Repurposing Content to Compliment Digital Products with a Physical Experience

This one time, at band camp… 😉

Okay – so it wasn’t actually band camp. But it was band. Marching band, to be exact. 

I had been top clarinet player for a long time. Everytime I was challenged for my chair, I won. 

There I was waiting for the director to announce, once again that I was the victor. 

I was actually paying very close attention, but was pretending not to care and looking everywhere but at the director. 

Only my name was not the one that came out of his mouth. My head snapped around as I looked at the director, then at my challenger, then back and forth I don’t know how many times as this horrifying news sunk in…

Have you ever been the tops at something and then found out someone was just as good or better? 

Well, these days my ego doesn’t run my actions (thankfully!) because I met today’s featured speaker, who is much better at physical product design than I ever was. 

I’m super happy to introduce Mark Stern – our content repurposing expert that is helping to enhance today’s digital experience with physical products. 

It’s a presentation you won’t want to miss at the virtual event – so just to give you a teaser I’m sharing a few juicy snippets here. 

Enjoy – then go register for the Smart[er] Content Formula virtual hybrid event. 

👉 https://www.thevirtualjenn.com/smarter-content-formula/

About Mark: 

As a serial entrepreneur and digital marketing expert, Mark Stern thinks outside the box — literally. His line of custom box services is at the frontier of customer experience innovation. During these unprecedented times, it’s more important than ever to enhance the human connection at virtual events. That’s where Mark hits his stride. As the founder of the Custom Box Agency, Virtual Social Box, Rough Streak Digital, and LYVE Online, he excels at bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds. With an exceptional blend of innovative marketing and high-level business strategy, Mark has transformed the way his clients connect with their customers. He’s eager to share his insights with other marketers who want to nurture customer loyalty and provide a meaningful experience.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Mark was a 1-rated (top tier) strategy consultant at Deloitte Consulting, the world’s largest consulting firm. While at Deloitte, he was selected amongst the firm’s 40,000+ US-based employees for a prestigious fellowship with the XPRIZE Foundation. He has spent the last decade working with Fortune 500 leaders across the retail, healthcare, fitness, beverage, and financial services industries.

Mark currently has a broad range of products and services, all geared toward leveraging modern technology alongside good old-fashioned swag. Working closely with clients to expand and refine their customers’ buying journeys, Mark helps companies grow through immersive marketing and a transformative customer experience. He also provides resources and coaching for aspiring entrepreneurs and budding business owners who want to operate at the forefront of their industries.

Repurposing Content to Compliment Digital Products with a Physical Experience

So what is a custom box? When we talk about custom box for talking about sending people a custom branded box, it’s a physical product that they will get in the mail. So we’re talking about that legacy channel that people stop using, which is mail. Everyone’s going by email. Now, the thing about it is because so many people have shifted towards digital only channels. It is disruptive when you send them something physical, because it so rarely happens aside from credit card companies, trying to get you to open up another card. It compliments the digital experience.

So when you think about a custom box, it’s not a standalone product. It’s not meant to be just swag only. It’s meant to compliment whatever you’re offering on a digital channel. So if you’re a course creator or a coach or an agency, it doesn’t matter. How do you start to bring people to that touch? It’s about the human connection. That’s what a physical box is going to bring to the equation. It provides tools to increase the likelihood of success. I highlight this because this is how I think about the custom box, because it’s experiential because it compliments the digital. You want to put things in there that will eliminate the barriers that prevent people from being successful.

Repurposing Content to Create a Unique Selling Proposition in a Crowded Market

But what ultimately happened is with the boom of the digital age, the barrier to entry has dropped. So what’s happening right now is we have billions of new pieces of content that are competing for attention. Day after day, the barrier to entry is no longer as sophisticated as it was in the nineties. For me to create any type of content. I could pull out my phone and I can film it right now and have an entire product that I can sell right away.

The barrier to entry has dropped meaning that when the barrier to entry has dropped the quality and the abundance, it’s all over the place. So what’s happening in the marketplace right now is that a lot of people are jaded by a lot of the quality of the content out there because it’s so easy to produce content. So this is why I tell people, if you really want to stand out with your products and services, create a physical box, ‘cause it’s going to cut all the noise of all the digital that’s out there, the mixture of good quality and bad quality. And for those of you who know that the quality of your products, great people are just so jaded by buying poor quality products and services out there. Having this one little element could be the difference between higher conversions and being able to create the impact for your clients and customers that you really want to have.

Building Authority & Social Proof From Repurposed Content

So literally when you’re looking at all of this content and how we repurpose it again and again, and again, our engagement with speakers was one interview, no followup, nothing. It was just that one interview. And just how we repurpose the content. And what’s crazy about it is things like the box itself that you see here. They went nuts. They started taking pictures with their card. They started taking pictures with the box. They were so proud to be a part of this project, which all came about because I repurposed content. I just made it accessible in a different way. That’s all I did. And the organic value of having speakers like stop and like show off authentically to their audience, just increase the impact and the messaging that I couldn’t get, if it was just me by myself pushing it. So that’s kind of why I really pushed this, not to mention some of these speakers started to incorporate this box within their own programs. They were taking ownership of it just because of how I repackaged the content, which was pretty awesome.