Generating new content has become a part of the process for the small and big businesses alike. Marketers curate great content so that they can reach their customers to convey their message. But how many times had these content able to motivate customers to purchase your product or service?
The answer is, if the content highlights your service resolving the priority issues of the customer then they will immediately go for the decision to buy your product. Just like consumer’s demand drives the market, problem resolving content drives the customer to go for your service.
Now, the next step is to how to develop or source content aligning with the needs, belief of the customer!!!! With the sea of content in the market, it has become a complex task for the marketers for diverting the attention of their potential customers to their product or service content. Many customers have even become numb to eye-catching visuals or videos of the advertised content until and unless it serves their needs. This calls for action by the marketers where they have to understand all the processes not only to create great content but also to convey the message that they care about their customers.
Some of the buzzing trends which have been going round in the content marketing world is promoting user-generated content (UGC) instead of the brand generated content. This is because customers over the years have become aware of the world-class brands, and are active on different social media sites to gather knowledge, reviews, feedback of a specific product from fellow customers who have used it. In such scenarios, marketers should use the tactic to use these social media sites with the user-generated content for their product promotion.
What Is User-Generated Content? How Different Is It From Brand Generated Content
Content is the king in marketing, but if the king does not utilize its power in the right way, then it will not yield desired results, which means if the content does not connect with the audience, then it will not increase the ROI as per the planned business targets.
This brings the spotlight to the user-generated content. Brand generated content does not involve the audience and focusses on promoting the product, that is talking about brand, it’s features, benefits, from the company’s point of view while user-generated content involves the audience where it takes their views, opinion, feedback thus helping in gaining the trust of the other potential customers and driving ROI.
Some of the examples of the tested and successful user-generated content of well-known companies are:
1. Burberry:
It is one of the renowned luxury fashion house having its headquarters in London, England. The company shifted the spotlight to their loyal customers for sourcing the user- generated content. It implemented the novel idea of making their customers as models with photos wearing the clothes and accessories from Burberry and promoting online. Human beings are wired to take the same action when they see it successful on other people.
Image Courtesy: Burberry
This helped in the e-commerce sales of the Burberry products by 50% every year, a huge booster for the marketing practices of the company.
2. Apple:
We all know about the great features of the Apple smartphone. But there were cases where the customers were not that much happy with its camera shots, mainly the shots in the dark. Apple implemented a #ShotOnIphone campaign where it encouraged the users especially amateur photographers to take pictures in the dark with their iPhones. Later the pictures were promoted on billboards to showcase the clarity of the shots. The customers were more than happy to see pictures promoted across the world. Apple also cleared apprehensions among customers that everything is fine with the camera.
Image Courtesy: Apple
The other processes which can be followed are developing blog posts, specifically user-generated and improvise the product pages with the user-generated reviews. The blog posts can be linked to the specific product pages for boosting sales. The process of running contests has been very effective as it engages the customers and develops an ever-lasting relationship with the customers.
Final Say:
The main benefit of user-generated content is that it creates a room for discussion with the customers. The content showcases the opinion and view of the real-time customers leaving a positive impact on other potential customer’s mind. They get an idea that the brand is not scared to promote the user-generated content as they are confident about their quality product. So, put the spotlight on customers as much as possible with the best user-generated content, and drive the maximum ROI for your business.