We hate to break it to you, but people don’t trust you.
Don’t take it personally, people have just become weary of brands telling them about how good they are.
User Generated Content, such as customer reviews, are often an effective tool to use in advertising because it is seen as more authentic and credible than any claims the brand makes themselves.
When people see other customers sharing their experiences and opinions about a product or service, they are likely to trust and believe that information more than if you were to tell them the exact same thing.
But collecting authentic customer reviews can be a real challenge.
To help you overcome this obstacle, we’ve detailed all the steps Impactiv8 went through to generate almost 30 video testimonials for one of our client’s products.
The Brief
Our client is an organic skincare brand from Tasmania. They wanted to tell their story, but directly from the voice of their customers. The mission was to collect as many testimonials as possible that would then be used on landing pages, in ads or across their website.
The Challenge
We need to solicit User Generated Content from their audience… Simple right? The reality is it’s not so easy. There are always a few hurdles to this process:
- How do you encourage your customers to record themselves?
- How can you make sure they’re consistently recording the same way – do you want videos in landscape or portrait?
- How do users send them to you? Do you then need to check your emails each day?
- How do you get permission to use these assets?
The brand had a lot of older customers that weren’t so familiar with technology, so we needed to find a way to make it easy for them to both record the testimonials and to submit the recordings.
The Approach
People will rarely take the time to record themselves without any incentive. So we created a campaign where all past customers had the opportunity to submit a testimonial for their chance to win a $500 voucher. The goal was to make it an enticing enough prize to really encourage past customers to send in reviews.
The prizes were as follows:
- First prize winner got a $500 voucher
- All entrants got a $30 voucher.
We sent out three emails to tell past customers about the campaign. The first told people about the campaign and the next two were reminders 72 and 24 hours before the conclusion of the competition. We used strong imagery and a call to action to get customers excited about the offer.
In order to collect the testimonials we used a software called SocialJuice. This software allows users to record directly from a link and it saves all the files in a single location. All the rights to use this content was collected at the time of submission, so we were free to use them ads, emails and across the client’s website. We also gave the client direct access to this content so they could review the videos and use them whenever they required. This streamlined the process and removed any friction around technical issues in submitting and gaining access to the reviews.
The campaign was a resounding success, with 29 video testimonials being collected. These testimonials are filmed in an authentic manner with real customers explaining the benefits they’ve found from using Beauty & The Bees products. We have gone on to use these clips in Facebook Ads to bring in new customers.
By the Numbers
One of the best things about this competition is that the cost of the prize offered was more than made back in purchases. They actually MADE money on this campaign! This was even after providing 3x extra runner up prizes as there were such great submissions.
The numbers were as follows:
So in total there were $1560 in prizes awarded.
Even just the email request campaigns generated $424, as people that saw the email were prompted to repurchase. In addition, the average order value of the 26 runner up prize competition entrants was $64, so they made $34 for every voucher that went out – so this meant an additional $2158 in revenue.
So in total, there was $2158 in revenue against $1480 in prize vouchers. Given that their cost of goods is a fraction of the retail value, this campaign was a resounding success for the brand.
But not only did it make money, it also saved a load of money too. Imagine how much it would cost to produce 29 review videos if you were to try to do this through a content creation agency… And the results would never be as authentic as if you were to use your own customers.
In Conclusion
User Generated Content is so important for brands, but it doesn’t need to be expensive or challenging to collect if you have the right strategy. It can be integrated as part of your post purchase email sequence or in a competition like this.
SocialJuice can really help in collecting reviews from your past customers and helps combat some of the difficulties associated with capturing video content. We highly recommend the software if you’d like to run this yourself. If you’d like Impactiv8 to handle the process for you from end to end (no software costs involved), reach out to us today.