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Unlike some intrusive ads, branded content allows you to connect with consumers by creating media they actually want to engage with.
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Whether you’re listening to the radio, watching TV, or scrolling on Instagram, you face a near-constant barrage of advertisements—ads you’ve probably learned to tune out. If you’re selling a product, you can be sure your customers are similarly adept at tuning ads out. So how do you catch (and hold) their attention?
One option is to reframe how you approach marketing, aiming to connect with your audience instead of just selling to them. If you’re wondering how to create meaningful content your customers won’t skip over, leveraging branded content may be your solution.
Branded content is marketing material that, rather than explicitly promoting your products, provides useful information or tells a story your audience can connect with. Unlike conventional advertising that incorporates a call to action (CTA) to generate leads and make a sale, branded content focuses on positive brand association and appeals to the viewer’s emotions. And unlike typical ads, audiences choose to engage with branded content. Effective branded content should function as entertainment, piquing your audience’s curiosity and, ideally, promoting conversation.
Branded content is often considered a type of content marketing. Content marketing is about creating useful or engaging content that contributes to brand awareness and drives sales. Branded content specifically focuses on engaging storytelling that doesn’t overtly promote the brand; instead, the brand benefits from the positive association of aligning its name with a story audiences love.
All branded content is content marketing, but not all content marketing is branded content. To illustrate the distinction, other types of content marketing might include downloadable templates, video tutorials for using a brand’s product, and clever social media posts that highlight the benefits of a business’ services. None of these types of content marketing have branded content’s emphasis on storytelling, and they’re also a little more overt in promoting the business itself.
Here are three reasons to consider incorporating branded content into your marketing mix:
A robust marketing strategy integrates different forms of marketing material. By integrating branded content into your marketing approach, you can avoid the redundancy of, for instance, typical pay-per-click (PPC) ads and present your brand from a fresh perspective. This helps you expand to broader audiences and boost visibility.
Branded content often tells compelling stories. Consider how you can express your brand identity through a narrative to create meaningful connections with your customers. What brand values matter most to you? What is your company’s mission statement? When your values and mission are reflected in the content you create—even if it doesn’t directly promote your products—customers are more likely to relate to your brand on an emotional level.
For example, Bebemoss is a sustainable toy company. Its founder, Izabela Erşahin, uses branded content to share how she found joy in crocheting and knitting after a difficult pregnancy. She breathes humanity into the brand’s story by sharing her narrative in a captivating video.
The branded content you create doesn’t have to be complex—in fact, something simple can come across as more authentic. Your first piece of branded content might just be you in front of the camera, sharing why you began your business. This openness can endear you to viewers and create positive associations around your brand.
Consumers are inundated with advertisements—to the point that many people have learned to tune them out. By creating branded entertainment your audience enjoys, you provide value in a way that traditional advertising cannot. Think of it this way: A traditional ad takes, while branded content gives. This allows your target audience to connect with your brand in a different way that doesn’t involve being directly sold to.
Use these steps to flesh out a branded content campaign that aligns with your business goals:
Before creating content to connect with your target audience, you’ll need to understand who they are and what they care about. This will help you tailor your branded content. Gather customer feedback in surveys and inquire about their concerns. Ask what things they care the most about. Consider emailing a survey immediately after a customer interacts with your brand, like after a purchase; post-purchase emails have a 40% to 50% open rate and increase customer retention.
Also examine customer reviews, comments, and engagement on social platforms. By evaluating customer behavior, you may notice patterns in their feedback that you can address through your branded content marketing strategy. For example, Bebemoss makes toys for children, but its customers are parents. As a result, the company’s video intentionally speaks to parents—specifically moms—because Bebemoss knows a story about resilience and motherhood will resonate with its target audience.
Your brand identity and values can serve as the foundation of a gripping narrative. They offer a purpose behind your story and a lens through which to tell it.
Shopify’s mission, for example, is to reduce the barriers to business ownership. This purpose can be seen in the Shopify Masters podcast, which features interviews with business owners, highlights their entrepreneurship journey, and provides listeners with valuable information. The podcast is branded content that contributes to Shopify’s mission of making entrepreneurship accessible while connecting its audience to the stories of those on a similar path.
To create content that incorporates your brand identity, know which problems your brand aims to solve, how it differs from the competition, and its outward personality. To create content that includes your values, know what you’re unwilling to compromise on and what motivates your brand.
The best branded content tells a compelling story. Great stories include rising action, a climax, and a resolution. Ideally, your audience should have someone to root for and feel emotionally tied to the story’s outcome. You can accomplish this by taking a relatable character on a journey that involves overcoming conflict. Your brand can tell the story of the founder’s personal history, the brand origin, a challenge the brand has overcome, or people your brand has helped.
They say two heads are better than one. If you want more creative expertise, consider working with another company—like a magazine or agency—to produce your branded content. For example, you’ve probably seen magazine articles marked with a paid partnership label; the content is interesting and doesn’t overtly promote a product. This is branded content in action.
Up-and-coming business owners who may not be able to hire another company can mimic these techniques on a smaller scale. For instance, you could hire a local influencer to create a video series in-house. Or, you could interview a customer to find ways their personal story connects to your brand’s values and then share that story on your company blog.
Ideally, you’ll promote your branded content via different mediums. Doing so will help you reach more people and present your content in new ways. This can involve posting on social media platforms, including it in newsletters, uploading a video to YouTube, and leveraging PR to get media attention.
Tracking the performance of your branded content will inform your team of its effectiveness. Remember, the primary goal of branded content is high audience engagement, not generating leads or sales. With that in mind, some marketing metrics to track are:
Your team can take this data and your findings to guide your future decisions in your marketing strategies.
Branded content is a marketing technique that connects viewers to the brand. It relies on storytelling, emotional appeal, and brand value to build a relationship with its target audience.
The Barbie movie took the world by storm with its star-studded cast, serving as branded content for Mattel, which saw an increase in sales after the film’s positive reception. Michelin’s restaurant guide is another wildly popular example that spotlights the tire company while providing restaurant reviews. On a more accessible level, Fly By Jing uses its recipe blog to provide genuine value to readers without ever making a hard sell.
Branded content is a type of content marketing; typically, branded content is an entertaining piece of media—a video or article, for instance—that audiences choose to engage with of their own accord. A content marketing campaign as a whole may be a bit broader, including social media, email newsletters, and press releases.
Companies can create branded content themselves, but they can team up with others to tell a more impactful story. For example, brands like Red Bull and Mailchimp have in-house branded content studios, while other brands rely on agencies or other creative partners to bring content to life.
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