Introduction
Don’t you think in recent times the marketing hasn’t been as interruptive as it was about a few years ago, especially if we talk about social media marketing?
To be honest, yes! The marketing has evolved a lot with brands and marketers making huge investments and efforts to make their marketing and communications more engaging and consumer-centric.
This is as they have realized that the success of a marketing campaign and the business lies in the hands of the consumers that is why the consumer-centric approach has been so successful. Continuing in the path of consumer-centric marketing, brands & marketers have found a perfect opportunity in the form of user-generated content.
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What Is User-Generated Content?
Content is of the prime importance in any marketing campaigns especially after the influence of social media and digital media has been rising among the users. The rising popularity of social media and digital platforms have contributed to billions of users globally creating and sharing content in the form of posts, tweets, images, videos, etc. actively.
User-generated content is any piece of content that the users of social media and digital platforms created and shared. In marketing & business, user-generated content is quite specific & valuable.
Here UGC is the content that the users (or mainly customers) have shared that is about a brand and its products/services quality or value based on their real experiences, reviews, feedback, opinions, ideas, etc. with the brand As the real customers share their real experiences with a brand, it makes the UGC the most reliable, authentic, and trustworthy content on the digital platforms that is voluntarily shared by the users.
How UGC Benefits In Marketing?
Now that we have explored what is user-generated content exactly so here are some of the best reasons why UGC is the perfect content for marketing.
1. Getting Original & Cost-effective Content
Content is the most crucial element in the digital marketing ecosystem for the brand as all the users on digital media and social media access, explore, evaluate, and share content actively. So, content is the most important to attract, engage, and convert the users into customers. But the challenge is that content needs to be unique, fresh, and original which leads to greater challenges of constant content creation.
As a brand, you have to create content constantly to keep it unique and engaging, this requires huge investments into time and resources. Whereas, UGC is totally opposite and beneficial. User-generated content is abundantly available on the social media platforms and you can easily curate the original, fresh, and relevant content whenever needed, leading to huge reducing the investments into content marketing strategies.
2. Brand Building Through Trust & Authenticity
Brand building is also an important aspect that goes hand in hand with driving conversions and revenue. As the stronger brand presence will eventually lead to lesser investments into marketing. Using user-generated content in your marketing campaigns will help you in building trust and reliability by showcasing the authenticity of your brand as the UGC is highly trustworthy and reliable due to its characteristics.
The real content from real customers will show the real image and brand quality leading to building trust and authenticity by being transparent with potential customers. Trust and authenticity in this digital age are huge influencers of consumers’ behavior and decision making as there’s a lot of distrust and issues of security among the consumers nowadays.
3. Brand Advocacy, Desirability, & Relatability
As we discussed the trust, UGC also helps in showing how the existing customers are taking the credibility for the brand through their reviews, feedbacks, or positive word of mouth. This credibility or the positive word of mouth is an excellent way to showcase the brand advocacy by the customers through user-generated content. Brand advocacy will help in attracting users to the brand.
UGC is shared by actual customers so it makes the content highly relatable and realistic for the other potential customers. So, advocacy and relatability make them trust the brand more. This leads to building a sense of brand desirability among the non-customers as they will come across the experiences of those who are the existing customers of the brand.
4. Increase Engagement & Interaction
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| Image Credit: Medium.com |
User engagement is something that all marketers keep in mind while creating their marketing strategies as it defines the success of any marketing campaign. So, user-generated content is the best way to engage the audience in the campaign as the content is high;y authentic and relatable so it will automatically attract them to engage and explore the content.
Also, UGC is immensely diverse and creative in nature as it is shared by a vast group of audiences from different demographics so this creative diversity will make the content more engaging and exciting. This will lead to higher engagement from the users along with that the engagement will lead to more UGC creation and more interaction between the brand and the users or customers.
5. Amplify Your Conversions And Revenue
The benefits that we discussed above are all positively related to the conversions and revenue generation as more trust, advocacy, engagement, etc. will all attract the consumers to the purchase funnel. UGC is so important that almost 95% of the people tend to trust the UGC such as reviews, feedback, etc. while making their online purchase decisions or over 3/4th of the consumers look for user reviews actively before buying a product or service.
So, as you move towards building trust and engagement, then you have already creative an affirmative base in the consumers’ minds and you just need to deliver the right solution they are looking for.
Conclusion
User-generated content is the hype among brands and marketers globally with brands like Apple, Starbucks, GoPro, Coca-Cola, etc. using it actively in their campaigns. These benefits along with some more such as expanding the reach and brand awareness through the users or building brand authority, etc.
Make it the perfect opportunity that you should leverage in your marketing. Get going now and you can use a tool like a UGC platform to leverage UGC in your marketing across any or all channels be it website, social media, events, outdoor advertising, emails, etc.