How to Use GIF Marketing to Boost Brand Awareness

The first step toward using GIPHY marketing for brand awareness is to create a branded channel on GIPHY.

Here’s what your brand channel could look like:

Well, technically, the first step is to create an account on GIPHY and start uploading GIFs to the platform.

Anybody can create an account and upload GIFs, but your GIFs won’t show up in search results on third-party social media and messaging apps unless you have a verified brand channel.

Fortunately, signing up for a GIPHY brand channel is easy.

Just go here and log in to your GIPHY account (or sign up for a new one).

If you don’t have any GIFs on the platform, you’ll see this page:

To sign up for a brand channel on GIPHY, you need to have at least 5 GIFs on the platform, as well as a website, and a social media following.

It can take from 2–14 days for your brand channel to be approved, but during that time, you can continue to build your library of branded GIFs and stickers.

Once you’re verified, your GIFs will be available for use across all platforms that have a GIPHY search engine integration.

Just like any other marketing tactic, you need a strategy for GIF marketing.

And, just like many other digital marketing tactics, your GIF marketing strategy starts with keyword research.

Keyword research just means checking out different search terms and topics that are relevant to your brand.

So, if you’re a running shoe company like Brooks, you’d want to target keywords like “running shoes women’s,” “tennis shoe,” and other similar keywords.

Adding relevant keywords to your GIFs is important because you want people to find the GIFs that are related to your brand. In addition, you’ll want to tag your GIFs with your brand name and any taglines you use.

But what if people aren’t searching for your brand?

That’s where your relevant search terms come into play!

These are terms that aren’t necessarily directly related to your brand, but they are related to the types of things your target audience is talking about.

Here’s an example from TVLand’s brand channel on GIPHY:

As you can see from the tags used, TVLand uses their own brand name in the tags along with other keywords that users might search to find a GIF like this: “yay,” “conga,” “happy,” and others.

If you’re not familiar with keyword research, have a look at our article about search engine marketing to learn more.

When you’re planning out the keywords you want to target, remember that not all keywords are created equal. Some keywords are more competitive than others and, as such, it takes a lot of time, effort, and optimization to rank for those competitive keywords.

If you’re a fast food brand, for example, you may not be able to rank for a competitive keyword like “fast food,” but you could rank for something like “yum” or “tasty.”

Whatever the keywords you choose, it’s important to remember GIPHY’s primary goal: to show users GIFs that are relevant to the keywords they search.

How to Choose Low Competition Keywords

1. Make a list of topics you’re going to target.
2. Brainstorm a list of keywords for each of those topics.
3. Search GIPHY for each keyword, making note of the number of GIFs as well as the number of views the top GIF has gotten.

From there it’s a bit of a guessing game. Obviously, the keywords that bring up tons of GIFs and where the top GIF has thousands of views are going to be more different to rank.

After you have a list of the keywords you’re going to target, it’s time to create content around those terms.

There are a few different basic GIF types:

• Animated GIFs: GIFs that add animation to a still image
• Video GIFs: the most common type of GIF
• GIF stickers: typically used as an overlay on an image or video

Animated GIF Example

An animated GIF is similar to a video GIF, but the GIF is based on a still image that has been animated using animation tools:

Video GIF Example

Video GIFs feature short video clips:

GIF Sticker Example

GIF stickers are animated images or text that usually have a transparent background. These are the GIFs that you can put on top of an image or video:

They’re used often on social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

Here’s an example of a GIF sticker using text:

GIFs are exciting and fun. When you’re just getting started using GIFs for marketing, you might want to jump into all the different types.

Take a breath and think about where you want these GIFs to do their magic.

If you want to reach users on social media, GIF stickers are the best way to get started. If you don’t know how to edit images or add animations, maybe hold of on animated GIFs for a while.

Once you take a minute to think about the platforms and people you’re targeting, it will be easier to decide what type of GIF to create.

Don’t forget to upload your GIFs to your verified brand channel and add your keywords!

Once you get your creative ready to go, all you need to do is login to your verified brand channel, upload your GIFs, and tag each GIF with your target keywords.

GIFs are evergreen content, meaning they’re always relevant. That also means you’ll want to regularly monitor the performance of your GIFs.

With a verified brand channel on GIPHY, you’ll get access to the analytics dashboard.

On your analytics dashboard, you’ll be able to see view counts for your GIFs. Here’s how GIPHY defines what a view count is:

“A single view is counted when a GIF is served, regardless of how many times it loops. A GIF view on GIPHY is a sign of relevance, share-ability, and popularity.”

This will help you understand the types of GIFs and GIF content perform the best for the audience you’re trying to reach. That way, you can model other GIFs on what works.

Calculating Your ROI

To calculate the organic CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) of your GIFs, you only need to compare the cost of creating the GIF to the number of impressions the GIF has received.

If you spent $1,000 to create a GIF that has generated 5 million impressions, your CPM would be $0.20.