10 Winning Strategies to Encourage Customers to Create UGC Videos

Publish Date:

Feb 14, 2024

5 min read

Introduction:

UGC or User Generated Content refers to any form of content—be it images, videos, text, or reviews—created by customers for the brands. They provide us with genuine insights into products or services from a user's perspective. SMB Guide says that 51.2% of people do brand research across all platforms before they trust and buy from them. That is a large chunk of consumers. The question is how to build trust with a client.

So to answer the question, using the UGC to showcase all the love and attention you’re getting on social media can help you build social proof. It is a psychological phenomenon where individuals look to others' actions to determine their own. And when people see that your product or service is popular, and has received lots of positive reviews and ratings, they’d be more than willing to choose you over your competitors.

Let us check out a few strategies you can use in your brand to encourage the production of UGC.

1. Offer Incentives & Rewards

People love rewards—motivate them with discounts, freebies, or loyalty points. You can send out emails or WhatsApp communications to a select portion of your customers, maybe those who have bought from you multiple times.

Encourage them to record a video about their experience with your product and why they chose you. In return, you can give them coupons or discounts on their next purchase. This is a small investment you can make for a long-term ROI. Since you are also potentially getting an additional sale out of them and a UGC video.

2. Launch an Exciting UGC Contest

Who does not like competitions? Building on the previous idea of offering incentives and rewards, you can also give your customers a way to compete with each other. Run a competition where they can send in product videos or their use case for your product. Give them clear prompts and guidelines for testimonials that what to feature and talk about in the video.

Make sure to deliver on the front of the prize and offer something worth competing for. At last, you’ll end up with a library of UGC videos and multiple happy customers. It’s even great just for plain old customer engagement.

3. Feature Customer Videos in Your Marketing

Make a list of the pages, profiles, platforms, and marketing avenues that get the most Facetime with your audiences. These are the places you should be featuring and showing off all the good things your customers are saying about you. Especially on landing pages, pricing pages, and social media highlights. Also, the market has expanded a lot. There are so many Testimonial Importer software in the market that we can use to add or import social media reviews to the website home page, and it can also be used for marketing campaigns.

Some businesses even design a whole “Customer Spotlight” section which they use to show off all the content that their users have generated in their favor. You can even use these sections to feature case studies marketed as customer success stories. And don’t forget to have links leading to the original creator of the content—be it a LinkedIn profile or an Instagram.

4. Simplify the Submission Process

One of the biggest challenges customers face when it comes to leaving reviews, testimonials, or any other kind of UGC is the submission process. There are long-drawn forms, extensive questions, or just too many steps from start to finish. But it does not have to be this way.

To simplify and make sure the process is as efficient as possible there are a few steps you can follow,

Provide clear instructions: Explain how the submission process will work, how much time it will take, and what they get in return.
Provide prompts: If you are looking for feedback or a personal vouch from them, give them relevant prompts and questions to answer. This ensures you get usable content that can then be repurposed as you wish.
Multiple submission options: Let your audience choose how they would like to submit content. Give them options to either record a video or audio or write a text-based recommendation. Additionally, provide multiple upload options so that they don’t have to go through the hassle of converting or formatting the content they’ve produced.
Hashtags: Use hashtags if you are running a social media campaign or collecting UGC over a social platform. This will ensure all the content is accessible under one section and will help you organize it better.

Many brands even choose to use UGC software. These help you aggregate all the user content that has been created in your favor across the internet and collect it under one roof. There are multiple UGC tools on the market, and most of them offer free plans so you can try and buy the one that serves your purpose best.

5. Encourage Video Reviews & Testimonials

According to a study, 70% of sales associates say that video converts better than any other form of content they use. It’s easy to see why. People like consuming content in the form of videos online. And if you can show a video testimonials or a video review that talks positively about your brand it can leave a lasting impression.

Ask your customers to always share their experience with a product or service you’ve provided. And encourage them to do it with a video recording where they talk about it on camera. This gives you a personal recommendation for your brand from your existing customers which you can then use with fresh leads. Potential customers would rather hear about a brand from their customers than from the brand themselves.

Again, you will need to guide the reviewer with prompts and questions for them to answer and make the whole recording process smoother. Otherwise, they might start recording and end up in frustration over not being able to focus their thoughts which can lead to them abandoning the effort altogether. The best way to make testimonial videos is by giving them proper prompts

Remember, they are taking time and energy out of their life to provide you with content that you can use in your video marketing efforts. And in most cases, they are doing this for free. Ensure you respect their time and make the process as smooth as possible for them. And if you are feeling generous you can even reward them with exclusive perks like discounts, coupons, and access to exclusive communities.

