If you’ve struggled with incorporating effective video production in your e-commerce marketing strategy, here is one thing for you to watch out for: User-Generated Content, or UGC for short.
At around the same time as the rise of social media in 2005, UGC also gained traction. More than ten years later, hundreds of millions of people now create user-generated content.
But is UGC beneficial to e-commerce brands? Most believe it is.
One reason why it’s a good thing is because of social proof. Social proof is a psychological trigger that leads people to think that what others do is considered correct or acceptable behavior. In the sense of e-commerce, it’s as simple as people seeing what others have purchased and using that as a reason to consider purchasing the same item themselves.
To understand UGC better, we will break them down into four kinds of UGC and how they are beneficial to your marketing strategy.
The 4 UGC Types
There are four categories of User-Generated Content. These are comments, photos, videos, and reviews. If you’ve observed UGC lately, you’ll notice that users often mix these categories.
Another thing that may have occurred to you is that out of the four categories, videos demand the most time and effort to create, making it the most challenging type of UGC to generate. Thankfully, however, platforms like YouTube and even IGTV have made user-generated videos more trendy and common. Platforms like these encourage people to create videos despite the effort it takes.
Moreover, with videos being the hardest to create, they are also the most valuable. If a customer makes a video dedicated to your brand and product, they reinforce social proof and show their friends and followers how worthwhile your product is. Although it’s also a strategy to hire actors and influencers to produce videos about your product, videos made by customers who genuinely appreciate your brand are arguably much more valuable.
How UGC Can Help Your Ecommerce Brand
Now that we’re familiar with UGC types, it’s time to break down what positive effects these can have on your brand.
Increasing Consumer's Trust
Online reviews, even in raw text form, are quite useful in gardening consumer trust. Most consumers nowadays look at other customer reviews as part of their decision-making process. Businesses found that 46% of e-commerce customers in America trust other customer reviews when getting to know a product. Compared to professional marketing reviews, 70% of American customers prefer customer reviews and trust them more. Other micro-reviews in the form of comments also serve the same purpose.
Providing Visual Proof
Photos and videos offer much more than you may initially think. They provide visual and auditory proof of the product and how it looks and works. Media such as these are 64% more preferable than text comments and reviews. 2 out of 3 people are likely to search for video reviews on a particular product before making their purchase decision.
Even in the ordinary social media context, visual content is much more attractive and brings in more impressions from viewers. Any social-media-savvy user or marketer will confidently say that photo and video content are more likely to be shared and engaged with than simple text posts.
Boosting Purchasing Intent
Research has shown that 4 out of 10 shoppers only need a handful of UGC, whether in text or media form before they solidify their intent to purchase a product. The same research looked for the most effective UGC content that helps people with their purchasing plan. This content is UGC showing pros and cons at 71% trustworthiness, and UGC showing their full experience with the product at 80% trustworthiness.
The Verdict
User-Generated Content heavily influences customers in their purchasing decisions and general opinions regarding brands and products. However, they work best in tandem with traditional brand-produced Ecommerce videos. Together, you will raise the legitimacy of your brand both from your end and the consumer end.
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