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Brand Content: How to Maximize Your Brand Content Strategy
Brand content is one of the phrases that keeps circulating in digital marketing. Brand content has changed how advertising strategy and digital communication work.
So how do you get more from a brand content strategy? Here are a few practical moves.
Brand content: what is it?
A definition of brand content
Brand content refers to brand-owned content. The term appeared between 2007 and 2009 (source: journals.openedition.org). The idea is to create content for the brand itself, rather than promoting a single product or service. It covers editorial pieces published online, on television, on social media, in print, and on screen.
The goal is to build a relationship between the brand and the consumer through a global, multichannel strategy.
Brand content is a modern, high-value form of advertising, designed to strengthen awareness, clarify positioning, and grow audience and visibility.
That marketing strategy aims to get consumers to identify with the brand. Brand content looks for positive reactions and tries to keep the target audience coming back. It does that by entertaining and informing, not by pushing a hard sell.
According to the experts
The web is full of definitions of brand content. In general, brand content is content tied to what the customer already knows about the brand.
According to definitions-marketing.com, “Brand content is the English term for content produced more or less directly by a brand, as part of a content marketing approach.”
That definition is still a bit thin, because it sounds like classic advertising. Brand content uses other ways to build loyalty and reach the right people.
For WebConversion, the goal of brand content is “to influence the audience through emotion, storytelling, and creativity, in order to create a strong relationship with them.”
At Semji, we define brand content this way:
“Brand content is a modern, high-value form of advertising, designed to strengthen a brand’s awareness, clarify its positioning, and grow audience and visibility. That marketing strategy aims to get consumers to identify with the brand. Brand content looks for positive reactions and tries to keep the target audience coming back. It does that by entertaining and informing.”
Branded content is therefore a creative form that sits apart from advertising. Brand content leaves out commercial slogans and arguments that do not hold together. The work is to tell a story and use the marketer’s full toolkit to strengthen brand image and reputation, while earning the audience’s support.
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Why do brand content?
Brand content gives a company several strategic advantages. First, it lets you step away from classic advertising, which consumers often experience as intrusive. By publishing original work, brand content holds attention and builds a stronger relationship with the audience.
It also helps improve a site’s organic search. Search engines such as Google favor sites that publish quality content and keep it up to date.
Brand content can also raise brand visibility. A well-built strategy reaches the right customers and keeps them. By creating a world that belongs to your brand, you make it easier to remember and more attractive.
Finally, brand content has real viral potential. By telling a story, it holds attention and raises interest in the brand. That is a chance to stand out from competitors and grow awareness.
What is the main strength of brand content?
The main strength of brand content is its ability to create an emotional connection with the target audience. It does not stop at promoting a product or service. It puts the values and story of the brand first.
By sparking positive emotions, brand content supports stronger attachment to the brand and makes it easier to build a lasting relationship. That softer marketing approach, compared with traditional advertising, helps you strengthen brand image in a way people remember.
How do you become a brand content manager?
There is no single path to becoming a brand content manager. Some programs come up often. Many candidates hold a master’s degree in communication, marketing, or digital.
A bachelor’s or master’s (three to five years of higher education) from a university, business school, or journalism school is a useful foundation.
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Prior experience in digital marketing is often required, along with a solid grasp of marketing and editorial content.
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A brand content manager needs strong SEO skills and editorial production skills.
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Creativity, writing, project management, and the ability to analyze and measure performance also matter.
Some specialized programs can prepare you for the role, such as the state-recognized “Chef de projet digital spécialité Communication digitale” diploma, or courses in communication and web marketing.
The most influential branded content: a few examples
Dove’s campaign
Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches is a clear example of content marketing used as brand content. The brand started with a survey showing that 4% of the women interviewed considered themselves beautiful. The team then created brand content to show women they were more beautiful than they believed.
The brand chose video. A series of films showed an FBI sketch artist drawing women from their own descriptions. While he worked, he could only listen. He could not see them. The same people were then redrawn from descriptions given by strangers. The gap between the two sketches showed that the women held a harsher image of themselves than people who had only seen them briefly.
After only 12 days online, the videos had more than 180 million views. That 2013 campaign is a strong example of brand content at work: it connected a social fact to a brand identity. The web project was to tell a story that made the message credible.
Brand content used across many fields
Brand content is not limited to a single ad. The same marketing strategy shows up in film, including animation and television series (for example, merchandise from Disney and Pixar films, or Nike’s training and coaching programs).
This form of advertising also reached the creator of the Firefox browser: Mozilla. Mozilla launched an IRL (In Real Life) brand-content podcast about the relationship between offline life and life online.
The production studio Vox Creative partnered with MGM Grand Hotel & Casino. Together they created a mirror-like screen featuring the hotel’s mascot. The videos and animations on the screen could interact with visitors.
