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The Ultimate Guide to Sponsored Content
By [email protected] (Pamela Bump)
Creating your own branded videos, blogs, or podcasts can require a lot of bandwidth.
If you’ve always wanted to experiment with this strategy, but haven’t had the time or resources to produce your own campaigns, sponsoring content from other companies or influencers might be the right strategy for you.
Once relegated to print publications, sponsored content is thriving in the online marketing space. We’ll explain what sponsored content is, give best practices, and provide tips for staying within federal advertising guidelines.
Skip to:
- Sponsored Content Definition
- Sponsored Content Examples
- FTC Guidelines
- Sponsored Content Best Practices
This type of content is most engaging when you sponsor a company or influencer who targets your core audience and already discusses topics that align with your brand. When this is done right, any mention of your brand feels like a natural fit rather than an invasive advertisement.
Instead of thinking they just saw an advertisement, audiences should come away from sponsored content feeling like they’ve learned something interesting. This makes your brand look more credible, memorable, and — most importantly — trustworthy.
When it comes to branded or sponsored content, trust is a major factor that engages potential customers. In fact, when marketers sponsor content from a trusted publisher, they see a 50% higher brand lift than marketers who make their own content.
As branded and sponsored content gains steam, research continues to show that marketing your product with quality content can be incredibly effective. In fact, content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising.
How to Distinguish Sponsored Content
Although sponsored content is engaging and effective, it still occasionally gets confused with more traditional native ads.
Native advertising is when a brand creates editorial content that centers around their product. Then, they might pay a website or publisher to share it in a way that naturally flows within a list of content on their homepage.
Here’s an example of a native ad that appeared on Huffington Post’s homepage. Aside from the advertisement attribution under the headline, the post about senior entitlements is designed to show up on the page just like a regular news story.
When you click it expecting a regular post, you’re sent to a branded article that purely highlights services and discounts from Money Nation.
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While you might want to consider a native ad that goes directly to a product page for immediate sales or traffic purposes, leading readers down a conversion path too soon could turn off audiences.
Since people may scroll past or tune out when they see content that’s obviously created by an advertiser, a piece of sponsored content created by a trusted source might be a stronger alternative.
Once you’re ready to start sponsoring content, it can still …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
