Marketing is customer-oriented, that’s why businesses constantly have to change their marketing strategies to meet the changing needs and desires of customers…
Marketing is customer-oriented, that’s why businesses constantly have to change their marketing strategies to meet the changing needs and increasing desires of customers. In particular, UGC is considered a modern marketing trend and businesses need to apply it in their strategy if they want to attract customers. So what is UGC? Why is UGC so important to Marketing today? How can businesses apply UGC? All will be answered through Malu’s article below.
What is UGC?
What is UGC ? UGC is a term in Marketing and it is the English abbreviation of the phrase: User-Generated Content, translated into Vietnamese it will be: User-generated content. True to its name, UGC – User-generated content will be content created by customers – people who use products and services, not from businesses. The content that is considered UGC is also extremely diverse, it can be reviews, images, even video reviews of a certain product or service.
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The purpose of UGC appearance
We live in an era where the Internet is extremely developed, which means customers will have many channels to receive content and information and this also applies to advertising content from the brand. Nowadays, it is a fact that customers are gradually losing trust in advertising from brands, the reason is because a lot of advertising content is “exaggerated” or overdone and when customers buy products it becomes reality. Not as advertised. As a result, traditional marketing is gradually losing its position and UGC appears.
The emergence of UGC – User-generated content is like a breath of fresh air blowing into businesses, helping them solve the problem of trust in their marketing strategy. As explained in the What is UGC section , the content that UGC brings comes from the people who buy and experience products and services. That’s why UGC creates more sympathy and trust with consumers than traditional advertising. Take a simple example, when choosing between 2 restaurants for your dinner: 1 restaurant known by advertising on Facebook and 1 restaurant recommended by friends who have eaten out, today, customers will prioritize I prefer to choose the restaurant in the latter category more.
The reason why UGC is considered a modern marketing trend
As mentioned above, UGC is currently considered a modern marketing trend because it solves the communication problem that businesses are facing in the context of changing customer needs and desires due to the development of society. More specifically, why UGC is considered a modern marketing trend is:
Motivate consumers to make purchases
The ultimate destination of any marketing strategy is to create motivation to promote the purchase and use of products and services to consumers. Of course, UGC is a Marketing method so its purpose has not changed, even the level of effectiveness that UGC brings is much better. UGC focuses on customer psychology. When they search for a product and if that product has been used by people and has positive reviews, or if their acquaintances use it and have positive feedback, this will greatly impact their decision. customers choose that product, because those positive reviews make that customer think: If they use it themselves, they will get the same good results. From there, it stimulates the consumer’s decision to buy that product.
High authentication
This is perhaps the easiest factor to understand when it comes to UGC, especially in the context of consumers’ product selection criteria becoming more and more strict today. When someone shares product images or experiences using a brand’s services on social networks, the name of that brand and product will be spread more widely and reach many potential customers. other. In addition, user comments or reviews will be the most authentic evidence for other customers to look at and refer to, thereby making a decision on whether to buy or use that service or not. Because those comments and reviews come directly from customers and not from businesses, their authenticity is greatly increased.
Create consumer confidence in your products
Many studies have shown that today the first thing consumers do when deciding to buy a product or use a service is to find, read and research reviews of customers who have purchased and used it. before. Through such UGC content, consumers are provided with information about the product in the most objective way, as well as being able to verify whether the product is really what the manufacturer advertises or not. Are not. For one thing, if a product or service is evaluated positively by many people, customers’ trust in it will certainly increase significantly, thereby making the decision to buy the product or use that service easier. becomes quicker and easier.
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Tip to help customers create their own UGC
Although UGC is very high-quality content, it is not simple to “encourage” customers to create UGC. Because normally, after customers buy or use a service, what they care about most is the value and results that that product or service brings, that’s why the probability for customers to make their own decisions. Product reviews or photography are not high. Obviously, businesses cannot force customers to create UGC, so how can consumers do this voluntarily?
Build customer loyalty
This is considered one of the most effective ways to entice customers to create UGC content about the brand. Building the trust of shoppers and turning them into loyal customers will bring that brand many benefits. The simplest thing is that when a customer loves a brand, they will certainly enthusiastically share images and reviews about their experience using products or services from that brand. Not only that, brands can take advantage of that same UGC content and share it on their social media channels. This not only helps build trust with other potential customers, but also makes the “owner” of that UGC content feel cared about, thereby helping the relationship between customers and brands become even stronger. attached.
