3. You Can Introduce New Product Lines or Start New Companies With a Content Brand
Instead of starting a new company, creating a product, and raising venture capital only to find out your product doesn’t really have a market (despite your well-intentioned market research), you can start a branded content destination to test your ideas out on an audience before committing to expensive product development. Brian Clark of Copyblogger refers to this as creating a Minimum Viable Audience.
Your content will attract an audience, elicit responses in the comments section or on social media, and provide valuable, sometimes unfiltered market intelligence you wouldnt get otherwise.
Three Examples of Successful Content Brands
Want some examples?
Tractor Supply’s Chicken Whisperer
Have you ever heard of The Chicken Whisperer? Sounds kind of crazy doesn’t it? Andrew Davis, in his book Brandscaping, details how Tractor Supply partnered with Andy Schneider and his popular Chicken Whisperer podcast to target the hobbyist farmer niche.
The podcast has attracted a loyal following of thousands of listeners, and has helped distinguish Tractor Supply from other brands in their niche.
Blackbaud’s NPEngage
Software provider Blackbaud offers a suite of software products to help nonprofits manage their donor lists and raise money. Their content brand, the NPEngage blog, has established a reputation as one of the top nonprofit blogs in a crowded field.
Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV
Brash wine enthusiast and NHL fan Gary Vaynerchuk became famous for Wine Library TV, his daily wine podcast which appeals to a new niche in the wine market: regular folks who like wine but who had previously been ignored by the traditional “wine connoisseur” publications such as Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate. Wine Library TV is such as strong content brand that nobody really knows the brand name of his parents’ liquor store for which Vaynerchuk had created Wine Library TV in the first place.
But so what? Vaynerchuk grew liquor store sales from $4 million to $45 million. The results speak for themselves.
Are You Willing to Build a Content Brand?
Building a content brand is possible if you identify your audience’s particular needs and are willing to satisfy those needs with a content destination that offers a unique perspective while establishing its own brand.
You must be willing to create your own media property independent of your company’s brand. Or as Tractor Supply did by partnering with The Chicken Whisperer, your company can associate with an already existent content brand.
This is not for everybody, but the benefits can be very powerful if you’re willing to wear two hats: that of a media mogul and as CEO of your own company.
Related articles:
Content Marketing, Why You need A Strategy
Is Your Content Marketing Getting Lost in Translation?
Your Digital Content King or Court Jester
Small Business Branding- What’s in a Name?
