Corporate owners and marketing managers continue to have new ideas to integrate them into their marketing strategy, to raise brand awareness and increase sales.
The user generated content (ugc content) represents one of the low-cost marketing solutions to achieve those goals.
So, what is the user generated content? What are his advantages and types? And how do you optimize it in your business?
What is the user generated content?
user generated content refers to one of the types of content marketing, consists of original commercial content, but writes and publishes loyal to the brand or service users or product, not the company.
It may take several multiple forms, such as social media publications, reviews, powder, videos, images, and other forms.
When you buy a specific fragrance type from an electronic store and you are impressed, and you are a video on YouTube or is writing a publication on a social networking platform.
This example illustrates how the user generated content is formed on the Internet, naturally and free by customers and consumers themselves.
user generating content advantages
There are many benefits for the content established by the user, which stimulates companies to exploit, most notably:
Read also: Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots for Digital Marketing
Free Digital Marketing Tips for any Business
1. Unique and Original Content
Some marketers make fun of a lot of effort and money to prepare ideal user generated content advertising. To show the bothers for service or product believe that this wishes consumer to see it, which may be stolen to make a purchase decision.
But it turned out that this is incorrect because consumers are looking for something real and do not seek behind perfect and ideal, but authenticity and credibility.
user generated content statistics indicate that 90% of consumers find that credibility is important for them when choosing them for the brand, while 60% find that the content created by the user is the most affordable content.
The statistics confirm that the consumer is more trusted in the recommendations of customers who have purchased and experimented with product or service, because they find their observant review target, unlike trademarks that most of them find their only goal.
2. Increased brand loyalty
The content created by the user helps to increase loyalty to the brand because it makes the consumer feel that part of the brand community and not just a sales number.
This feeling is achieved when the consumer shares the experience of using it for a product or service purchased, as well as when the brand interacts with content owners and gives them and examines their proposals for product development or service provided.
All this helps to develop and deepen the relationship between the public and the brand, creates an interactive society between the company and its customers on the one hand, and between customers and each other.
In addition, the costs a brand image in their minds continuously. This has an increase in loyalty to the brand that will become your customers more loyal to your company than the rest of the competition companies.
3. Cost-effective
Traditional marketing activities cost huge amounts to pay the staff salaries, launch paid ad campaigns, and other expenses. In contrast, the ugc content provides those costs, because the customer who purchased the product or service is responsible for the production and participation with others in enthusiasm. However, a few expenses may cost to stimulate customers to share this type of content regularly.
For example, you can offer them discount coupons or free credit in the wallet, or even send them the product or provide them with a free service to review and share them with the audience. All this eventually increases the return on investment (ROI ) by reducing marketing expenses, which is important and essential to each company and a business.
4. Influence on Procurement Decisions and Improve Conversion Rate
If you have bought a pair of shoes before after seeing someone else wearing or asked for a meal inside a restaurant after you spark your admiration and offer someone else on a table adjacent to you, this means you are affected by the social directory.
The concept of social guide confirms that people tend to imitate others, and therefore companies and brands can exploit this behavior in the impact on consumer behavior in the purchase.
Statistics also indicate that 79% of consumers are affected by their purchasing career with the user generated content, as credible social evidence. Many companies exploited it to improve conversion and sales, including
For example, BUSABOUT, a favorite tourism company for the millennium generation, provides users with tours and tourist adventures in multiple destinations throughout Europe.
The company has replaced all the visual images on its website with the user generated content, to raise awareness of the tourism services provided by the brand in Europe. The result was amazing. Content production costs fell about 65%, while the reservations rate increased by 33%.
What are the Types of user generated content?
There are many different types of ugc content, as follows:
1. Social Media Content
More than 58% of the world's population uses various social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok, Snape Chat, Twitter, and others. Thus, any content that will be shared on those platforms, has a significant impact on many potential customers, which may affect their purchasing decisions towards a certain product or service, it manages to choose the appropriate platform for your target audience.
2. Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are one of the most powerful forms of social evidence and is part of the oral marketing strategy for the brand. It is formed of customer reviews and assessments after they purchase and experience a particular product or service. They provide for potential customers, honest and neutral experiments from clients such as their purchase and experience, and therefore provide them with confidence and credibility, as well as a realistic vision of the meaning of the thing they accept.
3. Pictures
The user generated content is not necessarily formed but may also exist in the form of special images with products that require it primarily. Customers sometimes hesitate to purchase products from the Internet, for fear of not conforming with images attached by vendors. They, therefore, resort to former buyers' ratings that contain pictures, to discover the product form on the ground instead of the ideal images shown.
