Branded content works, period. But why and how?
Well, branded content integrates storytelling into marketing to build relationships. It does not disturb consumers with hard sells.
Where traditional advertising is often one-sided, pushing products for immediate sales, story-driven content shares narratives to evoke emotions, build connections, and foster engagement.
Branded content or branded entertainment delivers value and experience. Surprisingly, branded content may never mention a product explicitly, as the motive is to strengthen brand identity and trust.
From driving engagement to building awareness, you can create a strategy that consumers don’t have to opt into, but consume naturally.
With this in mind, here are six multi-channel branded-content strategies that B2B marketers and agencies can use.
6 Branded Content Strategies for Better Awareness and Engagement
1. Customer Success Stories & Case Studies
Real customer stories represent authentic social proof. Through these, prospects start trusting their peers, and they rely more on the authentic raw feedback than glorified marketing copies.
A case study, testimonial, or video review is much better at showing how your brand or solution solved a concrete problem for the users.
Customer stories and experiences humanize a brand, enabling potential leads to empathize with the customers. High-level marketing content tells your brand story, but customer stories tell their story, which builds credibility.
Platforms like Printful and Printify, for example, regularly feature stories from independent artists, e-commerce entrepreneurs, and small brands using their print-on-demand services to build successful online businesses. These case studies highlight challenges such as a lack of inventory, fulfillment logistics, or global reach, and how those hurdles were overcome using scalable, no-inventory models.
How to Use It
Publish well-structured case studies and success stories regularly. Within these, add details like the customers’ challenges, how your solution solved the problem, and measurable results.
Additionally, use different types of content formats, including:
- Written articles
- Quotes
- Infographics
- Short videos
If you want to check out how this can be done, follow Slack. Their website has case studies marketed as personal stories. They share how different teams use Slack to boost productivity and collaboration.
The stories they share have quotes by clients like managers discussing collaboration challenges before Slack and how it's improved after Slack.
On top of this, every story they share ends up with concrete metrics, ensuring the readers can quantify the impact.
Did you know StoryChief lets you share customer stories about your brand, product, and solutions? Check out how StoryChief can elevate your content strategy and brand presence.
2. Content Collaborations With Influencers or Brands
Partnering with influencers and other brands expands your reach and lends third-party credibility. When you co-create content with another brand or an industry influencer, you tap into their audience, which also helps build social proof.
But you need to choose influencers with a built-in community that trusts their taste.
For best results, work with influencers who are already avid followers of the products and brands of your industry.
Work with people whose vision aligns with your values. If the collaboration feels authentic, it exposes your brand to those followers in a positive context.
How to Use It
- Co-create content like webinars, video interviews, eBooks, short-form video content (Reels), etc. to share each other’s experiences and opinions.
- You can also do cross-promotional campaigns as two brands or collaborators come together to share a common story about the product or brand.
This will only work if the content collaboration is organic. Don’t force-fit things. Work with clear goals and create a system to track them as you move forward.
A great example of this collaboration is Bumble x Amelia Dimoldenberg. Together, they produced co-branded content around modern dating.
Amelia, who is known for her humorous “Chicken Shop Date” series, eventually became the face of the brand, aligning perfectly with Bumble’s narrative of authentic dating experiences.
3. Email Series and Newsletters
Emails ensure your message is personalized and direct. A well-crafted email reaches subscribers in their inbox, and since they have already agreed to engage with your brand through emails, they are more likely to read the emails.
Regular email series let you nurture audiences with curated, brand-aligned content, such as newsletters. Email is a direct channel to your customer’s thought process. It allows you to reinforce your brand voice, highlight your latest content, and build a consistent relationship.
Over time, readers come to trust the content source and open the emails expecting value.
How to Use It
Start by sending periodic emails. You can use StoryChief to build your brand content strategies related to email marketing.
- Send newsletters regularly, including your content and curated industry news.
- Ensure the tone of the email is friendly and conversational.
- Add feature sections within the email templates, but make them dynamic by adding the latest blog posts, upcoming events, and/or customer stories.
- Personalize the email newsletter content using segmented customer lists and dynamic content.
- Always include one strong call-to-action, like, read full article, register for a webinar, etc.
