications are still in print format, and your competitors’ websites were all last touched in the year 2000, you’ve got it made!
But what about the rest of us?
This list of tips was made especially for those in the fiercest competitive markets. It’s designed to help spark ideas for unique ways to make your content stand out and get noticed. Even if your industry is full of competitors armed with skilled content marketers at the helm, these tips are sure to make your content unique and attention-grabbing.
5 Unique Ways to Make Your Content Stand Out In A Crowded Industry
1. Adopt a contrarian angle
The road less traveled is sometimes the best road to take when you’re creating new content. Are all of your competitors saying the same thing? Is it difficult to break through the noise, not to mention get rankings for popular keywords?
If so, it might be time for you to cover a topic by taking a unique approach or angle. If everyone in the industry is saying the same thing, chances are your clients and prospects are eager to hear something new, a different vantage point, or a slightly unique approach.
For example, in the over-saturated world of business coaches and advisors, one doesn’t have to do much poking and searching before stumbling across Marie Forleo. Marie’s mantra, “The world needs that special gift that only you have” is said repeatedly across her website and media platforms.
Watch one of MarieTV’s business coaching videos that she releases every Tuesday reliably:
While most business coaches are looking over metrics, watching the numbers, and helping people make tough decisions, Marie’s softer, sillier, and more spiritual side is a contrarian voice of encouragement.
2. Give something away for free
Is there something your industry normally charges for that you could offer for free? Services such as assessments, evaluations, or other lower-cost items might be worth testing for free as part of a content marketing strategy.
For example, imagine if something you’d normally charge a small fee for was offered for free one month of the year. You could create all sorts of content around this offer to drive attention away from your competitors’ content pieces.
Be ready for your competitors to get angry and start copying you. You’ve made it really difficult for them to charge for a service you’re offering for free. So if they’re paying attention (and they are), before long, they’ll be offering a similar thing for free, too.
Be prepared for this by promoting why you’re the best firm to work with or buy from for the paid portions of your services or products. This’ll encourage prospective customers to get the free item from your company and the paid items too.
3. Create a series or theme
Is there something that’s more complex as it relates to the products or services your company offers? Are prospective customers often confused as to how something works or how a product can be used?
Creating an educational series of content pieces is a great way to get more mileage out of your content marketing. If something is too complicated or takes too long to explain in one blog post, no problem! Breaking it down into smaller pieces and writing individual blog posts on each portion keeps people paying attention for longer.
If you’re worried that your audience will miss portions of your series and therefore get confused, make sure there are plenty of links between the pieces to connect them together. Similarly, you might consider posting them all at once so that people don’t have to wait to read the other pieces.
Take Abbott’s online video series profiling their innovations, for example. They dripped out a series of videos about their technology advances, while also storing them all in one place on their website. That way, if someone catches one of the episodes, they can easily find the rest of them all in one place.
4. Collaborate with a neutral industry thought leader
Is there a consultant or advisor in your industry that your audience views as a thought leader? Approach them with a topic that you could collaborate on and write together.
Often these folks are busy and pulled in a million directions. But if you present the offer to collaborate with a list of positive benefits for them, such as website traffic, exposure to your list, sharing the content on your social profiles, they just might say, “yes!”.
This is a strategy we follow quite frequently at our marketing agency. And the simple reason is this — it’s a win-win for everyone involved. The thought leaders are big names in our clients’ industries. When prospects see their name mentioned in an article, they take notice.
Also, we don’t agree to collaborate on a piece unless everyone is willing to share it with their unique audiences. So not only does the thought leader benefit from exposure to new prospects for their own businesses, our clients are benefiting from exposure to the thought leader’s audiences, as well.
5. Create something other than written content, such as a podcast or video
Very few content creators have a strategy for producing a podcast or video series. They might post a video here and there, but is there a consistent strategy behind it like there is for this same company’s blog?
Not usually.
Creating a podcast or a casual video series allows you to create an amazing piece of content without having to go through countless revisions of your work. Let’s face it, we’re done with stuffy and over-edited multimedia. Unlike written words, the more conversational and casual a podcast or video series is, the better it will connect with your audience.
Take this example from Michael & Son Services, an HVAC company located in Washington, DC. Their videos are educational in nature and are aimed at helping their customers make smarter purchase decisions.
Here is a video from Michael & Son Services that details the differences between Heat Pumps and A/C Furnace Systems:
To have your content really stand out, sometimes you’ve got to challenge yourself to use different mediums than your competition. A video or podcast series is a great place to start.