E-commerce and brand managers will soon have to rely on first-party data — the data you collect directly from customers yourself.

Not just to stay compliant with privacy regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA, but because a first-party data strategy can enhance your revenue, provide value internally for your business, give you better customer data, and ultimately help you build a relationship with your customers. 

Chapters:

1. What is first-party data?
2. How to use first-party data
3. How to collect first-party data
4. First-party data e-commerce strategies
5. Examples of first-party data strategy in action
6. Maximize your first-party data

What is first-party data?

First-party data is customer information and data that you collect yourself — directly from your audience. Nobody else owns this data except you. It cannot legally be sold or shared, it doesn’t follow users outside of your website, and it’s made up of two different “types” of data.

1. Declarative data

Declarative data is the data that your audience self-reports, such as their name, email address, location, and more. It doesn’t just have to be rote demographic data, however. It can also be data such as their income level, the number of pets they have, and more. It’s especially useful for understanding consumer behavior and finding out what triggers buying behaviors.

Example: A customer informs you that they have pets: two cats. This information comes directly from the customer.

2. Behavioral data

Behavioral data is data based on the activities of a site visitor. This type of data is often collected via the use of a first-party cookie or tracking pixel. This cookie is unique to your site and your site only, and never follows the user across the web. Tools like Google Analytics are commonly used in conjunction with behavioral data to analyze site performance and user behavior, giving marketers and managers granular details about what parts of their website are performing and what parts need improvement.

Example: A customer likes several cat pictures and pages on Instagram but does not explicitly tell a business they have any cats. It’s up to the business to make that inference.

How to use first-party data

Before you start on your first-party data strategy, there’s some housekeeping and tactics that will need looking at first.

Align with stakeholders on what first-party data you’ll collect

First, you need to align with stakeholders on what first-party data you’ll collect. This way, you have buy-in from everyone on your team, and everyone’s needs are equally represented. Because this first-party data will become your only data source, it needs to be as robust as possible, while still keeping within regulations.

Aligning with stakeholders requires some prep on your end. Before meeting with the different stakeholders in your organization (managers, executives, legal, IT), come up with a list of metrics you’d like to track. Some common ones include sales interactions, emails, phone numbers, site behavior, purchase history, and common demographic information, such as age and location.

Next, you’re going to want to run this list of possible data points by your stakeholders, justifying why you want to collect each data type and how you’re going to do it, so there isn’t any friction between departments over what data is collected and how it’s being used.

Update to the latest Google Analytics data model

Google Analytics version 4 includes new ways to segment and track users, is GDPR and CCPA compliant, and is built to take on first-party data by utilizing AI to fill in data gaps that third-party data would ordinarily have filled.

The ever-popular analytics tool specifically addresses issues with the retirement of third-party data and inconsistencies in cookie consent options by using AI to fill in missing customer information, meaning you can still collect and analyze user data even if you don’t have a complete user profile.

Additionally, Google Analytics 4 helps you easily find and delete user data upon request, which means you can stay compliant with “the right to be forgotten.”

Looking to get started with a site implementation? Google has some valuable resources and a step-by-step guide to implementing Google Analytics 4 properties on your website’s analytics property.

Build new personas and segment your audiences based on first-party data

Because you’ll be using first-party data moving forward, you need your personas to be as accurate as possible; working with inaccurate or baseless buyer personas is a huge waste of time and resources. But you can’t keep relying on third-party data to build your buyer personas. Ask any marketer how accurate their third-party data is, and you’ll probably get back a “not very.” Survey data collected by Deloitte unearthed some startling facts about first-party data’s ugly cousin:

• Over 66% of respondents said that the third-party data about them was zero to 50% accurate as a whole
• Around 71% of all third-party data was deemed inaccurate after a review by survey respondents

As part of a first-party data strategy, personas based on first-party data are crucial to providing a personalized e-commerce marketing and advertising experience. Buyer personas based on first-party data have a number of benefits, including a 10–20% reduction in marketing and sales costs, a 20% higher customer satisfaction rate, a 10–15% increase in sales conversion rates, and a 20–30% increase in employee engagement.

Start by leveraging all the first-party data you can to build your personas. This might include data like location, age, purchase history, audience research, CRM data, or user account information, all of which can be consensually collected without the use of third-party data or cookies.

How you divide your customer base is entirely up to you. But some common shopper segmentations include: 

• Shared characteristics and behaviors
• Common interests
• Demographics
• Region
• Purchase or browser history
• Frequent shoppers or buyers
• New customers
• Recent cart abandoners
• Browsing or buying habits
• Engagement levels
• Average AOV (e.g. big spenders, sales hunters, etc.)

Build a data governance strategy that keeps you compliant

Data governance is the process of ingesting data and managing that data’s lifecycle from creation to storage to deletion.

Both the GDPR and CCPA have clauses that allow users to request their data be deleted — “the right to be forgotten” and “right to erasure.” Data governance strategies play a huge role in both of these clauses — you can’t comply with a data deletion request if you can’t easily find and manage that data in the first place.

Failure to govern your first-party and third-party data in accordance with regulations could put you in regulatory hot water. The GDPR imposes stiff fines for companies who fail to comply. Amazon was hit with a massive $887 million fine for not complying with the GDPR.

Failure to govern your first-party and third-party data in accordance with regulations could put you in regulatory hot water.