Create a lot of content for customers to refer to and choose from
As mentioned before, today’s consumers are extremely interested in reviews from previous users as a reference. That’s why creating a “library” of UGC content would be a good thing to do so that customers can refer to it and build trust with them. That UGC content library will be a collection of images and reviews from previous customers who were satisfied with the product. This not only helps strengthen the reputation of the brand with the products and services it provides, but also helps stimulate the desire of potential customers and speed up the speed of making purchasing decisions.
Create a desire for customers to own the product
Perhaps this will be the most basic method for customers to create their own UGC for their brand or business. As a basic logic, when a customer really wants to own a product or use a service, that customer will want to share the experience of using that product or service voluntarily. . In addition, even if customers do not buy the product, the brand itself still needs to interact with them. This can be through introducing new products to customers, thereby stimulating their desire to own the product.
The impact of UGC in today’s fields
Through the above content, surely readers have a rough understanding of what UGC is and in fact, as many studies have shown, UGC has gradually become more popular than ever. Furthermore, UGC can be applied to many different fields. So for each specific field, what is the impact of UGC?
SEO – Social Media
According to a study, more than one-third of online shoppers will turn to search engines when they need to refer to products or services, rather than directly visiting the brand’s website. In which unique, relevant and trustworthy content is one of the most important factors in SEO, search engines always prioritize websites that possess new content, related to search queries. Internet users. Not only that, when visitors visit a website, if that website possesses a lot of UGC, the ability to sell is also significantly improved. This will be even more true when applied to social media channels (Social Media). Today, the effectiveness of SEO will no longer be high if it is not combined with communication on social networks. Because of this, brands need to actively use UGC on social media channels by reposting, sharing or customizing customer images or videos. This not only helps the brand expand its reach to customers, but also increases the likelihood that customers will actively create more UGC content for the brand.
Restaurant, hotel business
In the restaurant and hotel business, the influence of UGC is very clear because the customer base of this field is very large. That’s why the amount of UGC that can be created each year is extremely large and businesses operating in this field can greatly benefit from this. For example, a hotel with 100 rooms, an occupancy rate of 50% and each room with an average capacity of 1.5 guests, in one year, your hotel can generate:
100*50%*1,5*365 = 27.375
If all of these nearly 28,000 guests use Facebook and on average each person has about 100 friends, then your hotel can reach more than 2.5 million people a year just by taking advantage of UGC. . Not to mention the fact that Facebook’s algorithm has changed today, prioritizing the display of user-generated content on News Feed instead of content from brands and businesses. In short, UGC can be considered one of the most effective ways for your hotel to increase its reach to customers on Facebook in particular and social networks in general.
How to use UGC on social networks
- Facebook: Is the largest social networking platform in the world today, that’s why Facebook’s reach is also the greatest when used by all ages. As is obvious, this is considered a “golden land” to share user-generated content. For businesses with strong financial resources, they will combine advertising campaigns on Facebook to improve the reach and accuracy of those ads to the right customers. In particular, video content is considered the most popular content trend today and on Facebook.
- Instagram: Instagram’s starting point is a social networking platform specializing in images, so this is also considered the most visual communication channel with UGC. Instagram is considered the ideal channel to discover and share customer photos or videos about a brand, product or service.
- Twitter: Twitter is an extremely popular social networking platform with foreign businesses and is an excellent communication channel, especially for emerging businesses. If business information is regularly updated on Twitter, it can help improve customer trust, increase their confidence when choosing to buy products or use services of that brand, and there is another way to Which method is more suitable than using UGC?
- Snapchat: Compared to other names in the industry, Snapchat is still a relatively young name and a relatively new communication channel for Marketers. That doesn’t mean Snapchat isn’t a popular source of user-generated content, though. There are even many brands that use Snapchat to create extremely effective Influencer Marketing campaigns, both attracting user attention and providing the most authentic view of the brand.
Conclude
So Malu has just explained in detail what UGC is . Through the above content, it can be seen that UGC or user-generated content plays a very important role for businesses today as it builds trust between customers and brands, which is the premise. so that businesses can nurture and build sustainable and long-term relationships with customers, turning them into loyal customers.
Changes and developments in society have brought about changes in consumer needs and desires. Nowadays, each of us is “inundated” with advertising content, which is why the credibility of traditional advertising has decreased significantly. Instead, consumers look for more reliable sources of information and UGC is the key to solving this communication problem for businesses. Hopefully through this article, readers will understand specifically what UGC is as well as the importance and influence of UGC on current fields and how to use UGC effectively.
