Beyond Traditional Advertising: How Branded Content & Promotions Drive Real Revenue

What is Branded Content

Branded content is a marketing strategy that uses engaging content via education & storytelling to provide a valuable benefit to advertisers while increasing audience engagement and revenue for local media publishers.

You may know it as content marketing or native marketing, but they all lead to the same result – promoting your advertiser in a way that educates and engages your audience.

Why is Branded Content Important

According to our friends at Borrel & Associates, branded content marketing is an $85+ billion industry with over three-quarters of spending in digital formats, growing more than 5% year over year.

If that huge amount of potential doesn’t convince you to enter the branded content arena, they also discovered that of those who are buying branded content, 40% of those businesses believe they are underspending on their branded content. Meaning they are potentially looking at investing with YOU on more branded content opportunities.

Who is Interested in Branded Content

The short answer is Medium to Large companies. They are statistically spending more on branded content and have the budgets for larger advertising spends.

More specifically, industries each spend over $1 BILLION annually on branded content:

Do these industries look familiar? They should! These are the industries we say time and again are who you should be targeting for advertising with promotions. This shows that these industries are prime prospects for branded content paired with promotions.

Is Branded Content Effective

According to businesses polled by Borrell & Associates, 70% think branded content marketing is moderately to extremely effective.

They also said branded content is most effective through these channels:

• Video
• Newsletters
• Digital Articles/Blogs
• Brochures/Flyers
• Social Media Posts

This makes branded content campaigns a prime strategy for media companies. You are already utilizing these channels for other forms of advertising, so including branded content into your marketing offerings would be a simple addition.

Check out these case studies of successful branded content promotions!

The Value Proposition

The main things advertisers are looking to get out of branded content are:

• Awareness
• Engagement
• Ability to Educate
• Leads
• Audience & Data Growth

They’re also looking for something outside of traditional advertising. Audiences are tuning out passive ads, and branded content is 22x more engaging than display ads. And when paired with interactive content like promotions, the content is consumed intentionally, not ignored. Additionally, brand recall is 59% percent higher for branded content than other digital ads!

It all comes down to the fact that true engagement is inherently higher with branded content paired with promotions because it:

• invites action that provides advertisers with time & attention, not just impressions
• Drives measurable results and actionable leads

How to Sell Branded Content

We talked about the value proposition, and you’ll want to make sure that is included in your pitch. Your branded content advertising with provide your advertiser with solutions to their goals: building awareness, educating & engaging, and providing lead, data, & audience growth.

When creating your package, consider multi-month or annual proposals as opposed to one-off campaigns. This provides both you and your advertiser with more value and revenue opportunity. Also be sure to include prizes with your promotions, as our data shows that quizzes with a prize have 1,600% more participation.

Within your package, include:

• Assets like video, OTT, digital, email, social, and your core media
• How the content will be distributed (quiz/poll/sweepstakes embedded in an article)
• Lead-gen questions
• Opt-ins
• Social opportunities

Key Takeaways

The bottom line is that branded content advertising is an $85 billion industry where 40% believe they are underspending. The advertisers you should be targeting are most likely already on your prospecting list and have goals that branded content with promotions specifically achieve.