How Retail can Reach Millennials on Mobile

In this article we'll explore how Retail brands can fully use Instagram to set up social commerce conversion and digitally influenced sales that connects the dots between visual marketing, video content and products & actual sales. For those of you not familiar with UGC, this article is also a basic primer. UGC is primarily a Millennial consumer phenomenon that is mainstream now in 2016. 

Leading Customers to UGC Galleries 

The Instagram link and Facebook galleries can lead to UGC image and video carousels that can provide seamless integration of social media with ecommerce, what is sometimes called social commerce. By providing new frictionless digital customer journeys, big enterprise level Retailers can get the full ROI from their investment into social media, particularly Instagram. 

UGC galleries is a new form of branding that is more trustworthy, peer-to-peer related where a brand can engage the visual savvy consumer with their products seamlessly, more transparently thereby limiting the divide between marketing and customer service that is more authentic and relatable for the millennial consumer. For mobile and ecommerce natives, buying off Pinterest & Instagram, has just become the new normal. 

UGC Automation & ROI

Companies such as UGC solutions provider, Candid.io, can automate this will easy to navigate displays allowing major Retail brands, to basically do with software with their marketing & web team now has to do manually. Candid.io, a company based out of Toronto, is maybe the most affordable way of integrating UGC & Social Commerce with digital showcase rooms of products, UGC galleries and getting the full ROI out of social memes. 

A retail brand by venturing into the UGC space, is also making their brand more contemporary where they can engage with visual marketing influencers to truly reach and amplify their products in a more aesthetic, appealing and attractive way to Millennials who are digital natives and mobile sharers themselves. 

Giving Brands more collaborative Storytelling 

UGC stands for user generated content. Due to how Millennials are content creators on Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Pinterest and trust peer content more than branded content, many Brands have learned how to harness the power of their top brand advocates. Retail brands now have the opportunity to easily link social with UGC galleries that are click-to-buy friendly. For many brands, this is the missing link between their social media and website where the CTA is designed for to cater to mobile shoppers. 

Following the Consumers 

Consumers crave reciprocity, engagement, and by harnessing their amazing ability to create, spread and share inspiring storytelling content your retail brand can go viral and get a form of advertising that is far more believable, authentic and genuine. 

Interactive Content is Bleeding Edge Content

Influencer, viral and P2P content is converging in a UGC movement of how content online is evolving more visually and towards video content and real-time live streaming. Some content pundits even believe content marketing is dying, while that might not be accurate, it is changing on a year and now on a quarterly basis. 

Maintaining a Customer-Centric Vibe

As we evolve with the times, young consumers are the true trail-blazers and brands that follow them are transparently keeping up. Harnessing the full engagement of Instagram's visual appeal, is a time limited opportunity that Retailers need to maximize. Retailers that work more with displays of their customer created content create a more customer centric and authentic rapport with their audience. 

Buying directly via Instagram & Pinterest is a form of eCommerce that is gaining a lot of traction. The theory is to minimize consumer friction on mobile devices, and Instagram represents the ultimate in a visual platform that is engaging, fresh and delightful. Scommerce or social commerce is how UGC can turn lucrative as a branding and content strategy for enterprise retail and even for SMB retailers who already have high brand trust with their loyal customers. 

In 2016, the majority of content online is already user-generated content, but brands continue to struggle how to leverage it fully. 

Visual Marketing as Replacing older Social Media Practices 

As SMS is taking a greater share and the place of conventional social media practices, engagement on social media is mostly increasing on visual platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Even on Instagram and Facebook, video content is steeply on the rise. 

Retail brands are starting to follow the lead of highly savvy retail brand success stories with UGC. Consumers love producing photos and videos for brands they love, however brands do not always have the tools (software) required to truly maximize, optimize and automate this. 

When consumers create something for a brand, naturally they become more invested and emotionally attached to it. As mobile advertising is being jeopardized by ad-blockers, UGC remains the obvious answer to the dilemma.  Millennials have proven nearly advertisement-immune, yet Retail brands are slow to fully realize that content created by their customers is the most authentic.

Case-studies, branded content and advertisement created by a brand themselves, is no longer as effective unless it is paired with a corporate social responsibility theme that's very persuasive. UGC and influencer marketing taps into the way Millennials actually use social media in relation to brands, thereby creating more contemporary digital sales funnels and lead generation that's organic and does not feel coercive. 

