As you go through your old financial marketing content, chances are you’ll come across some high-quality pieces you don’t even remember publishing. Reviewing your existing content is more than a walk down memory lane. It can also help you find opportunities to create a more cost-effective and successful marketing plan for this year.  If you haven’t audited your existing content recently or at all, here are the top benefits for doing so now.

1 – You get to update and refresh pieces

Every year financial laws and rules change. All the advice in an article might be fantastic, but it won’t give readers much confidence if it’s quoting figures from 2019. By going through old content, you can find ways to quickly update and refresh. For example, any old articles covering IRAs could be updated to the new contribution limits and income restrictions for 2023.

Perhaps you find some articles including surveys, data and trends that are getting a little stale. You might want to poke around and see whether there have been any major updates that impact the advice or viewpoint of an article. And if so, that could be an opportunity to quickly refresh a piece and publish it again this year. Just updating old content for the annual changes can be enough to create a decent stream of new posts.

You might find some that are so far off because of new changes, that they should be taken down altogether. Otherwise, readers might stumble upon them and make financial decisions on out-of-date and inaccurate advice.

2 – You can find ways to repurpose existing materials

As you browse your old content, think about whether there’s enough variety in the type. Perhaps you notice that nearly everything is a mid-sized blog of about 600-800 words. As you audit, think of ways you could re-use existing content in new fashions.

For example, perhaps you could combine several short articles on estate planning into a whitepaper or e-book, “the complete guide to leaving an inheritance.” You might also repurpose some old articles into new styles of content, like turning them into quizzes, podcasts, and/or videos. People absorb information differently so mixing up the content style can improve your engagement. But rather than creating all these materials from scratch, your content audit can give you a shortcut by repurposing existing materials.

3 – You can give quality pieces that didn’t perform another shot

Sometime even the best pieces of content don’t land with your audience due to bad luck. Perhaps you published when everyone was on vacation or a crazy news story soaked up everyone’s attention. If you see some high-quality pieces where the engagement numbers were low, consider publishing them again.

Most of your readers didn’t see it the first time so it will come across as brand-new to them. For the few that did read it, chances are they won’t remember. People have short attention spans in the digital age. I’ve enjoyed reading articles on Google which after the fact I realize not only had I read it before, but some of them I had even written.

4 – You can find holes and opportunities for future content

One last reason to audit your content is to find opportunities for your next posts. What kind of client questions and pain points have you done a good job answering? And what’s missing? Perhaps you have plenty of information on products, but less on the process and fees for joining as a client. Your audit will help you identify the best uses of your limited resources for future posts, given what you’ve covered well already.

You worked hard on your existing content so why not put that effort to use today. If you need help performing your financial content audit, reach out. Together, we can determine how to maximize your existing materials and create your strategy for the future.