A lot of posts online define evergreen content marketing, but they don’t really offer any real strategies to use. Evergreen marketing at its core simply means using strategies that won’t go stale quickly.

This excludes pretty much all forms of popular marketing methods such as email blasts, social media posts, trending topics, news, PPC, and promotions/sales gimmicks where prices/products can change or an influencer may lose their relevance with the market (ie., “You Can Get This Right Now For Just $19.97!” or “Kanye West Says Our Vodka is the Best!”).

Evergreen, just like the type of tree, lasts through the ages. It doesn’t lose its leaves and go dormant in the winter months like the deciduous variety. It still needs some occasional pruning, and it will die without water and fertilizer, but it requires a lot less work and will draw people in from all around with its majestic beauty.

Our friends at Assertive Media share these evergreen marketing tactics that will work forever, even when we’re all talking telepathically to one another!

Getting to know your market’s needs – i.e., how you’ll provide true value

If you don’t think getting inside the mind of your ideal customer is strategic, you first need to direct your attention to number 1 on this list. The idea behind this is that before you come up with any ideas for deploying evergreen marketing content to your audience, you first need to understand what they truly need and want at their core.

For instance, if you’re running a store that sells survival gear, you better know that consumers who buy that stuff regularly can’t get enough tips and tricks to survive in the wild and fight off tigers, lions, and bears with their bear hands! Kidding, but there is plenty of evergreen content marketing opportunities you can offer in your content such as “how-to”: build a shelter, start a fire without matches, purify water, etc.

Once you can compete on value, you have customer loyalty wrapped up. Once you have loyalty, all of your marketing efforts and content immediately get evergreen status because customers will recommend your content and products for years to come, regardless of what your most current campaigns are centered around.

Create lasting evergreen content that will be relevant for years to come

When creating content to effectively help market your brand for years to come, it’s important to avoid trending topics/titles and instead stick to offering information, tips, etc., that doesn’t imply it has an expiry date on it.

For example:

• “Start Here First” pages
• How-tos
• FAQs
• Lists of resources
• Industry definitions
• Step-by-step tutorials
• Fun and/or informative videos
• Posts about broad, unchanging issues or products (tough to do)

While these types of posts are perfect examples of evergreen, they aren’t entirely set-and-forget. Many of the posts, in order to be successful at generating leads and sales, will need to be kept up-to-date to stay relevant through the years. Not all, but some. Consider a lasting post about “SEO Defined”: You’ll still need to go in and revise the content on at least a yearly basis to keep it relevant and up-to-date with newly emerging industry terminology.

 

Don’t date evergreen marketing content

By virtue of its title, this blog post “Evergreen Marketing Strategies That Still Work in 2017” won’t be relevant much beyond this year. Sure, some will still read it in 2018, but most will not, passing it off as dated. That’s not because this content isn’t evergreen, it is.

It’s because of how information seekers on the Internet think, and it’s smart thinking – we want to know what’s relevant now – not two years ago. A smart tactic that is rarely, if ever recommended for SEO purposes, but great for delivering evergreen content, is to leave out the post-date, so search engine users and site visitors can’t see when the content was uploaded.

This is really tough to do unless you’re using your own self-hosted content platform such as a blog, vlog, or podcast. If you’re guest posting or using sites like YouTube, you’re at the mercy of that particular platform.

This evergreen marketing strategy is also why you never see a post date on successful landing pages. The publisher doesn’t want a 2017 visitor to their site that sells Pink Widgets, via a long-form sales page or video ad, to think they’re getting information and opinions from 2012. An evergreen lander, sans-date, can offer passive income for years to come.

Are you ready to go evergreen?

It’s important to note that there’s a delicate balancing act between being evergreen and staying current. If a survival supplies outlet only offers content geared toward universal survival concepts and chooses not to focus on the best knives, survival schools, destinations, and other trends, they might as well stick to blogging for Adsense money.

Evergreen content can offer passive leads and sales, but it can only go so far. Diversity, as with all consumer-driven content, is key to marketing success.