Building a data governance strategy requires you to consult with two teams: legal and IT. Legal will be able to tell you what needs to happen to the data you have from a governance standpoint. IT will be able to help you find a solution to managing your data.

Start collecting first-party cookies in place of third-party cookies

You may have seen those popups on some websites asking to place cookies on your browsers while also offering you the chance to opt in or out of data collection. That’s how first-party cookies are placed in a way that’s compliant with regulations — and it’s a crucial aspect of your first-party data strategy. There’s a few key ideas at work here:

• Customer information gathered from first-party cookies is gathered consensually
• This data is being used on this site and only on this site and will not follow the user across the web

Ordinarily, companies use third-party cookies — cookies that have been placed on users’ browsers by third-party sites — to gather customer data. These cookies are placed without the consent of the user, directly violating the GDPR and CCPA, which prohibit the non-consensual placement of third-party cookies. How do you start collecting first-party cookies?

You can do this manually by consulting the different teams in your org about how you’re going to implement a first-party cookie strategy. Design the language and copy, then take your plan to legal, and finally to IT, who can implement a first-party cookie solution. 

If you’re a small or medium-sized business, services like Cookiebot can help you set up collection popups. Larger organizations can rely on tools like OneTrust to do this at scale.

Value exchange

Value exchange is a tactic used to entice customers into exchanging their personal information for high-value content or services (you might recognize this as giving your email in exchange for an e-book or a discount from a company). Value exchange is consensual data collection that’s compliant with the GDPR and CCPA, and it’s mutually beneficial to your business and the customer. It’s a win-win that provides some great, long-term benefits.

Common value exchange tactics are to offer discounts, which help you gather emails, and loyalty programs, which can improve your bottom line and your brand’s relationship with your customers. You get their data and earn their trust, and the customer gets a valuable piece of content, item, or service.

Additionally, it represents your commitment to user privacy and data transparency. You’re being upfront about what you’re collecting, why, and what the customer is getting in exchange for their data. This type of approach is great for building goodwill with your customers and helps you stay compliant with regulations.

How to collect first-party data

Collecting first-party data starts with building users’ trust, gaining their consent, engaging the customers in ways that prompt them to volunteer information, and having the right tech to gather first-party data in place. Here are some tried-and-true methods of collecting first-party data:

Be transparent about the data you do collect. Customer trust is built on transparency, but one in five consumers still believe businesses don’t care about privacy. Separate your business from the pack by explaining how you’re going to use the data you do collect and how it’s being collected in your cookie consent popup.

Ask for reviews from customers. Asking for customers to review products in your e-commerce store is not only a great way to improve your sales performance but also gain access to customer data consensually.

Offer quizzes to your customers in exchange for personalized recommendations. Customers like personalized product or content recommendations — 35% of Amazon purchases come from product recommendations, and 75% of Netflix watches come from recommendations based on customer data. Learning a buyer’s likes, dislikes, and interests is a great way to improve the customer experience, your ROI, and consensually gather first-party data.

Let customers make accounts in your e-commerce store. Accounts are a veritable treasure trove of first-party data. By letting customers volunteer information via user-created profiles, you give them an incentive to return to your e-commerce store and can also mine their accounts for useful bits of data.

Reward repeat customers with a loyalty program. Building a successful customer loyalty program provides you with a dynamic source of customer data — a data source that is constantly evolving and is updated by the customer — as well as better sales numbers and increasing your brand loyalty. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Ask users to participate in surveys. Customer satisfaction surveys are an excellent way of improving your products and services. Surveys can also function as a source of first-party data, giving you the ability to tie interactions back to specific customers so you can identify points of friction within your e-commerce store or customer journey.

First-party data e-commerce strategies

Follow these best-practices for using first-party data to drive e-commerce growth.

Retarget hesitant shoppers

Retargeting is a super effective way to use first-party data to reach customers who have shown interest in your products but haven’t completed a purchase. Use data from website visits to create targeted ads that remind them about their viewed or wishlisted products or items left in their carts.

This subtle-yet-not-so-subtle nudge brings reluctant customers back to your site and also nudges them to complete their purchases.

Generate personalized product recommendations and promotions

With 91% of consumers more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations, implementing this strategy into your e-commerce marketing plan is a no-brainer. Utilize purchase and browsing history to tailor offers and product recommendations that are most likely to appeal to each customer.

These can be displayed on product pages, in email campaigns, and even during the checkout process, and should include related or complementary items that encourage upsells and cross-sells to increase average order value.

Enhance the shopper journey

Strengthening customer relationships is paramount for any e-commerce business’s growth. The stronger the relationship, the greater the trust. And the greater the trust, the deeper the loyalty — which just so happens to convert to higher online revenue. 

Analyze your first-party data to identify any pain points and areas for improvement. This will allow you to optimize the customer experience by reducing any friction throughout the conversion funnel. For example, your first-party data might highlight that many of your customers make their exit during checkout after they see limited payment options.

So then you could add more payment methods, such as buy now, pay later.

Strengthen your loyalty program

A recent study found that 79% of consumers are more likely to do business with a brand because of its loyalty program, which translates to increased customer retention and revenue. Your best approach for making your loyalty program a reason that shoppers seek out your business?

Begin by using your first-party data, such as shopper preferences and previous purchases, to tailor your rewards to each customer. 

And with third-party data going away, loyalty programs are going to be more important than ever when it comes to customers actively sharing their information. With a well-executed, personalized loyalty program, you can increase your customers’ lifetime value, drive repeat purchases, and create champions for your brand.

