There are two questions that any ecommerce brand must successfully answer in order to successfully convert a sale. The first is “How will your product help me?” and the second is “why should I choose you instead of your competitors?” Both of these questions can be answered through social proof – that is, showing how your brand is enjoyed by real customers.
One fantastic form of social proof that you can leverage in your marketing is user-generated content, or UGC. In this blog post, we’ll look at user-generated videos (UGV) and the best ways to use them to market your ecommerce brand.
But before we talk about UGC and UGV, let’s talk a little bit about social proof.
Why Social Proof Helps Convince Wary Customers
Traditional advertising still has its place, and will likely always have its place, but the main issue with it is that – perhaps not undeservedly – consumers have grown savvy and mistrustful of what a brand says about itself. As the saying goes, caveat emptor, and the emptors are indeed caveating.
Let’s say your ecommerce brand sells something called a whizzlewhump. You can advertise all you like – social media, search engines, video ads on YouTube – and will likely get some conversions, but the problem is that you are the one trying to tell consumers how a whizzlewhump can help them and why your whizzlewhumps are the best on the market.
You might be telling the truth. (We hope you’re telling the truth.)
But there are enough advertisers out there in the world who don’t tell the truth that in order to convince someone to part with their hard-earned cash to purchase a whizzlewhump, just your word alone isn’t sufficient.
This is why social proof is so important to marketers of any kind, but it’s especially important to ecommerce marketers – because you only get this one chance to make your sales pitch. This is a problem different from those faced by, say, B2B SaaS marketers, who can offer low-buy-in things like free demos to make a detailed pitch directly to the prospective customers.
If you’re an ecommerce brand, the only time your prospective customers are going to get their hands on a whizzlewhump and see its great benefits for themselves is after they’ve already spent their hard-earned money to buy it. Policies like “return for a full refund if you aren’t satisfied” can help with this, but many customers assume that this will either be a hassle or that there’s a catch.
And this is where social proof comes in.
Social proof takes many forms, from posting your aggregate review scores to posting various accolades your products have earned. (The “#1 best whizzlewhump” badge from Whizzlewhumps Monthly magazine might help here.) But by far one of the most effective forms of social proof is the customer testimonial. Your prospective buyers might not be able to get your hands on your products without spending their money, but they can read reviews and customer testimonials from those who have already done so.
This gives prospective buyers a great way to assess the merits of your brand and its products beyond what you’re saying about yourself. It’s a great opportunity to really build authenticity in the minds of your target audience.
And if, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth?
The Power of User-Generated Videos
That brings us to UGV. (See, told you we’d get there eventually.)
User-generated content, especially user-generated videos, are a potent form of content that resonates with customers in ways that traditional advertising just can’t match.
As mentioned above, UGVs are a powerful form of social proof. They prove that real people are using and enjoying your products, which is especially powerful in the ecommerce space. If a shopper can’t physically touch or try your whizzlewhumps before making a purchase, seeing others have positive experiences and learning about how they solved problems just like the ones they themselves have can significantly reduce hesitation – increasing their confidence in the buying decision.
UGVs benefit your brand in several vital ways.
Authenticity and Trust
Consumers today value authenticity almost above anything else in a brand. They don’t want to see polished advertisements that come out of a marketing board meeting. They want to see real people using and talking about the products they’ve purchased.
UGVs provide genuine, unfiltered insights into how a product works, its benefits, and its potential drawbacks. This authenticity builds trust. And when potential customers see real users who are satisfied with your product, they are more likely to trust your brand and make a purchase.
Engagement and Reach
Videos are extremely engaging, and often capture attention more effectively than text ads or static images do. User-generated videos, in particular, tend to generate higher levels of engagement because they are often more relatable and interesting.
A video that your brand creates and shares is limited to the social networks of those who already follow you. A user who creates a video about your brand, however, will usually share it on their own social media networks, which can extend your reach to a broader audience that might never have heard of you.
4 Great Types of User-Generated Videos
So a customer has made a video about your product. Should you just sit back and do nothing and cross your fingers that it goes viral?
Well, no, obviously. That’s why you clicked on this blog. You wanted to learn more about how you can use these UGVs as an ecommerce brand marketer. So, let’s look at some of the best types of UGVs in ecommerce marketing, and then we’ll discuss how you can use them.
1: Product Demonstrations
One of the most common – and most effective – types of UGV is the product demonstration. These videos show your product in action, highlighting its features and its benefits. How is your whizzlewhump used? What are some neat tips and tricks for it?
A good product demo by a real user can be used to help answer potential customers’ questions, show practical applications, and highlight your products’ unique selling points.
2: Testimonials and Reviews
As previously mentioned, testimonial videos are a potent form of social proof, making them a powerful tool for building trust and credibility in your audience. These videos provide firsthand accounts of customer experiences with your product, and can highlight benefits as well as mention some drawbacks.
While we imagine that most marketers are internally cringing at the thought of publishing a video that talks about the downside of their product – and you obviously shouldn’t feature any video that’s too negative – this can be valuable! A video touching on your product’s shortcomings will be seen as more authentic and unbiased, and you can use this feedback to adjust your product. Critical but fair reviews can help you build a better whizzlewhump, in other words.
3: How-to Guides and Tutorials
We all try to make our products intuitively understandable and usable at a glance, but realistically, not everything is going to work that way. The more features your whizzlewhump has, the more documentation you need to provide with it, and text guides in the owner’s manual can only take you so far.
Video guides are more effective and often more helpful than text guides for a number of reasons, including:
- How your copywriting team thought was the best way to concisely and clearly describe something might not be how everyone interprets it. “The connection is inside the drum” could mean that it’s right on the edge of the inner lip, or it could mean it’s halfway down.