Instagram is a Millennial Channel 

With 400 million active users, fully 75 million are daily active users, Instagram represents where personal brands, influencers and corporate brands all blur together in a beautiful collage of aesthetic genius and simplicity of design. 

Millennials are the pioneers of how visual design has transformed social media. To give value to this demographic, how a brand does visual marketing is clearly extremely important. It's not enough to have a high quality Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube experience. New software tools allow for more seamless monetization of these channels that's still transparent for the consumer. 

Why Retail brands invest in UGC 

Consumer created visual content or UGC is branding that's personable. Not only that it has some pretty unique benefits which each year more Retailers are starting to invest in and understand, such as: 

1. UGC is living proof of social authority. It shows demand of your brand and is like a real-time testimonial that consumers can identify with.  It's better than a case study, it's a customer centric case experience. 
2. UGC is cost-effective. UGC is a high ROI strategy. With the right software it's easy to get seamless share the love of your brand advocates, without requiring a marketing team to produce and promote it. It's in a way part of the sharing economy and a form of free advertizement. 
3. UGC is a trusted source that does not feel manipulative. Marketers have always known word-of-mouth is the best advertising, and UGC is the word-of-mouth of Instagram. 
4. UGC self-amplifies itself if done right. With the right platform: software, contest, campaign or corporate social responsibility theme. Content is difficult to distribute when everybody is doing it. UGC is more shareable since it's viewed as more authentic. UGC is highly shareable and automates distribution. 

20% of all Internet Users are on Instagram.

What follows are some actionable tips Retailers can take to use Instagram and UGC more effectively. 

Instagram UGC Checklist 

• Create UGC showcase galleries, carousels that boost scommerce and your Retail brand's YouTube channel. 
• Adopt a branded hashtag (#IfIWere22) 
• Create a themed contest
• Involve a peer Influencers

• Pair a customer event with a cause (corporate social responsibility)
• Create a Campaign Calendar of UGC events 
• Integrate a UGC campaign across channels 
• Get the right UGC tools to find, monitor, moderate and rewards participants. 

• Create incentives for brand advocates to participate.
• Give top performers credit, show gratitude and make it personal to boost your campaign to become a customer experience that's memorable. Recognition is a good prize, but vary your rewards to the customer, give them choice so they can truly enjoy participating. 
• Create Guest galleries or UGC driven sections of your branded Instagram 
• Link Instagram #Hashtags with images via Email and SMS sign-up forms and being more interactive with personalized messages. 

• Lead customers to off-site UGC galleries that mesmerize consumers with UGC product related images, videos and authentic testimonials of people like them! 
• Use UGC to research what your customers most like about your brand and how they represent it in terms more popular among their peers and social network. 
• Use branded #hashtags to know who your top brand advocates are and most prolific and quality UGC creators and develop rapport and social relationships with them across channels. They are not just loyal customers, they are VIPs and brand ambassadors on the front lines. 

• Always thank, acknowledge, showcase and reward your customers and have a social CRM handy to keep detailed notes and UGC records per brand advocate. The more analytics you have on both the user and the performance of the content the better. 
• Do real-time UGC moments from live events. 
• Leverage memes and popular trending hashtags to boost reach. 
• Do a sweepstakes with a reward you know your audience values. 
• Make your UGC hashtags # easy to remember and unique. 

• Address cultural and social issues and trending memes in your UGC strategy and campaigns. 
• Mix and master UGC video snippets into a longer video you can share. 
• Encourage and promote your UGC campaigns, make it fun, brand your special stamp on how you relate to your audience. Be true to your brand's tone and voice and develop excitement, in no time you will learn what works for your retail vertical and your audience. 
• Make the link between UGC, CSR, Influencer marketing and your loyalty rewards program all with smarter software. 

Empower your Audience to Celebrate

UGC is all about tapping into emotional experiences, so keeping the contests fun, light-hearted and joyful is usually a good idea. Focus on authenticity, even at the sacrifice of perfection, showing that your brand cares about causes and people matters.

UGC is a great way to engage your customers and even acquire new ones through content they can relate to combined with innovative campaigns that have ROI. Good luck! 

Instagram's true engagement potential is not reached without user generated content, that's some of the best evergreen content your retail brand may ever produce.