What is branded content and why is it important?
SHORT READ
Branded content is a popular marketing strategy many businesses and organisations use to reach their target audience — but what is it, and how does it differ from other marketing activity?
Marketing: two sides of the coin
On one side, you’re using conventional (product placement) marketing to highlight what you are selling, focusing on why your product is preferable; highlighting its USPs — quicker, cheaper, why it’s more efficient etc. This drives short-term gains with your audience. It’s what makes them think, “I’ll buy that easter egg.”
On the flipside you are creating branded content, designed to build awareness of your brand and what it stands for. It does this by associating your brand with content that shares its values and beliefs; often to evoke specific emotions in your audience. This tends to drive longer-term value; by sharing content your audience finds valuable you will draw them into your sales funnel, but it’s a long game. It’s what makes them align themselves with the company; “I’ll buy an easter egg from M&S as they believe in quality.”
Branded content comes in a variety of formats from videos to blogs to articles. All these will tell your story and share. It’s worth keeping on top of trends to ensure you invest in what drives you the most value. Podcasts, for example, saw continued growth in 2022*.
By engaging customers across your channels you can help them learn more about your brand by interweaving your story where they are interacting.
All this is encouraging customers to have positive experiences with the brand, with the goal of increasing loyalty and trust; invaluable when building new relationships or selling products.
Additionally, branded content allows for customer feedback and engagement on a deeper level than standard marketing campaigns. By encouraging customers to share their thoughts and feelings about the brand, you can better understand what drives their behaviour.
Benefits of branded content include:
- Increased reach — Branded content engages customers with engaging stories and increases brand advocacy through quality content shared on their preferred channels
- Enhance authenticity and trust — It’s a show, don’t tell approach with branded content. Engage your customers emotionally to become more memorable and demonstrate the value of your brand
- Quality conversions — Well considered content will show that you have valuable knowledge. As a result, you can become a ‘go-to’ for consumers seeking direction and clarity.
How to create compelling branded content?
Before investing anything in branded content, ensure your brand positioning is nailed. If your values aren’t aligned and you don’t know what you stand for, you’ll appear insincere.
Visually they must be able to emotionally connect with your audience. To achieve this, aim to balance aesthetics, impact and information. Before you press go – take a step back and ask yourself, “does this content align with the overall brand narrative; is it communicating one key message effectively without overwhelming readers or viewers?”
Copywriting is critical. The right words at the right time help convince readers to take action on your behalf – whether signing up for a subscription or purchasing a product. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but you can gain control by focusing on target audiences to reach people who will appreciate what you have to say.
Maximising your branded content reach
You’ll need to develop consistent messaging to keep up momentum across all channels — including social media. Referring to brand tone of voice guidelines will ensure messaging is consistent across all media platforms – from blog posts to social media posts to paid ads. By incorporating a mix of multimedia elements into your branded content (such as images, audio clips, and video files), you not only create more engaging pieces, but also increase visibility for your brand on channels such as LinkedIn, etc.
Once you’ve created branded content, it’s important to measure its performance to assess their success. Use analytics software to track user engagement and behaviour across different channels; web, social media platforms etc. This data will help you optimise future campaigns accordingly. Key metrics include click-through rates (CTRs), shares/likes/comments (SLCs), and impressions/day (IMD). You can optimise your content by understanding how people engage with it for maximum reach and impact.
In addition to measuring results during campaign execution, consider producing custom-branded content for those customers who are most engaged, or who actively have shown an interest in what you offer.
Finally, make sure that the user experience is as good as possible, so that viewers aren’t discouraged from continuing down your funnel once they’ve discovered your brand online.
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