Exclusive content can transform your marketing operations in ways you never imagined. Content marketers may find it appealing to produce content that reaches many people, and often, this impulse can lead to great results.
However, creating exclusive content for a niche audience you are targeting can be the ace up your sleeve that leads to more relevant users taking an interest in your brand, coming to your website, and taking the action you want.
Exclusive content, when done right, can trigger a powerful FOMO (fear of missing out) reaction in your audience’s mind and get them into your marketing funnel quickly and often turn them into repeat customers. It is worth mentioning that, with exclusive content, you can offer an experience to your users that they didn’t even know they needed yet. This strategy works especially well if you attach a deadline for accessing your exclusive content or taking a particular action to engage with your product, brand, or service to make your users feel like they have stumbled upon something rare and valuable.
Given how powerful exclusive content is in marketing, we have put together a definitive guide covering why exclusive content works, how to apply exclusivity to your marketing strategies, and a surefire way to create high-converting exclusive content.
Why exclusive content works
Using exclusivity you can get more people to be interested in your offerings or business. It works because people want to be in on the secret or want to be a part of something that everyone can’t join. If people can’t have it, they want it more, using exclusivity means only making a few available.
There are plenty of people that take pleasure in the fact that they’re a part of something others aren’t, even if we don’t want to admit it. We’d rather be a part of a group than being left out, it makes people feel special.
Exclusive content also works for companies that offer their product to anyone who wants it, but on specific terms. In this case the product has to be great, people have to be able to find it, and the organization has to be able to keep people from spreading it beyond what you can control, to keep it exclusive.
Exclusive content makes people want something, and works in two ways:
- People are left out: This requires a product that is good, desirable, has status, and a reputation to make people excited to be a part of it.
- Everyone gets in, but only through one channel: This requires a product that is almost perfect, people have to be able to find it and you have to have a method for keeping control over how it spreads.
It is worth mentioning that companies can only do this successfully if their product is highly desirable, can be found easily, and has a high demand. It doesn’t work if you “only” offer 25 openings and only one person wants it. There has to be demand for the offering, whether it’s a real demand or one you create with marketing efforts.
Applying Exclusivity to Content Marketing
Exclusive content is created in a few ways but, the language you use in your copy might be the most important. An article from QuickSprout, titled a ‘Definitive Guide To Copywriting‘, clearly demonstrates the importance of exclusivity-focused language when convincing people to take action. To motivate people to take action faster, some of the things you can incorporate into your marketing copy are:
- The chance to become an “insider”
- Exclusive offers & promotions
- The opportunity to be the first to have/ do something
Write copy that brings out emotion: use words in your exclusive content marketing efforts that can create panic, curiosity, excitement or other important emotional responses and urge your users to take the desired action. Even if your offering isn’t limited, using such marketing language can go a long way in generating interest and higher conversions.
In addition to the copy you use in your social media posts, ads, etc. you should create full pieces of exclusive content. While a blog and social media are the foundations of your content marketing, exclusive content that everyone can’t get to is like a sneak peek at something special.
3 Ways to Make Content Exclusive
1. Limit the availability of your content
Importantly, you need to convince your audience of the scarcity of the content you are offering with words such as “limited offer,” “today only,” “get it now,” and “supplies running out fast .” When you implement this strategy, you will see that people are more likely to sign up because they get to be part of an exclusive group. However, scarcity only works when:
- People want the offering: You can create genuine interest in the content offering with excellent marketing copy that hooks the user and compels them to act with words that signal exclusivity.
- People know about it: Scarcity only works if people are aware of your exclusive offering. This can be done through promotional activities, such as social media posts,email marketing, press releases, or even paid ads.
- It’s just scarce enough: You need to have enough to maintain hope among users who want it, that they will have a chance to get it. But you still need to keep it scarce. In the end most people will get the item, but over time and in a way that makes it feel as if they were lucky to get it.
Scarcity and exclusivity allow you to create events around availability. You can promote them in all of your marketing channels. Instead of “sign up for our newsletter”, it’s “for a limited time”. Promote what you have to offer, give it hype and make it something people are excited about.
2. Guard the entrance vigilantly
Exclusive content can be like a membership or club with restrictions or barriers to enter. Either everyone can’t join or everyone can but there are requirements that people need to join. When an entrance is guarded you use language like “members only”, ask for an invitation”, or “apply to join”. Setting up entry requirements that serve as bouncers to your best content will ensure that only the right users gain access. You should restrict access to your content if:
- You have some premium content to give out
- It makes sense for your business model or brand
- You can produce and handle the distribution of exclusive content
- You have an exclusive content strategy in place to retain your users
Guarding some of your best content works with scarcity and can get more people to interact with your content writing agency or business. Make sure you have a plan for guarded content and have the ability to create content that keeps members around.
