A few months ago, our research report was complete. Instead of simply rejoicing at its delivery, we pounced on the opportunity to use it as a core part of our content marketing strategy.

Now, we share what we did, what we learned, and how we’re using it today to help you learn how a single piece of good content can launch a robust content marketing effort.

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Research report

The 19-page study, Deliver Peak Experiences from Interactive Content, detailed the results of a randomly sampled survey of 20,000 marketers about interactive content crafted by the report’s co-sponsor, CMI.

The study provided a strong foundation for a host of targeted content highlighting the industry-wide move to interactive.

We didn’t just want to share a PDF that people could download (and hopefully read) after providing their contact information. We wanted to scale the content into something that would engage a broader audience. Here is how we did just that.

Create infographic-on-steroids landing page

We distilled the most engaging facts from the report — the top three types and most popular uses of interactive content — to create a freely accessible interactive infographic.

The goal of the infographic was to provide potential readers with an authentic taste of the report and offer them an impetus to give their information to download the full report through a sign-up form (in the upper right). That approach was more helpful than sending them to a landing page and saying, “Trust us. It’s good. Please download.”

We have found that lead quality goes up significantly with this “preview” strategy. Even though the total number of leads is similar, the people who engage with even a little content before providing their contact information are more likely to believe your brand can help them.

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Share it

To increase reach, each of the 10 data pieces in the infographic included its own social-sharing buttons (Pinterest and Twitter).

The infographic quickly became one of our company’s top five interactive content assets, with a 10.2% conversion rate for downloading the research report and becoming a lead.

We sent a dedicated email drop promoting the study and the infographic to a highly segmented portion of the ion audience. Over 1,000 users from our email universe engaged with the infographic within the first few days of its publication.

The email drop resulted in an 8.5% lead-gen conversion rate for downloading the research.

An additional 625 engagements from organic website traffic earned a lead-gen 6.5% conversion rate for downloading the research report.

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Test it

We also didn’t create a one-and-done infographic page — we developed a couple versions to test and see what resonated better with our audience. The infographic used today is the original (A) version that beat the challenger (B) version in head-to-head A/B testing with a 9% lower bounce rate and nearly double the conversion rate at 10.0% versus 5.5%.

Excerpt of infographic’s original version (A)

Excerpt of infographic’s second version (B)

Teach it

One of the biggest pieces of content we did around the study was a 45-minute webinar during which I took listeners through the results step by step.

The webinar delivered 516 lead-gen registrants, which resulted in 41% attentive attendees (as measured by engagement throughout the webinar).

Subsequently, webinar registrants received a thank-you email including a link to the recorded webinar and a link to the infographic.

The Keynote-created file used in the webinar was turned into a standalone illustrated presentation on LinkedIn SlideShare.

Promote it

In addition, we authored two blog posts on Medium, another organic distribution platform. They were published a week apart, one previewed the study and the other offered insight into the study.

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Print it

We didn’t stop with the online world. More than 3,500 copies of the report were printed to include in the bags for Content Marketing World attendees in September. While results-oriented measurement from collateral distribution is almost impossible to calculate, our intent with the report was to stand out among a sea of promotional postcards and fliers with valuable information on interactive content. We also had a few hundred copies available at our event booth.

We also printed a dozen 10-foot banners, each with a quote or stat from the report, and placed them around the party we sponsored during CMWorld.

Conclusion

From the single study, multiple pieces of content have been created, including:

1 report

1 infographic (multiple versions)

10 social-sharing visuals (breakouts from infographic)

2 blog posts

1 webinar

12 banners

It’s a rising-tide approach — leveraging the data into multiple formats lifts not only the findings of the study on interactive content but executes a multi-pronged content marketing strategy.

What do you do with your company’s research?

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Editor’s note: We appreciate ion interactive’s support of Content Marketing Institute as a paid benefactor. This article was reviewed and edited independently to ensure it adheres to the same editorial guidelines as all non-sponsored blog posts.