Extend the Shelf Life of Your Content

Avoid "dating" your marketing materials 

A few years ago, I joined the fall festival committee in my town and was charged with developing a website and handling online marketing for the event. The fall festival is an annual event and highly anticipated by the townies and tourists alike and I was honored to have been given the opportunity. 

I didn't notice at first, but after a year or two, I realized that the committee needed to order new banners each year in order to change the date. After the first year, I stopped using the date on the website and Facebook page in favor of the "Last Saturday in September" (since that does not change and as a coder, I am rather lazy when it comes to things like that) and suggested that they use that as well. This saves both time and money as our banners and other materials do not need to be repurchased each year and our website and Facebook covers are always up-to-date.

Another local group needed lawn signs to promote their regularly occurring breakfast fundraiser. Since they always plan it for a Sunday, but not on the same month or date necessarily, I advised them to purchase a sign that reads "Breakfast This Sunday" to put up at the beginning of the week and "Breakfast Today" to put up on the day of the event. This has allowed them to use the same signs for the past 4 years.

One of my clients uses videos to promote their annual summer "sport vacations". I watched the video and the voice at the end said "2012 teams are forming now." They are still using the video to advertise this summer, but for future reference, just saying "teams are forming now" or "summer teams are forming now" would have been just as good and kept the video fresh.

While websites generally can be changed quickly and at a relatively low or no cost, printed materials, videos and other marketing materials generally have to be ordered, reprinted, re-shot or repurchased and can be quite expensive. With a little creative thinking and planning ahead, you can save money and time by maximizing the "shelf life" of your marketing materials.