Target shopping cart ditchers

Customers often leave your site and abandon their full shopping basket with no intention of ever returning to complete a purchase. While this might seem like a waste of time, it’s actually a great opportunity to build connections with online consumers you might never have heard from again.

First-party data can identify those who have recently abandoned shopping carts, and you can then send targeted email reminders or offers to encourage them to complete the purchase. This strategy is proven to work well, especially when an incentive like a limited-time offer is included. 

Looking to catch cart abandoners before they leave your site? Machine learning tech (like Bazaarvoice) can use first party data to identify when a shopper is likely to abandon, and intercept before they’ve made their exit.

Implement dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing can help you maximize revenue by charging different prices to different customers at different times, optimizing based on each consumer’s willingness to pay. Determine whether this hyper-personalization strategy could benefit you by looking at first-party data like customer preferences, buying behavior, and historical purchases.

You’ll also want to take a look at competitor pricing to ensure you’re not over (or under) reaching. From here, you can adjust prices based on your customer segment and offer discounts to customer groups who would benefit from them most to encourage purchases.

Create personalized campaigns

A large part of your marketing budget is likely going toward advertising. Take your wealth of first-party data, including purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographics, and use it to create highly targeted campaigns that spark interest in your segmented groups.

For instance, a furniture retailer may target a group that has all purchased the same sectional with ads featuring a matching chair or ottoman, along with a limited-time discount if they buy it within a set time frame.

Don’t forget to test your strategies

Testing different strategies and messages based on first-party data is paramount to determining what resonates best with your audience.

Make sure to continuously refine your marketing and personalization strategies using A/B testing, and experimenting with different messaging, offers, and channels.

You can then use first-party data to measure the impact of these changes on key metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and average order value.

Examples of first-party data strategy in action

First-party data is used like any dataset to improve your products, services, revenue numbers, or processes. In the following examples, you’ll notice a common thread throughout: a strong first-party data strategy is in place, and best-practice data collection techniques are used to do a lot more than just target customers for ads or remarketing.

B2C — The slipper store

An e-commerce store selling fun and stylized slippers severed its ties with its data vendor in order to build a first-party data strategy. Upon visiting its website, users are greeted with a prompt asking for their email and phone number in exchange for a 20% off coupon. The user fills in the form and collects their discount.

During checkout, the user is then prompted to create an account to speed along the transaction and manage future purchases. The customer creates an account, enters their shipping and billing information, and completes the transaction. The e-commerce store now has some data points it can use to help improve its products or services.

But that’s not all: first-party data can be used to retarget and nurture leads during the sales process.

B2B — Applicant tracking software vendor

An applicant tracking software (ATS) has a new website and a blog it’s using to capture organic leads. Employees notice that while the blog itself is attracting a fair number of leads for the company, once users navigate to the rest of the website, they bounce within seconds, most never completing an action beyond clicking through a few pages.

The company’s first-party data strategy helps uncover the problem. Using a first-party data cookie and Google Analytics 4, the vendor can see the users coming in via the blog, attempting to schedule a demo with the CTA link on the homepage, and then bouncing. Upon analysis, the vendor realizes that the form isn’t opening when users click the “schedule a demo” CTA. They re-work the form but have another problem on their hands: the vendor has no way of remarketing to leads who didn’t convert.

They turn to first-party data to help. The vendor creates high-quality e-books and assets and then gates them at the bottom of their highest-performing blogs, asking for some basic customer information, such as their email and phone number. Now the vendor can send personalized email content to their leads, educating them on the benefits of ATS in their business and qualifying them for a sales conversation.

Maximize your first-party data with Bazaarvoice

E-commerce managers and brand managers who don’t embrace first-party data are living on borrowed time. Regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA, in conjunction with unanimous motions to quash third-party data and cookies, have put additional pressure on businesses, that often don’t have the time or resources to prepare for third-party data’s retirement.

An easy solution is insights and reports tools from Bazaarvoice. Rather than waste time hiring third parties, the tools help you analyze customer behavior and sentiment, build your brand, and source more reviews to diversify the voices in your first-party data strategy.

The type of brand loyalty that leads customers to rush to the stores on day one for a new product is hard to come by. It’s also extremely profitable. Stanley experienced a 751% year-over-year increase (no, that’s not a typo!) in its tumbler sales in 2022. Talk about results that justify a marketing budget.

Stanley’s breakout story isn’t a trajectory most retailers can hope to mimic. But it is a success story we can all learn from. The secret sauce isn’t a colorful 40-oz tumbler — it’s in the brand equity that Stanley built among its loyal customers. 

This guide will help you understand what brand equity means, how you can build it, and how to handle brand challenges that many retailers face. 

Chapters:

1. What is brand equity?
2. What goes into brand equity?
3. The importance of brand equity
4. How to create brand equity through the consumer experience
5. How to measure brand equity
6. Solving brand equity challenges
7. Every company has a brand equity journey

What is brand equity?

Brand equity is the value attached to a certain brand name. It’s a combination of brand awareness and brand reputation, and maintaining both is essential for companies of all sizes.  

In practice, brand equity measures customer loyalty. It helps you understand how much more your consumers are willing to pay for your products, how likely they are to choose you over a competitor, and whether they’ll consider trying completely new products or services from you. 

Sound simple? It is. The hard part is building it. 

What goes into brand equity?

