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#72 Authentic Marketing and Why it Matters: LoudCrowd and UGC
#72 Authentic Marketing and Why it Matters: LoudCrowd and UGC
Social Media floods us with marketing every single day. How are you gonna stand out in the sea of Instagram and TikTok ads? Authentic marketing. And how do we keep it authentic? Three words: User Generated Content (UGC).
Alex Johnson is the Head of Strategic Partnerships at LoudCrowd. LoudCrowd empowers ecommerce owners to connect with their most valuable customers to generate UGC that works. LoudCrowd is trusted by leading brands including GymShark, Revolution Beauty London, and Verb for getting customers beyond the purchase and into marketing. Tune in to hear Alex and our podcast host and CEO Daniel Budai discuss:
✔️ What Brought Alex into Marketing
✔️ What’s So Important About UGC?
✔️ Influencer Marketing
✔️ LoudCrowd’s Approach
✔️ The Best Platforms for UGC
✔️ Tips and Tricks for UGC
What Brought Alex into Marketing?
Alex actually started out in the sports world. A huge fan of football and basketball, Alex became good friends with a marketing grad assistant who was working for the sports department at their college. Soon enough, Alex was getting involved with game day promos and campaigns, event ticketing, and sponsorships: diving into all things sports marketing and keeping it up all through college. Alex was in the marketing world for a while before transitioning into sales, actually working with the CEO and Co-Founder of LoudCrowd, Gary, at a different company, years before LoudCrowd got started.
Alex’s work in live sports events took a turn last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Alex was able to make the transition - all the way from marketing, through sales, into media, and eventually into marketing with LoudCrowd.
What’s So Important About UGC?
Alex assured Daniel that around 90% of the social media content comes from brand customers. The top 1% of a brand’s social advocates typically create between 15% to 20% of their content. It’s powerful stuff.
UGC is the most authentic and engaging content out there. It’s going to outperform anything and a brand curates and posts on their own due to social media platforms gating their content.
As a brand gets more and more followers, it becomes harder to reach them. The same goes for influencer marketers. As they become increasingly popular, their content is perceived to be less engaging and authentic.
That’s where UGC comes in. Customers sharing their love for a brand via social media stands out as authentic as it gets. Most of the smart marketers are saying that 90% of customers trust earned media i.e. referrals from friends and family that’s coming through social media. Ads with UGC typically see around four times higher click through rates.
When Apple and Google changed their privacy policies, it became a lot more difficult for smaller direct to consumer (D2C) brands to make returns on their ad spend. LoudCrowd’s solution? Turn your customers into advertisers to build a long-term marketing strategy.
Influencer Marketing
So what’s Alex’s opinion on influencer marketing?
If you have the budget, influencer marketing has certainly been shown to be effective. But Alex believes that influencer marketing is losing its effectiveness. You can only follow so many people that you have no idea why they’re famous and watch them push products. Understandably, most of us assume that influencers are getting paid a ton of money to advertise a certain product. A referral from a customer, especially if from a friend or family member, is going to be a lot more powerful.
“The future of marketing is customer-led”
You’re going to trust a friend, family member, or somebody that you follow on social media more than an empty review. LoudCrowd heavily focuses on incentivising customers to post content on Instagram and TikTok for this very reason.
If you do want to dabble in influencer marketing, Daniel and Alex both recommend beginning with micro-influencers, seeing how that goes, and scaling up.
What’s LoudCrowd’s Approach?
LoudCrowd is, first and foremost, a customer-led growth platform, ultimately helping ecom owners measure and scale UGC. LoudCrowd isn’t an influencer platform and is not focused on finding new people that have never interacted with your brand and creating a ‘follower persona’.
Instead, LoudCrowd creates unique Ambassador programmes for people who have tagged your brand on Instagram and TikTok.
1. Exclusive Ambassador Programme
High-value super fans with a good following, and very engaging content. These are invited to exclusive reward programmes where they get access to high-value credit free products, early access to product releases and content, event tickets, calls with the founder, etc.
2. Loyalty Ambassador Programme
These are for all customers engaged with your brand on social media. LoudCrowd offers spending incentives such as discounts and store credit. This builds a community around your brand and turns your customers into nano influencers that produce authentic content. This creates an entire marketing cycle that encourages customers to continue engaging with and buying from your brand.