3. Don’t Make it Obvious
Exclusive content doesn’t necessarily mean that it has real boundaries, scarcity, or restrictions. Content can be termed exclusive if it is not heavily promoted or is less than obvious. People are bound to feel special about this content when they hear about it or get a taste, but to keep it truly special, you also have the responsibility of figuring out how to keep people quiet about it.
This method only works if you have excellent products, services, or content that people desperately want. If you have content that isn’t popular because it is terrible, users won’t care even when they find it.
You can make content exclusive based on not promoting it or publicizing it, not just price or availability. This works with the human desire to be in the know or having a connection that gets you somewhere.
Creating Content That Is Exclusive with Testing
Delivering exclusive product-led content to the right audience at the right time can be the difference between keeping your customers informed and engaged and losing them to your competitors. If you create targeted content that adds value to your audience, you are already on your way to gaining their trust and converting them.
But this isn’t an easy task. You need to have real insights about what your target audience wants regarding the type of marketing copy they will find engaging, how to produce exclusive content that can create a buzz in your target market, what content to keep exclusive, and the best way to maintain exclusivity.
Here are the benefits that come with content testing:
- Identifying content that resonates with your target audience.
- Guaranteeing that the users can easily understand your marketing copy.
- Understanding accessibility of your content and how effective it is at reaching each segment of your audience.
- Learning if the content is good enough to rank on Google and get relevant traffic.
- Ensure that the tone and voice of your brand messaging are consistent throughout your marketing copy and that it speaks to the target demographic.
To access all of these benefits you should quickly test your content on a remote user testing platform. Running a content test, like an A/B test with an online platform can take less than an hour, cost far less than traditional testing, and help you achieve all of your content goals.
Steps for Testing your Content
Research
Initially, make a list of the most urgent and impactful pieces of content that your brand has. It can include social media posts, headlines, e-book titles, newsletter content, etc. But ensure that you proceed into testing after conducting market research about what content you are testing, who you are targeting, and what metric you are looking to improve.
Set realistic goals
Don’t begin testing with vague plans like getting more engagement, clicks, etc. Ensure your goals are highly specific and realistic, considering your target audience. With a proper objective in place, you can guarantee that you are testing for the right thing and efficiently communicating the findings to the team.
Create variations
Content testing is highly effective when you have two distinct pieces of content to compare. These can be two calls to action that you have created urging users to download a whitepaper, two ads, different headlines, etc. By creating two variations and asking testers to identify the version that is most engaging, impactful, or intriguing and give their honest feedback, you can ensure that you’re better prepared to present your exclusive content to your audience.
Launch the test
All you need to do is decide what you are going to test, select a template, insert your questions and variations to choose from, preview the test, and launch. Cost-effectively, you can bring in hundreds or thousands of respondents who will give you detailed feedback on what they thought about the two options.
Analyze the results
An effective testing platform will have a results dashboard that will show insights from everyone who took the test. You can filter through the responses to find the most valuable feedback. You can get deep insights from the automatically generated charts and graphs or delve into the written feedback. The written feedback is beneficial, as it shows you opportunities for improvement that you wouldn’t have noticed through a simple A/B test.
While the results are comprehensive, you need to run tests until your hypothesis is proven correct and your goals are met continuously. This will help you optimize every part of the exclusive content that you put out.
Conclusion
Content exclusivity can generate a ton of interest in your product, service, or brand. People like being part of a select group with special privileges, so marketers need to use that aspect of their users’ personalities to drive their brand’s engagement and loyalty. This can be achieved by limiting the availability of your content, not over-promoting what is supposed to be exclusive, and keeping a close watch on who gets access to it.
Creating exclusive content that is effective, taking it to the right users, and knowing what segments of your audience members to keep out and what tone to use in the promotional material isn’t something that comes easily. However, content testing can remove all the guesswork from the process, leading to better usability, accessibility, searchability, understandability, and tonal consistency.
Performing content testing will be the best way forward for most organizations because it gives you instant and valuable results as long as you have done the proper research and set the right expectations. It lets users give detailed feedback about why one aspect or another of your exclusive content plan worked or didn’t meet their expectations.