As a whole, brand equity is intangible. It’s based on consumers’ perceptions and emotions, which means it can be hard to measure. However, there’s a few elements that strong brand equity is built from.

The first is brand awareness. Awareness, in this case, doesn’t mean whether people have heard of your company. It means what they know about your products, the things you stand for, and the benefits you offer your customers. The value of your brand depends on consumers’ understanding of your purpose.

The second is brand perception. This might seem similar to brand awareness, but perception is born in your customers’ minds. It’s what your brand represents to them. For instance, Stanley sees its core values as “invention, innovation and inspiration” and its purpose as “build[ing] a more sustainable, less disposable life and world.” However, to its current fans, Stanley Tumblers are about staying hydrated (if you #WaterTok, you know) while making a fashion statement. They perceive Stanley as a status symbol, whether the brand is meant to be one or not.

Third, we have brand associations. These are the concepts and feelings consumers attach to your brand. Think of your car. You likely equate it with the freedom to go where you want. Depending on the type of car you have, you may also consider it a leader in safety features or a way to save money and the planet by reducing your gasoline use. If you’re like most consumers, you ascribe those specific feelings to the car brand. (This can work the other way, too, if you really hate your car.) Those would be your associations. 

Fourth comes perceptive quality. As the name suggests, this is a measure of how consumers feel about the standard of goods or services they’ll receive from a brand. Perceptive quality doesn’t need to be based on personal experience. Consumers may make quality assumptions based on price point or the selection of stores that carry a brand or product. They may also form their opinions from word-of-mouth or marketing campaigns. 

Fifth is brand experience. This is the part where customers interact with your products or services — and yes, it really is fifth on the list! However, brand experience is still an important part because it’s where their impressions of your brand can be proven true or false. 

The sixth is brand loyalty. This is your customers’ decision to keep interacting with your brand. For some, brand loyalty means continually rebuying consumable products. Brands that make durable goods may instead measure loyalty through customers’ engagement with social media or newsletter content. The most loyal customers will try other products from your brand and recommend you to friends and family. 

Together, these six components add up to a perception and experience of brand value among your customers. 

The importance of brand equity

It’s hard to overstate the value of brand equity because there are so many ways you’ll see positive ROI if yours is strong. 

On the customer level, you’ll find it easier to attract new buyers because they’ll know your products or services are of high quality. A company with high brand equity also finds retention easier since equity includes trust — and trust is a factor in over 90% of consumers’ buying choices. 

When it comes to profitability, brand equity allows you to charge more than competitors without losing your customers. It helps you increase your sales volume as brand advocates share their love for your products with friends.

Plus, brands with a high level of trust can be more efficient with their marketing spend. Customers who already know and trust your brand don’t need nearly as much enticement to buy. Between a decrease in spending and an increase in prices, your company will see higher profit margins overall.

Brand equity matters because it increases your market share over competitors. It makes it easier to expand into new products or verticals because you have a base of buyers who are willing to try out a new product. And, for publicly traded companies, brand equity increases your stock price.

Brand equity is sort of like money: The more you have, the better off your company is. You might even argue it’s a type of currency in its own right — the currency of trust.

How to create brand equity through the consumer experience

Look up “how to create brand equity,” and you’ll get a laundry list of action items — be consistent in your branding! Run the right kind of marketing campaigns! Make good products! But brand equity can’t be built in a vacuum. It’s a relationship between you and your consumer base. It’s, therefore, best to start from the consumer perspective.

Consumers go through a journey with each brand that either ends in them valuing the product or deciding they want to try something new. Here are the five steps you must lead your buyers through to develop brand equity. 

1. Awareness

Brand awareness is the top element of brand equity, and it’s also the first step in each consumer’s journey. They have to know who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. 

Advertising is typically the best way to introduce yourself to new customers. But awareness marketing can’t just include the name of your brand and a picture of your product or a description of your services. If you’re unknown to a consumer, they need a reason to care about you. 

A strong brand story can help you break through the noise with your awareness campaign. The best awareness campaigns cater to the values or interests of your target demographic. For instance, if your buyers care about supporting small businesses, your ads might emphasize that your products started from a home recipe. If they’re nature lovers, talk about your company’s sustainability efforts while showing how your product will help them enjoy the great outdoors. 

Awareness campaigns are often easier to disseminate through mass or social media. PPC ads keyed on your brand name won’t be reaching new potential buyers. You’ll need to identify the spaces where your target audiences hang out and then go to them there. Maybe that means buying ads in publications centered around a certain topic.

Or maybe it means encouraging your existing fans to share user-generated content (UGC), such as reviews and media your customers create about or featuring your brand. UGC can be reshared by your brand, but it also spreads organically through the networks and communities you want to reach. 

2. Recognition

Once customers know who you are, you want them to start seeing your product around. The familiarity will help build trust and cement you in their mind as an option.

Building recognition requires you to focus on brand consistency. Consumers expect a certain uniformity in aesthetics — that’s your logo, fonts, colors, and other design elements — to help them quickly identify brands. Depending on how your product is presented, you might consider appealing to other senses. You know exactly what that Slack “new message” sound is, thanks to consistent branding. 

Consumers are also more likely to recognize your brand or product when they routinely encounter it in the same context. You can use that context to start building associations. For instance, a product that’s consistently shelved with premium goods will come across as a quality item. One that’s mentioned in buzzy publications will seem on-trend to consumers. 