4. Videos
Potable customers love video clips or services before they make their decision to buy them, especially with products and services that need to experience real use and can only be possible through a video clip, such as smartphones and technical devices, home appliances, cars, and other products other services.
Tips to Use the user generated content
Here are some important tips to use the content that the user is properly created and effective:
1. Select user generating content goals
Sometimes companies are sometimes in error not to determining the goal of the user generated content, so they may succeed in achieving a goal already, but it is not in line with their marketing strategy. So, before anything, you should ask yourself what is the goal of the content you create for your company? Is your goal being to build a brand identity, for example, or another goal?
If your goal is to raise brand awareness and access to new customers, you must focus on seeing more likes and comments, and interacting on different communication platforms. If your goal is to increase conversion rates, it must give priority to content, which increases awareness of services and products provided by your brand, to influence buyers' decisions and motivate them to perform the purchase.
Your goal may be to increase confidence in your audience and potential customers and therefore should focus on this case to stimulate your audience to share photos and videos after purchase, experience product or service on the ground. So, you should first clearly define your goal, so put an appropriate strategy to help you achieve it.
2. Employee user generating content
To ensure effective results for the user generated content, you must employ in the right place, here are some ways that can be used to display this content to your potential customers:
- Websites and Electronic Stores
The user generated content is original and unique, so you can view it on your site or your store to increase confidence and influence purchasing customer decisions, especially before step completing the purchase.
- Live and Virtual Events
There is no better than the user generated content to attract your audience's attention in live and virtual events. It helps to survive the audience in full focus and enjoy the event, and similarly helps to raise awareness of your brand of new customers who watch the event.
- Re-share user generating content
When your audience is involved on the official social media, it makes them feel appreciated, prompting them to work for more professional content with severe enthusiasm. In addition, do not forget notice always to content owners in your publication, which brings more appreciation and respect for your company by the public.
- Promotional Emails
You can take advantage of the user generating content for your company in email marketing as high credible social evidence, to influence your purchasing customers' decisions and motivate them to complete the purchase.
3. Ask for Permission from the Content Owner
Sometimes some companies and brands are neglected by a necessary step before publishing the ugc content, which is requested by the authority of the content. Thus, if the company does not request permission from it before deploying its content, this may be presented to judicial proceedings to violating intellectual property rights.
4. Reward the Content Owners
Your customers offer unique content with high credibility, and when you do not offer them in return, to encourage them to continue to share their experiences with the public? You can express your appreciation in several ways, including example offering discount coupons or free balance, sending invitations to attend live and virtual events, sending new products and services to review and share with the public, and other ways.
5. Learn from Negative Experiences and Publish Positive Ones
You should know well that the user generating content is not always positive, but sometimes a user may publish a negative share of your brand because of a problem. In this case, negative experiments should not be published, but only focused on the positive deployment of inspiration with your audience, and not damaging your brand.
Meanwhile, negative participation should not be ignored so do not affect the brand image, but you must communicate with the upset customer and ask him to explain its problem in detail. For example, if the problem is delayed in the arrival of the shipment, I apologized to him and has a free discount coupon or credit. After you satisfy the client, you can participate with the audience his positive participation after solving the problem, this will be an impression of your company that they consider customer service experience.
6. Specialize Hashtags
After a short time, the content generated by the user will be accumulated in favor of your brand, so as not to find this content is difficult and long for your company, even easy for potential customers access to this content and interaction, you must specialize Hashtags for your brand.
Thus, once the Hashtag is written in the research box, you can access all the content that this Hashtag is easily indicated. You can search for the best content that achieves quality agent and matches the content strategy for your company, to share with your audience and take advantage of it.
user generated content examples
GoPro has been competent to produce lightweight and high-definition personal cameras several years ago, integrating the user generating content with its own ugc marketing strategy. The amazingly achieved results, in 2013, the number of videos on the company that is loaded on YouTube has reached more than 6000 videos and when you are looking for the word "GoPro" in the YouTube Platform search engine, you get millions of results.
In addition, more than 10.6 million participants on the official channel on YouTube, have become a private channel on Virgin Airlines and user generated content blocked xbox one. However, you feel that you are seeing a continuous declaration of the camera while watching those videos, credited with the content made by Gopro clients.
In conclusion, companies can exploit the user generating content, and its strong impact on consumer purchase decisions to increase sales. To do so properly, you need to hire a professional marketer via Freelance Services, to help you prepare a clear content strategy and goals and choose the appropriate deployment platform for your product or service.