Amundsen Sports, a sports brand popular in Switzerland and Austria, has an amazing email campaign we can all use to learn and build our brand content strategies. They regularly send narrative-driven newsletters to their audience. Email campaigns added with dreamy snapshots of snow-capped mountains with emotive storytelling about ski adventures inspires the readers to engage further and make a purchase. They are not hard-selling the products but inspiring subscribers to engage with the brand’s story.
4. Branded Podcasts and Audio Content
Podcasts are great at building intimacy and authority among the target audiences. By sharing your brand’s story through a host or guest voice, it becomes easier to create a personal connection because it's similar to creating a one-on-one conversation.
Branded podcasts often feel less like ads and more like editorial content, which boosts credibility.
Trends have shown that people are more receptive to video podcasts than audio ones. Plus, the listeners are more receptive to the insights shared through these podcasts.
How to Use It
- Launch a podcast series on a topic related to your industry or values. You can use a platform that lets you create, share, and monitor podcasts.
- Host or co-host interviews with experts, customers, or leaders while publishing your podcasts on all major platforms.
- Create episodes of the podcasts and share them along with the email newsletters.
- Leverage the power of short-form content consumption to promote audio clips on social media.
Here’s what Vineet Gupta, Founder of 2xSaS, has to say about branded podcasts:
“Add captions along with podcasts as it improves accessibility and is good for SEO purposes. Be consistent with podcasts and share them weekly or monthly.”
5. Storytelling Through Video Series
Videos, by their basic nature, are emotional and engaging. A brand-specific video series can create a strong emotional connection by putting real brand-related stories or personalities in front of the target audience.
However, these videos can only make an impact when the audience can relate to the narratives and characters. Hence, ensure your videos have well-crafted and authentic stories that can foster empathy and brand affinity.
The best part about videos is their repurposability. You can edit long videos into small clips to share key insights and pocket-sized but crucial information on social media.
How to Use It
Host a branded video series. You may use YouTube, but other options you can explore include Vimeo and Daily Motion.
- Break longer episodes into bite-sized clips for LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, or TikTok.
- Bring along industry leaders and share innovation stories or behind-the-scenes brand journeys for better engagement.
- For better outreach, promote each new episode via email and social media.
- You can also embed the videos in blog posts for additional exposure.
PwC launched their Purpose + Profit video series as a part of their branded content campaign. The video series ran on Huffington Post, and in the videos, they show organizations and leaders combating societal and environmental issues.
The video series was started to highlight the role of purpose in business and share authentic stories. Video storytelling works for all types of businesses, be it a candle business, an eCommerce platform, or a logistics company.
6. Interactive Content (Quizzes, Polls, Calculators)
Interactive tools like quizzes, polls, assessments, and calculators make users part of the story and provide immediate value or insights. Such branded content examples increase time spent by potential customers and generate leads.
Interactive content also yields customer data, including emails, preferences, and pain points.
How to Use It
People like learning about themselves or benchmarking their knowledge, so a fun quiz or poll tied to your domain can be shareable and memorable.
- Embed quizzes and interactive elements on your website and promote them socially.
- Follow up with a personalized outcome and a call-to-action. For example, you can say Learn how we can help you achieve this result.
- Feature the quiz/poll on relevant blog posts or landing pages, and mention it in newsletters or social ads to drive traffic.
While doing all this, ensure your brand elements are visible in the quizzes and other elements.
One of the best branded content examples here is Cloud Sherpa’s quiz on their clients’ cloud serviceability. They launched a How mature is your ServiceNow quiz where visitors had to answer questions on ServiceNow usage.
Categorized according to the clients’ maturity level, the quiz provided tailored improvement tips according to the answers.
Choose Strategy Over Volume
For every branded content strategy, quality is always preferred over quantity. Hence, brands should focus on formats that fit their voice, audience, and resources. It’s better to launch one thoughtful video series or curated newsletter that resonates deeply than to produce generic content just to fill a schedule.
More importantly, align every piece of branded content with your core values and objectives.
At StoryChief, we help brands create and share branded content with their target audiences. You can use the power of AI for marketing purposes and ensure your audiences receive high-quality and personalized content.
Adopt a content management platform today to streamline strategy, creation, collaboration, publishing, analytics, and optimization.
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