The Influence Of User-Generated Content Throughout The Customer Journey

User-generated content has always been around the corner. But it was only until recently that marketers and businesses identified ways to utilize this content to enhance customers’ experience and their journey with brands.

One thing is clear: it has become a consumer behavior to look for reviews or real-life experiences around products before purchasing them because these experiences are the only trustworthy entities for internet users. 

UGC brings a shared emotional connection among consumers, even if they are not even partially acquainted with each other, making it the most influential among the marketing strategies.

So! Let’s understand the impact of user generated content before we dwell upon the ways to leverage UGC throughout the customer journey.

The Impact Of User-Generated Content 

More than 86% of companies today use user-generated content as part of their marketing strategy. What does that mean for you? Does someone create content for your brand? 

Well, UGC is any content that a customer, client, or audience member makes about your brand or your product. You can use it and turn customers into your brand ambassadors.  

You could tell people what you want them to think of your brand, but the truth is, you don’t get to decide. Having your users, customers, or clients talk about you is a way to generate positive brand awareness. In fact, 86% of millennials consider UGC to be a good indicator of the quality of a brand.

Another reason user-generated content is so powerful is that it feels more authentic, and authenticity builds trust. 92% of people trust recommendations from a friend over branded content, even if both are saying the same thing. That’s because we want to feel a sense of familiarity that we know the person in front of us.

Above all, user-generated content builds community. As humans, we want to feel that connection to other people, and we love to find what unites us, even if it’s just that we all use the same brand of deodorant. The most powerful brands are the ones that have managed to build a connected tribe. 

Story Time: 

With Starbucks, it started as a joke when one of the baristas misspelled a customer’s name, and they posted about it on social media. Many Starbucks customers related to it, and it became a trend to post the picture of the Starbucks cup, with the misspelled names.

And to contribute, Starbucks made the baristas deliberately misspell the customers’ names. This incident helped Starbucks with a social media presence, brand awareness, and advertising that the brand itself could have never managed. 

Well, now that you have understood the power of user-generated content, you must be feeling tempted to try it out.

It’s time to master ways to leverage user-generated content throughout your customers’ journey. And make it so impactful that they keep coming back for multiple purchases.

When leveraging user-generated content (UGC) throughout the customer journey, understanding each step through strategic tools can be invaluable. To get an overarching view and make data-informed adjustments, you can use a customer journey map template. This method allows brands to pinpoint target personas, touchpoints, and potential areas for enhancement in the consumer experience.

Why Improving Customer Journey Is Important?

The most significant ingredient in a brand’s success story is the kind of customer experience they have offered. From the moment your customer interacts with your brand for the first time till they make the final purchase with you, you need to provide a solid reason why they must come back to you to make another purchase and not go to your competitor. Also, bring their friends with them.

Here are the reasons why you should focus on improving the customer journey:

Now that you know the importance of improving customer experiences, keep reading to know how UGC can help you achieve it!

Leverage User-Generated Content Throughout The Customer Journey

Brand Awareness With Comforting UGC

Believe it or not, relatability and familiarity are what online consumers are seeking. You must provide these consumers with something attractive and trustworthy. What can be better than learning about a brand from peers?

71% of consumers agree that customer reviews make them more comfortable buying a product, while 82% of consumers consider user-generated reviews extremely valuable.

Drive your potential customers towards your brand with authentic user-generated content that creates brand awareness so that they choose you from the endless pool of brands like yours. Your product may not be unique, but your content can be with UGC.

With so many brands rising in the digital space, user-generated content will enable you to stand out in this wave of competition and create the perfect first impression as your customers begin their consumer journey with you.

Affective & Effective Advertising On Social Media

When we say affective advertising, we mean something that touches the customers’ hearts and moves them. And when we say effective advertising, we mean something that’s result-driven. User-generated content is a blend of both.  

Many social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram provide promotional features like Facebook ads and Instagram ads. You can utilize user-generated content to reach more customers. Repost UGC on your Instagram and Facebook business accounts and use them as ads.

The promotional features provide filters that you can use to make your promotions target-specific, like the age group, gender, demographics, or the type of brands they engage with. It will help you directly reach your brand consumers and engage them, contributing to their customer journey. 