The techniques you use for recognition are similar to those you use to build awareness. But you shouldn’t think of the two as interchangeable. Your goal in the awareness step was to get your name and story out there. When you’re building recognition, you have the chance to go deeper into your story and cement your values, mission, and desired preconceptions in your audience’s mind. 

3. Trial

After a consumer gets to know your brand, those who find it intriguing will move to step three: trialing your product or services.

You typically have one chance to impress a new consumer (unless you’ve done an extremely good job in steps one and two!), so delivering on your promises in short order is of the utmost importance. 

First, the recognizability must be there. If buyers have only ever seen your product in photos and videos, the item they receive has to match. (If they’re picking it up on a store shelf, you can assume you’ve succeeded on this point.)

Second, your product must be of the expected quality. It doesn’t need to be the best on the market, but it should meet or exceed the standards for the price point and perform as you’ve stated it will. 

Third, users must find your product memorable. Whether that’s because it introduces a new and fun way to address an old problem or just because it looks different than competitors, there has to be something about it that sticks in their heads.

Keep in mind that the physical product is only part of the equation here. If the trial stage is about your company delivering on its promises, it’s your job to craft guarantees your product can easily meet. Set your company up for success by guiding your buyers’ expectations through advertising, product copy, or post-purchase communications. You may want to test this messaging with focus groups or survey customers to learn where you’re hitting the mark and where you can be more accurate or specific. 

4. Preference 

The number of customers who choose your product over others is an indicator of brand equity. You can earn your customers’ preference by providing an excellent brand experience.

Make sure your buyers are getting the most out of your product with tutorials, user guides, or inspiration. More complex or technical products are more likely to call for the first two; we trust you can figure out if a user guide would be helpful to your audience. 

For items that don’t need a how-to, you might instead show suggested uses. This is another place where UGC works well. For instance, apparel sellers might share ‘fit inspiration to help buyers style their new clothes. Or, help customers think outside the box by offering some “hacks” that repurpose your product for unexpected uses. There’s a whole community centered around stretching the use cases for Ikea furniture; if your devoted users have similarly clever tips, don’t be afraid to share.

Keep in mind that your customers’ experiences go beyond their interactions with your product. Every interaction with your company matters — whether that’s the emails they open (useless or worth reading?), their visits to your website (is there an annoying modal in the way?), or communications with customer service (nobody likes those AI chatbots. Nobody.).

Make sure you’ve optimized the digital experience so interacting with your company is simple. You should also use proactive customer service to make your users feel like they’re real VIPs. 

5. Loyalty

You’ve succeeded in building brand equity with a consumer when they convert from a sometimes-buyer to a loyal customer. Loyalty may seem like the natural outcome of the previous steps of the journey, and you certainly can’t earn it without focusing on them as well. However, you can also nudge customers into becoming more loyal. 

Keep customers around by following through on the experience-building work you did previously. A buyer’s seventh purchase should be just as valuable and enjoyable as the first. Therefore, your efforts to engage customers with your product and brand can’t stop after that first W. Treat each new purchase as an opportunity to engage them more with your brand story and values, and make your product even more central to their life.

Beyond that, you can build brand loyalty in two ways. The first is by building a community around your brand. If you don’t have your own platform to bring people together, create a hashtag for users to share related content on their socials. This is where resharing UGC can be a big boon; customers love to see their content endorsed by an official brand account. 

If a community isn’t a viable option, try a loyalty rewards program. There’s multiple ways to structure a loyalty program. You can offer discounts, exclusive or early access to new products, or perks like free shipping or birthday rewards. Just getting people to enroll in a loyalty program makes them 30% more likely to increase their spending with you. If you can talk them into paying for it, they’re 60% more likely to drop more on your products. 

Loyalty matters because it’s cyclical. Once someone starts thinking of themself as a loyal customer, they’ll start acting more loyal, reinforcing their perception. The more value they get from your brand, the more value they’ll perceive it as having.  

How to measure brand equity

There’s not a brand equity meter you can access to measure how much consumers value your company and its products. You can, however, gather internal benchmarks for related metrics within a few categories:

• Financial “big picture” numbers like market share and company value
• Financial “small picture” figures like price growth and sensitivity, revenue potential, and purchasing frequency
• Sentiment measurements from web analytics, online engagement statistics, reviews, focus groups, and surveys
• Customer metrics like loyalty program participation, purchase frequency, and retention

The valuation and strength of your brand depend on your brand equity. Watch for fluctuations in any of the metrics your company uses to track these two KPIs, along with those listed above. 

You’ll have to rely on your judgment to determine whether a change in one number reflects a change in brand equity or whether it’s a response to other factors. If you see growth or declines across the board, though, you’re likely seeing the impact of your brand equity efforts. 

Solving brand equity challenges

Brand equity, like the stock market, can go up and down. All companies face challenges (whether from internal or external factors) that decrease the perceived value of their brands. If you’re not already performing regular brand reputation maintenance, it’s time to draw up a program. Then, get ahead of these hardships with our playbooks for some common obstacles. 

Crowdsourced brand information

Brands largely controlled their image when mass media was dominant; now, consumers can get their information anywhere. Customers who detail negative brand experiences online can drive away potential buyers and pollute your brand’s image.

Negative reviews from customers who just enjoy yelling about things are part of life — every Swiftie knows that the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. You should start worrying when those bad reviews start to outnumber the good ones or customers share stories outrageous enough to go viral. 

