I can’t remember a single day at work in the past three years when I haven’t heard those three immortal words “help hub hero”. Created by Google, accepted by… well pretty much everyone. This may sound a tad cynical, it's not. There’s a reason it’s spread like wildfire through marketing departments and agencies alike. Put simply. It works.
Help Hub Hero lets content marketers map their video content against customer needs and give themselves a spectrum of content their customers require and desire. It means each individual project has a role in a broader holistic video content strategy, helping to drive wider marketing goals. (Have a look at our previous article on help hub hero if you’d like to explore this in more detail).
Sounds simple right?
And broadly it is, but it doesn’t come without challenges. Making content that is frequent, of high quality, engaging for audiences, cost-efficient and activated effectively are, in our experience, the biggest hurdles facing brands that want to use video effectively. Here are my top tips for overcoming these challenges.
1. Engagement - It's all well and good producing help, hub and hero content, but how do you actually make it engaging for audiences? Producing engaging content is a challenge for 61% of content marketers (Content Marketing Institute, 2016). The key is to research and understand your audience’s passions, interests and needs. This insight will provide rich territory to develop ideas that are compelling for consumers that they will find interesting, entertaining and of value. Whether it’s a practical explainer video or a large brand campaign, audience engagement is king.
2. Frequency – with so much video content being produced, the chance of creating an impact with one hit is dwindling. No-one can afford to be a content island and producing content consistently is a challenge for all marketeers. Frequency is at the heart of the Help Hub Hero approach, and thinking holistically about video will open up all kinds of additional content opportunities. We work with our clients to maximize every filming opportunity. This means creating multiple assets from any film project and working towards a Tease, Launch and Sustain strategy. Tease the audience with a trailer or sneak preview to warm and entice. Launch with paid promotion and a targeted activation strategy. Finally sustain the launch with supporting and follow-up content such as ‘behind the scenes’ or photo stills. Taking this approach to each video project will stretch out it’s life span, increase ROI and when applied against a defined content plan and program of work will ensure the gaps between launches will be minimized.
3.Quality –video is a great way to bring your brand and its personality to life. Get it right and it enforces and builds positive brand perception. Get it wrong and it will erode all the hard work put in to date. Creating regular content that is to the standard expected by customers of the brand and finding skilled content producers is reported as a challenge by 24% of content marketers (Content Marketing Institute, 2016). The key is to have your content producers aligned with your brand and winder marketing goals. Ask them to attend a brand immersion session to get a full understanding of you, your unique position, your tone of voice and personality early in the working relationship. Armed with this knowledge they will consistently create bespoke work which builds upon and enhances your spirit, ethos and values.
Conclusion
A good video content strategy is required to form a continuously strong bond with your target audience. The Help, Hub, Hero method provides a solid base for this. Without which you risk using up your budget faster than you think, without getting much in return. Ultimately the Help, Hub, Hero method lets you retain your visitors and actively work on creating a close-knit community. In the end, this is what pays off.
