Moving Beyond Podcasting
ADVanced BRanded Content: Part 1
As you know, branded content is a style of marketing that builds brand awareness by focusing on a brand's and customer's shared values. We have previously discussed that one of the easiest (and least expensive) ways to get started in creating this type of content for your customers is with podcasting.
Podcasts have one of the lowest buy-in costs, both financially and with your time, but to keep your audience long-term, it is critical to move beyond podcasting.
THE FIRST QUESTION YOU HAVE TO ADDRESS IS WHAT TYPE OF BRANDED CONTENT WILL WORK RIGHT FOR YOU AND YOUR BRAND.
I wish more than anything that there was a perfect black-and-white answer to that, but there isn't because, more than any other marketing method, branded content has to be specific to your audience. So when developing a branded content marketing stream, you have to start at your audience and find the intersection between your brand's and your customer's shared values.
Starting with your (target) audience, customers, or client base and ask a few questions:
Where are they located?
What else do they enjoy?
What movies or TV do they like?
How do they consume content? Cable? Netflix? HBO? YouTube? TikTok? Etc.
Where do they interact with their community? Facebook? Instagram? Snapchat? Etc.
What do they do in their free time? Hobbies? Side Gigs? Etc.
What else do they value? Family? Social Justice? Mental Health? Religion? Etc.
Once we do that, we can move on to find where those values and interests intersect with your brand's values.
This next step is going to be unique to your brand, and this is where I spend a lot of time helping my clients to find, define, and revise what that intersection of values looks like to them and how to implement it in a way that provides value to our audience.
Our ultimate goal is to find something that overlaps as many shared values as possible and develop a branded content project that will then provide value (entertainment value, educational value, functional value, etc.) to our target audience.
One great example of all of this theory in action is a project with did with Quincy Harris (a TV and Radio Personality based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and his branded content series BLACK IN GOLF™.
We found that his audience valued social justice, sports, and personal growth, and from that, we created a short Web Series that could keep his audience engaged and reach a whole new audience that loved golf and had never met Quincy.
If you need any help developing the branded content vision for your brand, don't hesitate to send me an email or schedule a free consultation with me!
BY JOSHUA STANLEY
FOUNDER & CEO OF LIFESTYLED MEDIA
