How can Sponsored Content help your Brand Reach a Mass Audience?

The best sponsored content is the content that people remember, and engage with. Sponsored posts are a form of advertising that give an advertiser the opportunity to get their message to a specific audience. This type of native advertising appears front and center next to regular content in the form of native ads or banner ads that resemble the premium content that is expected from publications like Newsweek, Fortune, People and many others.

Creating sponsored content is an art form that requires experience to build a content marketing strategy that will be consumed by your targeted audience and can be more effective than traditional paid media or promoted listings.

Sponsored Content Success

Content creation can be difficult for some marketers or businesses without a history of creating custom content that is optimized for conversions or sales. Grow your audience with sponsored content. Sponsored content is one of the most effective forms of infusing branding and content with your clients’ interests. As one of the fastest growing advertising methods available today, it is no wonder that the most effective organizations are having success with sponsored content and influencer marketing tactics. 

Sponsored Content Engagement

Sponsored content ads are a unique type of advertising. 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. Learn how sponsored content can engage your customers and increase your brand awareness and reputation. 

What Exactly Is Sponsored Content? 

Sponsored content is engaging, interesting, and educational content. It is a type of promotional advertising that is paid for by an advertiser; however an influencer, a publisher, or another brand creates it. There are several different ways that sponsored content can be seen. Everything from sponsored content from linkedIn to sponsored Buzzfeed content through YouTube sponsored videos are examples of where you will find it. In terms of what you may see, sponsored videos, sponsored blog posts, and sponsored articles are all avenues to deliver content. 

 

Examples of Sponsored Content 

This style of content is most effective when you sponsor a company or an influencer that already targets your selected audience or already discusses subjects that are pertinent to your brand. If this is done correctly, any time your brand is mentioned, it will feel natural as opposed to feeling like an advertisement. The result will be that your audience will not feel as if they were just subject to an ad but instead that they just learned something. Now your brand will become more credible, memorable, and perhaps most importantly, it will become more trustworthy. 

When reaching out to a potential or existing customer using sponsored or branded advertising, trust is what engages them more than anything. The results will be up to a 50% higher brand lift along with a threefold increase over paid search advertising.

Benefits of Sponsored Content Advertising

Why choose sponsored advertising? Well, there are some great benefits. First and foremost, it leads to sales. 

There are a growing number of people that have never been forced to sit through a commercial. They grew up with DVRs, streaming video, and digital video. Those people have a different point of view as to what is tolerable in advertising. A growing number of younger people, along with the older generations as well, are less and less willing to sit through an ad or be interrupted. Sponsored content gives a different and less invasive feel to the ad. It is much more appealing to younger generations. In fact, over 30% of millennials have admitted to making a purchase after seeing a sponsored ad. As opposed to standard advertising, sponsored content does not make a user feel as if they are being sold something. Users often will dismiss other advertising as being insincere or possible having an ulterior motive. The reason behind all of this is that sponsored advertising does not feel like a sales pitch. As a matter of fact, studies show that Gen Z, Gen X, and Millennials all believe that sponsored ads are considered more trustworthy than traditional ads. Moreover, the Gen Z consumers find sponsored ads more impressive, more thought provoking, and more entertaining. In addition, sponsored ads just do better than typical display ads. Click through rates for sponsored ads are over eight times greater than display ads.

sponsored content

Traditional Ads vs Sponsored Content 

It may often be tempting to consider using a traditional ad that goes directly to a product page when considering what kind of marketing to use for your product. Advertisements like these help to drive immediate sales and traffic. However, they can also turn off readers now more than ever. Seemingly more so now than ever, people have a tendency to scroll right past materials that are created by an advertiser, or that simply appear to be an advertisement. Therefore, sponsored content made by a trusted source is often a better option. Users see them and do not immediately associate them with the negative stereotypes of a traditional ad. Studies show time and again that while advertising revenue for traditional ads continues to grow. However, the ROI on sponsored content offers a much better bang for your buck.

Best places to Use Sponsored Content 

Sometimes traditional advertising is not the most effective tool for your brand or company. With banner blindness becoming more and more prevalent, it is important to diversify your advertising portfolio. Traditional ads simply do not have the same appeal as they once did. There is increased competition for them and there is a stigma upon them which is not found in sponsored content. 

