In the age of Metaverse & AI, Customer speak is still paramount!
The Digital Revolution is rapidly developing with strong advancements in the Metaverse as well as Machine Learning. Yet one aspect remains core to every experience a brand caters to, which is their customers. Today’s customers like to be a part of a brand as much as brands want to be part of the customer’s life.
Customer speak is important and plays a huge role in a company’s success as well as how it is perceived. User generated content (UGC) encourages existing customers to create something unique with the product and share it with the rest of the world. This helps build brand recall with your brand & product. Some great examples of UGC Campaigns:
From a branding perspective, Starbucks’ secret sauce behind their success stems from UGC dominated conversations for the brand as a reflected status of an individual. #HolidaySeason specials and cups were conversation driven by the brand. The brand also gave constant updates about new locations to not only keep users engaged but also to lead to footfalls.
There are also brands that drive UGC directly from the product. GoPro with their action camera, have managed to garner lots of UGC content with its ongoing hashtag campaign that simply uses the brand name. The #gopro campaign has got almost 50 million posts and features videos & images of people engaging with their product.
Coca-Cola worked on the widely successful “Share a Coke” campaign in which they printed 150 common names in Australia and printed them on their bottle labels. The personalized bottles were shared on social media by friends & family with these personalized bottles. The idea later spread to 80 other countries.
The above examples help showcase not only how brands have driven UGC but also showcases the brand’s intent to be engaged by their existing customers.
Build a stronger connection with your customers!
There are several ways to build a stronger connection with your customers & encourage UGC:
- Create buzz for your brand or announce a new product and ask fans their opinions / what they think it is
- Running contests & creation of engagement content to further amplify engagement
- Offer incentives like putting your fans on social media / creating micro-brand ambassadors
- Ask questions & value people’s opinions
Seems easy to understand, is it worth committing to?
Encouraging the creation of UGC for your brand has many benefits including:
- Encourage fans to interact & engage with your brand
- Creation of Organic content for your Social Media Channels
- A great way to let customers know you value them & their opinions
- Content produced is viewed as authentic and can lead to higher retention rates of customers. Successful UGC campaigns can lead to higher click-through rates
- Organically increases share of voice in the digital space
- Can help increase repeat interactions amongst customers
Are there any negatives to creation of UGC Campaigns?
There are some cons of UGC:
- Content relies on User experiences with the brand and could be both positive and negative
- If the product is not high-involvement, there maybe less UGC produced
- Requires a strong push and even incentivisation for certain types of products
Turn these cons into an opportunity!
- This is a great way to address feedback head on, make customers feel heard and lets brands even flex their ‘ORM’ muscles
- Advocating UGC and responding to feedback properly is also a great opportunity to gain goodwill & faith with other customers
