The e-Commerce Industry is benefitting greatly from user-generated reviews. Yet, there are many marketers who don’t consider using content from freewill contributors.
User Generated Content (UGC) is of great value to your marketing strategy, as they are given to you by genuine buyers or users. A lot of marketing campaigns use them for inviting potential buyers. Many studies have brought up the importance of user-generated reviews into the limelight.
Around 95% of users look into reviews and rating provided for products before making a purchasing decision. Most of them even put the peer suggestions and recommendations above their interests. These statistics, in turn, persuade many marketers to consider user-generated reviews in their campaigns and strategies.
Creating brand recognition
The technique to include the UGC to build the brand and recognition of your product or service and retaining the true customer can be boosted with the intervention of social media.
Bridging your customer reviews with your brand is, in a way, a good marketing methodology. People trust reviews. Giant firms are using user-generated content to their advantage.
Like the Starbucks’ paint your white coffee cup’ launched in April 2014. It’s creative and has generated an immense amount of social media activity. There are a lot more examples of successful stories of UGCs.
Tourism revived
The tourism industry immensely depends on user reviews. Tourists who take up plans freely express themselves about their experiences online. Most places in the world are better known to others through reviews posted on tourist sites.
TripAdvisor is one of the websites which completely depends on user-generated reviews. Millions of tourists check out reviews from experienced travellers before making a decision. These ratings and reviews are actually enhancing the tourism industry.
Marketing with user-generated content
Marketing with user-generated contents is a tough job. It’s like presenting a well-decorated platter of veggies to a picky eater. Hence, marketing has to be done depending on the interests of the user you interact with.
With twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social sites coming upfront in branding a business, user-generated content are in high demand. UGC tend to engage more customers online and give a genuine chance of buying a product if the product has a good amount of reviews. These reviews build up the trust of the company or a service. Wikipedia and YouTube are two of the giant companies that are spearheading user content.
How to get user reviews
The only way to get a review is by asking for it. You have to keep emailing the customer asking how satisfied they are with the product in question. Email follow ups are just one way of getting the reviews.
Some brands are using user-generated reviews in their online marketing strategies to highlight their genuine satisfied buyers.
Posting your reviews in the graphical format is also one of the methods to adopt to highlight the product performance. Appealing presentation of the user reviews paves the way to get prospective customers hooked on your website.
Even though the consumer feels the genuine need of posting his/her review, at times they are reluctant to put up what they actually feel about the product.
Reluctance is mostly caused by the complexity of the web page. Engaging a customer is not that simple. The task to get the customer review has become cumbersome. Encourage customers by offering them rewards, points or gifts can help your business gather reviews faster.
Marketers must request customers to provide inputs either by providing review options or with pre-written suggestions, which, in a way, helps them to give you an appropriate input in the shortest time.
Tackling the negative reviews
Reviews can be positive or negative. The statistical reports show that negative reviews get you more conversations and, in turn, the trust of the buyers too. Actually, if there are no negative reviews, that generates suspicion in the buyer’s mind. Too many negative reviews can also backfire.
Genuine reviews definitely are worthier than crafted content. Get professional help on getting genuine UGC, which will help you attract genuine buyers, more reviews, better SEO ranking and ultimately lead to a successfully marketing campaign.