- There are thousands of languages spoken in the world, and you can’t possibly publish documentation in all of them. Videos can be at least partially understood by speakers of any language – much better than text can, at any rate.
- If you’ve ever built furniture from a kit, you surely know that picture diagrams can often be confusing, and replacing them with videos is an excellent way to ensure clarity in just what needs to be done and in what order.
Now, your team can create how-to videos yourselves, but if you have users who are going to do it for you, it’s an excellent way to save time and effort! Besides, one hidden value in how-to UGVs is that there might be something a little confusing or opaque about your product that you, as the brand behind it, didn’t realize needed explanation and clarification. UGVs can help with anything that the user might find confusing that you might never have thought about in the first place.
4: Unboxing Videos
Unboxing videos have become something of a trend, especially in fields like tech, beauty, and fashion. Imagine if you could distill and package the excitement and anticipation of getting a shiny new toy and use that as an ad for your product. Well, you kind of can – and it looks like an unboxing video.
These videos provide an authentic, first-time look at your product’s packaging as well as initial impressions. These can be very appealing to prospective buyers, since first impressions carry great weight.
So, how can you use these various types of UGVs in ecommerce marketing?
How to Use User-Generated Videos in Ecommerce Marketing
Before we talk about the various ways you can use UGVs in ecommerce marketing, let’s be clear: If one of your users has made a video of their own volition about your product and put it on their own social media channels, always ask them for permission before you go ahead and use their video for any commercial purpose.
Finding out a brand has appropriated your hard-earned content without your permission is a great way to turn a video creator’s impression of you negative, and while the legality of it may be fuzzy (since they are, after all, using your product) it’s best to just avoid all potential missteps and pitfalls here. So, ask for permission, only use the video once you’re given it, and ensure that both you and the creator are happy with the outcome.
1: Put UGVs on Your Site
This is a great way to use those product demonstrations or how-to guide videos we discussed in the last section. If you find helpful videos showing off your product or teaching others how to use them, why not put them on your site?
You can have a “Demonstrations and Guides” page and embed the most helpful ones there. Alternatively, you could collate the best ones in a playlist on sites like YouTube, or link to ones for the most common issues you see people having with your whizzlewhumps.
2: Use UGVs on Landing Pages
You only have so much time to convince someone of the merits of your product when they click on an ad and go to one of your landing pages. So, why not find the best video testimonials of your products and use them there? “Hey gang, I ordered a whizzlewhump from this company and I couldn’t be happier, and here’s why” is a very strong way to turn a curious shopper into a converted sale.
3: Use UGVs in Video Ads
Putting together a videoshoot to create a great video ad for social media platforms like TikTok, FaceBook, and YouTube can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Fortunately, with UGVs, you don’t have to – you’ve already got the video right there!
If it’s a short video (under 1 minute is good, under 30 seconds is better) you can use the entire video as-is, though we recommend you add subtitles since some people watch videos with the sound off.
Otherwise, when you ask permission from the video creator, make sure you ask permission to edit the video as necessary to make it fit – obviously without changing the content in any meaningful way or distorting their words – and pick out the highlights. Use captions that reflect their opinions, like “INCREDIBLY EASY TO INSTALL” or “THE BEST WHIZZLEWHUMP ON THE MARKET”. You can also add some captions indicating other forms of social proof, like the number of customers you have or how many people have given you 5* reviews.
How to Choose the Best User-Generated Videos
Not all UGC is created equal. Just because people are making videos about your brand and its products doesn’t mean you have to use them! To maximize the impact UGVs can have on your brand, it’s important to understand what makes a good video.
- Authenticity. The hallmark of a great UGV is authenticity. Viewers should feel that the person in the video genuinely uses and likes your product. Overly scripted or staged videos can come off as disingenuous, and might not resonate as well with your audience – or worse, could backfire and reduce trust instead of building it.
- Clear and concise messaging. Effective UGVs convey their message in an easily understood way. Rambling or overly complex videos can use a viewer’s interest quickly. Whether it’s a testimonial, a demo, or a guide, the video should be easy to follow and comprehend.
- High-quality visuals and audio. Imagine reading this blog, but every other sentence was replaced with random gibberish text. Would you have kept reading it? Would you have derived any insights from it? In all likelihood, you’d have tapped out mere paragraphs in – and video is no exception. While you shouldn’t expect professional production quality from UGVs, poor sound quality and blurry visuals can detract from the message, be confusing, and make the video less effective.
- Relatability and engaging content. Good UGVs are relatable. That’s the whole point of user-generated content! They should feature real people in real situations that customers can identify with. They should also be engaging and interesting. These will increase the likelihood that the video is watched, shared, remembered – and that the viewer can envision themselves using your product, making it more likely that they convert.
UGVs: A Potent Tool for Ecommerce Brands
When used right, user-generated videos are a powerful tool for ecommerce businesses like yours looking to enhance their digital marketing presence. They provide authenticity, build trust, and engage audiences in ways that your traditional advertising simply can’t.
By understanding how to use UGVs well, recognizing the best types of UGVs – and what makes a good user-generated video different from a subpar one – you can leverage the full potential of user-generated content to boost the prominence of your ecommerce brand.
If you want help using UGVs for your business, why not contact an expert ecommerce marketing agency like SevenAtoms? We’re a veteran digital marketing team that has oodles of experience helping ecommerce businesses like yours find eager, receptive audiences for your whizzlewhumps, including mastering the power of influencer and user-generated content. Contact us today for a free consultation.
