As we all come to learn at some point or the other, customers are the biggest assets of a brand. Knowing who they are and what they need can help you resonate with them and come across as reliable.
Further, users’ voices act as a compass that guides sales for brands. But, if getting your customer to adore your brand is step one, then having them to share it is step two. And it is a lot easier with User-Generated Content.
Infact, 70 percent of the consumers place peer recommendations above professionally written copy.
Be it in the form of customer feedback, blogs, testimonials, visuals, or more – user-generated content has massive potential to inspire and influence the purchase decision of the users.
For brands and marketers alike, UGC represents a great opportunity to win trust of the potential audience, boost brand awareness and build sales. Wondering how you can hit home with UGC marketing? Read this blog for some insightful marketing tips in 2022.
What Is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content, simply put, is any content – text, videos, images, blogs, testimonials, etc., created by and for the people.
UGC is effectively overshadowing the marketing trends that prevailed over the years, simply because it is unbiased and real. People find it reliable, trustworthy, authentic and detail-oriented because it speaks of users’ experience with brands.
Further, trust and engagement being the major KPIs of businesses across categories online can be easily achieved by integrating users’ voices in their branded marketing efforts.
Leverage The Untapped Potential Of User-Generated Content To Boost Trust, Traffic & Conversions
User-generated content is becoming an unavoidable part of the brand’s content marketing strategy, especially today, when users are ready to gush about your product or service on their active channels.
UGC is trusted by 92 percent of the consumers more than any traditional form of advertising, simply because of its authenticity. By incorporating user’s content into marketing, the chances of coming across as a credible brand increases which leads to better traffic, lead generation and conversions on the website.
Let’s understand some key strategies that can help you ace your UGC marketing game in 2022.
Increase Ecommerce Website Revenue With a Customer-centric Approach
The best part about users’ content is that it can be integrated anywhere in the eCommerce sales funnel – be it at the awareness, review stage, or checkout stage. User-generated content creates a complete journey to successfully convert leads.
The major reason why users’ content has this massive impact on eCommerce conversions is that it is the most trustworthy, dependable and genuine format of content.
Consumers look for relatability and inspiration while making online purchases, and UGC provides just that. By featuring users’ content on websites, product page galleries, category pages, in-store displays, etc., you can create social proof and help customers make informed buying decisions.
Incorporate Reviews In Your Marketing Funnel
Customer reviews are the biggest asset for your business. They actually have the potential to make or break your brand. Further, research shows that 92 percent of consumers will hesitate to buy an item that does not have any user reviews attached to it.
Hence, knowing how to collect and use them is the best bet moving ahead in this year. Here are a few ways in which you can use customer reviews on your website.
- Incorporate customer reviews, ratings and testimonials in emails
- Showcase the users’ experiences on your web pages
(Tip: Integrate user reviews on your home and checkout pages to persuade the potential customers into buying your product.)
- Make them a part of your social ads
- Accentuate the performance of your social media wall – both in-store and DOOH, by featuring users’ feedback.
Furthermore, by adding reviews and testimonials of your users on the website, you can ease pre-purchase anxiety of the postects and let them get a grasp of how the product would actually look or function.
Users Seek More User Generated Video Content
Video is a great way to stay connected with your audience, especially by leveraging the ones created by your users. Infact, stats suggest that user-generated videos about a brand were viewed 10x more than official brand videos on YouTube.
User-Generated Videos have immense potential of getting shared, which will help ensure sustainable growth of your business. Using UGC videos is better than traditional brand-generated videos because it can easily engage your audience, and provide them insights about your brand.
Additionally, you can build a promising image of your brand simply by leveraging the most authentic voices – the users. Showcase unboxing, usage, or reviews shared by the users on your social or digital channels to make the customers feel valued about their contribution and build brand-user relationship.
Brand Example: Pampers’ Love, Sleep & Play included a UGC video. The brand collected users’ content from social media platforms and curated all of them into one video. The babies were shown playing, falling asleep, and having fun together, which was relevant to the brand’s audience, leading to a positive response.
Omnichannel Is No More Optional
Those days when having an active presence on just a couple of social media channels was enough, are definitely in the past. Users now have a rather global presence, compelling brands to be out there loud and outright!
Here, showcasing UGC alongside branded content can be a great strategy.
However, it is worth considering that different platforms require different content strategies. For example platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter house thought leadership content, while platforms like TikTok & Instagram provide a more visual experience to the users.
Over To You
There is a lot of untapped potential in user-generated content which marketers must attempt to harness as it is what makes the tomorrow of content marketing.
Users’ behavior is altering. They are a lot more active and want to know everything, especially past buyers experiences before investing into a brand.
So, if you have been looking for smart ways in which you can capitalize on user-generated content in 2022, hope this blog helps.