These days, it’s hard to tell if infographics are still hot in marketing, or if they’ve started to cool off. Based on our research and extensive market testing for every client, we’ve formed an opinion: infographics are still hot—but only when the infographic is truly innovative, or when you’re launching it in a space that hasn’t seen many infographics yet.

If your next content marketing project is an infographic in a content space that’s already saturated in infographics, forget it. Unless your project is truly original (and it probably isn’t), you’ll get lost in the noise. Unfortunately, given the level of competition, even great work in a saturated niche will likely get lost in the noise, too, unless it’s promoted properly.

So how do you crack this?

Start with a great hook, and create an infographic that’s GROUNDBREAKING in its niche.

That’s exactly what we did for our client, Berg Engineering. Berg sells NDT (nondestructive testing) equipment, such as the GE DM5E Basic Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge, in the engineering sector. NDT equipment like this makes gas pipelines, bridges, and airplanes safer for all of us—but almost no one outside of NDT has heard of NDT. We decided to change that. Take a look!

 

 

At 216digital, we carefully vet every content marketing concept that we come up with. (Believe me, we generate a lot of them—we keep a sort of running notebook on Google Docs.) If a topic or pitch doesn’t meet the following criteria, we drop it. It’s that simple. Here’s the rubric we use to build great content strategies for our clients:

In a good piece of content, several factors converge:

Obviousness—when a reader sees it, they should say, “why didn’t I think of that?”
Surprise—it should be so obvious, it’s a surprise the content hasn’t been done before.
Novelty—it should take a familiar concept and extend it into new territory.
Value—it should provide genuine, useful information, or it should provide genuine entertainment.
Appropriateness—it should align with the link creators’ editorial focus, while expanding that focus as explained above.

Content Marketing: An Evolving Field Requiring Constant Innovation

At 216digital, we constantly reevaluate our clients’ standing relative to every other content brand in their niche. That means we take a relative approach to content marketing. For each client, we ask, how does this content strategy fit into the niche as a whole, and how will it give our client a leg up? Without asking these questions, content marketers risk rehashing content that’s already been done. In today’s fast-paced web world, that simply isn’t good enough.

The Bottom Line

Content marketing has hit the “full bloom” stage. It isn’t enough any more to do content marketing; rather, it’s time to surpass content marketing with truly innovative content. Are you looking for help with your content marketing? Our team specializes in creating content that drives engagement and brand awareness. Get in touch today, and let’s launch your content marketing machine.