Branded Content vs Content Marketing: Choosing the Right Strategy

With how we consume content today, it’s more important than ever for businesses to build their brand through engaging online media.

Whether you’re scrolling through your social media platforms, watching videos, or reading articles, chances are you encounter engaging content in some form every day. And more often than not, that content introduces you to a new brand, product, or service.

In fact, you’ve likely discovered some of your favourite brands this way—even if you didn’t realize it at the time.

This is because content marketing can take several forms, including branded content. However, while all branded content is considered content marketing, not all content marketing can be classified as branded. I know it’s a little confusing.

So, what actually makes this distinction?

In this post, we’ll break down the key differences between branded content vs. content marketing, when each works best, and how you can use both to strengthen your marketing strategy.

What is Content Marketing

Content marketing is creating and distributing valuable content designed to build awareness and trust in a product or service without directly promoting a brand.

Its non-intrusive marketing strategy focuses on building long-term relationships with audiences through a mix of content types, including branded and non-branded blog posts, social media updates, and video content.

What sets content marketing apart from traditional advertising is its focus on providing value rather than promoting a brand directly. Instead of pushing products, content marketing delivers useful information that resonates with a brand’s target audience, positioning the company as a trusted leader in its industry.

What is Branded Content

Branded content is a type of content marketing that blends entertainment or education with brand promotion. It aims to connect with audiences by providing value while incorporating the brand in a natural and unobtrusive way.

Branded content typically comes in two forms:

1. Influencer Marketing: Imagine your company sells workout equipment. To promote your brand, you partner with a fitness influencer who creates a social media post detailing their workout. In the workout, they mention your branded product as a key component. The focus is on the influencer’s experience, with the brand supporting the narrative. This is branded content.
2. Owned Content: Brands can also make their own content, like Nike’s Nike Run Club. Through the mobile application, Nike publishes a variety of content to help runners train for various race distances. While none of these programs directly promote a product or service to sell, they all indirectly help build the brand simply by having the brand name and logo.

Marketing content is only considered branded content when it prominently features the brand name, logo, or other brand elements naturally within the content.

Key Differences Between Branded Content vs Content Marketing

Brand Building vs Value Advertising

A key difference between branded content and content marketing is the overall objective.

A branded content campaign is all about brand building. By incorporating the brand image into entertaining or useful content, this strategy helps shape your business’s identity through storytelling. It aims to create a deeper connection with your target audience, fostering improved brand recognition and loyalty among potential customers over time.

Meanwhile, a content marketing strategy’s primary goal is to drive profitable customer action through the creation of relevant content. It doesn’t necessarily need to mention the brand. Instead, its success is measured by its ability to offer value, generate traffic, and boost conversions.

The goal is to position the brand as a trusted authority while encouraging the audience to take a desired action, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or engaging further with the brand.

Overall, branded content aims to build an emotional connection with the audience, while content marketing seeks to build trust and loyalty by offering useful, actionable information that drives results and lead generation.

Direct vs Indirect Strategies

The most obvious difference between branded and content marketing is the prevalence of brand visibility within a piece of content.

Marketing content can be both branded or non-branded. Both forms of content work to indirectly promote a product or service through the use of helpful and engaging content, but only branded content prominently features the brand within the messaging.

Whether it’s a sponsored video or a blog post, branded content tends to rely on more storytelling elements while subtly incorporating the brand within the overall flow. By doing so, companies can craft and manipulate their brand image to better speak to their target demographic while associating themselves with topics their audiences find entertaining or useful.

Say you own a roofing company, and you create a step-by-step guide on how to clean gutters. This is innate content marketing, as it attracts an audience that is relevant to your services. However, it only becomes branded content if you include a brand mention throughout the post.

Instead of saying, “Start by setting your ladder,” you would say, “At Kurt’sRoofing, we start by setting our ladder.” In this example, you insert your brand as a character in your story, building first-hand credibility for your services without explicitly promoting them.

Entertainment vs Educational Content

As a result of benefiting from storytelling elements, branded content often targets entertainment and narrative-focused content, while other forms of content marketing focus on educational topics.

