Whether you’re listening to the radio, watching TV, or scrolling on Instagram, you’re constantly bombarded with advertisements—ads you’ve likely become adept at ignoring. If you’re selling a product or service, it’s a safe bet that your potential customers have also developed this skill. To capture and sustain their attention, a new approach to marketing might be necessary. Conversely, branded content offers a fresh perspective by aiming to connect with the audience rather than merely pushing a sales message. How can you create meaningful content that your customers will actually want to engage with? Understanding branded content might be the solution.
Understand Your Target Market
Before diving into creating branded content, it’s essential to have a comprehensive understanding of your target market. This initial step involves delving deeply into who your audience is and what they find most compelling or relevant. Collecting customer feedback, conducting surveys, and analyzing social media interactions can yield valuable insights. It’s not just about demographics; understanding their values, habits, and pain points can guide you in crafting content that resonates.
Gathering this information can be done in several ways. Surveys, for example, provide direct insights into customer preferences and behaviors. When sent immediately after a customer interaction, such as a purchase, surveys tend to have high open rates and offer accurate reflections of customer sentiments. Furthermore, examining customer reviews, comments, and general engagement on social media platforms provides context about what your audience enjoys or finds irritating. Observing these patterns helps you tailor branded content that speaks directly to them.
An in-depth understanding of your audience not only helps in content creation but also in deciding the platforms where the content should be shared. For instance, a brand that sells children’s toys needs to know that its primary buyers are parents, therefore, the content should specifically appeal to the concerns and emotions of parents. Analyzing customer behavior and feedback allows brands to address specific needs and preferences through their content, making it more engaging and effective.
Define Your Brand Persona and Principles
Once you’ve gained extensive knowledge about your target market, the next step is to define your brand persona and core principles. This involves articulating what your brand stands for, including its mission, vision, and values. These aspects serve as the backbone for your branded content, providing a consistent and relatable narrative that can attract and engage your audience.
Your brand persona and principles should be reflected in every piece of content you create. They offer a guiding framework for storytelling and help to establish an authentic connection with the audience. For example, a brand like Shopify, which aims to reduce barriers to business ownership, employs branded content like its Shopify Masters podcast to communicate this mission. Through interviews and storytelling, the podcast promotes Shopify’s core values of entrepreneurship and accessibility, while simultaneously providing valuable insights and inspiration to listeners.
Creating a brand persona involves understanding your brand’s unique characteristics and how they differ from competitors. Additionally, defining your brand principles includes identifying the core values you hold and are unwilling to compromise on. These principles should consistently inform your content strategy, reinforcing your brand’s identity, and building trust with your audience. When your branded content aligns with your brand persona and principles, it resonates more deeply with viewers, fostering a stronger emotional connection.
Choose the Narrative to Share
With a defined audience and solid brand principles, it’s time to choose the narrative you want to share through your branded content. A compelling story can significantly enhance your content’s effectiveness, transforming it from mere information into a memorable experience. Great narratives typically include a beginning, middle, and end, with rising action, a climax, and a resolution.
Consider crafting a story that introduces relatable characters and conflicts, resulting in a satisfying resolution. This approach not only captivates the audience but also makes the content more relatable and emotionally engaging. Your brand’s story could focus on various aspects, such as the founder’s personal history, the origin of the brand, significant challenges overcome, or the positive impact your brand has had on customers’ lives.
For example, Bebemoss, a sustainable toy company, uses branded content to share the founder Izabela Erşahin’s personal journey. She narrates how crocheting and knitting became therapeutic after a challenging pregnancy, blending personal insight with the brand’s mission of sustainability and ethical production. The simplicity of her story—shared through a captivating video—helps to humanize the brand and foster emotional connections with the audience.
A well-chosen and well-told story can elevate your content, making it not just palatable but genuinely engaging. Transparent and authentic narratives that reflect your brand’s values and mission are likely to create positive associations and deeper connections with your audience.
Partner with Others
Collaboration can be a powerful tool when creating branded content. By partnering with other companies, influencers, or content creators, you can tap into their expertise and audience, adding more creativity and reach to your content campaigns. This approach can diversify your content and bring fresh perspectives that align with your brand’s values.
Engaging with partners can take several forms, such as co-producing content with a magazine or agency, or enlisting the help of influencers to create a series of videos or social media posts. These collaborations can result in branded content that is more compelling and has a broader reach. Consider, for instance, how magazine articles often label certain content as part of a paid partnership. These articles are typically engaging and informative, subtly incorporating the brand without overtly selling a product.
For smaller businesses or startups that may not have the resources to collaborate with large agencies, partnerships on a smaller scale can still be effective. Local influencers, bloggers, or even loyal customers can contribute to creating authentic branded content. For example, interviewing a satisfied customer and sharing their story on your company blog can create authentic content that resonates with other potential customers.
Collaboration not only enhances the creative process but also helps in expanding your content’s visibility. By leveraging your partners’ platforms and audiences, you can reach new segments and strengthen your brand’s presence in the market.
Publicize Your Content
Creating compelling branded content is only half the battle; the next crucial step is to ensure it reaches as many people as possible. Publicizing your content through various channels can amplify your message and attract a wider audience. This involves leveraging multiple mediums such as social media platforms, email newsletters, video platforms like YouTube, and even traditional PR strategies to maximize reach and engagement.
Social media is a powerful tool for promoting branded content. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer diverse audiences and engagement opportunities. By sharing your branded content across these platforms, you can engage with different segments of your target audience and encourage sharing, commenting, and other forms of interaction. Additionally, including your branded content in email newsletters can keep your existing customers informed and engaged, driving further interaction.
Further, PR efforts such as press releases or media partnerships can help in publicizing your branded content. Getting media coverage not only boosts visibility but also adds credibility to your content. Consider how viral media content often stems from strategic PR campaigns that capture the attention of journalists and news outlets.
It’s essential to adapt your promotional strategy according to the platform and audience. Tailoring the content’s presentation for each platform ensures that it resonates well with the respective audience, whether through a brief, engaging video for Instagram or a detailed article for LinkedIn.
Evaluate Results
After executing your branded content strategy, it’s essential to evaluate the results to understand its effectiveness. Metrics such as engagement rates, shares, comments, and customer feedback can provide insights into how well your content resonated with your audience. Tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and customer surveys can help track these metrics.
Analyzing these results allows you to determine what worked well and what didn’t, guiding future content strategies. Regularly revisiting and refining your approach ensures that your branded content remains relevant and effective. By continuously engaging with your audience and addressing their feedback, you can maintain a strong connection and foster long-term loyalty.
Whether you’re tuning into the radio, watching television, or browsing Instagram, you’re inundated with advertisements daily. These ads are typically easy to ignore, a skill many of us have developed over time. If you’re a business owner or marketer trying to promote a product or service, it’s likely your potential customers have honed this skill as well. In light of this challenge, capturing and keeping their attention may require a fresh marketing strategy. Branded content offers a unique alternative by focusing on creating a connection with the audience rather than simply delivering a sales pitch.
So, how do you craft content that genuinely engages your customers? Delving into the concept of branded content can provide insights into building meaningful interactions. Unlike traditional ads that interrupt your feed, branded content seeks to resonate with the audience by offering relevant, valuable, or entertaining information. This approach encourages a deeper relationship, providing a sense of trust and loyalty over time. Emphasizing the story behind your brand or product, showing behind-the-scenes footage, or aligning with social causes can make your content more relatable and memorable.
Ultimately, understanding and implementing branded content strategies can transform the way you engage with your audience, leading to more meaningful and lasting connections. It’s not just about making a sale; it’s about building a relationship that encourages your audience to care about your brand.