Targeted vs. Recurring Content, Pt. 1

Ron Torres (showrunner of original content): Hey, everybody! Ron here, Showrunner of Original Content at Nifty Marketing. I have to admit something about our Two-Minute Tuesdays—they haven’t been two minutes. But that’s because we want to give you the accurate information and value-added that is important to your law firm. 

So, this specific Two-Minute Tuesday arc is going to be a two-episode deep dive on one of the most important subjects when it comes to video: do I want to do a recurring model, or do I want to focus on one targeted video? There are a lot of nuances to this, so it’s a big enough topic that it warrants going further than the 2-minute mark and also going into a two-episode arc with specific topics that are relevant to you. 

So I hope you enjoy the first episode of this Two-Minute Tuesday deep dive.

Okay, here we are. The conversation is targeted content versus recurring content. It’s a tough conversation, but here’s what I want you to think about: you’re not just making one video, you’re actually doing your brand storytelling. When you’re telling a story, a story needs to unfold because what an unfolding story does is create a connection of empathy between you and your audience, which eventually is your customer. What you need to think about is: what is going to make the strongest connection? 

Here, I’m going to give you an example so that you can think about why this conversion between targeted and recurring [content] is so important. Oftentimes, I compare filmmaking to the construction industry. If your law firm is like a family and that family wants to live in a house, that house is your branded marketing. That’s the house that you live in, that’s where you’re comfortable. Now, content creators that you’re in partnership with are like the construction workers. They’re like the architects. 

When you say you want to build a house, you can build a house a couple different ways. One way you can build a house is to literally–and imagine this–say, 

“Hey, I want to build a house. I don’t really know what the house completely looks like, but I want to start room-by-room. So I’m going to pay you to build just one room really nice. We don’t know where the rest of the house is goning to go, but you’re gonna build this one really nice room. Then, we’re gonna go away. Everything is going to stop for six months, and then I’m going to pay you again to do one more room, but I don’t know what that one more room is going to be. It could be the kitchen, it could be the dining room. I don’t know.”

So each step of building your house is just room-by-room. “And every time, we have to rethink the design of it, we have to rethink the architecture, we have to rehire everybody, we have to bring everybody out to build the materials again, we have to do this stuff over and over and over again.” And that costs a lot of money. To start the ship again, to set the mechanism in motion again, that’s where the money gets eaten up, because it’s people’s time, and it’s people’s resources, rebuilding them. So that’s not really how people build houses. How people build houses is you have an architect that lays out the entire layout of the house–that gets agreed upon, that architecture gets agreed upon. And then everybody builds and accumulates all those resources all in one stint, and you just build the house. And once the house is built, you can live in the house. 

In the room-by-room scenario, you’re not giving yourself a liveable space to actually enjoy the house. You’re in this cramped room, and then you’re kind of desperate and want to move to the other room. And then you’re kind of desperate again and you want to move to the other room.  Every decision is made on a consequence rather than a plan. Well, to be honest, that is how a targeted video versus a recurring video model works. When you’re making a one-off, single video, you are telling a filmmaker or a content creator, “Hey, I’m want this one thing, and we’re not going to know what’s next. But I want this one thing, and it’s targeted.” And, yes, you can accomplish that targeted thing very well, and it does good for the single piece of information it is, but there’s no plan from there moving forward. There’s no sense of what this story is. The story of your brand, how it’s unfolding. There’s no house for your brand to live in. 

Counteract that with the recurring model, and you are building an overall annual campaign of video content that is installment-based and a lot like a web series or a TV series. That’s why Netflix and Marvel movies and all these different organizations are starting to think of things in recurring installment, world-building models of storytelling. Because once you get the loyalty once, if you can get it again, it just keeps coming, and now you have to see that next piece of information through. And that connection, that empathy exchange that happens from a recurring model, that is the dealbreaker that you’re looking for when you’re trying to get that new client. 

So, yes, it seems like a bigger investment to do a recurring model, but the reality is it’s the investment that is going to work. And, actually, you save time and money doing the recurring model because you’re not starting over again. You’re not building the relationship all over again when you could have, all in one longer-term stint with one longer-term investment, gotten all of your content created for an entire year and made the value-added storytelling for your brand actually live free and fully in a nice little content house.

Already interested in doing content with Nifty Marketing? Don’t wanna wait for part 2? Why don’t you reach out to Chad [Henkel, Director of Marketing]? And stay tuned for more Two-Minute Tuesdays.