Increase Online Sales with These 6 User-Generated Content Ideas
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content created by your shoppers and end-users. If someone takes a photo of herself using your product and uploads it to social media, that’s UGC. UGC includes product ratings and reviews, consumer reviews, Facebook and Twitter posts, YouTube videos, Instagram photos, and so on.
Having UGC on your online store increases sales in a number of ways. One principal reason is that it builds trust; it is absolutely essential that shoppers trust your site enough to give you their personal and credit card details. More trust in your brand creates better conversions. UGC also helps you stay abreast of what your customers are doing off your site, as well as helping you understand their interests. Building user-generated content marketing campaigns around what your customers love generates sales and increase conversions. UGC also provides free engagement with potential customers. Below are six user generated content examples that can increase online sales.
6 UGC ideas to help you increase online sales
1. Use Social Media Photos and Videos From Customers
A great way to build awareness of your brand and products is to display them across all social media channels. Social media lets you do just that, and if your UGC is compelling enough, you can gain a serious multiplier effect. Fully 64% of marketers now use photo or video UGC from earned marketing channels, and UGC is particularly useful for attracting millennials.
According to a survey, millennials: 1) trust UGC 50% more than other traditional and non-UGC media, 2) find UGC 35% more memorable, and 3) make purchasing decisions that are influenced 20% more strongly by UGC.
2. Add customer reviews to your site to allow customers to measure pros and cons
Content that shows real people talking about real products increases sales. Customer reviews can raise your conversion rates by 4.6%. Even bad reviews are helpful because they let your shoppers know that your reviews are real. When customers review the pros and cons of products, you get a better understanding both of problems with your products and the features/functionality that really excite shoppers.
3. Create Hashtags Around Your Brand
Hashtags make it easy for shoppers to interact with your store. They also make it easy for you to search what shoppers are saying about your products. Hashtags are a great fishing line for catching good UGC. You can search hashtags to find new ideas on similar products. Try adding some catchy visible hashtags on your online store. The big consumer brands like Pepsi (#LiveForNow) and Coke (#ShareACoke) now routinely create social media UGC-based marketing campaigns. Customers simply snap a selfie with the soda and post it.
4. Contests, Promotions, and Giveaways
Shoppers love promos and contests. They are great ways to enable customers to interact with each other and your store. Be creative; there are many ways to produce these events. Shoppers love to win products, and you can time these special events to take up the slack in slow periods of the year. Or, you can build them right into the common experience of your site, running at regular intervals. This keeps current customers engaged and coming back periodically.
5. Use Cue Sharing Tools
Cue has a number of sharing tools that make it easy for your customers to create UGC, and easy for you to find and use it. Cue’s social icons let you add social media icons to your product pages, giving your customers the option of easily sharing items to social media by. One click and it’s shared. This is a simple, free way to get more people seeing your wares. You can capture valuable data from these shares and saves as well. These help you know what your customers are interested and talking about, and this knowledge is can help in various ways with subsequent marketing campaigns.
6. Offer Incentives for Customer Engagement
Cue offers a great tool that incentivizes your customers to share on social media. If a customer shares a product, you can right then and there offer them a discount on the shared item. Not only does this create conversions, but it also increases the amount of UGC your shoppers create for you.
All the best eCommerce websites, eCommerce platforms, and top eCommerce companies run user-generated content marketing campaign because these UGC campaigns have proven to be 20% more influential on purchasing decisions than other types of media. If you are not currently employing UCG capture tools and strategies, you should be.
Did you find these user-generated content examples helpful? Pass this post along to your colleagues, and if you have any user generated content ideas that you’d like to share, please tell us in our comments section!
Originally published at cueconnect.com/blog/ on January 11, 2016.
