📢 User Generated Content: Harnessing Your Customers' Creativity to Enhance Your Marketing Efforts

Hey Business Owners,

have you ever watched an unboxing video?

bought something from an Instagram post or Pinterest Pin?

ate at a new restaurant because it had solid reviews?

If so, you’ve experienced the power of user generated content (USG) first hand.

It’s drives awareness and social engagement, increases conversions, expands reach, and helps clear up objections a potential customer might have with your business. All without you having to create it.

No wonder major businesses take advantage of USG, but here’s the thing - any size business can benefit from utilizing it strategically. Whether it’s through excellent reviews and testimonials leading to more customers, videos driving to increased website traffic, or photos to inspire.

Today, we’ll talk about why USG is helping brands of all sizes, the benefits your customer’s content about your products and services could have, and how to encourage customers to make and share content on your behalf.

Let’s dive in!

In 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

✅ 8 benefits of user generated content for your business

✅ How to encourage customers to create user generated content

✅ a few popular USG real life examples

8 Benefits of User Generated Content 💫 

USG comes in many formats. Anything from a photo or video posted to social media, a testimonial on Google, a product review on Yelp, a blog post on Medium or a live stream on Twitch shared by a customer can provide a multitude of benefits for your business.

Here are some benefits of utilizing this type of content:

1) Influential in the consideration and purchasing phases of the sales funnel because it acts as genuine social proof that your business is worthy of spending time and attention with and money on. Your potential customers will see your existing customers as people just like them which influences those new customers to buy in too.

2) Improves your credibility and trust because of the content is made by real customers, not you or your marketing team.

3) Cost efficient marketing - By leaning into learning from, re-sharing USG, and mimicking user generated content in your marketing efforts, you are sharing authentic to your business marketing and saving money for other vital parts of the business to better help you serve your customers.

4) Sharing and engaging with USG helps improve customer relationships and give you valuable feedback for how to improve in the future.

5) Works well with social commerce. Social commerce or shopping directly from your favorite social media channels is becoming a more popular route to shopping online and generating website traffic.

6) Humanizes your brand image by establishing an emotional connection. When you share USG, it also makes you come across as more relatable and approachable to customers and potential customers.

7) Boosts SEO because USG often naturally incorporates relevant keywords and hashtags into the content that your target customers are already active with. This could lead to boosts in traffic to your store or website if customers use location tags in their UGC for example.

8) Builds your customer’s confidence by showing potential customers how your existing customers use your products and services in real life scenarios.

How to Encourage Customers to Create Content 😀 

How do you get customers to make USG for you?

Ask them to and make it worth their while by making the process easy, fun, and rewarding. Here are 10 examples:

1) Offer discounts, coupons, or exclusive offers in exchange for customers to create USG and share it online. If you have a loyalty program, gift them reward points for sharing their experience

2) Organize a social media contest with a theme related to your products and/or services. You can also offer a prize for a randomly selected participant.

3) Prompt customers to use a specific hashtag when posting about your brand online through website pop-ups and your marketing content.

4) Re-share and engage with your customer’s content (testimonials, blog posts, social media comments, etc.)

5) Highlight customer testimonials (with the customer’s permission) on your social media pages, website, email newsletter, etc.

6) Offer early access to new products, services, or features in exchange for reviews

7) Engage customers with feedback surveys to involve them in new service or product offerings.

8) Highlight customer’s creativity using your products or services in their day to day online.

9) Give individual shout outs and personalized replies to loyal customers and/or customers who have achieved a milestone/accomplishment

10) Tie USG content creation to a charitable cause. For example: For every post on Instagram for a week tagging your brand, you’ll donate X amount to a specific charity that you and your customers are both passionate about.

Examples of User Generated Content In The Wild 🌲 

Airbnb - How You Airbnb: Airbnb engages on Twitter (now known as X) with hosts and guests by sharing USG. Last year, Airbnb asked followers to share their experiences using Airbnb with pets.

#ShareACoke: Remember when Coca-Cola sold bottles of soda with popular individual names with the hashtag Share A Coke?

The idea was simple, find your name, your friends name, and family member’s names on bottles and share a soda with them. If your name wasn’t found on their mass distribution bottles available all across the country (and internationally), you could also easily order a custom name bottle on their website.

The result: Globally customers generated their own photos, videos, and talked about Coca Cola all over social media without any more of a prompt than the hashtags #shareacoke. Customers shared videos of them scouring their local grocery store to find specific names, the smile on the face of the person receiving a Coke bottle with their name, global sales skyrocketed. At one point, Coca Cola sold 1.9 billion name bottles a day.

ABOUT VERSA STRATEGY

Chandler Kirkman is the driving force behind Versa Strategy. She’s on a mission to elevate businesses’ marketing and empower Creative Strategists to think big picture about the business landscape.

In the past decade, Chandler has consulted with over a hundred businesses of various specialities from Fortune 100 companies to local small businesses. By infusing branding, advertising, and marketing efforts with her signature blend of creativity, strategic thinking, and enthusiasm, she cultivates a dynamic and empathetic approach that helps business owners better connect with their customers.

LET’S CHAT! [email protected]

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