The Importance of Value-Add Marketing Assets

The key to any lead generation campaign is to provide something of value to your prospects, something they can read, use, learn from or engage with. We call these VALUABLE MARKETING ASSETS.

There are many forms of such assets, from eBooks and white papers to use cases, videos, webinar events, recorded presentations and free trial-type offers. The end benefits of providing marketing assets are multi-faceted. Educational assets are informative and offering training. Other assets fill a need or answer questions from prospects. Good assets take this a step further by providing value while demonstrating how your product can help achieve the prospects’ end goals – rather than merely delivering a product pitch or feature list.

Here, we’re going to expand a bit on the end benefits of providing these value-add marketing assets. Once you have developed a plan for presenting useful and valuable assets, you need to get them to your prospects as Gated or Protected content. This is done in via email campaigns, social media distribution, ads and dynamic content offers on your website, all tasks the ActiveDEMAND automated marketing platform does best.

The Art of Creating Added Value

Added value is a vital tactic used to acquire and retain customers, promote brand awareness, and stand out in the market place. Here’s what we can’t stress enough: The art of creating added value begins with the ability to see your business through the lens of your customers. Think about what is important to your target market and how your service or product most benefits them; ask yourself (with regard to that service or product offering):

• What problem does it solve for the user?
• How will it help the prospect overcome obstacles or do their jobs better?
• How can I stop missing the boat by focusing on features instead of benefits?

By concentrating on providing content that focuses on your prospects’ needs, you can begin HELPING while no longer SELLING.

Marketers and business owners alike can develop content marketing assets such as:

1. eBook/White Paper – Additional content based on original material such as a blog post.
2. Infographic – Illustrated data demonstrates concepts and enhances a call-to-action.
3. Slide-deck – A presentation of the research findings on the market opportunity, summary of the white paper and the exec’s best-practice recommendations.
4. Live and On-Demand Webinar – The leveraging of slides or presentation to present a live webinar and/or recorded webcast.
5. Video and Podcast – An executive is interviewed in Q&A form to create a series of short and compelling videos and podcasts.

How Do These Options Leverage More Interactive Media Tactics? (i.e. The End Benefits Associated with Providing Value-Add Marketing Assets)

Customers are increasingly distracted. To improve engagement, marketers are moving beyond traditional methods to leverage interactive media and dynamic content. Interactive content makes these marketing assets even more compelling and useful. Consider:

1. Micro-sites – Create a collection of related content, research and advice into a best-practices microsite or targeted website. This provides prospects with a single resource to facilitate each step through their journey.
2. Interactive eBooks – Converting the key white paper, static eBook content or slide presentation into a visually compelling eBook enables an interactive overview of the subject. These presentations are enhanced with embedded video and podcast recordings, helping buyers feel more connected.
3. Dynamic Content – With the right tools, any web based marketing asset can be made more personalized and contextualized using server-side dynamic content.

Here’s the bottom line. Leveraging marketing content and blog articles is essential. Creating value-add marketing assets and deploying them to multiple channels puts the content in motion. When developing your strategy, consider creating multiple traditional and interactive marketing assets that engage buyers with content across all channels.

Written by Eric Murphy

Eric Murphy is the Digital Marketing Manager at ActiveDEMAND. He is responsible for driving the marketing strategy for the ActiveDEMAND integrated marketing platform. He has a strong background in online marketing, communications and working closely with sales teams. For many years Eric was an evangelist and marketer for the industrial communications community through guest articles, maintaining industry blogs and speaking at conferences and other events.