6. Partner with Micro-Influencers & Brand Advocates

This strategy is pretty straightforward. With the rise of popularity in both social media and its influencers, many brands have started partnering with social media influencers to promote their offerings. Influencer campaigns have great success especially when you choose the right influencer whose target audience is the same as yours. They already have access to many eyes who are willing to give them time to watch their content and engage with them.

You can either partner with an influencer by paying them money, offering free products, or complimentary access to your services. Some brands even set up affiliate commissions which can bring you long-term success and partnerships with different influencers. There is always the risk of choosing the wrong influencer or one that might lose their influence but that is why you have to do all your research before engaging one’s services.

However, it’s not just influencers that can promote your brands online. You can even encourage your existing customers no matter how big or small their following is to promote and talk about you in their online conversations. A lot of apps do this through the “referral bonus” model where upon a successful referral, the referee gets a bonus. This way you can build a large network of loyal brand advocates and employ their services as required.

7. Create a Viral Branded Challenge

Anything that engages your fans and makes them feel like a part of the family is always a game changer. For example, when a popular artist starts a random dance or lip-sync challenge on a platform like Instagram it has the potential to go viral. We’ve seen multiple instances of this happening in the past. Similarly, an easy way to get your audiences to engage better with your brand would be to create a themed challenge.

Some examples include:

Before/After Videos: First thing first, take customer feedback. Ask them to share a transformation video where they show how their lives have changed before and after using your product or service. These sorts of videos are popular with skincare, hair products, fitness, and the beauty industry in general. But there is no reason you can’t apply it to use cases like using software to transform a messy-to-organized workspace, bringing UI design improvements, or just making something like collecting user-generated video content more streamlined.
A 30-Second Pitch: Straightforward—ask your users to pitch your product or service in under 30 seconds and upload it tagging you or using a hashtag.
Unboxing: If your business focuses on selling physical products then you can ask your users to create an unboxing video for you. As a bonus through these videos, you can even capture their initial reactions to your product and their interactions with it.
Be Our Creative Challenge: Ask your users to design an ad or marketing campaign for you and feature it on their social media. Win-win.

8. Provide Exclusive Perks for UGC Creators

We’ve listed out many different ways to interact with your audiences and collect usable UGC content from them. But remember that it is always important that they feel like there is something in it for them too. In return for shooting a video for you or leaving you a glowing testimonial, you can offer them perks like,

Invites to official events
Early access to product demos and beta versions
Shoutouts on your social media pages if you have a large following
Invites to exclusive online communities on platforms like Slack or Discord

These are just some of the ideas. The goal here is to just make your users feel like they are a part of a community. Bonus points if you can make them feel exclusive about it. But building a community comes with its responsibilities. You need to maintain it by posting on it regularly, interacting with comments or messages you receive, and offering any sort of support your users might seek.

To build a large following your focus should be on giving back to the community that you have gained so much from. You will find that members of the community bring a lot to the table and form a kind of networking space that everyone would want to be a part of. With the right efforts, it might just become one of your brand's biggest strengths—with purchases being made just to join the communal space.

9. Leverage AI, AR & Interactive Filters

The younger generations are big fans of using apps that give them filters to use with their cameras. These are not just fun but also a great spot for product placement. Have your design teams work on AR and interactive filters that can then be used by your customers to flaunt whatever they want on the “stories, highlights, or statuses” they post all over social media.

10. Engage, Repost & Respond to UGC Creators

A study by Sprout Social found that 51% of brands respond to consumers, and 37% prioritize engaging with their followers over publishing relevant content extensively. This means that brands aren’t just posting their content and disappearing. They are actively making an effort to engage with their followers.

This builds both trust and loyalty because potential customers who look you up and end up on your social pages will see that you are active, present, and keeping in touch with existing customers. This reassures them that they won’t be abandoned after purchase and builds confidence in doing business with you.

Conclusion

A study by ComScore found that brand engagements rise by 28% when consumers are exposed to both professional marketing content and user-generated content. UGC has the power to hook in an audience. Don’t just take our word for it. UGC-based ads are known to get 4x higher click-through rates. Start bringing UGC into your marketing strategies today. You can start with something as simple as collecting testimonials with tools like Feedspace and move on to organizing competitions and viral challenges—use the list in this guide as a starting point and build from there. Find yourself a good UGC software, run a few campaigns, and measure the ROI. You will realize you should have been doing this all along!

Which strategy are you going to implement first? Do you have any other ideas you would like to share? Let us know!

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Rahul Pai

Author

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