Prepare yourself by learning how to respond to bad reviews (tl;dr: quickly, briefly, and with empathy) so you can step in when a customer is unhappy. You’ll hopefully improve their experience and show shoppers your company cares about making things right. 

Failure to deliver on promises

Customers expect good value in return for their money. What defines “value” will vary based on the individual and type of product, but they’ll know when a product isn’t up to snuff. For instance, if a phone’s battery keeps catching fire until that phone gets banned from commercial flights, you’re probably not meeting expectations.

Most products don’t have this big of an expectations-reality mismatch, but you may face a disconnect between the product your company announced and the product it was able to create. When you learn customers aren’t having the experience you thought they would, it’s time to shift your messaging. 

There may not be a lot you can do to reach those who have already bought the hyped-up version of a product except offer refunds. But you should adjust your future marketing pitch so your next crop of buyers knows what they’re getting. 

Breaches of customer trust

People make mistakes, including people who are on the job. When those mistakes affect your customers, you may see a large decrease in brand equity.

A 2023 survey by PwC found that protecting consumer data is essential to earning trust — so hacks or other data breaches will harm your customer relationships big time. AI use is also shaping up as a trust-breaking practice for some companies.

38% of customers stop purchasing from a brand altogether after that brand damages their trust. The others will need some reassurance that your company understands the problem, takes it seriously, and is coming up with a plan to prevent further issues. Your exact approach will vary based on the incident that sparked the outrage, but as in the other cases, communicating with empathy and a genuine desire to make things right can help salvage your image.  

Every company has a brand equity journey

It takes time for customers to see your brand as a valuable part of their lives. It will take time to build that perception of value, too. You’ll likely see ups and downs during the process, and you may learn about some problems you didn’t even know existed. 

Don’t let these roadblocks deter you, and don’t feel down if you don’t get results overnight. Think about the brands you trust completely — how many months or years did it take for them to win you over? You’ll be starting at the same place with your customers, so have patience. Things will start to change as you follow the steps laid out in this article. 

One last tip: Keep yourself motivated by breaking your grand plan into small, concrete steps. The first thing you can do now — today! — is to take control of your brand communications. It’s an easy starting place, and it will set the foundation for more important work you’ll have to do later. Read our complete guide to ensuring brand consistency across channels to get started.

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Today, perusing through ratings and reviews and other user-generated content (UGC) has become a foundational part of the routine of online shopping. It’s how you truly experience a product without being able to see it in person — by hearing about the intricacies of a real product experience from one of your fellow shoppers. 

But even though we shop online so frequently (100% of shoppers we surveyed said they shop online at least once a month!) and therefore are utilizing UGC just as frequently, due to nefarious actors, we’re unfortunately having to spend a portion of that time validating the authenticity of that UGC.

Three quarters (75%) of our survey respondents are at least somewhat concerned about encountering fake reviews when shopping online. Only 9% said they’re either not very concerned or not concerned at all. 

So, how can we solve this problem? Not just to make e-commerce more efficient but also to make UGC more trustworthy and transparent. A trust signal (also referred to as a trustmark) might be the answer.

What are trust signals?

A trust signal is a logo or badge displayed on websites that tells customers the site has passed certain digital security tests or qualifications that confirm content authenticity. Their main purpose is to make shoppers feel more secure and confident in their purchasing decisions.

Trust signals research report key findings 

To find out exactly what consumers think about fraudulent UGC, what would give them more confidence in the consumer content they’re consuming, and what brands plan to do about it, we surveyed over 8,000 shoppers and 400 brands across the globe. Here’s what they said. 

1. Consumers are concerned about all types of fake UGC

Fake reviews aren’t the only type of fraudulent UGC that shoppers are worried about. Consumers are at least somewhat concerned about encountering fake shopper images (69%), fake social media content (69%), fake shopper videos (68%), and fake shopper questions and answers (66%).

Because they’re so worried about this fake content, they’re taking steps themselves to verify the legitimacy of an online store or product before making a purchase. Using trusted online shopping platforms (63%), researching the brand or company online (58%), checking for secure website indicators (e.g., padlock symbol, “https”) (51%), reading customer reviews (47%), and recommendations from a friend/family member (46%) are the most common ways consumers typically do so.

2. Consumers think brands should be taking care of fake reviews

Even though they’re doing it now, consumers don’t want to be doing all of this detective work themselves. The majority of shoppers we surveyed (63%) think the brand’s website they’re visiting should be solving issues of fraudulent content online, followed by governmental bodies (49%) and a third-party expert (36%).

And even while doing all of their own sleuthing to verify the online stores they are using, almost three quarters (73%) said that websites today are doing at least somewhat of a good job of blocking fraudulent content. Over a quarter (27%) think they’re doing a relatively poor job. 

However, they’d prefer if content on brand websites would be verified by a trusted third-party over than by the brand itself. Over two thirds (66%) said they’d have confidence in a “trust signal” [i.e. — lock, checkmark, symbol] that shows each piece of content has been verified by an independent third party – only 8% said they wouldn’t trust it. 

3. Brands think they’re on top of fraudulent issues

The vast majority (94%) of brands and retailers said that they rate the importance of maintaining online content authenticity in e-commerce business either high or very high. The majority are also either moderately (41%) or very (35%) confident in their current strategies and tools for detecting and preventing fraudulent or counterfeit content within their online channels. But only 10% said they were extremely confident. 

