Should I use branded content or a regular content marketing strategy for the digital growth of my business? This is the most asked question in online business forums, webinars, and podcasts. You will find so many posts about this question on the web. But what is the answer? There are too many answers as well. But when it comes to finding the right answer, it becomes really hard. That is why we are here to make things clear for you.
If you feel confused between branded content and content marketing, then here you are at the right place. Here we will let you know the actual difference between these two strategies. However, both of these have different advantages and disadvantages associated with them. If you want to know everything about branded content and content marketing, then this is the right post for you. Let’s discuss the advantages, disadvantages, importance, and usage of branded content and content marketing.
Let’s Start With the Branded Content
Let’s start the discussion with the branded content. Its name suggests a lot about it. Branded content is the published content in various forms by many brands to engage with the audience. But engagement is the only benefit that branded content gives? There is something more important that you need to know about branded content. And its play an important role in SEO services.
What Is Branded Content?
Branded content is specifically content which talks about or points out a specific brand. When you see content on the web, you will find a brand mentioned everywhere very smartly. Such type of content is known as branded content.
Why Is Branded Content Used?
Branded content is used by brands for more brand promotion. There are several ways online to promote your brand and branded content is one among these ways. It is most widely used by popular brands around the world. However, for some brands, their branded content is not only used for promotion. There are many other things that they want to achieve with the branded content. You can call all of them the advantages of branded content. Let’s jump to the next section where we discuss the advantages of branded content.
Advantages of Branded Content
Branded content is useful to promote your brand online. Do you think that this is the only benefit that you get from branded content? There is something more important than just branded content. There are many advantages that a business can get with the help of branded content. Following are some major pros of branded content.
Brand Awareness
As we have mentioned that branded content provides brand awareness on a priority basis. The first and very important advantage that you will get from branded content is brand awareness. You can make your brand popular with any brand promotion strategy. But if you want to catch the mind of your followers or customers, then brand awareness is important.
Loyal Audience Build Up
As you have more brand awareness you will get a more loyal audience. Building a loyal audience helps you achieve much more than just sales. It provides you with a way to get promoted on a long-term basis. With a loyal audience build-up formula, your customers become your promoters and brand advocates.
Quick Results
Branded content will start showing quick results as compared to a regular content strategy. If you compare the time consumption or time required in both strategies then you will find branded content less time-consuming.
No Too Much Ideas Required
One more benefit that branded content gives you is that you don’t need too many ideas for your content. Have you heard that less is more? This statement fits the branded content strategy. You don’t need too many ideas. So less brainstorming will be required.
No Chance of Copy
It is hard to copy the branded content of a business. Have you seen popular and viral ad campaigns? These ad campaigns can never be copied because they have branded content in them.
Disadvantages of Branded Content
Along with advantages, there are some disadvantages of branded content. So many cons of branded content will encourage you to use other marketing strategies rather than using branded content. However, there are some tactics you can use to get rid of these disadvantages.
Expensive Campaigns
Creating and publishing branded content can be more expensive as compared to regular content marketing strategies.
Requires More Creativity
You will require more creativity to run a branded content ad campaign. Without creativity, it is not possible to create awesome branded content. However, you can hire creative people.
Requires High Skills
Creativity won’t work alone, high skills are also required. You may need more experienced and skilled people in your team to publish branded content.
Now Have a Look at Content Marketing
Now let’s take a look at content marketing. It is also important and is used by the majority of online businesses. However, it is not a good idea to compare content marketing with branded content. Because both of these strategies have different purposes. Content marketing is something like a necessary thing for online businesses. While branded content is optional for brands.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is basically planning, creating, and then promoting your content to reach out to the right audience. There are different audiences out there in the markets. Content marketing will help you target the right audience for your business. Content marketing tries to choose the topics most relevant to the audience and published content on such topics. More problem-solving content is always part of content marketing strategies.
Importance of Content Marketing
Content marketing is important because it engages you as a business with your brand. Without content marketing, a brand cannot survive in this cut-throat competition arena. If you are not using content marketing then you are missing a big opportunity to get more organic traffic and even high conversion leads for your business. So content marketing is not just related to the content, engagement, and traffic. It is also related to the overall growth of a business.
Why Content Marketing Is Used?
As we have stated that there is a basic goal of all the marketing strategies. This basic and ultimate goal is to promote a business. The basic purpose of content marketing is to reach out to more people and promote a brand. But there are so many other advantages a business can get with content marketing.
Advantages of Content Marketing
Following are the advantages of content marketing. The list can go longer than we have created. But on the majority basis, you will get these benefits from content marketing.
More Engagement
Content marketing will help you get a more engaged audience. Getting more followers and subscribers on digital platforms including websites, social media, etc. is easy these days. Paid campaigns can help you get more followers but what about engagement?
Long Term Results
If you are publishing the right type of content for your audience, then you will see its long-term benefits. It is nothing like a paid advertisement campaign, which stops showing results as you stop paying the advertiser. You will even see the results after you stopped publishing content in content marketing.
Budget-Friendly
Content marketing is budget-friendly if we compare it with some other technique as one we have mentioned above. Publishing branded content and developing a branded content strategy will require more funding as compared to regular content marketing strategy.
Disadvantages of Content Marketing
Along with advantages, there are so many disadvantages of content marketing. So if you are planning to go with content marketing, you must have a look at the following disadvantages before making a decision.
No Quick Results
Content marketing takes more time as compared to other paid advertising campaigns or branded content marketing. Never expect quick results from regularly updated content on your website or blog. It is important to be patient if you are using content marketing.
No Loyal Followers
Getting brand followers is easy with content marketing. But it is not easy to turn these followers into customers. So it means that there are no loyal followers in content marketing if we compare it with the branded content strategy. Content marketing provides useful content to the audience but it attracts more people, who just need content and don’t want to buy anything.
More Content Ideas Required
You will require more content ideas because there will be a high volume of content required if you want to compete with the top leaders in your market. So more brainstorming or a big team is required.
No Brand Awareness
Creating brand awareness with content marketing is sometimes difficult. Because people get attracted to the useful content and they are connected with it only. But they are not connected with the brand which is providing that content.
Honestly saying, it is not good to compare branded content with a regular content marketing strategy. A regular content marketing strategy is a necessary thing for an online business. But branded content is never compulsory for businesses. Branded content shows quick results, it is expensive and creates more brand awareness. Content marketing is budget-friendly and takes time to show results. But with content marketing, you get high engagement and long-term benefits.
Source: https://www.corecommerce.com/