A lot of people wonder How to Create Successful Branded Content Campaigns, and we are going to take a look into it. Branded content is a powerful marketing instrument, which you can use to convey your brand message to your target audience. This type of content helps to turn customers into brand advocates and achieve long-term business goals.
If you want to learn more about How to Create Successful Branded Content Campaigns, read this article. It will help you to understand what branded content is all about and how to use it to benefit your company.
Table of Contents
What is branded content?
Thirst things first, let’s clarify what the difference between the branded content, ads, and content marketing is. Branded content is always about people and their stories. Advertisement and content marketing is all about products and the company.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these marketing tactics separately and consider a few examples.
Advertisement campaign
If a company wants to boost sales, it creates an ad that presents its product in the most favourable light. As a rule, the advertising campaign aims to convince prospective buyers to spend their money on the product.
The message of the ad usually sounds like this:
“Our product is great. It has this and that features. You should buy our product to satisfy one of your needs.”
Do you want to see an example of the perfect advertising campaign? Watch Coca Cola’s commercial Open Happiness. The video demonstrates how to use original Coca Cola bottles to have fun and make new friends in college.
The tagline of this marketing campaign is the following: “Open a Coke. Open a new friendship.” The company invites customers to buy a Coke in order to satisfy their needs: to drink and to fight loneliness.
Content marketing
If a company wants to raise brand awareness and increase customer loyalty, it uses content marketing. It produces and publishes textual and visual content to grow its online presence.
Content marketing allows grabbing the audience attention and building customer relationship. As a rule, content marketing aims to promote the following message:
“This is who we are. This is what we do. Here is an example of how you can use our products and services.”
If you want to see an example of a successful content marketing strategy, take a look at Swiss Airlines’ YouTube channel. Video content allows learning more about the company, its aircraft, employees, and many more.
Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/user/SwissIntlAirLines
Branded content
Finally, let’s talk about branded content. Now you will see the difference more clearly.
The branded content aims to encourage people to support the values promoted by the company. Companies use branded content to make people emotionally attached to the brand.
If you want to create branded content, you should focus on the values your company share and the ideas it promotes. What is your mission? How does your company contribute to global issues?
Forget about your product, revenues, and profits. Now your task is to craft a story, which discusses things which are important for your company and your target audience.
The main message of the branded content sounds like this:
“This specific issue is important for everyone. Let’s spread the word and try to resolve this problem together.”
Before considering examples, it is worth to be mentioned that key elements of branded content are emotions:
- Sadness
- Happiness
- Fear and surprise
- Anger and disgust
Here are four branded videos which demonstrate how to use each of the feelings to influence customers’ mind.
Sadness
Dove created a short film Real Beauty Sketches. The film shows that there is a gap between how women perceive themselves and how other people see them. The sad truth is that most women don’t feel pretty no matter how beautiful they are indeed.
This video aims to break beauty stereotypes. It teaches women to accept themselves the way they are in order to be more confident in themselves and feel happier.
Happiness
BlueGreen Vacations, a travel company, created the following video. It shows that it’s important to share laughter, sweet memories, and happiness with others.
This video is not an ad. It doesn’t promote any specific products and doesn’t explain why BlueGreen Vacations is better than other travel companies. This video is a piece of branded content, which reminds viewers that time with family and friends is priceless.
Fear and surprise
Colgate-Palmolive Company created a short documentary about the zoo in Cincinnati. The video aims to shock viewers with water use statistics in order to encourage them to save the water.
The company states that if you leave the faucet on for two minutes while brushing your teeth, you waste up to four gallons of clean water. The Cincinnati Zoo’s story helps to convince the audience that “every drop matters” and that everyone can make a change.
Anger and disgust
Some companies create branded content to discuss the topics, which most people try to avoid. For instance, Kotex offered women to share their “embarrassing period stories”. The stories tell about the unexpected first periods at school, bleeding through pants at a party and other awkward moments.
The message of the video is the following: “Periods should never stand in the way of a woman’s progress.”
Tips on how to create a winning branded content
Now you know how an ideal branded content campaigns look like. And it’s time to create your own campaign to win the audience’s attention. Here is a short guide for you.
Utilize elements of visual brand identity
If you have watched branded videos attentively, you have noticed one important thing. All these videos tell people’s stories and discuss important issues. But they don’t provide any information about the products.
The only thing, which helps to understand which company created this or that video, is the company’s logo. As a rule, the logo is displayed at the end or /and at the begging of the video.
So before you create branded content, you should design a strong visual brand identity. Your company should have a memorable logo, which will make your brand to stand out.
Write an impressive story
Your main task is to identify an issue which is worth discussion and to create a story, which leaves no one indifferent. To complete this objective successfully, you should take the following steps:
- Learn more about your target audience, its preferences, interests, and concerns. Define its pain points.
- Focus on a global issue, which your company is trying to solve and which is also important for your target audience.
- Decide who will “play” the key role in your story: your clients, your employees, brand ambassadors, or just random people.
- Select one of the emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise) which perfectly fit your brand message.
- Write down your story from scratch. Do it by yourself, or get assistance from a storytelling expert. You can hire The Logo Creative to design your brand identity and graphic designs to tell your brand’s story and utilize writing services such as Trust My Paper.
Decide what type of content to create
In fact, not only videos can be used as branded content. You can also utilize textual content, infographics, vector images, collages.
However, according to statistics, videos engage the target audience better than other types of content. So if you have enough financial resources, it’s better to create a branded video. If you operate on a budget, feel free to choose less expensive options.
Make your branded content shareable
In the era of social media, it’s crucially important to make your content share-worthy. If you can provide a fresh look at the existing problem, that’s great. But it’s not enough.
You should create a story which touches the hearts and evokes emotions. You should get social media users to share your branded content with their friends. It will help you to increase reach and boost your marketing efforts.
Keep it simple
Your story should be understandable for everyone, even for children. Don’t use sophisticated phrases or rarely used terms. Tell your story in simple words.
Even if your branded content discusses such serious issues as global warming or gender inequity, you should strive for simplicity. It’s the only way to capture and retain the audience’s attention.
Write a brand new story
No matter whether your company is big or small, and whether your brand is new or already well-known, you should write an exclusive story. The uniqueness of your branded content must be 100%.
Yes, you can get inspired by campaigns of famous brands. Yes, you can learn a lot from the best practices.
But you should never try to create something similar. If you want your company to succeed, you should choose your own path and create a brand new story. You should craft your content from scratch using your own brilliant ideas.
In conclusion
If you have been looking for a marketing solution, which will take your business to the next level, you have just found it. Branded content is one of the most powerful marketing tactics, which exist nowadays and now you have a better understanding of How to Create Successful Branded Content Campaigns.
Feel free to use this article about How to Create Successful Branded Content Campaigns as a guide. Start working on building your branded content strategy, be creative, and lead your company to success.
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Author Bio
Diana Nadim is a writer and editor who has a Master degree in Marketing. She combines her passion for writing with her interest in research and creates thought-provoking content in various fields. Diana also runs her own 3to5Marketing blog. What inspires her the most in her writing is traveling and meeting new people.