Despite their confidence, the majority (69%) of brands and retailers don’t currently use any fraud detection software today for transactional fraud (fraud that occurs where money is being exchanged). Only 31% do.

Two thirds (67%) are actively exploring or planning to implement any new technologies or strategies to enhance online content authenticity and fraud prevention. The majority (81%) said that they would consider utilizing a third-party vendor specializing in content authenticity verification to enhance their fraud prevention efforts, but 57% said with the caveat that the solution aligns with their needs. 

4. Consumers want a trust mark signal to help verify online content

When asked if they’d trust an industry-leading, third-party authentication provider to verify the trustworthiness of the content for all of the sites they visit, 70% of consumers said they would. 

On the other hand, when asked if they’d trust a website to verify its own content without an industry-leading third-party authentication of the UGC on its site, less than half (47%) said they would trust it. And when asked our survey respondents if they’d have confidence in a “trust signal’ [i.e. — lock, checkmark, symbol] that shows each piece of content has been verified by an independent third party, 

• 73% said they’d trust it for ratings and reviews
• 66% said they’d trust it for social media content
• 60% said they’d trust it for influencer content

5. Brands are interested in incorporating trust signals 

Brands are open to getting help in verifying their website’s content for shoppers. A whopping 79% said they have no concerns or reservations about outsourcing content authenticity verification to a third-party vendor.

When asked if they’d consider adding a “trust signal’ [i.e. — lock, checkmark, symbol] that shows each piece of content has been verified, 78% said they would be for ratings and reviews, 79% said they would be for customer answers, 73% said they would be for customer images, and 71% said for every customer video.

A trust signal eases consumers’ stress around fake UGC: give it to them

As our research shows, consumers want to continue using UGC. But they also want to make sure that it’s authentic. They want brands to ensure the validity of the UGC they consume, and a trust signal would be of use to them.

The Bazaarvoice Authentic Reviews Trust Mark is a symbol of a company’s dedication to authentic consumer feedback regarding its products and services. The Trust Mark is also a signal to consumers that the review content they see is safeguarded — by a neutral third party — with sophisticated fraud detection technology and industry-leading best practices. Learn more here. 

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Every day, hundreds of millions of posts appear on social media. Consumers are often inundated with content from brands, while retailers and brands find themselves shouting into the void. 

To stand out among the marketers jostling to be heard on social media, you must be smart, not loud. The best strategy is leveraging user-generated content (UGC) creators from your ideal customers. This approach will help you go beyond the once-and-done buyers and reach consumers who shop again and again. Let these loyalists become your brand advocates. 

Consumers want to build relationships, connect emotionally, and support the brands they cherish, especially during a tough economy. You just have to guide them. Here are some strategies for targeting and nurturing loyal customers to become your brand advocates. 

What is a brand advocate?

A brand advocate is an individual who shares their positive sentiment and experiences about your brand with their followers and friends.

Brand advocates are true loyalists. They enjoy your products, interact with you on social media, and appreciate opportunities to share feedback with you. It’s more than just whether people are spending money with you — it’s about emotion and identity.

According to Leonie Brown, Qualtrics XM Scientist, “True loyalists understand your product and brand, believe your offering to be good value, and identify with your product on a personal level.” 

Why you need brand advocates

Brand-generated marketing is important in a healthy marketing mix, but it’s impossible to meet consumers’ demands for content with traditional marketing messages alone, especially when your marketing team has a lean budget. Consumers also actually prefer UGC created by their peers. 

Brand advocates, who are real customers and love your brand, are the mouthpiece you didn’t know you needed. Because brand advocates are just regular people and not affiliated with your company, they’re highly influential. 

Consumers trust other consumers more than anyone else. 100% of shoppers say they’ve purchased a product based on a recommendation from another shopper that they saw online, and 78% trust everyday social media users just as much or more than they did a few years ago. 

Most shoppers say they won’t buy anything without consulting UGC first. They especially seek out customer reviews and photos or videos from other shoppers. 

Encourage a peer-to-peer recommendation environment by tapping into your brand advocates. 69% of marketers today are working with smaller creators, like everyday consumers and social media users. Partnering with these creators brings higher engagement, trust, and authenticity than traditional marketing — and, it’s cost-effective, scalable content. 

The creator economy is booming and is currently valued at $16.4 billion. Over half (53%) of shoppers consider themselves to be UGC creators, according to the Bazaarvoice Shopper Experience Index. 17% of these creators actively create UGC, and 36% will do so when asked. 

5 ways to find brand advocates

Both shoppers and marketers are tightening their budgets these days. Activating brand advocates makes other consumers feel more confident shopping with you, and this strategy offers a high return on investment when marketing teams need to do more with less. 

Consumers are leaning more into the expertise of everyday social media users and subject matter experts to discover new products, learn about how something can meet their needs, and purchase with confidence. 

We’ve found that about 1% of your community — your loyalists — can produce about 90% of your content. You just need to target your brand advocates and harness their power. Here’s how to find them. 

1. In-person events

Events like in-store holiday activations, sports-themed contests, or awareness month campaigns are a fun way to engage shoppers in real life. In-person events can help you stand out by offering something unique and memorable. 

In-person events also help you get to know your most loyal shoppers. Pay close attention to those who show up, as well as consumers who make an effort to speak to you, ask questions about your brand or products, and purchase from you. 

Loyalists tend to show up organically to an in-person event. But, you can reward them and make them feel extra special by peeking into your shopper data and personally inviting them to attend. This approach will build and nurture relationships with brand advocates. 

