What is UGC Marketing?
UGC Marketing or User-generated content marketing has become an essential part of the content marketing strategy, especially in this era where customers are ready to buy, use and appreciate your products or services available online. UGC is the content that mainly created, published, and/or submitted by the consumers/users of a brand. In most cases, it is effective content for a lot of brands. Every so often, the contributors are the fans who do not charge anything and promote a brand instead of the brand doing the promoting for itself. It can be categorized into various parts like comments, user reviews, and images to social media posts, testimonials, etc.
How Pandemic is helping UGC Marketing a Growth Bump
Increasing your brand awareness and conversions with the help of user-generated content is not something new for digital marketers. Positive user reviews, comments etc. have always been a great way to make your brand famous and increasing sales. But these tactics are reaching towards new heights of success during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If we take an example of Canadian manufacturer Calego, maker of iFLY luggage and accessories, has taken the benefit of UGC and managed to sell over 250 million face masks during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their achievement in winning and spreading positive customer reviews and feedback also helped them sell approximately 8 million iFLY Smart Kits — low-cost bundles containing rubber gloves, sanitizing wipes, and other essential items that helped in providing safety and comfort to air travellers.
The company introduced the concept of a small Kit in 2017 only when things were different from now and travel-related safety gear was of basic importance.
President of Calego said – “We were able to collect ratings and reviews on this item before COVID-19,” and David Rapps also said, “It wasn’t selling well. We knew nothing was wrong with the product, and it received high ratings from anyone who bought it.”
Although it was not being sold pre-COVID, the user-generated reviews allowed Calego to understand what customers liked and what they did not like, Rapps said. They got more than enough positive feedbacks to understand that it is worth the investment to make more iFLY Smart Kits available in a time of high demand for protective equipment and comfort accessories.
All of this clearly shows that UGC marketing has multiplied. Social media platforms also managed to generate a continuous stream of UGC when it comes to introducing, explaining, or selling any product and brand. If we talk about new platforms like Hello and TikTok, and their content formats like Stories, they have created even more options that users or their customers can leverage.
What’s Your Business Strategy to leverage the UGC marketing.
When it comes to leveraging UGC Marketing, businesses can do it by showing their audience that their products and services have a vocal and really satisfied user base! Once you manage to do this, you’ll see a good increase in terms of user engagement, traffic, and conversions. Here are the few ways through which you can leverage the UGC marketing and get your business benefited through this –
• Add an option of reviews and ratings to your website.
• Ask your customers to answer questions.
• Give your customers the flexibility of adding product images to the reviews.
• Drive a hashtag campaign.
• Try showcasing your audience’s social media posts.
• Build and grow an online community.
You can also leverage user-generated content and get rewarded! How? Here is the way – you can smartly use the free content that is already available out there. All you need to do is to just you are your potential customers to existing ones through the user-generated content. Utilize user-generated content for your business, ask questions, and/or create polls on social media.