Not just that, when your loyal customers will get to know how much importance you’re giving to your consumers’ experiences, they’d want to contribute by creating more UGC for you.

Must Read – Leverage UGC In Your Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaign

Engaging Website Experience

Till now, you have created brand awareness and encouraged consumers to visit your website using authentic advertising practices with user-generated content. But the real deal is whether they are going to find your website engaging enough, or would they give it enough time to explore and understand your brand.

Enhance your customers’ journey as they stop by your website by embedding the engaging social media widget on your website. Social media is the first love of every internet user. To ensure you serve them well, you must include widgets with embedded social media posts created by your customers. 

You can sign up with the Taggbox widget that provides a feature to collect social media content using a hashtag, handle, mentions, etc. Once done, you can use its moderation feature to filter out the irrelevant or repeated content so that you are only left with some rich UGC, ready to embed as a UGC widget on your website. 

Not to forget, you can also beautify your widget with filters, fonts, themes, and templates provided by the Taggbox widget to seamlessly leverage UGC on your customers’ journey.

Seamless Shopping With UGC Galleries 

If you want to impress consumers, your services must be seamless and user-friendly. It is the era of the Gen-Z, where users prefer things to be quicker, so you want something that’s more compatible with the masses. 

That’s why you need shoppable UGC galleries that work as an all-in-one aspect of your ecommerce website. Your website visitors no longer have to go through your entire website to explore products or look for reviews. 

48% of consumers claim that user-generated content is a great method for them to discover new products. They can simply explore all your products on the UGC gallery, equipped with content created by your customers, and embedded on your website. 

Not just that, these shoppable UGC galleries come with product tags; website visitors can click on them to make direct purchases, shortening the purchase path. It enhances the customer experience and encourages them to visit again.

Utilize Email Marketing

Create emails with user-generated content. User-generated content drives a 73% increase in email click-through rates. Send rich and authentic emails with UGC to customers on your list. Increase the chance of your customers’ interaction with your brand while they are on their customer journey, giving you more possibilities to leverage user-generated content while they are at it.

Up to 80% of reviews originate from follow-up emails urging shoppers to review their purchases. Sending emails is a more polite and considerate way to ask customers to give their feedback, rather than aggressively sending them messages or website pop-ups that interrupt their everyday digital activities. 

You can also add discount codes that the customers can avail themselves of once they give their review. It makes the process rewarding for them and enlocks a future purchase by them.

Above all, when you take out time to ask your customers about their experience with your brand, and you use these reviews in your marketing campaigns, your customers feel special and realize what importance they hold for you, giving the perfect ending to their customer journey that is actually the beginning of the customers’ loyalty for your brand.

User-Generated Content Success Story:

Eureka Street Furniture: Shoppable Instagram & UGC Galleries 

Eureka Street Furniture is an Australian brand that makes home decor and furnishing affordable for all. But, for an online furniture store, it isn’t easy to gather customers’ trust and give them the idea of how the furniture would look in their house or complement their home perfectly.

That’s when Shoppable Instagram & UGC galleries by Taggbox Commerce came into the picture and gave it some unique colors. 

With Taggshop, Eureka Street furniture curated user-generated posts from Instagram using hashtags and mentions and tagged products to the UGC posts and then published this Shoppable UGC gallery as a new landing page called Inspiration. They also published another Shoppable Instagram feed.

Eureka Street experienced 2000 monthly clicks on shoppable posts/CTAs, 500K views on the Homepage gallery, and 260K post engagements. Both the shoppable image galleries received 15% more conversions and a 78% higher user engagement rate. 

The conversion rate from Shoppable UGC Inspiration Gallery is 12% which is way higher than the industry average. 

Also Read – User-Generated Video Content Guide

Conclusion

A good customer journey is no longer a jigsaw puzzle as user-generated content has arrived as the largest puzzle piece that can create a perfect customer journey picture by itself. 

User-generated content has many discovered and undiscovered benefits, making it the ultimate strategy that has forced brands to take a 180-degree turn with their marketing plans.

We have now reached the end of this blog, where you got to know about the impact of user-generated content and how you can leverage it in the customer journey to enhance their experience and convert them into your loyal assets. 

Remember, a brand’s success is measured by the number of multiple visits by satisfied customers and not the number of new customers.