As the market becomes more and more saturated, the stakes become higher and higher to capture audiences attention. As a result, it can be difficult for brands to stand out from the crowd.
Creating content is one way you can make yourself known to your audience. But how can a brand stand out and differentiate itself when every other business is already creating content? The answer? Tell stories… One way to do this is through the creation of branded content.
In this post, we’ll have a look at what branded content is, uncover why it’s so important and examine high-quality examples from big, successful brands to inspire you.
What is branded content?
Brand content is content that shares your business values and evokes an emotional response from your audience, allowing them to understand what you stand for. This type of content can be found in many forms, for instance, a blog, YouTube video, news article, or anything else really.
The goal of this type of content is to build brand awareness, increase loyalty, and leave a lasting impression on your audience, aside from the products and services that you sell.
The difference between branded content marketing and content marketing
Branded content marketing is focused on highlighting your business’s message, values and story. It isn’t tailored for a specific segment of your audience but rather meant for everyone who comes across your brand.
Content marketing on the other hand is focused on highlighting your products and services. The aim of this content is to drive leads and sales. While the aim of branded content is to raise awareness, inspire and inform.
The importance of branded content
People love a great story because it reminds them of their humanity. Brands know this and use it to their full advantage. A compelling story, however, doesn’t work for every marketing goal. It works wonders to pique curiosity and interest in your brand but if you want to improve your discoverability, you will need to create content that breaks away from single direction brand storytelling (otherwise known as linear content) and consider creating more personalised content or non-linear content to engage your audience more effectively.
According to SEJ (Search Engine Journal), the purpose of non-linear content is to facilitate brand discovery. They state that “Connecting varying content to serve your restless audience is the way to nudge the search engines to rank your content. Full-circle coverage of your brand using different media is what feeds the search engines, which leads to your brand discovery.”
How to create a branded content strategy
So how can you create branded content stories that will have a meaningful impact on your audience without sounding like a pushy salesperson?
1. Don’t just tell your audience, show them
Your branded content should always aim to tell a story and share your brand beliefs at the same time. For example, saying that you are committed to saving the environment and then showing your audience how by creating content that shows your brand using environmentally friendly practices to make your products.
It’s not enough to just say that you do one thing in a piece of content, you need to back it up in another so that audiences can see that you are sincere about your values.
When you do this, keep in mind that a compelling story entertains, educates and makes your audience curious enough to think about your content for a while afterwards.
2. Appeal to their emotional side
Your branded content should always appeal to your audiences’ emotions. That’s how you know you are doing it right! Think about creating content that taps into a specific emotion, like happiness to elicit a response.
Your message should inspire your audience to either get involved, change their perspective on something or make them curious about doing business with you because you piqued their interest.
3. Choose relatable characters who personify your brand’s core values
People like to buy from brands that they identify with. So if they see characters in your content that they can relate to, they are more likely to connect with your brand and become customers later on. It’s therefore important to include relatable stories and people in your branded content so that your audience can see themselves in them.
Also, be genuine in your approach, as audiences can pick up on inauthentic attempts at making a connection and will call you out, creating the opposite desired effect.
4. Create branded content that highlights your product or service
As a brand, it’s your responsibility to show people the benefits of your product or service. Branded content marketing won’t necessarily focus on advertising your products or services as content marketing does. But it certainly doesn’t hurt to mention a few benefits to explain to your audience what it is you offer.
Below are some examples of brands that did a fantastic job of creating branded content.
Brands who created amazing branded content
Dove – Real Beauty
This campaign seeks to encourage women to love the skin they are in. One of Dove’s core brand values.
In the video, an artist sets out to draw some women. Each woman is asked to give a description of herself without the artist being given the opportunity to look at her. He then sketches her based on that information. A stranger then describes the same woman to the artist who then draws their description of the woman. The women are shocked to see the difference in the two sketches once the artist finishes.
The video highlights the fact that women don’t always see themselves as beautiful and in the same way that a stranger might see them. Dove created this piece of branded content to show women that it’s okay to love themselves and it was a hit with their audience.
Nike – Play New
Nike’s famous slogan, “Just Do It”, speaks to its commitment to selling products that anyone can use. Their mission to their audience is to eliminate any false beliefs that they may have about their ability to pursue fitness and to “Just Do It” if that is what they want.
In the video, people are shown playing various sports and are by no means excellent at them. But the narrator highlights that being excellent is not what is important and that what is important is that they go for it anyway, even if they are terrible at it because what matters more is that they were brave enough to try new things and not feel ashamed that they were bad at it in the beginning. Spreading the message that their products are for everyone, regardless of their ability.
Conclusion
Getting your brand’s message across in an intensely competitive environment can be challenging. But it’s always worth the effort, whether it pays off today or in a few years time. For now, the best thing you can do is focus on identifying your brand’s humanity and core values. Then create content that inspires and shapes the hearts and minds of your audience.
Are you too busy to focus on creating content for your business? Get in touch with us today to see how we can help you achieve your content marketing goals this year!
