Today, digital is definitely at the heart of our lives, but also at the heart of brand’s lives. From simple economic actors, they have become real actors of our society, trying more and more to establish a direct relationship with their targets, especially through social networks, and more and more often choosing to no longer focus solely on traditional media such as television or radio.
At the heart of a true digital maelstrom, brands are trying, in order to become visible, to create interest and attract attention. Thus, if the ROI (Return on Investment) remains a major KPI, ROA (Return on Attention) is becoming increasingly important.
What is brand content?
Brand content is a consequence of these developments: it is a creative new genre, combining a brand communication logic with the presentation of a traditional media offer, in order to answer these issues of engagement creation.
More specifically, the brand content is a content directly created by and for a brand, which is both the editor and the producer. This content has a “natural” link with the DNA of the brand and its role is to expand its territory by sharing its values and passions, but also to create a relationship, and lead to support and engagement.
On a more global scale, content marketing is definitely there to stay, and its development isn’t stopping anytime soon: in 2015, 70% of marketers produce more content than the previous year (Content Marketing Institute), and 80% of CEOS are convinced that the content is the future of marketing (Infographics Demand Metric).
5 characteristics of successful brand content
With this in mind, I studied numerous successful brand content campaigns and was able to identify 5 essential content features:
1 / Be interesting, before being interested
The aim is to ensure that the audience comes and remains primarily for the quality of content, and not primarily for the brand. The content should be based on the DNA of the brand, but above all, in relation to a target, and not in relation to a product.
2 / Be entertaining, but not advertising
The second essential characteristic of a successful brand content is its ability to be entertaining and engaging, while remaining within the universe of the brand, without falling into the pitfall of advertising. Brands are not media and therefore aren’t destined to be neutral: we must create characters, tell stories, while remaining consistent with the brand values.
3 / Create engagement and adherence
The goal of Brand Content is to build a strong relationship between a brand and its audience. For this, it is necessary to create content that makes you want to share it, that will fit into a social system, and that will ensure Internet users transmit the brand’s message and content.
4 / Be Free
A brand content must be free: there shouldn’t be any access fee to that content because the goal is to generate attention, and paid content automatically has a reduced scope.
5 / Be able to spread in the digital ecosystem
Finally, Brand Content should enable the brand to reach its audience directly where it is located: on video platforms, on media portals, on social platforms, and not necessarily on a brand site.
The presence of these 5 characteristics does not guarantee success, but the absence of one of them seems to guarantee failure: it’s about stacking all the odds in your favor!
Moreover, measuring the performance of a Brand Content campaign is essential, but it requires to clearly identify objectives in advance, which is still far from simple: I will speak about it in more details in my next article. But know that, as usual, if one does not know precisely define what success is, it is difficult to evaluate and measure it…
What about, what are the qualities that you consider critical to the success of a brand content campaign? Feel free to continue the discussion and share your views in the comments section!
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