LoudCrowd takes on a data-driven approach to incentives. Rewards are based on a tier system, offering greater rewards to those who generate the most valuable content. This increases their lifetime value and optimizes conversion rates.
What Platforms Work Best for UGC?
LoudCrowd has seen incredible success with Instagram. It’s become the ecommerce social media platform. Watchwear brand MVMT became a billion-dollar brand just from Instagram ads.
While Instagram is LoudCrowd’s ‘bread and butter’, they’re also now jumping onto TikTok.
So is Alex concerned about migration to TikTok?
Alex considers Instagram and TikTok to be two strong, but different platforms. TikTok is more music and video-based; Instagram relies more on more static posts - but this is changing with the introduction of ‘reels’ - short videos similar to the TikTok format. Alex certainly isn’t concerned about Instagram dwindling with its billions of users and the response evoked during its 6-hour shutdown. The response wasn’t so much, “Thank God we have TikTok”, it was more so upset at not having access to Instagram.
LoudCrowd enjoys the best of both worlds with rewards for customer engagement on both Instagram and TikTok.
Alex’s Tips and Tricks for UGC
Often, it’s as simple as asking customers to tag your handle to be featured on your Instagram and TikTok. And make sure to actually feature people that do. If you don’t feature your customers, your post instantly loses validity and comprises trust in your brand.
Hashtag data is great, but as Instagram doesn’t consider anyone to own hashtags, it can get messy. So focus on the handle.
When your customer has finished an order, remind them to join your VIP rewards programme on your landing page.
Contests are also great. You’ll see a lot of brands posting “Tag 3 friends to win such-and-such a product”. LoudCrowd goes a step further by launching a photo of customers: to enter, customers post a picture of them with their product with a hashtag or handle that the brand can use to track entries. That way you’re getting hundreds of engaging individual posts - you’re not just tagging three people that will see your post for a second or two.
TL;DR: UGC is fantastic marketing. Use Instagram and TikTok. Test competitions, and check out LoudCrowd!
Visit LoudCrowd or connect with Alex on LinkedIn to find out more about scaling your brand with UGC.
Follow Daniel Budai:
Daniel's LinkedIn
Daniel's Facebook
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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By Daniel Budai
5
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#72 Authentic Marketing and Why it Matters: LoudCrowd and UGC
Social Media floods us with marketing every single day. How are you gonna stand out in the sea of Instagram and TikTok ads? Authentic marketing. And how do we keep it authentic? Three words: User Generated Content (UGC).
Alex Johnson is the Head of Strategic Partnerships at LoudCrowd. LoudCrowd empowers ecommerce owners to connect with their most valuable customers to generate UGC that works. LoudCrowd is trusted by leading brands including GymShark, Revolution Beauty London, and Verb for getting customers beyond the purchase and into marketing. Tune in to hear Alex and our podcast host and CEO Daniel Budai discuss:
✔️ What Brought Alex into Marketing
✔️ What’s So Important About UGC?
✔️ Influencer Marketing
✔️ LoudCrowd’s Approach
✔️ The Best Platforms for UGC
✔️ Tips and Tricks for UGC
What Brought Alex into Marketing?
Alex actually started out in the sports world. A huge fan of football and basketball, Alex became good friends with a marketing grad assistant who was working for the sports department at their college. Soon enough, Alex was getting involved with game day promos and campaigns, event ticketing, and sponsorships: diving into all things sports marketing and keeping it up all through college. Alex was in the marketing world for a while before transitioning into sales, actually working with the CEO and Co-Founder of LoudCrowd, Gary, at a different company, years before LoudCrowd got started.
Alex’s work in live sports events took a turn last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Alex was able to make the transition - all the way from marketing, through sales, into media, and eventually into marketing with LoudCrowd.
What’s So Important About UGC?
Alex assured Daniel that around 90% of the social media content comes from brand customers. The top 1% of a brand’s social advocates typically create between 15% to 20% of their content. It’s powerful stuff.
UGC is the most authentic and engaging content out there. It’s going to outperform anything and a brand curates and posts on their own due to social media platforms gating their content.
As a brand gets more and more followers, it becomes harder to reach them. The same goes for influencer marketers. As they become increasingly popular, their content is perceived to be less engaging and authentic.
