Why UGC Marketing is the Ultimate Trend

 

There is a lot of buzz in the retail space about how to do focus better on the customer experiences, improve customer service and relate better to younger consumers.

This article is my contribution to #marketingtrends, to which I contribute on a regular basis. Innovation in 2016 in digital marketing centers around how to use existing trends and distribute content in more contemporary ways. Take content marketing, for instance. 

Where does content marketing best intersect with digital native consumers?

Today I'm going to focus on UGC, as a great opportunity for retail brands and SMB brick-and-mortar retail entrepreneurs and store owners who want to connect with their customers better! 

• Millennials trust UGC 50% more than any other media. 
• Focus on the top 20% of your brand advocate customers (BAC) to help amplify your brand.

 

This article discusses why UGC is the ultimate marketing trend in retail branding and retail loyalty marketing.

UGC synthesizes how digital natives use social media more pro-actively. For legacy brands and marketers who don't understand the power and influence of social media, it's a very difficult soft-sell to make to them. Unfortunately, an entire generation of marketers are out of touch with how digital marketing is evolving. 

UGC is special in that it brings together customer experience, branding and viral marketing like nothing else can in 2016. 

 

The Pitch - What is the value of UGC?

 What if you could reach your customers better than ever in a voice and with images they can respect, that's contemporary to their peers, THEIR values and is actually customer-centric and more authentic than branded content?

Now imagine that this content is more shareable, more brand intimate and reciprocity worthy and more authentic than any other media. It is since it is created by real people in the real world and not just employees paid to create it?

This is exactly what user generated content (UGC) is, sometimes called consumer driven content (CDC) is, and does! 

To illustrate what this looks like in the real world, check out what Healthy Spot, an awesome pet brand did: #ShowSomeLove 

* Does this not make you want to love this brand more? Is this not an emotional moment of connection with a brand that's heart-bound? Ipsos released a white-paper on this that's pretty persuasive. 

To be a bit silly, this brand is not B2C it's B2P (Pet). When the customer *star* is a dog or cat, why would you not want to showcase your stars, your babies? Especially when you offer such a variety of services to them:

What if in 2016, your tribe are your pets. It's the reality I think for many folk out there. But I digress...

 

Interactive Media, The Content of the Future

30% of millennials’ media time is spent with content created and curated by their peers. How do brands leverage this in a user and peer-centric consumer content driven reality?

 

What To Call the UGC Movement?

 I've seen a lot of names flying around for an umbrella term of how to call this new phenomena, and it's not like it's new, it's just trending because of the value-shift in digital natives. As digital natives get more purchasing power, this trend will only continue in retail, ecommerce, advertising and alter the fabric of how brands do social very apparent in 2016 for example on Instagram. 

You have your P2P (peer to peer) marketing, your influencer marketing, your social influencing. In reality, it's the word-of-mouth of digital and it's huge as a viral strategy to amplify your brand and distribute your content.

It's H2H (human to human) and it's also what amounts to a social authority campaign to be seen as more authentic than your rival brands. It's a fight for social credibility and online reputation management (ORM brand reach). Not only is it more trust-worthy, it's more fun than watching one-way white label content. 

Which of these would you trust more?

1. 3rd party content = the worst (spam offers from networks)
2. white label = 1:1 relationship between brand and consumer
3. blue label = UGC, truly consumer driven 

 

 

Welcome to the New Age 

 Nothing is ever really new, it just has a new name and new package.

For customers where online reviews is no longer as persuasive as they once were, peer reviews and peer content has a lot more trust and reciprocity building power especially if they are charged with CSR and gratitude campaigns that can influence customer acquisition, retention and brand loyalty. 

In an ideal world,  as each piece of content reaches a consumer’s network of trusted friends, it creates a wave of social conversation that can in influence product discovery and purchase intent beyond any form of media in history. In practice, though each campaign has to be targeted per channel with a theme and emotional quality that is best optimized for a particular change. This is what I would refer to as channel native UGC. A UGC campaign on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram looks and feels fundamentally different. 

 

The Sweet Spot 

Since Instagram has the highest engagement, more opportunity for social commerce and frictionless buying, and has a rich location-targeting tool of #hashtags, it's the obvious choice for branded #hashtag UGC, CSR and visual campaigns that hit digital natives where they live.

A close second would be micro video contests paired with an influencer them. It is not difficult to find brands who have done very successful and lucrative UGC campaigns that show tremendous ROI potential. 

Millennials will have record breaking purchasing power by 2020. $1.4 trillion US by 2020. That's considerable. 

