How Branded Content Marketing Can Transform Your Business?

Branded content marketing has become a new interest in the business community to reach more audiences, get public attention, and increase business revenue. It is even more productive and helpful to generate more leads where the audience usually does not move by traditional ads, as it directly targets the audience by building a strong connection.

So whether you are a successful business or a new small enterprise, in order to beat the current market competition, try the data-driven approach to design your branded content campaigns.

What is Branded Content Marketing?

Branding Content Marketing is a strategy in which a business or organization creates content that is directly linked to its brand and its value in a partnership with any publisher or advertiser to establish the image or awareness of its brand.

The strategy is helpful to promote anything including their products, services, positive market reputation, and business image. They can use different types of content including blog posts, social media posts, videos, infographics, and many more.

The main purpose of branded content is advertising content to connect with the audience or customers and help them make informed decisions about the brand. 

Moreover, these branded content campaigns help you stand out in a business industry where everyone is using traditional marketing strategies. Your product will grab more customer attention.

However, the best thing about creating branded content is that you can learn about your audience, which is quite essential. 

Why Knowing the Audience is Essential for Any Business:

It is essential to know your audience before creating branded content to get their attention. This knowledge involves the following:

• Different Topics in which your customers are interested in
• How can you entertain your audience 
• What type of content and channels do they usually like
• What are their beliefs, ideas, and values 
• What personalities, ideas, and figures can your customer genera can be identified with
• How can your product meet the customers’ expectations or fill the gap?

Suppose you know all these things about your product potential and customer or audience type. In that case, you can initiate a result-oriented branded content marketing campaign and easily stay one step ahead of market competition in the business world.

What is the Difference Between Branded Content Marketing and Traditional Marketing?

Do you know that 88% of businesses drive revenue by using branded content as the most popular marketing strategy after regular ads? Branded content is a new term in the business world, therefore, it is confusing to understand the difference between branded content and traditional marketing such as content marketing.

The main difference between these two is that, unlike traditional marketing where campaigns usually focus on the product and services in the form of advertisements, commercials, and posters, branded content uses a nuanced approach. See the difference in the following section:

Branded Content Marketing Vs. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a vast and broader term than branded content marketing. It includes all online marketing strategies, including emails, newsletters, ebooks, and unbranded content.

However, branded content is a specific type directly linked to your brand and product and focuses on business values, image, and story.

Branded Content Vs. Product Placement

In product placement strategy, your product appears very clearly in the ad or in the campaigns. However, it does not properly tell the story like branded content marketing does.

Product placement can also use the strategy of storytelling by putting the product ahead, unlike branded content where marketers do not even place the product in front of the audience clearly.

How to Create Engaging Branded Content

We are going to give our readers a step-by-step guide on how to create successful branded content campaigns. 

•  Find Your Brand’s Voice 

In your marketing campaigns, you will share your brand’s message with your audience. Therefore, you need to find out what your brand is saying and what its right voice is.

To understand that, you should learn what your brand is, what it stands for, its values, and its potential for the audience. The following are the important points that you should keep in mind to develop your brand’s right voice.

1. 1. 1. 1. What sets your product apart from the competitors in the market?
         2. What tone suits your product?
         3. What type of inspiration does your product develop in customers’ minds?
         4. What are people saying about your products?
         5. What types of solutions are offered to customers?

• Use a Direct Approach to Engage People

A direct approach is good for engaging the customer by using an authentic and emotional appeal in the campaigns. For example, if you go with a traditional approach you might start the message with “Hey that’s my brand, you should buy it.”

However, with branded content marketing you would go with a more linked and emotionally connected approach saying, “Hey we care about your problems, Let’s talk about a solution.” 

• Collaborate with Right People

If you want to collaborate with a larger audience it is good to collaborate with the right people. You can collaborate with influencers, different advertisers, and other companies, as well as publishers whose audiences match your brand’s intent and show the same interest.

There are some important points that you must consider while choosing the right people to partner with, such as:

1. 1. 1. 1. They should have a strong following. 
         2. Their followers must show the same interest and must have the potential to be your consumer. 
         3. Their values must align with your brand
         4. Their content must be authentic and possess quality
         5. Look for the previous work and results of publishers before hiring them
         6. Also, collaborate with companies who match your business ideas
         7. To get better influencers to explore social media and their social accounts

• Tell a Story

Stories often stay in the audiences’ minds for a long time and leave a better impact than regular ads and posters. Moreover, stories usually are more interesting and always teach something better. So, it is very helpful to use stories for your branded content marketing campaigns.

• Few Things to Avoid

Before you start designing your marketing campaign, you should avoid some things. If you want to make your branded content marketing more effective and result-oriented:

1. 1. 1. 1. Do not put your brand in marketing campaigns as a main character 
         2. Consider the audience’s interest before creating the story
         3. Do not use controversial or preachy narrative style for your story
         4. Do not copy someone else’s idea or marketing strategy 
         5. Do not keep jumping to irrelevant topics during narration
         6. Show images and graphics during the campaign to keep the people focused.

Benefits of Introducing Branded Content For Your Business

See the benefits you will get after introducing branded content marketing to increase your business’s brand awareness and image.

• Enhanced Visibility and Reach

Increased visibility and reach mean potential customers highly view and read your brand. It means your brand is easily recognisable by a large number of audience members.

This will create a strong image in their minds that will stay in their memory for a long time and build a strong and credible brand image.

With this enhanced visibility and strong impact on customers, you can not only retain previous consumers but attract more audience towards your brand. 

• More Customer Engagement 

When you reach the audience with high-quality content that is relevant to their interest and valuable for them it will increase the customer engagement ratio on your page.

People will show more trust and loyalty toward your product as your content appears highly credible and authentic to them.

• Showcasing Expertise for Personalized Targeting

You can create content campaigns with personalized targeting by reaching the right audience with the right message. Moreover, you can give a personalized experience to your audience which is also good for building a strong personal connection with your consumers and targeting their interests with a customized approach.

• Drive Moreover Traffic to Your Website

As we mentioned earlier, branded content brings more engagements to your page, which means you will observe more traffic on your website.

It can further help you improve the search engine optimization of your website, as Google will also consider your brand a credible and authentic one due to the high engagement rate, increased amount of time people spend on your web page, and relevant content. 

• Generate more Leads and Sales

Branded content increases customer interest and trust in your products. It helps them make informed decisions and show increased loyalty to your brand therefore you will see a significant increase in sales and will be able to generate more potential and high-quality leads after using branded marketing strategies. 

• Boost Search Engine Optimization

It is another important aspect of branded content marketing that helps you increase search engine visibility. By creating content that is highly relevant and fully optimized, you can beat search engine algorithms and place your position on top ranking to stay visible to the eyes of customers.

• Measure and Track the Success of Your Brand

You can easily track the success of your marketing campaigns to make better and data-driven decisions for the future. You can use analytical methods and tracking insights to find out helpful information for future prediction and planning on what changes you should consider for future campaigns and how to improve the effectiveness of your advertisements.

Final Thoughts

Branded content is a relatively new but powerful marketing tool for businesses to make their products stand out from the competition. Branded content marketing is your solution if you want to introduce your product to the market by showcasing its value and true purpose in a different, more direct, and emotionally appealing way.

Moreover, it is essential to keep the quality of content high and bring uniqueness into it, as copying someone else or taking a pre-developed idea to design your content can take the actual message of your brand away.