With the current deluge of advertising now upon us, an increasing number of companies are turning to native advertising to promote their content. Native advertising has been described as “paid ads that are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong.” (Interactive Advertising Bureau)  Per the IAB, there are six different types of subgroups of advertising. The in-feed group will be where you will find sponsored articles. That is exactly where promoted content is found on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Due to them being found in the normal content feed of the publisher, it makes no difference if the publisher is Twitter or ABC News. That is to say, sponsored articles are basically advertising via a media outlet but it looks like editorial content that is there naturally. This is highly sought after advertising for companies trying to promote their brand.

Types of Sponsored Content 

Some of the most popular types of sponsored content distribution that SEO Design Chicago uses are the following: Listicle Distribution, Infographic Distribution, and Branded Video Distribution. Listicles are popular for their ability to easily convey a number of pieces of information to readers in a list/article. Think about Huffington Post or BuzzFeed sponsored content. Infographics are one of the most popular distribution methods due to their reliability and proven track record. There are a number of great reasons that Infographics are so effective. The majority of people are visual learners in this world. They can interpret a visual image in a fraction of the time that they can when compared to reading it. Also, people are much more willing to stop and read a colorful visual image. Branded Video is an extension of Infographics. People are much more willing to watch a video to learn about a product than to read an article. In turn, they have a much more positive view of said product which helps in making their decision about purchasing.

Facebook Sponsored Content

 

 

Facebook is one of the major streams for sponsored advertising today. It can be daunting to get started using them, which is why SEO Design Chicago is available to assist in all aspects of the process from content to completion. There are a little more than two billion Facebook users each month and that creates a fantastic opportunity to reach out to a specific audience. SEO Design Chicago can use our expertise to avoid common mistakes, increase sales, and maximize ROI. Facebook actually drivers more people to referral ads than any other social media platform. Not only that, but there are so many businesses that now use Facebook to reach out to their and possibly your potential clients. By avoiding Facebook Sponsored Content, you are giving your competition an advantage. SEO Design Chicago can help you to create meaningful ads that target the audience you want.

Social Media Sponsored Content

In addition to Facebook, other social media platforms are also very effective in reaching a targeted audience. Surprisingly, serving ads on LinkedIn, weather they be sponsored content or text ads from LinkedIn normally draw good results. LinkedIn sponsored content is another tool that provides great results. It is a great way to reach professionals without serving them a standard ad that they will most likely ignore. There are a variety of linkedin sponsored content specs depending on the type of content you are creating. It is also commonplace to piggyback linkedIn carousel ads or linkedIn text ads as well. 

Instagram is another great vehicle to reach a specific group of people. Due to the popularity of Instagram influencers, advertising with Instagram is unlike other social media outlets. SEO Design Chicago has experience working with linkedIn, Instagram and Twitter sponsored content.

Podcast Advertising Using Sponsored Content

Podcasts are also an incredible opportunity to reach an engaged audience. So why jump on the podcast boom? Well, over 70 million people listen to podcasts monthly. That is roughly the same amount of people that use Twitter monthly. Not only are the listeners usually well educated and affluent they also truly enjoy the material that they are listening to. The average podcast listener listens to 90% of a podcast. This suggests that they are not skipping through ads. Moreover, 75% of people that listen to a target ad end up taking action. That action may be to discuss the products and brands that they heard about. It also includes purchasing the products and products that were the subject of the podcast. 

Podcast advertising has skyrocketed over the past few years. Companies are turning to creating entire podcasts that are both content rich and targeting their customers. They are a combination of a branded ad and a podcast that is compelling and interesting.

Podcast creation

Sponsored Video

Aside from podcasts and social media sponsored content, there are additional avenues to explore as well. Sponsored videos have become a popular and effective method of reaching and getting through to your audience. For many of the same reasons that sponsored podcasts are great, sponsored video is also great for your business and its reputation and growth. The audience is engaged and is unlikely to skip ads entirely. Using YouTube sponsored videos is one of the most powerful tools available.

seo design chicago video advertising

Sponsored Blog Posts

Sponsored blog posts are also an outstanding tool to reach out to your audience. Blog posts are seemingly as old as the internet itself. People become very impassioned about certain subjects with great content and read and write about them. Sponsored blog posts themselves are avenues to tell a story and inform people about your brand while also being informative and entertaining.

happy barber looking at magazine with client

 

Sponsoring content allows you to place your brand in front of the customers that are already looking for you. When search engine competition is steep, SEO Design Chicago helps you manage your marketing efforts and sponsored content.

Creating sponsored content is an art form that requires experience to build a content marketing strategy that will be consumed by your targeted audience and can be more effective than traditional paid media or promoted listings.

seo design chicago sponsored content

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