Your Complete Guide to Branded Content [With Examples]

Imagine a product that perfectly fits your needs. Even if the quality, price, and features are just right, you don’t want to feel pushed to buy it. Brands that employ aggressive sales tactics miss out on the power of branded content. It’s a marketing strategy that helps you promote your brand’s values and unique value propositions (UVPs) in a way that’s engaging for your target audience. 

Tapfiliate offers brands a platform to manage all their affiliate partnerships, complete with real-time tracking, flexible commissions, and, you guessed it: branded content. We’ll walk through the ins and outs of branded content, how to master it, and stellar examples to take home inspiration. 

What Is Branded Content?

Branded content is any type of content that promotes your brand’s offerings in a way that focuses more on your company’s core values and audience engagement than the products themselves. It’s much more than slapping your logo on a commercial or adding a product placement on your social media platforms.

Branded content:

• Promotes your values: Branded content pieces help your audience see your company behind its products, whether it’s a commitment to quality and hard work, or passion for a smooth customer experience.
• Inspires conversation: The best branded content is shareable content, popping up in audience conversations online, social media posts and comments, or online forums. The more buzz; the better.
• Adapts to different channels and formats: Instagram Reels, interactive quizzes, email newsletters, podcast conversations — the mediums are endless for branded content. 
• Flourishes with collaboration: Affiliates are great co-creators to promote branded content with, as you can leverage your brand’s values with the affiliate’s familiarity with your audience. User-generated content (more on that later) can also promote your products without the tiring feel of pushy sales.
• Valuable to your audience: At the end of the day, branded content should appeal to your audience. They should want to watch your podcast, read your article, or laugh at your jokes. “Valuable” means that your branded content can either serve your audience’s direct pain points or simply entertainment them. 

In other words? Branded content is marketing alright, but it doesn’t feel like marketing. And it causes your audience to recall (remember) your brand 59% more than with other traditional advertising types. On top of that, they’re 14% more likely to seek your brand’s content in the future. 

That’s because branded content inspires positive associations for your brand in your audiences’ minds. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Keep reading to inspire your next branded content brainstorm.

How Do You Create Branded Content?

Not sure where you start? We’ve got you covered with this five-step process to create branded content. 

Determine Your Target Market and Audience

Every solid branded content strategy starts with its audience. Who do you sell your products to, or who do you want to sell them to? Consider what all your social media followers, customers, and website visitors have in common. 

To find these common denominators, you might review data from Google Analytics, your customer relationship management software (CRM), or even social media activity. And if you work with affiliates, leverage access to insights like location and demographics on Tapfiliate’s reporting dashboard.

Your audience research should develop into clear personas that lay out details about your audience’s needs and behavior, like:

• What are their pain points?
• What problems can your brand solve for them?
• What are their hobbies?
• What kind of content do they like to consume?
• What are their values?

Speaking of values…

Identify Your Brand’s Values and What You Want to Express in Your Content

It’s time to look inward. Sure, you might have a brand mission statement and core values, but how can you translate them into engaging, appealing content? You can’t until you have a clear vision about what you want to share with your audience.

Consider what you want your customers and wider audience to take home with them after seeing your content. This includes:

• Brand tone of voice
• Associations 
• Competitor advantages
• Product advantages
• Core beliefs

Create Engaging Content

Backed with a clear picture of your audience’s needs and company values, you’re ready to create your branded content. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Interactive content: Games, polls, giveaways, and anything that gets your audience talking are all solid branded content strategies in an interactive format.
• Industry interviews: Boost niche authority with content that highlights industry trends and players, like a Q&A on your social media account, or regular podcast. 
• Customer testimonials or real-life stories: A great example of user-generated content, personal stories from your customers are a great way to highlight your brand’s value while engaging your audience.
• Guides and articles: Keyword research can help you figure out what kinds of queries your audience types into Google. Satisfy those queries with how-to guides and blog content that solve your audience’s pain points. 

Looking for more branded content ideas? Keep reading.

5 Superb Branded Content Examples

Curious to see what branded content looks like in action? We rounded up a few eye-catching examples for you to gain inspo from.

Nintendo: Excitement and Entertainment With the Super Maio Bros. Movie

The first version of the Super Mario Bros game was released over 30 years ago in 1985. Since then, a number of evolutions have entertained Nintendo’s audience across multiple gaming systems. But despite the billion-dollar game company’s success, they still lost users to the game as they aged. 

