It’s a competitive landscape for any business. And to thrive alongside compelling competitors, we need new marketing tools, tricks, and tips.
UGC is one such tool but only good enough if we can trick our customers into becoming our unsung brand ambassadors out of their will.
But how do we make sure that our customers blatantly don’t reject our sales pitch?
The key point is to maintain the authenticity of the brand or product, while also leveraging our existing marketing ideas and implementing them with our customers. Trends may come and go, but what’s still in trend is, that customers still want to invest or splurge on good products, exciting products, and one-of-a-kind products.
When we get our hands on a fancy new dress (or) that sparkly piece of jewelry you invested in or the new café that opened up around the corner, we have to let our Instagram fam know that we’re one of the firsts to find it or that it’s our go-to place! It’s a crime if haven’t posted an aesthetic Instagram story with the fancy coffee mug, no?
What we may be doing out of excitement and pride, we are also advocating for the respective brands and speaking for their authenticity, their offerings, and more.
Now, UGC is presented in various forms -
Videos
Pictures
Client Testimonials
Influencer review content
Paid review or not, this reel does its job. With traction of over 277K views and 8K plus forwards, it has reached more than enough target audience, urging them to visit this café!
The deliverables of this reel cover the food, the ambiance, the glowing interiors, and the pricing, which is ideally enough information to decide if we want to visit the place or not. A quick guide under 30 seconds!
To summarize this aspect, UGC is the organic content created by consumers, influencers, creators/artists and not something that a brand or business produces through structured strategies and planned marketing.
UGC represents the voice of many and it offers validation to any potential audience. The client testimonials after using our products or a renowned chef or even home chefs using our product in their recipes and showcasing how to use it and how it elevates their dish, or even a reflexology footwear from a local brand that has boundless reach among the elderly, through word of mouth feedbacks. All of this reflects the authenticity of the brand and adds value to our business free of cost.
A few strategies to leverage User-Generated Content that will boost our e-commerce growth and invariably the offline market too.
1. Creating a Distinctive Brand Voice
This involves establishing a brand style, tone, and image, that helps our audience resonate with and recognize our brand anytime, anywhere. This goes beyond the products or services we offer, focusing on the intangible elements that hold significance for our business and our target market.
2. Focusing on the Voice of the Customer
We need to promote the generation of UGC by urging our customers to share their experiences with our products or services. Ideally, this can be implemented through various channels such as social media platforms, email campaigns, or even on our website.
Our CTA should be - to provide incentives or rewards to encourage target audience engagement, such as discounts, exclusive offers, or the opportunity to be featured on our social media platforms.
Video testimonials prove to be highly effective in capturing the attention of our target audience and building trust. The difference happens when real people talk about their real experiences and express their views without any filters. This is one step towards humanizing our brand and making it easy for customers to relate to. But this doesn’t stop there, it’s what we do right after. The active engagement with these customers who’ve expressed their involvement/loyalty to our brand, we can strengthen this relationship by responding to them expressing our gratitude, and encouraging more active participation.
3. Hashtag Campaigns
To integrate a successful hashtag campaign into your eCommerce growth strategy, adhere to these steps:
Craft a Compelling Theme
Develop a theme that resonates with your target audience, aligning with your brand values for heightened excitement and community involvement.
Utilize Social Media Channels
Capitalize on platforms like Instagram to prompt customers to share content linked to your brand, utilizing a designated campaign hashtag to extend brand visibility.
Incentivize Engagement
Drive active participation by organizing contests with enticing prizes, such as free merchandise or exclusive services, motivating customers to engage and contribute to the campaign actively.
Showcase user-generated content on your brand’s platforms, validating and recognizing customers’ contributions to build trust and loyalty.
Repurpose UGC for marketing efforts, featuring it on your website, social media channels, or email campaigns to provide social proof and influence purchase decisions.
Track engagement metrics, such as user-generated posts, likes, shares, and reach, and analyze the impact on eCommerce growth, refining and optimizing future campaigns.
You get to turn existing consumers into brand ambassadors, raise brand recognition, and draw in new clients by incorporating hashtag campaigns into your eCommerce growth strategy. Below is an example of a Hashtag campaign.
4. Quality Media Content
Visual content plays a major role in a brand’s growth because visual representation impacts what kind of client base the brand or business will inherit and how many. And when it comes to visually representing a brand, it’s always quality over quantity. Quality media content will help customers make informed decisions and make purchases with our business.
Here UGC happens when these quality visuals are created by Influential figures or bloggers who have used a particular product or service offered by the brands. Paid or not, this influencer review is a real-life perspective that helps customers in their buying decisions.
When incorporating UGC into your product images, ensuring the content aligns with your brand’s image and quality standards is important. Striking the right balance between professional images and UGC helps create a visually appealing and informative shopping experience for your customers.
5. Building an Online Community
Building an online community on any site with benefitting memberships can be a powerful strategy to engage with customers, foster brand loyalty, and generate user-generated content. To create an effective online community, we need to follow a few steps.
Platform Selection
Choose a hosting platform like WordPress with membership plugins.
Community Interaction
Establish discussion areas like forums and chat rooms for users to share ideas and experiences.
Enable user-generated content, showcasing testimonials, images, videos, and reviews.
Organize live events and webinars for direct engagement between customers and your brand.
Community Management
Provide a FAQ section for common concerns and questions.
Foster collaboration among members, encouraging support and shared solutions.
Recognize and reward active participants with badges, perks, and featured content.
Set clear guidelines, appoint moderators, and actively participate in discussions.
Promote your community through various channels to expand membership.
In a fiercely competitive business landscape, the power of User-Generated Content (UGC) emerges as a game-changer. As we explored various forms, from videos to client testimonials, the authenticity embedded in UGC speaks volumes to potential audiences. The key lies not in tricking customers to buy into something, but in fostering a genuity through enthusiasm that transforms them into unsung, unfiltered brand ambassadors.
We are armed with strategies for creating a distinctive brand voice, amplifying the voice of the customer, executing hashtag campaigns, curating quality media content for socials, and building an online community, it's time for you to unleash the potential of UGC in your business.
The journey to unlocking the full potential of UGC continues, and we invite you to be part of it, at TCTC! Connect with us today!