The User-Generated Content Manual For Automotive Brands

The automotive industry is considered the most capital-intensive industry with inventory risk. It focuses a lot upon branded advertising, and it usually takes 10 or 15 commercials you see of a certain car that ‘might’ influence you to buy it. 

There was a time when buying a car was associated with a person’s success; it still is, but the sudden rise of the cab services like Uber and Lyft has resulted in a decline in automotive sales. A common millennial finds comfort in booking an Uber over purchasing a car.

It has created high competition for automotive brands, struggling to reach conversions. So how does one overcome this abrupt fall and recapture the consumers’ interest? We would call our stakes upon user-generated content.

User-Generated Content For Automotive Brands

User-generated content is the content created by experienced customers who share their stories on social media about how they liked a product or a service. Among the examples of UGC in the automotive industry, ARB 4×4 accessories have successfully leveraged user-generated content to showcase the durability and adventure-ready quality of their products, enhancing engagement and trust within their community. It can be a video, a photograph, a review, a tweet, anything you find on the internet created by a common consumer is user-generated content.

User-generated content has recently witnessed immense popularity, where around 87% of brands are using UGC to share authentic content with their audience.

Now, what does that mean for you as an automotive brand? As an automotive brand, user-generated content opens up an opportunity for you to offer a personalized experience to your audience through your marketing channels. You get to capture your audience and hit the right string of emotion with user-generated content and create stand-out campaigns.

Continue reading further to understand how user-generated content works for automotive brands.

Case Study: Royal Enfield Maximised Bikers’ Engagement With User-Generated Content

How Does User-Generated Content Work For Automotive Brands?

1. Achieve Better ROI With UGC

When you incorporate user-generated content into your marketing strategies, you take the passenger seat and give the steering wheel to your customers. While you are at it, it helps you save a lot of time, effort, and capital that goes into content creation.

All you need is to fetch UGC across social media, take content rights from the owner and repurpose it. Not just that, when leveraged across consumer touchpoints, UGC can be very beneficial for your automotive brand, helping your avail of maximum return on investment.

2. Inspiring Content Leading To Conversions

Every second automotive advertisement usually has a rich man wearing an expensive suit and tie driving the car to his successful job, or parents and their happy children in the car seat going on a vacation and the story continues. That might move some of the target audiences, but the ROI is never adequate. Because that might be the American dream for some, it is far from reality for many.

Leveraging user-generated content brings transparency and relatability to your automotive campaigning. The familiar faces sharing real-life experiences inspire your prospects and encourage them to buy your car, offering you a better conversion rate.

3. Encourage Users To Share Stories

One of many superpowers user-generated content holds is the ability to instill social proof among users. When you leverage user-generated content into your marketing strategies, it will captivate the spectators, but it will also gather the attention of your existing customers. 

When these customers see how well you have repurposed UGC around your automotive brand, it encourages them to create UGC for you or share their stories with your wheels. So, better UGC leads to more additional UGC. It boosts the visibility and social presence of your brand like never before.

4. Create Stand-out Marketing Campaigns

User-generated content helps you create stand-out marketing campaigns for your automotive brand. That’s because the source is never the same. It is created by your diverse range of customers from different backgrounds and has unique stories about your car. 

When you leverage these stories into your marketing campaigns, your campaigns become more striking,  vibrant, head-turning, and talk of the town!

How Can Automotive Brands Activate Consumers’ Content?

1. Impressive & Captivating Web Pages

92% of car buyers research online before they buy. When it comes to learning about a new automobile brand, the brand’s website is the first marketing touchpoint they reach. Make the first impression count as the spectators learn about your brand by leveraging user-generated content into your web pages.

When spectators come across the happy faces of your customers alongside your wheels on your website, it will captivate their attention. The vibrant UGC gallery will encourage them to scroll through the cheerful experiences of your customers with your automobile. It will enhance your website’s performance and create a positive brand image.

2. Create Performance-driven Social Ads

Create social ads on your social media platform to harness the powerful user-generated content in your automotive social ads. When you run social ads equipped with genuine, trustworthy, and visually appealing content, it captures the prospect’s attention as they see something beyond the regular branded campaigns, something unique and visually appealing.

The users would stop by to engage with your social ads. Your customers’ stories with your car would intrigue users, helping you generate better ROI.

