4 Ways to Use Customer-Generated Content to Boost Conversion Rates
Sometimes, your customers write better content than you do.
That’s not meant as an insult! The fact is, you can hire the greatest content creators and copywriters in the world, but if you’re not speaking a language that excites your audience, you’re not going to sell.
And who knows your audience’s language better than your customers?
Why Customer-Created Content is So Valuable
There are two key advantages of customer-created content, and they are huge:
- Your customers are your best advocates. Fully 88% of consumers trust recommendations from their friends and family, more than any other marketing channel. Happy customers are enthusiastic about and willing to promote your brand and their voice is incredibly powerful.
- Customer content is free. The content is there, and just waiting to be used! Leveraging customer content is an important strategy for how to save money on content creation.
As any content marketer knows, creating content is just the first part of the story. Truly great content must generate audience engagement and compel your audience to convert.
Let’s first look at how to collect customer-created content, and then explore four ways to use it in your content marketing strategy to drive more conversions.
How to Collect Customer-Created Content
You probably already have a ton of customer-created content, but you first need to identify it. Let’s take a look at some surprising sources of customer content that you can use to build up your pool:
Ask for reviews
Around 95% of people read reviews before making a purchase decision, so reviews are clearly a must in your UCG toolbox. That’s fortunate, as asking for reviews is probably the easiest way to get your customers to write content.
It can be as simple as emailing your customers to ask for feedback. If you need to do this at scale, use email marketing software to automate the process.
Mine customer emails, support tickets, and chats
Any time you interact with customers, they’re giving you important language cues and clues that you can use in your content.
For example, imagine you’re getting tons of support tickets asking if a product you’re selling is machine-washable – clearly a top concern among your customer base. Make sure you’re leveraging this information to write better content, whether blog posts, ads, or product pages.
Use content CTAs on social media
If you want to get more content from customers, ask your followers open-ended questions that drive them to action, as this will increase the chances of engagement.
For example, stay away from posts like “Thumbs up if you love coffee!”, and rather go for interaction-driving posts, like “What is it you love about coffee?”. People love to talk on social, and you’ll get tons of content to use later.
4 Ways to Leverage Customer-Created Content to Boost Conversions
Once you’ve collected customer-created content from a variety of sources, it’s time to leverage it for your conversion-boosting strategy.
Here are 4 ideas for how to use customer content to increase conversions and, ultimately, drive more revenue:
1. Match product descriptions and landing pages with customer language
How can you ensure that your description and landing page copy are effective?
Make sure you’re talking the way your customers do.
For example, once you’ve determined the kind of language your customers can relate to, adapt the content on existing landing pages to help increase conversions.
This is particularly important for the titles and headings on your digital assets – the copy that stands out. You don’t necessarily need to change all the content on a landing page. Start by adjusting the most obvious elements and test the impact on your conversion rates.
This doesn’t only apply to the language of the copy – it is also about the overall message. For instance, if you’re advertising yourself as a great budget option, but your customers are more concerned with quality than price tags, you might be shooting yourself in the foot.
Match your brand’s value proposition with the words your customers are using and want to hear, and you’ll see improvements in CVR.
2. Feature customers front and center in your content marketing
Make customer content an integral part of your content creation process by using their words in your blog, social accounts, email newsletters, or more.
It’s engaging, interactive, and ties them to your brand.
You can ask your customers to write for your blog as guest contributors or invite them to enter a photo or video contest related to your product.
Make it easy for customers to contribute to your blog or submit content. Create a Google form asking for submissions, or – better yet – contact potential contributors directly and invite them to tell their story. Then publish it as awesome customer profiles or success stories.
3. Share customer reviews on social media
One of the biggest trends in social media marketing in recent years is the shift to social commerce, where consumers shop directly on Instagram and other platforms. Today more than ever before, people use social media to browse and buy.
Even so, consumers don’t like a pushy sales approach. The challenge is to get your message across and convince your target audience to convert without doing the ‘hard sell’.
Sharing reviews on social media is a great way to do this and has amazing results. According to Yotpo, when reviews are shared on social, conversion rates on Facebook increase by an average 40%!
Collect reviews and testimonials from current customers and share them on your social media pages. Get creative about it – request a video chat with a customer and clip 30 seconds as a short video to share on social. Also, use social mention tracking software to notify you when customers have uploaded their own reviews and share those widely.
4. Use customer content in advertisements
Big brands with big advertising budgets can afford to engage advertising agencies and book Super Bowl ad placements. For the rest of the marketers out there, you can achieve excellent results with ads by featuring customer quotes and reviews. This way, the ad stops being just an ad, and starts to feel like a recommendation from a friend. This drives more clicks, increasing the chance of conversions.
Also, ads that feature customer-generated content use the language of the target audience, which lends a more natural feel. This makes them much less sales-y, and much more relatable.
By promoting customer-inspired ads on Outbrain’s network, you can increase your exposure and target your most relevant audiences from among one billion monthly users browsing the open web. Outbrain ads are featured on premium publisher sites, where consumers like to spend their time reading news, entertainment, and sports content. In fact, research by Outbrain and Savanta has shown that consumers are becoming more wary of social media ads and even have a preference for ads on editorial sites. Coupled with user-generated content in ad titles and images, this is a winning strategy for driving engagement and conversions.
Customer Copy Can be a Powerful Weapon
Reaching out to customers for their reviews and opinions, promoting their content about your brand, and tapping into their voices to learn the language of your target audience – all this not only strengthens your relationship with your audience but also helps build the transparency and trust they need to make the decision to convert.
Customer content is a gold mine, so don’t let it go unused. The content generated by your customer base is the invaluable element that will set your content creation efforts apart from the competition.
FAQ
How to get user-generated content?
To solicit user-generated content, encourage your audience to share their experiences, opinions, or creations related to your brand or products. You can host contests, ask for reviews, tap into customer support chats and emails, or engage with users directly through comments and messages. Offering incentives or recognition can also motivate users to contribute valuable UGC.
How does customer-created content help to increase conversions?
Customer-generated content boosts conversions by speaking the language of the customer base and addressing their needs more accurately. It helps build trust and credibility by showcasing authentic user experiences and testimonials and strengthening community engagement, all of which encourage customers to engage with your brand and convert.
