Are you looking for a new approach to hawk your brand? Are you wanting to get the attention of new, potential customers and to pique their interest in your company? Do you need a marketing strategy restart? Do you know what branded content is?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then we can help. Read on to get our three creative and quick ways you can brand your content and get more promotion for your company without ever showing your brand. Learn all about branded content and more by reading on!
What Is Branded Content?
On a basic level, branded content for your business is literally anything you put your brand on. Examples can include but are not limited to the following:
- Your blog or website header;
- Your social media header;
- T-shirts;
- Koozies;
- Key chains;
- Umbrellas;
- Business cards for your entire workforce;
- Signage at events;
- Magazine ads;
- Direct mail.
Think of branded content as a highway billboard for your business on just about anything that can be printed upon.
Who Uses Branded Content?
Branded content is the go-to way to advertise for any and every business. Based upon your budget for branding promotional materials and routine assets such as a website or blog, your company may have more or less branded content.
The key to using branded content is to known when and where to use it. Overusing branded content can create a sea of messaging that customers eventually will ignore. In addition, every business has a life cycle when using more branded content makes sense. For example, it may make more sense for company to use more branded content when it is just starting out. This way, customers begin to recognize the company and pay attention to it.
How Can Branded Content Help Your Business?
- The best branded content helps customers with name recognition and identification of your company in the marketplace.
- On a secondary level, branded content can build loyalty among customers and boost your image. This can lead to more customer referrals and ultimately more business.
For example, let’s say your company recently incorporated and launched. You’ll want to get the attention of new customers and let them know you are in business. To compete with the many other brands out there, you’ll need to brand some types of content for name recognition — most notably your website, blog, business cards and social media platforms.
From there, you may want to energize your customer base and let them know you are in the business of making them happy. So, you may hold social media contests to giveaway branded T-shirts or give out email coupons that feature your brand to encourage your target audience to try out your company.
3 Tips to Brand Your Content Without Even Showing Your Brand
What marketers sometimes don’t realize, however, is that not all effective marketing is branded. Instead, you can try a more subtle and fluid approach that will still get the attention of your audience and build customer loyalty. Try these three tips for boosting your brand without actually showing your brand!
1. Launch a Social Campaign with a Catchy Hashtag
Social media is essentially free branding for your company. You can boost your brand and its exposure by telling your company’s story and promoting your products and services on social media. Add a memorable hashtag to your posts on Instagram and Twitter. This is a subtle way to brand your content without showing your brand.
For example, take Nike’s hashtag is #justdoit while Duke University’s is #foreverduke. You can encourage your customers to use these hashtags when touting your name in the social sphere — and you can track posts using this hashtag.
2. Launch a Live, Behind-the-Scenes Video
Social and web platforms are moving to live video more and more as a source of promotion for your brand. What you want to do is give your audience a behind-the-scenes, exclusive look into your company in your video.
This is an excellent way to promote your brand and to show what it is all about without actually displaying the brand logo. Give your customers something interesting to see and to learn via a live video.
3. Teach Your Customers Something They Didn’t Know
The value add of your brand is that you become useful to your customer base. If you can’t make that value argument and fulfill it, you’re not going to last long as a company. So publish blogs, emails and even white papers or e-books that teach your customers something they didn’t know about your company. For example, maybe you send out a weekly email that lists Three Ways Product A Can Change Your Daily Routine, or Four Things You Didn’t Know About Product B.
This is easy content branding for your company without being overly promotional or displaying your brand. If at the end of your blogs or emails your customer has learned something valuable that he or she can take and implement in life immediately, then you’ve done your job as a brand — and you may just see a boost in business!
Branding Up
Are you ready to get started with your new strategy for branded content that is creative, energizing and gets the attention of your target audience? What many marketing strategists forget is that branding everything you promote can become less effective over time because the industry is saturated with brands.
Instead, switch it up a little and promote your brand more subtly using these tips. You’ll still have a big impact. Also, your branding experiment will teach you a lot about what is and is not working for your company. Did you try any of these expert tips? Leave a comment below and let us know what worked for you!
The images are from pixabay.com.