When Bonnie Tyler proclaimed she was holding out for a hero, she probably didn’t have a B2B marketing campaign in mind, but if she had, she wouldn’t have been wrong either!
A hero asset – generally defined as a longer, meatier piece of thought leadership like a report or eBook – can feel like a lot of effort for marketers and comms professionals alike. They take time to craft, need design, it needs to say something new and interesting and relevant, ideally informed by unique data or insights… But much like Superman, the hero asset can be the saviour of any campaign. Whatever your objectives – whether brand awareness, lead generation, reaching a new audience – starting with the hero asset not only helps realise those goals more effectively, it’s also a gift that keeps on giving to keep momentum up for the next three, six, twelve months….
Here’s why your marketing needs a hero.
It starts with strategy
The beauty of a hero asset is it can be grounded in insight, thought leadership and strategy. Whatever the topic or focus area, whether a trends analysis or advice piece, the hero asset is a detailed piece of work that by nature needs to be carefully considered and crafted to convey exactly what your organisation wants to say. Throughout, the hero asset will be informed by your brand’s unique tone of voice and point of view.
Once nailed, your campaign starts by putting its best foot forward. The hero asset is the credible, authoritative piece that all other content, channels, and conversations drive leads back to.
Rinse and repeat
After all that effort, the good news is that not only do you have one valuable asset to point to, but it’s much easier to create a content cascade from the hero piece after. Reports and eBooks are already modular and chapters and topics can be extracted as shorter form content that provides a perfect starting point to ‘slice and dice’ the asset into blog series, smaller reports, infographics, social posts for amplification.
It can also provide perfect fodder and inspiration for new content. That might be a jumping off point to do a deeper dive on a particular subject area that was just one chapter, or the starting point of a podcast discussion or panel session. Using the central hero asset as a starting point, whatever content you create and whatever channel you go on to use, it not only saves time, but it means every single communication in the campaign shares that consistent brand message, voice and opinion.
Supporting sales
Most hero assets are generally gated, making them a perfect central piece to any lead generation campaign.
This couldn’t be more important in today’s challenging economy, with slower sales cycles and longer decision-making. In fact, 50% of C-suite leaders report thought leadership content has a bigger impact on their purchase decisions during economic uncertainty than in the normal course of business, according to the 2022 B2B Thought Leadership impact report. Assets on social help keep brand top of mind and ease leads through longer conversion processes.
Thinking about the buyer journey, hero assets are generally a catch-all asset for consideration. As they cover a broad range of topics in one piece, hero assets can catch the attention of a wider pool of potential buyers via search, social and other channels. Once captured, marketing can follow-up with more targeted, relevant, and detailed follow up assets to convert leads through consideration to decision.
Earn it
Finally, rich assets still have life in earned media channels too. If crafted with genuinely compelling, new insights, there’s a story for media too, and a credible asset to point them back to.
The hero asset is the hardest working part of any campaign – do the hard work first and reap the rewards later. If you are looking for a partner to help you make the complex simple, although we are not Marvel or DC Comics, we have a long track record of success creating those heroes for our clients. At Tyto Content Studio, we have a team of experts in content generation: eBooks, podcasts, videos… If you’re holding out for a hero ’til the morning light, get in touch!
Featured photo by Engin Akyurt.