E-Commerce Guide
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The prominence of social commerce has grown exponentially in the last year as the transition to digital shopping has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only do social shopping platforms allow consumers to more efficiently browse and purchase products all on one screen, thereby shortening and simplifying the path to purchase, but they also offer reviews and feedback that satisfy the social validation needed for conversion.
Indeed, 95% of Slickdeals users visit the site before making any purchase decisions simply because they want to see what their peers have to say about it. Is there a better offer available? Is this a good product? Should I buy it? By combining shoppable content and content creation, social platforms have facilitated a way for people to shop together without being physically together.
And yet there’s still a distaste for user-generated content (UGC) within the industry. While brand marketers are finally coming to embrace the power of social commerce, they would prefer to reject the UGC that fuels it—preferring, instead, influencer content that has been vetted and deemed “brand safe.”
Alas, this is not how the internet works. Regular UGC will continue to exist alongside perfectly engineered influencer content, and both are perhaps equally as valuable. As a matter of fact, eMarketer predicted that UGC will continue to grow this year, potentially reaching beyond social media to TV, digital video and print ads due to the engagement and loyalty that it inspires.
Just as traditional word-of-mouth advertising from a family member influences your next purchase, so does the user-posted deal on a social shopping platform—and so does the latest video from your favorite influencer. In fact, the UGC holds a distinct authenticity and proven power in the minds of consumers. eMarketer agrees: “Consumers are less trusting of the mainstream media and slick corporate marketing, turning instead to user-generated content and influencers to find their own truth.”
Thus, in order to fully and strategically embrace social commerce, marketers must come to terms with user-generated content. Working with a social shopping platform such as Slickdeals is a great way to redefine your relationship with UGC, but it starts with understanding how your brand exists within the social shopping community: How often is my brand being posted or talked about? What are people saying about my product? What are people saying about my competitors’ products?
From there, the best marketers will strategize a way to bolster their brand’s presence and its organic positioning. Instead of only focusing on a perfectly engineered, brand-safe message to beam across their latest media buys, they will return to their roots and focus on their customer. Indeed, the best way to strengthen a brand and the UGC that surrounds it is to cultivate a positive, customer-centric experience that will ensure truly brand-safe and advantageous content from shoppers. After all, a brand is no more than what consumers perceive it to be, so it makes more sense to embrace consumer content rather than to shy away from it.
When properly harvested, compelling UGC can authentically build a brand. Besides the free exposure it provides, UGC offers feedback and reviews, competitive and consumer insights, memes to share, ideas for ad copy, and more. Perhaps most importantly however, UGC creates a flywheel of exposure. As users post and discuss content, brand awareness multiplies. Slickdeals has seen, for example, that engagement grows exponentially when we work with a brand to strategically inject deal content into our user-generated forums. Following a campaign, users often become more aware of and comfortable with the brand. In turn, they begin seeking out deals and sharing their own content about the brand, themselves. We then work with the brand thereafter to maintain its presence in our forums and leverage complementary media campaigns, accordingly.
As marketers continue to embrace social commerce as a key facet of the digital landscape, there will be an inherent need to also embrace UGC. To value user-generated content is to acknowledge and invest in an authentic foundation of brand safety, which will build upon itself and prove critical in the new age of online, social shopping.
Learn more about partnering with Slickdeals.
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Briana Hall
Director of Business Development
6255 W. Sunset Blvd., Suite 1400
Los Angeles, CA 90028
briana.hall@slickdeals.net
(323) 500-4429
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E-Commerce Guide
Sponsored content presented by
The prominence of social commerce has grown exponentially in the last year as the transition to digital shopping has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only do social shopping platforms allow consumers to more efficiently browse and purchase products all on one screen, thereby shortening and simplifying the path to purchase, but they also offer reviews and feedback that satisfy the social validation needed for conversion.
Indeed, 95% of Slickdeals users visit the site before making any purchase decisions simply because they want to see what their peers have to say about it. Is there a better offer available? Is this a good product? Should I buy it? By combining shoppable content and content creation, social platforms have facilitated a way for people to shop together without being physically together.
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And yet there’s still a distaste for user-generated content (UGC) within the industry. While brand marketers are finally coming to embrace the power of social commerce, they would prefer to reject the UGC that fuels it—preferring, instead, influencer content that has been vetted and deemed “brand safe.”
Alas, this is not how the internet works. Regular UGC will continue to exist alongside perfectly engineered influencer content, and both are perhaps equally as valuable. As a matter of fact, eMarketer predicted that UGC will continue to grow this year, potentially reaching beyond social media to TV, digital video and print ads due to the engagement and loyalty that it inspires.
Just as traditional word-of-mouth advertising from a family member influences your next purchase, so does the user-posted deal on a social shopping platform—and so does the latest video from your favorite influencer. In fact, the UGC holds a distinct authenticity and proven power in the minds of consumers. eMarketer agrees: “Consumers are less trusting of the mainstream media and slick corporate marketing, turning instead to user-generated content and influencers to find their own truth.”
Thus, in order to fully and strategically embrace social commerce, marketers must come to terms with user-generated content. Working with a social shopping platform such as Slickdeals is a great way to redefine your relationship with UGC, but it starts with understanding how your brand exists within the social shopping community: How often is my brand being posted or talked about? What are people saying about my product? What are people saying about my competitors’ products?
From there, the best marketers will strategize a way to bolster their brand’s presence and its organic positioning. Instead of only focusing on a perfectly engineered, brand-safe message to beam across their latest media buys, they will return to their roots and focus on their customer. Indeed, the best way to strengthen a brand and the UGC that surrounds it is to cultivate a positive, customer-centric experience that will ensure truly brand-safe and advantageous content from shoppers. After all, a brand is no more than what consumers perceive it to be, so it makes more sense to embrace consumer content rather than to shy away from it.
When properly harvested, compelling UGC can authentically build a brand. Besides the free exposure it provides, UGC offers feedback and reviews, competitive and consumer insights, memes to share, ideas for ad copy, and more. Perhaps most importantly however, UGC creates a flywheel of exposure. As users post and discuss content, brand awareness multiplies. Slickdeals has seen, for example, that engagement grows exponentially when we work with a brand to strategically inject deal content into our user-generated forums. Following a campaign, users often become more aware of and comfortable with the brand. In turn, they begin seeking out deals and sharing their own content about the brand, themselves. We then work with the brand thereafter to maintain its presence in our forums and leverage complementary media campaigns, accordingly.
As marketers continue to embrace social commerce as a key facet of the digital landscape, there will be an inherent need to also embrace UGC. To value user-generated content is to acknowledge and invest in an authentic foundation of brand safety, which will build upon itself and prove critical in the new age of online, social shopping.
Learn more about partnerning with Slickdeals.