Leveraging the power of premium publishers for branded content is an incredibly effective way to educate consumers in a safe and trusted environment. For businesses looking to also capture new leads or grow their marketing database, consider interactive elements like quizzes and polls to add attributable and actionable results to content marketing strategy.

We’ll look at just a few compelling reasons here why combining branded content and promotions can drive results for your business.

Consumers who feel a connection with a brand spend twice as much as those that don’t.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to establish an emotional connection with consumers through display ads alone. They have their place as supportive structures of larger marketing initiatives, but branded content is the road to developing relationships. While you’re telling your story and setting the stage for your brand, adding an interactive element like a quiz or a poll is a way to add some more depth to your story. Rewarding customers for the time they spend interacting with your story is the way to capture valuable data, qualify leads and add contacts to your marketing database to continue developing that relationship over time. Quizzes, polls and surveys can incorporate sweepstakes elements as well as instant benefits to all users like online redemption codes or in-store offers included in bounce back emails.

 

READ THE CASE STUDY: Vision care office sees 10x ROI by combining branded content and promotions

Get quantifiable and attributable results 

Many businesses use metrics like page views and scroll depth to measure their branded content performance. While those numbers can give you some idea of the effectiveness of your content, what if you could also attribute revenue to your content campaign? Layering in those interactive elements that use registration forms to capture consumer data can give advertisers qualified leads and opt-in email lists to add to their database. This is an important metric when looking at a holistic branded content and promotional campaign. 

Content is how customers prefer to interact with you

90% of consumer say that they prefer to interact with brands through content. Is this really a surprise? Content requires an active choice by a user to read an article, take a quiz, fill out a form or watch a video. So instead of being “advertised at”  they are “participating in”. It’s far less demanding of consumers’ attention and therefore is viewed as less intrusive. And since this is an active choice taken by the user, you can increase the depth of engagement and truly solidify your message by using those interactive elements.

These are three of the most compelling reasons to consider combining promotions and branded content. There are, of course, myriad other reasons and if you are thinking about pursuing this tactic, get in touch with us to start the brainstorming!

Source: SellBranded.com (The Branded Content Project)