3. Organize Hashtag Campaigns

Hashtag campaigns are the most common marketing strategy among automotive brands. Audi has done it, and so has Porche; you could do it too. Create a unique hashtag. It can be around your brand or product like #PorcheMoment or #WantAnR8, or just a relatable and memorable one like #feelthestreet by Toyota. The idea is to create a hashtag that would encourage your customers or spectators to participate in the hashtag campaign. 

You can even turn it into a hashtag contest and announce your branded goodies as a winning prize. It will encourage more people to participate. More people will participate and create social media content around your hashtag and enhance your brand’s reach, social media presence and offer you more UGC to repurpose in other marketing campaigns.

4. Driving Robust Email Campaigns

Customer experience is an important aspect of the automotive industry.  49% of the consumers claim they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands weekly- so what could be a better way than to enhance your email campaigning with engaging user-generated content?

Besides, consumers find user-generated content more authentic and relatable, helping you create emails that your customers would want to look forward to, rather than feeling forced. Leveraging UGC in your email campaigns would help you to increase email click-through rates, decrease the number of unsubscriptions and create a two-way conversational flow between you and your customers.

5. Inspiring Spectators Through Print Promotions

Appreciate your customers’ efforts by taking user-generated content beyond digital right on the papers through print ads. Be it a magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, or any other printed advertisement, make sure that your spectators stop flipping pages and pause to see what your ad has to speak. 

Efficiently showcase user-generated content created by the proud owners of your automobile. When they have put so much effort into creating content for your brand, go a step ahead by leveraging users’ content in your printed ads.

6. Get On Board With Social Commerce

Among automotive internet shoppers, 22% use a social media site as a source while shopping for their new vehicle. Take things a step further by offering your target shoppers a unique experience of shopping along with socializing. Social commerce is a newly found trend among eCommerce brands where they are turning their social media content into shoppable content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and more.

Cash up on this trend. Turn the user-generated content you have reposted on social media into shoppable. It will engage your potential clients and also offer them easy purchasing options. Social shopping has brought one-tap shopping into reality, as users don’t have to switch tabs, they can simply make purchases on their favorite social media platform.

Examples Of UGC In the Automotive Industry

1. Toyota Boosts Engagement With Facebook Ads

Toyota decided to leverage user-generated content into their Facebook Ad campaigns and saw a boost in engagement rate by 440%. They launched #feelingthestreet, a global hashtag campaign to highlight and celebrate the best street performers worldwide.

While street musicians captured and posted their performances on social media with the #feelingthestreet, fans voted to choose their favorite artists. This social media campaign backed by UGC helped Toyota reach over 1.2 million engagements against a target of 800,000 – a 440% increase in overall engagement compared to the previous campaigns.

2. Land Rover Shares UGC With Land Rover Stories

Land Rover collaborated with influencers with an audience similar to their target audience to boost their reach. They created a campaign for users to share their travel stories around adventurous destinations like Alaska, China’s Tianmen Mountain Road, and the Colorado mountains.

With user-generated content, Land Rover managed to enhance reach and awareness along with a higher engagement rate. The results? 100x increase in YouTube subscribers and 4 million fans on Instagram.

3. Porche Live Shares International Customer Stories

Porsche launched its hashtag campaign with the unique #PorscheMoment, encouraging its fans to share posts around their Porche.

On Instagram, more than 600,000 people have used the hashtag, and Porsche cheerfully shares its fans’ posts on their website dedicated to the Instagram feed. When you visit the Porche website, you can find the embedded hashtag feed in the “Porche Live” section, adding a vibrant touch to the website.

4. Audi’s #WantAnR8 Boosts Their Twitter Growth

What started as a joke by one of Audi’s fans with the hashtag #WantAnR8 turned into a successful hashtag campaign for Audi. Joanna McCoy tweeted: “@Audi I #WantAnR8” and after some intensive and impulsive tweeting, Audi finally granted her wish and offered to give her a free ride.

Looking at such a positive response, Audi decided to create a hashtag campaign around the #WantAnR8. The result? Twitter went crazy. There were millions of tweets around this hashtag, leading to Audi winning the award for best hashtag campaign. 

Let’s Call It A Wrap!

When you place your customers at the heart of marketing, you turn user-generated content into your most powerful brand asset. 

Now that we reach the end of this blog, we hope that you understand the ability of user-generated content into your automotive marketing strategies.

So, it’s time to harness the power of your consumers’ voice and use it in the right direction that only leads to higher conversions!