• Empowering the consumers
• Put the customer first
• Let peers influence their peers (P2P)
• Let influencers be your brand's voice & be temporary product advocates and brand heroes with your audience (where there is overlap)
• Promote more emotionally fulfilling content by adopting UGC strategies and consumer generated content targeted campaigns that actually develops and facilities higher-value relationships with customers. 

Due to how mobile content works in 2016, visual, video and UGC content have higher engagement.

So these channels need to be capitalized on, including emerging social networks such as Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube channels, which give your brand and your products more value to a mobile device searching audience and an entire generation.

These are the consumers who are more savvy, more educated and becoming desensitized to even the most fabulous storytelling content and impressive videos. They have the best shoppers in history, so impressing them is harder than older generations. 

 

The Social Influence Map is Shifting 

In- u-ence: (noun) the power to a ect someone or something.

If the consumer has more power than ever, why should they not be creating and core to the visual displays and social media content that relates to your brand?

Why should they not having the ultimate incentive to share it (because it's theirs).

If I'm as a customer, I create a piece of content for your brand as an advocate, that's the ultimate opt-in to brand loyalty if there ever was one. It's creating an emotional opt-in experience. 

 So I created a You Tube and got attention by mentioning your product, that's a potentially "delightful" (customer) experience for a young customer, or a customer period. 

 

UGC, the Growing % of the Media World 

• So automatically 30% of content is peer to peer and social, i.e. UGC. 
• Video UGC, live-streaming, and SMS UGC is on the rise. 

 

The Move to Interactive Media & Consumer Content

Millennials and digital natives at large, aren't interested in passive content where they are a "watcher", they seek more educational experiences that are inherently interactive, creative and more stimulating. In 2016, Brands are realizing been seen in a video game is more important for some demographics, than TV/Radio/Print media that are becoming increasingly "legacy" media. 

Let me now say something outrageously intuitive, and something some people in Retail and even marketing still don't get: 

Millennials Prioritize Social Media Networking Above Other Media

Digital natives are basically, always online. Industry kids you not: 

• Even where we access the kind of information is changing on a monthly basis. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you were wondering if UGC if a figment of our imagination? If your brand's value and trustability index delivers ROI to your sales, think about it:  

• Is your retail brand in a likely hyper word-of-mouth (HWM) vertical?
• Is your audience young and likely to share about your brand?
• Can you leverage a corporate social responsibility (CSR) cause in a campaign that relates to your customers to inspire them?

 

Emotional Branding 

• Tapping the inner network of your brand advocates' is a good strategy 
• Viral marketing is a high-ROI strategy 
• Peer reviews are generally emotionally salient and memorable branding opportunities. That and they have more leverage to actually influencing purchasing decisions. 

 

What is the Sweet Spot to Reach the Hearts of Millennials 

• Time: digital natives are consumed with real-life and digital interactions simultaneously (attention economy) 
• Trust: digital natives are immune to legacy advertising, sales-speak and gimmicks. We can just tell if you are over-promising and it's a put off. 
• Emotion: digital natives need emotional triggers to approach your brand, be loyalty to your brand and to reduce them churning. 

 

How to Get the Attention of Digital Natives?

• For digital natives you cannot gimmick or over-promise your way to credibility, you have to earn it, through authenticity, CSR and UGC. 
• There's no shortcut to digital credibility, you need to demonstrate quality, connect and a seamless customer-centricity of your brand and products. 

 

 

How to be Authentic while Developing Social Authority 

Do both: 

Think horizontally and vertically, think influencer and p2p marketing. 

If P2P is the new marketing media, influencer marketing is the new distribution and sales channel. 

If you are not tapping the potential of both, your brand is behind the times in 2016! 

• Empower peer driven content 
• Incentivize brand mentions by Influencers of your audience 
• Gamify both into your loyalty rewards program (LRP)
• Integrate UGC in your social media and digital marketing strategy. 

 

Aim for Personal Sources that Have High Social Crediblity 

• UGC shines with the consumer themselves 
• UGC should target shares to Inner circle influencers (ICIs)
• Professionally peer influencers (PPI) can be lucrative but not always deliver tangible ROI

 

 

Social Influencing Content Strategies (Actionable tips)

• Create dialogue over one-way content. This will ensure more shareable content that can go viral and amplify your reach. 
• Create Contests that build community 
• Create a brand-voice through Campaigns that mirror what your audience cares about
• Try CRM software that is UGC specialized, like Pixlee. 
• In the future, even UGC will be 90% automated as marketing automation SaaS become more seamless and machine-intelligence guided. 

 

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I hope you enjoyed this article! Let me know if UGC makes sense to you for your brand, company or retail store?