Branded Content - What is it?

Branded content – What is it? Branded content is a marketing strategy with many advantages for your business. It can, among other things, help you stand out from your competitors and promote brand awareness.

Moreover, a branded content strategy will generate added value for your target audience. Interested? Then keep on reading!

Branded content – What is it?

 Branded content definition refers to the creation of branded content with no objective to advertise any product or service. In fact, the real purpose that drives the brand to generate content is to offer value to its potential consumers. It’s not about selling, it’s about improving your relationship with your consumers.

Some ways to implement this content strategy are through the funding of events, or the creation of audiovisual content or ebooks, for example. In short, everything that is useful for our potential customers and that adds value to our brand image. An alternative to regular invasive marketing campaigns.

What benefits does it have?

Content marketing can be very profitable for your business. Discover why this technique is so successful below:

1. Non-intrusive: As with any other inbound marketing strategy, consumers are the ones who come to your brand, not the other way around. In other words, if the content you generate is interesting, of high quality and adds value, your buyer persona will come to you without you having to interrupt them. As a result, the relationship that is created with your brand will be much stronger and long-lasting.
2. Build an emotional connection: Remember, it’s not about advertising, but a much more powerful way to reach your audience. Digital marketing gives you the opportunity to excite them, to make them laugh, to fall in love with your values and your brand. Take advantage of it! For this, you can use creative and emotional tools such as storytelling.
3. Improve your brand image and notoriety: its positive effects are really long-lasting. When branded content is able to convey positive feelings to us, we keep those values in our memory and are more likely to remember the brand.
4. It’s potentially viral: how many times have you watched a shocking video promoted by a brand and shared it with your family and friends? When effectively done, branded content tends to generate a “snowball” effect.
5. It helps to get new clients: if your letter of introduction is through content of value and in a completely disinterested way… It’s an unbeatable start! Therefore, as a last consequence, branded content is useful for getting new  readers and subscribers.

Branded content examples:

The best way to illustrate what brand content is and how a campaign works is through these famous examples that you probably remember:

• Popeye: you’ve heard of “I’m Popeye the sailor man”, haven’t you? Well, these famous drawings were actually branded content by some spinach producers. An intelligent and creative way to encourage spinach consumption! And without advertising!
• Coca-Cola: the “Share a Coke” campaign is another successful example of branded content. The soft drink brand got consumers to advertise the brand themselves. Users shared the photos of the Coca-Colas personalised with their name on Facebook and Twitter. In short, an ingenious idea that went viral and revolutionised social networks.
• Red Bull: undoubtedly the brand that has made the most of this type of content. Much more than an energy drink brand, Red Bull has organised and promoted so many extreme sports events that it has burned its values into the minds of its consumers. One of the brand’s most famous sponsorships was Felix Baumgartner’s stratospheric jump. Not only was Red Bull able to recover its investment, but its brand image and values were further strengthened.

Don’t confuse branded content with…

It seems that in the world of marketing everything is constantly changing and new terms and tools are constantly emerging. Here is another type of strategy whose concept is very similar to branded content but which should not be confused:

• Product placement: Have you ever seen a product or service in a series or movie? Although this technique is sometimes carried out very subtly, the product branding is always visible and clear.
• Content marketing: this is the strategy that encompasses not only branded content, but any type of content created by the brand. For example, an informative guide or video tutorial is part of content marketing, but it is not branded content, as it mentions the characteristics of the product or service.
• Conventional advertising: as you know, the main feature of branded content is that it does not seek to sell a product or service, and therefore does not try to advertise its characteristics. Moreover, it is content that our audience consumes voluntarily, unlike traditional advertising.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if your business is big or small, even the budget you have. Brand content is available to any brand and has a lot of potential. Simply unleash creativity and imagination!