This is because when someone is looking for entertainment value, they are open to a greater story. This leaves more room to incorporate a narrative that prominently features your brand’s values. Then, by incorporating humour or inspiration into your content, you can morph your audience’s perception of your brand image into something they can connect with.

However, this doesn’t work as well with educational content. When someone is searching for a common question related to your industry, they are looking for a quick answer. They don’t care about what your company does in that situation or how you learned your services. They simply want to know how to address the concern they asked.

This scenario is better suited for non-branded content. Instead, focus on providing value within each sentence you write, providing a complete yet concise answer to their query.

Episodic Engagement vs Long-Term Value

Content marketing is inherently a long-term strategy. It is a strategic marketing approach focused on providing consistent value to your audience over time.

The goal of creating ongoing content, whether blog posts, social media updates, or videos, is to nurture customer relationships, build trust, and continuously drive engagement. The effectiveness of consistent content marketing grows over time as each piece builds on the previous one, creating a cumulative impact that fosters loyalty and brand authority.

On the other hand, branded content often operates more like episodic content within a larger content marketing strategy. It’s typically used in campaign-driven marketing efforts that aim to generate short-term interest or spur immediate engagement.

Brand marketing, especially in the case of sponsored or paid partnerships, is often a one-off or a limited series that encourages a quick, initial response from the audience. These campaigns may generate buzz in the short term, but they don’t necessarily lead to sustained brand loyalty on their own.

In this sense, branded content is sometimes more like traditional advertising, where the focus is on immediate impact—such as raising awareness or prompting action—while content marketing prioritizes long-term value, steadily nurturing a relationship with the audience.

So, while branded content may create excitement or intrigue in the short term, content marketing builds deeper, more lasting relationships through consistent, value-driven content over time.

Choosing the Right Strategy

When it comes to branded content versus content marketing, there is no better strategy.

This is because content marketing is the two’s only real digital marketing strategy. Branded content is just a distinct content marketing approach.

The real question you should be asking is whether you should focus on branded or non-branded content. In this case, the answer is that it depends.

Realistically, your content marketing strategy will use a mix of branded and non-branded content depending on where you are in your customer journey and what kind of relationship you want to nurture.

Combining Branded Content and Content Marketing

Start with educational content. These have the greatest potential to reach broader, clearly defined audiences and attract new leads. For the reasons stated above, educational content is better suited for a non-branded approach because it focuses on providing valuable, informative content without overtly pushing a brand.

For instance, you might create how-to guides, industry reports, or informational blog posts that educate your audience. You can include a call-to-action (CTA) at the end, encouraging them to learn more or visit your website, but the content itself should primarily serve the audience’s needs and be kept direct and to the point.

Once you’ve built a following and established trust with your audience, you can start weaving in branded content. This is where you can get creative with entertainment and storytelling. Use branded content to craft narratives that highlight your brand’s personality, voice, and values.

You can strengthen your emotional connection with the audience through humour, inspiration, or even customer stories. These stories are not just about showcasing your products or services—they’re about establishing a relationship with your audience.

Ensure visibility and engagement by linking these branded posts throughout your website and social platforms. By creating pathways for your audience to explore more of your branded content, you keep them engaged and invested in your brand.

Ultimately, the key is balancing value-driven content (non-branded) with brand-driven content (branded). Over time, this combination helps to drive both short-term engagement and long-term loyalty.

Building Your Brand With Engaging Content

Okay, here’s a quick test.

Having discussed the difference, is this blog post branded or non-branded content marketing?

It’s non-branded. I haven’t incorporated Kurt’sCopy into the content itself—at least not until this point.

Instead, I’ve focused on creating valuable content that addresses you, the audience, and showing how both branded content and content marketing can directly benefit your business. This is educational content, and I want you to clearly understand how these techniques can help you achieve your business goals.

However, no matter the type of content, the key to success lies in having a strong call to action. So, if you’re ready to take your content marketing to the next level, let’s chat!

Reach out for a free consultation to discuss how we can tailor a strategy that drives both brand engagement and results for your business.