To increase your company’s brand awareness, looking to your loyal customers and audience members might be the best way to accomplish this feat. User-generated content can be very effective when it comes to making your brand a household name. If you’re not familiar with user-generated content, keep reading to learn about what it is, how it works, and how you can use it in your own marketing efforts.
What is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content, which is also referred to as consumer-generated content or abbreviated as UGC, is a type of brand-centered content that’s created by one or more members of a company’s consumer base. Consumers share these pieces of content, which brands then publish on their social media accounts
Types of UGC
There are several formats that consumers can use to create UGC, and the most common types include the following:
- Videos
- User Reviews
- Testimonials
- Case Studies
- Podcast Segments
- Images
Why is User-Generated Content Important?
Brands use user-generated content throughout the entirety of the buyer’s journey, and it showcases a customer’s experience with a product or service. This content helps to improve engagement and increase conversions, turning interested parties into loyal customers.
Implementing user-generated content in a company’s marketing strategy comes with several benefits. Let’s go over a few of them.
Increases Brand Awareness
Word-of-mouth is still one of the best ways to get a brand’s name out to the public, and user-generated content is essentially word-of-mouth marketing with a few extra components. When a brand publishes a piece of content that one of its customers made, people are likely going to be interested in what another human being has to say. After viewing the content, the name of the brand in question remains fresh in the viewer’s mind.
Grows a Brand’s Community
User-generated content enables consumers to participate in growing brands they love. Instead of simply viewing content and buying products, UGC serves as a great way for fans of a specific business to get involved with spreading the word about what the organization has to offer.
In addition, when brands display user-generated content on their social media accounts, other individuals with similar interests get to view it. As such, the consumer who generates the content not only helps the brand, but these individuals also have their creations shared with others. From there, that content can be praised and shared even further.
These pieces of content introduce an opportunity for conversations between the brand and its community and amongst community members themselves.
Creates a Better Sense of Authenticity
Today’s consumers tend to connect with brands that make it easy to see the human element behind the name. It’s similar to back in the pre-internet days when people preferred to shop at local establishments, where they were familiar with the owners and employees.
Because so many industries deal with fierce competition, brands need a special approach in order to gain authority and audience loyalty. There are so many businesses to choose from in today’s market, which gives consumers the power to choose the brands they want to support.
User-generated content adds to a brand’s authenticity, as someone on the marketing team received the creation a consumer made, and chose to display it for everyone to see. It shows that the brand cares about maintaining a connection with its audience, and it shows appreciation for that individual’s efforts.
Influences Buying Decisions
User-generated content can be extremely effective when it comes to convincing potential customers to make a purchase. People tend to trust one another more than they trust the content that a brand publishes on its own. There’s a greater sense of honesty and sincerity in a consumer’s content. When an individual claims that a product or service has benefitted them, potential consumers believe their claims.
For example, if a skincare brand carries an anti-aging serum, the marketing team can post content surrounding how well it works until they’re blue in the face. While it may or may not make much of an impression on potential customers, an existing customer posting a video demonstration of how the product works is going to get results.
Compatible with Social Commerce
Much of the time, brands post user-generated content on one or more social media accounts, which is also where social commerce options emerge. These two marketing tactics can work in tandem with one another to help consumers make decisions they feel confident about. By seeing a testimonial or some other form of user-generated content praising a certain product or service, a potential customer can complete the purchase they’ve decided to make conveniently, without even having to navigate away from the social media platform.
Flexibility
UGC is not only applicable to social media marketing. It can also increase sales and gain the brand some new customers on a variety of platforms. Brands can add compelling pieces of user-generated content in ads all across the internet, or on its own website’s many pages. So many possibilities exist when it comes to UGC that brands of practically any size can utilize this marketing method to their advantage.
Cost-Effectiveness
UGC doesn’t cost as much as hiring someone to market a product or service. Influencer marketing can become quite pricy, but often, UGC costs very little, if not nothing at all. Some customers create UGC simply out of appreciation for the product they’ve used, not for profit. Not only is this marketing method more authentic than influencer marketing, it’s also more accessible to brands that might not have the funds needed to implement more expensive marketing techniques.
Examples of User-Generated Content in Marketing
Several companies have already added user-generated content to their marketing strategies, and for some, the results were quite compelling.
Here are three examples of successful user-generated content implementation.
- Yosemite Conservancy: At Yosemite National Park, staff encouraged visitors to post photos of their adventures in the park during the Yosemite Moments: Winter campaign. The campaign incentivized participants by turning the request for submissions into a contest. The winner of this photo contest could look forward to a year of free access to the park.
- Buffer: This brand introduced a BufferCommunity hashtag that users could add to their posts in order to share their photos within the community of Buffer users. These photos ranged significantly in their themes, but the campaign itself became a fun way for fans of the brand to connect and comment on one another’s photos.
- Coca-Cola: The Share a Coke campaign was a successful UGC application that started when the brand started printing common male and female names on their soda bottles. This endeavor inspired users to shop around for a bottle with the name of a friend or loved one on it, then create content surrounding the concept of sharing. Consumers were posting photos of bottles displaying their names, as well as content that showcased consumers giving bottled sodas to friends and family.
Tips for Implementing User-Generated Marketing
Implementing user-generated content into your marketing strategy isn’t terribly difficult if you have a decent-sized audience. Follow these tips to get started.
- Encourage UGC Creations: Encourage your audience to share user-generated content by announcing contests, creating a hashtag, or posting on social media to ask for feedback. Get as many people involved as possible, from your customers to your brand’s staff members. Ask for videos, photos, written testimonials, whatever you can use to advertise your products and services.
- Spread Good Content: Don’t confine UGC to social media. Spread it around by posting it on your website, adding it to email campaigns or newsletters, or even cross-share it on different social media platforms aside from its original source.
Note: It’s important that, before you share content, you ask for the consumer’s permission to share the information. Be sure to credit that individual as well. - Appreciate Your Audience: Give thanks and reward your customers who take the time to create UGC that you can use to market your business.
At the end of the day, user-generated content makes it easy for brands to have loyal customers market their goods and services for them. Take advantage of the most modern word-of-mouth advertising techniques and encourage your customers to tell everyone they know about why they love your brand.
If you’re a business owner and you’re also searching for ways to engage your audience with compelling content, you’ve come to the right place. Contact Content Cucumber today and book a demo to discover how our team of professional marketers and writers can get your brand on the map.