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Who can advertise your products better than your customers? If you’re a business owner, you must be familiar with the concept of using customer testimonials for boosting sales. User-generated content is just a step further in that context. This is a way by which you can get your users to do the advertising for your products and help you sell them. It can act as a vital element in user engagement, brand loyalty, and awareness.
User-Generated Content (UGC) plays a considerable role in retaining customers. Not only does it help in increasing brand loyalty, but customers spend more time on your platform. A study from TurnTo Networks shows that UGC influences the shopping decisions of almost 90% of the shoppers. Moreover, if used correctly, this content can affect your key performance indicators and get you more sales.
A customer is most likely to respond to your review requests when they are sent out immediately after purchase. As soon as the order is delivered, ask your customer if they are satisfied with their purchase. Ask them for their feedback and then take out the time to respond to it.
No matter if it’s positive or negative, you can leverage both types of content in your favor. In case of negative feedback or content, apologise to your customer and ensure that their issue is resolved. You should also post some negative reviews on your website and maintain transparency with your customers. If you find good content created by a customer, respond to them and reflect that content on your social media to make your customers feel that their opinion matters.
Now, what’s important is to get your users to generate more visual content than written. A study shows that 91% of users prefer visual content over traditional formats.
How to do that? When you ask for feedback, include a review request with a picture campaign and reward the customers who submit picture reviews.
Ensure that they are rewarded for the extra effort they make in clicking and uploading photos and videos.
People love being important. Make your users feel that they are important and the content they create is really important to you. To do that, you need to respect your user’s time and appreciate their efforts. Dedicate a separate page to customer-generated content, reviews, and feedback.
When other users see this content, they would also want to stand out and be featured on your website. This way you will be able to get more and more users to create content for your brand.
Besides this, you can also use UGC on your FAQ pages or in your case studies, highlighting how you were able to solve a certain problem for the client.
Your marketing campaigns can majorly impact the number of conversions on your store. If you use user-generated content to promote your products, it will encourage your other customers to do the same. These campaigns run on different social media platforms, so they might give a boost to the user’s social media profile. This way both your brand and the user achieve something resulting in a win-win.
This will also make the user feel heard and they will know that their opinions are respected. Not only will this encourage other customers to create content for your brand but will also encourage the existing customers to stay loyal to your brand.
One important rule of marketing is to think highly of other people’s time. Respect it when somebody is courteous enough to put in the time and effort to create content for your brand. Be it visual content or a review, both are critical to your brand growth.
To thank your customers, offer them a reward for taking out the time to support your campaigns. Offer a discount or free gift each time a user takes the extra mile to do something new to promote your products. If you are asking for feedback then ensure that you reward the customers who attach a picture along with their review.
If they create a video or upload a picture, make sure you give them recognition and repost it on your website or social media accounts. These small actions can highly motivate your customers and encourage them to keep supporting your brand.
For example, Matcha.com asked its customers to upload a picture of their matcha on Instagram with the hashtag #mymatcha. The company set up a mobile app for their brand using Shop2app and sent out push notifications to its customers to inform them about the trend. In return, they offered to give $5 off on their next purchase.
As business owners, you are bound to receive some negative reviews about your brand but that’s okay. If only you know how to turn these in your favor, these reviews can also prove to be beneficial.
When you receive negative content on your products, try to respond to that then and there. Ask the user how you can solve their problem and once you have resolved the issue, request them to provide better feedback. The whole difference lies in how you see it. If you think negative reviews can harm your reputation, that’s true but some of these are required for transparency. No brand can be a hundred percent perfect. In fact, if there are only positive reviews on your website, customers might start doubting your brand.
So take negative reviews as an opportunity to improve and your customers will eventually become loyal to your brand. You can also request your clients to create content around how you helped in solving their issues and showed excellent customer service.
The best way to get the people of this generation moving is through trends. Start a hashtag or trend on social media encouraging users to create content around your brand.
One example of such a trend is #warbyhometryon by Warby Parker’s. I encouraged its users to request any five pairs of glasses to try on at home. They could select one, keep it and pay for it online whileand return the rest. However, the users had to post photos of themselves on social media with the hashtag #warbyhometryon. This earned the company nearly 2.5k Instagram posts featuring customers who participated or who are looking for buying a pair from the company.
This campaign spread awareness about the brand and collected enough testimonials for the brand to generate new sales and retain existing customers. In addition, the lively spirit and rewarding nature of the campaign motivated people to participate sincerely. It is important to keep in mind that if you ask the user to do something for you, you need to ensure they get something out of it.
As business owners, it is necessary to understand that, besides promoting your products, it is crucial to educate the customers on how they can make the best out of your products. You can do so by sending informational blogs, newsletters, and other relevant content.
For example, if you run a store for fruit jams, you can send out recipes to your customers where they can use Jam. Along with this information, encourage them to upload a picture on social media if they try out any of the recipes. This way, you can educate theem as well as encourage them to create content around your products.
Replenishment emails are sent to remind the users to buy an item that may run out of stock soon. For example, if a user buys a certain tea from Matcha.com, the company can send out emails to the user to restock them before they run out. This was you encourage the user to re-purchase and also make them feel attended to.
Your customers are your biggest assets and it’s important to retain your customers to boost brand loyalty. Be polite and respectful to your customers and engage with them as much as possible. Encourage them to create more content around your brand using campaigns, trends, and hashtags. Your brand will automatically gain good reputation if there’s solid user-generated content supporting it. Therefore, you will grow organically with support from your users.
We love chatting with like minded people. If you have any questions, reach out to me at ankit@shop2app.com.
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