That’s where UGC comes in. Customers sharing their love for a brand via social media stands out as authentic as it gets. Most of the smart marketers are saying that 90% of customers trust earned media i.e. referrals from friends and family that’s coming through social media. Ads with UGC typically see around four times higher click through rates.
When Apple and Google changed their privacy policies, it became a lot more difficult for smaller direct to consumer (D2C) brands to make returns on their ad spend. LoudCrowd’s solution? Turn your customers into advertisers to build a long-term marketing strategy.
Influencer Marketing
So what’s Alex’s opinion on influencer marketing?
If you have the budget, influencer marketing has certainly been shown to be effective. But Alex believes that influencer marketing is losing its effectiveness. You can only follow so many people that you have no idea why they’re famous and watch them push products. Understandably, most of us assume that influencers are getting paid a ton of money to advertise a certain product. A referral from a customer, especially if from a friend or family member, is going to be a lot more powerful.
“The future of marketing is customer-led”
You’re going to trust a friend, family member, or somebody that you follow on social media more than an empty review. LoudCrowd heavily focuses on incentivising customers to post content on Instagram and TikTok for this very reason.
If you do want to dabble in influencer marketing, Daniel and Alex both recommend beginning with micro-influencers, seeing how that goes, and scaling up.
What’s LoudCrowd’s Approach?
LoudCrowd is, first and foremost, a customer-led growth platform, ultimately helping ecom owners measure and scale UGC. LoudCrowd isn’t an influencer platform and is not focused on finding new people that have never interacted with your brand and creating a ‘follower persona’.
Instead, LoudCrowd creates unique Ambassador programmes for people who have tagged your brand on Instagram and TikTok.
1. Exclusive Ambassador Programme
High-value super fans with a good following, and very engaging content. These are invited to exclusive reward programmes where they get access to high-value credit free products, early access to product releases and content, event tickets, calls with the founder, etc.
2. Loyalty Ambassador Programme
These are for all customers engaged with your brand on social media. LoudCrowd offers spending incentives such as discounts and store credit. This builds a community around your brand and turns your customers into nano influencers that produce authentic content. This creates an entire marketing cycle that encourages customers to continue engaging with and buying from your brand.
LoudCrowd takes on a data-driven approach to incentives. Rewards are based on a tier system, offering greater rewards to those who generate the most valuable content. This increases their lifetime value and optimizes conversion rates.
What Platforms Work Best for UGC?
LoudCrowd has seen incredible success with Instagram. It’s become the ecommerce social media platform. Watchwear brand MVMT became a billion-dollar brand just from Instagram ads.
While Instagram is LoudCrowd’s ‘bread and butter’, they’re also now jumping onto TikTok.
So is Alex concerned about migration to TikTok?
Alex considers Instagram and TikTok to be two strong, but different platforms. TikTok is more music and video-based; Instagram relies more on more static posts - but this is changing with the introduction of ‘reels’ - short videos similar to the TikTok format. Alex certainly isn’t concerned about Instagram dwindling with its billions of users and the response evoked during its 6-hour shutdown. The response wasn’t so much, “Thank God we have TikTok”, it was more so upset at not having access to Instagram.
LoudCrowd enjoys the best of both worlds with rewards for customer engagement on both Instagram and TikTok.
Alex’s Tips and Tricks for UGC
Often, it’s as simple as asking customers to tag your handle to be featured on your Instagram and TikTok. And make sure to actually feature people that do. If you don’t feature your customers, your post instantly loses validity and comprises trust in your brand.
Hashtag data is great, but as Instagram doesn’t consider anyone to own hashtags, it can get messy. So focus on the handle.
When your customer has finished an order, remind them to join your VIP rewards programme on your landing page.
Contests are also great. You’ll see a lot of brands posting “Tag 3 friends to win such-and-such a product”. LoudCrowd goes a step further by launching a photo of customers: to enter, customers post a picture of them with their product with a hashtag or handle that the brand can use to track entries. That way you’re getting hundreds of engaging individual posts - you’re not just tagging three people that will see your post for a second or two.
TL;DR: UGC is fantastic marketing. Use Instagram and TikTok. Test competitions, and check out LoudCrowd!
Visit LoudCrowd or connect with Alex on LinkedIn to find out more about scaling your brand with UGC.
Follow Daniel Budai:
Daniel's LinkedIn
Daniel's Facebook
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.