What Is Sponsored Content?
Sponsored content is a form of native advertising. This means that it appears similar to the editorial content around it. For example, a social media feed might show several posts of your friends’ and family’s photos, with a sponsored post of an influencer wearing a particular brand’s hiking shoes in the middle. The influencer’s post is the same size and style as your friends’ and family’s photos, so it is more likely to catch your eye long enough for you to notice the shoes.
Brands can also create native ads that fit naturally into the surrounding content of a website. Sponsored content is native advertising that is paid for by the brand but created by someone else. Usually, an influencer or another brand creates the content.
Sponsored vs. Branded Content
Branded content is traditional advertising brought into the digital age. Every time you see a popup or banner ad on a website, that’s branded content. It’s the equivalent of a glossy ad in a traditional magazine, a TV commercial, or a billboard.
Branded content is still an extremely effective form of advertising, and our designers at SEO Design Chicago can help you create eye-catching, optimized ads.
Sponsored content can complement your existing advertising strategy by adding a layer of relatability and authenticity to your business’s online presence.
Types of Sponsored Content
Sponsored content can take a number of forms. Ideally, sponsored content isn’t immediately recognizable as advertising — it should blend seamlessly into the surrounding media, whether that’s an online magazine or a social media feed.
The kind of sponsored content you want in your strategy depends on where you plan to publish it. We’ll cover some of the most popular options.
Engaging, Interesting, & Educational
The key to effective sponsored content is that it provides something to the viewer. The average adult spends about six and a half hours online every day. Whether they’re working, streaming videos and music, or browsing a social media platform, that time is flooded with advertising.
Successful sponsored content breaks through the noise by providing informative or entertaining posts and videos. This content feels natural and valuable to the viewers and makes them more likely to stop scrolling long enough to view it.
Working with Influencers
Brands work with influencers to create sponsored content that appeals to their established audience. Popular examples of sponsored content include product reviews, lifestyle photos, or internet trends.
While you might assume that the influencer with the largest audience is the best person to create a piece of content for your brand, research indicates that micro-influencers with fewer than 5,000 followers usually receive the highest engagement rates.
This is often because these content creators are hyper-specialized in a specific niche. Their followers trust them and are more likely to trust any brand that they promote.
Working with Publishers
Partnering with established publications is another popular sponsored media strategy. The best sponsored content is outside of the box while still fitting in with the editorial style of the publication.
Buzzfeed, for example, is famous for its sponsored content work. A cosmetics brand might sponsor a listicle-style article entitled “How to choose the best lipstick for your skin tone.” This is useful and intriguing information for the reader, and this piece of sponsored content fits well with Buzzfeed’s normal style. The brand sponsoring the article can position its products within the article with links directly to its online store.
Quality is King
This form of content needs to be handled carefully. Customers will spot poorly designed content that is essentially only a list of shopping links.
Our expert digital marketing team at SEO Design Chicago can help you create a thoughtful, well-designed content marketing strategy that provides value to your target audience while building trust with your brand.
YouTube Sponsored Videos
Sponsored videos are all over YouTube. Along with ad revenue through the YouTube partner program, sponsorships and affiliate marketing are the main ways content creators make money from their channels.
Sponsored content on YouTube can be as direct or subtle as you like. Some videos actively promote the sale of a product, or perhaps show a lifestyle video of a particular YouTuber using the product.
Other sponsorships can be more subtle. Perhaps the YouTuber provides educational content or fan theories related to popular media, and your business sponsors a series. That would entitle you to verbal acknowledgement during the video, along with your logo displayed in the caption.
Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram Posts
Social media feeds are the ideal placement for influencer content. To easily fit the sponsored content within the organic content on the site, it’s a good idea to work with influencers who already have an audience among the demographic you want to reach.
Social media platforms are primarily image-based. We recommend working with our graphic design team to craft a strong brand identity. This can help the sponsored content look consistent with your existing brand, while still being unique to the content creator.
Sponsored Articles & Blogs
Long-form content is the cornerstone of the internet and still receives a fair amount of traffic. From blog posts and how-to articles to listicles and shopping guides, publishing sponsored content can be a great way to promote your business.
Consider partnering with a publisher or brand in an adjacent field. For example, a realtor group might work with a personal finance blogger on a piece about how to save money when purchasing your first home. This fits within the blogger’s expertise, advertises the realtor’s services, and is a topic that provides useful information to the reader. Win-win-win.
Podcasts
More than 80% of people listen to at least seven hours of podcast audio per week! Listening to podcasts while commuting, cleaning, working, exercising, or doing other tasks means that most people don’t bother to skip through ads. Additionally, most podcasters build a strong fan base of loyal listeners.
This is where branded and sponsored content can be extremely effective at reaching your target audience. Sponsoring a podcast episode about parenting, for example, could signal that your brand cares about families. This is effective even if you aren’t directly selling children’s products, but your audience is interested in parenting topics.
Disclosure Requirements
Although branded content should fit naturally into the setting, customers need to be notified that the content is sponsored. FTC laws require that influencers and publications disclose if they received something in exchange for their content, whether that’s a free sample or a sizable fee.
This means you must label sponsored content with a disclosure tag. These usually include a brand logo or hashtags and phrases like:
- Sponsored
- Affiliate
- Ambassador
- Paid for by BRAND
- Thank you to BRAND
- Ad
- Partner/partnership
The legal requirements vary depending on the type of content. While the disclosure labels can be small, so as not to interfere with the design, the key point is to be upfront with consumers.
Benefits of Using Sponsored Content
Sponsored content offers a valuable opportunity to connect with your audience in an immediate, relatable way. Sponsored content is designed to resonate with viewers, naturally incorporating your brand into their everyday media consumption.
When done well, using sponsored content pays off.
Higher Click-Through-Rates (CTR)
Research indicates that sponsored content is 22 times more engaging than traditional display advertising, like banner ads. This means that your potential customers are much more likely to take action on the content that resonates with them, like clicking on the ad or looking up your business.
Improved Brand Reputation
People like to have fun. Traditional advertising often comes across as disruptive and annoying, as customers click through multiple popup ads to access the content they really wanted to view.
Sponsored content created by influencers who have an interesting personality or style is more enjoyable to watch and engage with. Sponsored content is a great way to bring a fresh, fun feeling to your brand and help it seem more authentic and relatable.
Increased Sales
Ultimately, your marketing strategy should result in increased sales. Sponsored content provides a way to directly connect with your target audience. Often, it can open up a completely new demographic of customers for your business.
Whether you are interested in starting a content creation strategy from scratch or boosting your current digital marketing plan with the addition of sponsored content, our experienced digital marketing team at SEO Design Chicago can help you determine the best publishers and formats to increase sales.
Drive Performance
With content like sponsored blog posts, Facebook, YouTube sponsored videos, and LinkedIn sponsored content, your content becomes advertising for your website and generates increased engagement with an already excited audience.
Grow Your Audience
Use social media to accelerate your company’s brand name and reputation in front of the audience that you want.
Grow Your Business
Target your business to selected social media users. Every type of possible demographic is available via social media. Your audience choices are virtually unlimited.
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