Those examples show why digital transformation matters for brand content. By using the brand’s visual identity to tell a story that carries a message, brand content goes hand in hand with a quality content strategy.
Brand content and classic advertising
What makes it different
Traditional advertorials argue for a product with journalistic methods. Classic advertising pushes a purchase by highlighting product benefits. Classic marketing presents the company in its best light by listing features, strengths, and advantages. Brand content aims to build a relationship between the brand and the consumer. Customer experience sits at the center.
Brand content focuses first on the consumer’s story. The audience can identify with the brand through a sense of belonging and familiarity. The relationship with the brand then becomes a relationship with the product. The communication strategy is rebuilt so content stays consistent and the brand can stand next to competitors.
The advantages of brand content
Brand content relies on product quality, content relevance, and brand value. The strategy starts from the customer’s needs, through situations they recognize, rather than from a product pitch.
The content still has to carry a message that is useful, entertaining, and appropriate, so the customer reaction stays positive. As a form of content marketing, brand content can borrow tactics from classic advertising while keeping its own approach.
The strategy becomes a generator of social and emotional connection with consumers. That connection creates proximity without making the brand feel overly commercial. The company still has to keep a balance, or the audience will feel misled.
How do you create a brand content strategy?
Share the objectives
Content marketing now sits at the center of digital work. A coherent brand-content program is what helps you stand out from competitors.
A CMI (Content Marketing Institute) report shows that B2B marketers (business-to-business teams using marketing techniques in inter-company sales) work together to generate leads, grow sales, and keep customers.
Those goals are the right ones if you want to reach the audience on an emotional level. You have to share the objectives with your colleagues. That early internal communication is what keeps content aligned with the company’s needs, editorial line, and visual identity.
Colleagues can then adapt their own content. Brand content is meant to get closer to consumers while improving brand reputation.
The audience
Some agencies choose a neutral style to present a product. That does not help you reach a specific group of consumers. Objective content explains, but it does not try to reach the audience’s feelings or make the brand familiar.
Marketing specialists therefore need a real understanding of consumers if they want to build a relationship. Content is designed around those needs. That starts with research on:
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The jobs your targets hold,
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Demographics (age, gender, income),
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The consumer’s emotional state (strengths and weaknesses),
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The specifics of their buying process.
To help colleagues and managers design the content, share a clear picture of the audience.
The technical pieces
The editorial calendar
The next step is an editorial calendar, so you can get more from your brand-content communication. It tells your colleagues which themes to cover, what is coming, and what happens next. It also helps contributors build their own working method.
Many tools now make that document easier to design, including Trello, Editorial Calendar, GatherContent, and Google Sheets.
How do you design an editorial calendar?
Once you have chosen a tool, start by listing the agency’s internal events: product launches, professional events, conferences. The point is to anticipate information your audience is likely to care about.
Then list notable events and dates so you can plan thematic articles and promotions. Group articles by theme, and add information about the company, the products, and the problems and solutions your audience faces. Finally, start producing content according to the brand-content strategy you set at the beginning.
Creating brand content
For content that feels specific, try a few practical techniques. First, create work that is both entertaining and professional. Watch the length so the message still travels. You need to tell a story and deliver a point. That point should land: not too short, not too long. Add images and videos alongside articles to strengthen the visual idea. Do not forget the main keywords.
Put the most relevant pieces forward. Brand content is easier to create as a group. Good ideas tend to appear when several people work on them.
Blog, video, social: which content for a strong brand-content strategy?
To build an effective brand-content strategy, you have to choose the channels carefully.
The blog is a strong tool for sharing useful content and showing expertise. Blog posts can include storytelling, videos, infographics, or any other format that matters to your audience.
Video offers a more immersive experience and can reach a wider audience. Use it to tell a story, show your craft, or explain a complex idea in a simple, engaging way.
Social media is essential for interacting with your audience and sharing content that sparks emotion and engagement. Each platform has its own rules, and the content has to match. Instagram works well for images and short videos. LinkedIn is a better fit for in-depth articles about your industry.
Whatever the channel, the content still has to match your brand goals and the expectations of your target audience.
Should you hire an agency?
Working with an agency that specializes in brand content can be a good option for many companies.
On one side, the agency already has proven expertise. It has a team that knows how to create brand content and can design a strategy that matches the company’s needs, image, and values.
On the other, an agency saves time. Brand content takes a lot of time and effort. By handing that work over, the company can stay focused on its core activity.
Working with an agency also has drawbacks. Cost can be a barrier. The company can also lose some control over its brand-content strategy. Choose the agency carefully, and define expectations and objectives at the start of the relationship.
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