So they released the Super Mario Bros movie in 2023 and even inspired some of us at Tapfiliate to repurchase the game, if not share it with our loved ones or younger family members:

On top of a box-office slam dunk of over $570 million, the movie inspired more gameplay as seen by the 89% uptick in Super Mario Bros game content on Twitch. Of course, Nintendo isn’t the only brand that went the movie route for branded content. Look at The Last of Us series or the latest Barbie movie for similar inspiration.

But if you can’t manage an entire full-feature film within the budget, You could go smaller with YouTube videos and courses like Pet Valu does.

Pet Valu: Virtual Puppy Training Lessons on YouTube

Pet product carrier Pet Valu has a wide audience of pet owners and professionals. They did some research and figured that a solid chunk of their audience consists of new pet owners, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when they released their virtual puppy lesson videos:

This series of videos doesn’t directly sell any of the brand’s products. Instead, it’s completely dedicated to solving their target audience’s pressing pain point: training a new puppy! On top of that, the videos invite user-generated content and conversation with the proposed hashtag invitation: 

But Pet Valu isn’t the only brand that leverages user-generated content.

Kickresume: Helpful Niche Articles and User-Generated Content on Facebook

Kickresume, does a fantastic job leveraging user-generated content in their content strategy. The resume SaaS company created a Facebook group for people to share and discuss all things resumes, career goals, and more.

Here, Kickresume posts helpful articles that speak to their audience’s pain points, while guiding users to their website blog:

Additionally, they invite anybody interested in career topics to join the group where users are free to post about the platform or general niche.

Reddit: Instagram Reels of User-Generated Content + Celebrity Appearance

Reddit is a famous forum for pretty much every niche on the planet. The company highlighted a popular thread on its Instagram account: AITA (Am I The A**hole). But instead of simply sharing the web content with their social media following, they found a clip of famed comedian Kevin Hart reading that content:

Not only does Reddit get to share the platform’s endless funny threads and relatable content, but they have the added benefit of appealing to a wider audience with Kevin Hart’s presence in the branded content. 

Bumble: Immersive Stories From Customers on the Bumble Buzz Blog

You can yell your product’s results into the internet ether as loud as possible, but your audience won’t hear you as loudly as they hear a success story. Bumble knows this, which is why the dating platform highlights customer successes in storytelling content formats on the company blog. Here’s an inspiring example from a once-long-distance couple: 

Audiences can scroll through the story to hear how Bumble brought two love birds together, and how their relationship eventually blossomed into marriage: the ultimate online dating goal for much of Bumble’s audience.

Common Pitfalls of Branded Content

Content initiatives don’t always go as smoothly as you hope. If you hear crickets on your social media channels and your engagement metrics leave more to be desired? Maybe that compelling story you thought you shared wasn’t resonating with your audience. 

Here are some reasons why:

• Poor audience research: Branded content won’t get you the traffic or engagement you want if shared with the wrong audience. Monitor your audience’s social media activity and dive deep into analytics to ensure you know them inside out before you post. 

• Limited audience feedback: Always ask your audience about the content they’d like to see. You’ll make them feel important and heard while generating new ideas and meaningful content. 
• Inconsistency: You expect consistent treatment from your friends, right? Imagine what your audience expects if they’re buying your products. Consistency in brand tone of voice, content schedules, and brand personality encourages trust. So, branded content can’t look out of place compared to the rest of your brand messaging framework or content library. 

• Too many sales pitches: Overly sales-y content is a big no-no for branded content. Your audience will get turned off by endless partnership ads that beg for a purchase. Even if you share a customer story or interactive quiz, avoid too many CTAs or product placements.

Once you eliminate all of the above pitfalls from your branded content? Let’s make a few more final tweaks for perfection. 

How to Nail Branded Content

So you’ve got your content calendar going, but how do you make sure it hits your audience in the feels every time? Here are some tips for mastering the art of branded content:

• Choose the right partnerships: A publisher with 20,000 viewers in your target audience base is a great resource. The same goes for social media influencers who understand your audience inside out from their conversations and social media comments. Pick partnerships with affiliates that represent your brand priorities the most while offering you undeniable value and favor with your target audience.

• Tell a story: Strong branded content doesn’t need to express your brand’s value; it shows it via storytelling and social proof. For example, a list of product features will never be as compelling as a video of a happy customer using your product. 

• Promote your branded content: Build brand awareness and foster engagement with promotional marketing. If you have branded content campaigns on Instagram, guide web visitors to them with news links. 

Get Started with Branded Content Today

Bottom line? Branded content is a seamless blend of audience interest, entertainment, and brand value. The creative possibilities are endless, especially if you enlist support from influencer marketing creators or niche publishers as affiliate partners.

Ready to include high-quality branded content in your affiliate marketing strategy? Tapfiliate’s platform gives you the resources to do it via our branded asset features.