Another way to leverage in-person events is to see who usually attends similar activations. For instance, we spoke to digital creator Marina Mitrakos, whose passion for fashion and beauty led her to create content for brands. One way she’s developed her business is by attending fashion and beauty events and posting about them on social media. 

2. Email list/newsletter

While people enjoy receiving messages from brands in their inboxes, sending a mass blanket email to everyone on your list isn’t the best way to find brand advocates. People stay on email lists for years and never actually interact with brands. 

So, go beyond the people that are simply on your email list. Instead, track engagement on email content, like clicks on coupons, responses to polls and surveys, or email replies. These interactions showcase the consumers who are genuinely interested and invested in your brand. 

Emails are also a great way to ask customers for feedback and collect UGC, ultimately turning them into brand advocates. Our Shopper Experience Index revealed that 43% of consumers prefer brands and retailers to use emails to ask them for their opinions on products they’ve purchased. 

Sending an email after someone purchases from you to say thanks and ask for reviews and other UGC yields big results. We’ve found that review request emails increase review content by 4x to 9x, and sending a follow-up may lead to a 50% increase in review volume — or much more. Clothing brand MeUndies, for example, has seen a 218% increase in review collection since optimizing review request emails.

When requesting UGC, consumers like it when you tell them exactly what kind of content you want. For example, 60% will take a photo if you ask them to. 

Shoppers appreciate it when they feel like brands care about what they have to say and are listening and responding to their needs. They’ll be more than willing to respond to your request, create UGC, and become a brand advocate. 

3. Cause-related marketing campaigns

Cause marketing refers to marketing strategies that strive to increase revenue, while also taking action to improve society in some way. This might involve raising money or awareness for an issue or charitable organization or highlighting your sustainability or corporate responsibility initiatives. 

If your brand values a specific social, environmental, or humanitarian cause, be vocal about it — and take note of who’s interacting with content related to your cause. Consumers want to support and advocate for brands and retailers that also support the issues they care most about. 

For instance, if being eco-friendly matters to your brand, share your sustainability efforts and regularly promote that you’re cutting down on boxes and shipping to target customers who prefer to shop with sustainable brands. These efforts pay off. 

According to a Bazaarvoice survey of the Influenster community, 78% of shoppers said they prioritize using sustainable products across categories, and 77% will pay more for products promoted as “sustainable” or “clean.” 88% will purchase from new brands if they claim to be more sustainable. 

4. Pay attention to your social channels

Who are your most engaged followers? Most shoppers do follow their favorite brands on social media, but you should hone in on the followers who interact with you most. 

Knowing who frequently comments on your social posts, shares your content, enters giveaways, tags other users, and talks about your brand on social is crucial. These social media users make compelling brand advocates!

Social media is an amazing platform for starting conversations and getting noticed. Nearly 60% of shoppers discover new products and services on social media, where they research items and make purchasing decisions. Most shoppers also buy things directly from social media. 

Keeping tabs on who’s talking about you on social media is important, but don’t neglect people who are sliding into your DMs. Direct messages are an excellent place for one-on-one conversations and connections. 

Responding to any DMs, posts, or other customer feedback is crucial for relationship-building. Consumers expect a response from brands when they offer feedback, and responding heightens trust and showcases your authenticity. 

5. Targeted shopper communities

Using a product discovery and reviews platform like the Influenster App, gives you the opportunity to target the largest community of everyday consumers and skilled creators to generate the highest-quality UGC — including reviews, photos, videos, and social content. This, in turn, increases brand awareness, lets you reach new audiences, and helps you convert more customers across brand and retail. 

Influenster matches your product to your ideal audiences based on over 1,000 data points for each of the community’s 8 million global members. You can activate unique segments, such as loyalists and competitive users, members who shop at key retailers, and consumers with specific skincare or dietary needs. 

The ability to hyper-target consumers based on behaviors and other characteristics beyond typical demographics was a key benefit in choosing Influenster

Elizabeth Northrup, Associate Brand Manager at Kraft Heinz

Influenster members are also prolific content creators. Based on Bazaarvoice Sampling Community data from June 2023, here’s a look at what these members bring to the table: 

• 500,000+ new pieces of UGC each month
• 73 million total monthly impressions for Influenster social campaigns
• 34,000+ posts for Influenster social campaigns
• $5.5 million total monthly earned media value for Influenster social campaigns

One of the most effective ways to tap into the Influenster community and reap these benefits is through product sampling. This strategy gets your products into the hands of your ideal customers. In turn, they create authentic content about your brand in the form of social posts, reviews, photos, or videos. 

Beauty giant Rimmel sent its new Wonder Ombre Holographic Eyeliner out to target consumers through sending custom sampling boxes. This helped the brand collect over 1,200 product reviews, which are displayed on Influenster, the brand’s website, and syndicated across its retail partner websites. 

Rimmel’s sampling campaign generated real impact for the brand, including: 

• 44% higher sales lift versus benchmarks for average digital campaigns in the beauty category
• 69% higher sales life versus benchmarks in the product categories of the sampled products
• 73% of samplers said they would likely purchase something from Rimmel in the next 6 months 

Targeting your ideal customers to be brand advocates

One-time or some-time customers are great. But, marketing to all-the-time customers is a winning strategy. These shoppers are your ideal customers, who love your products, your mission, and the experiences you provide, both online and in-person. 

Finding and building relationships with your brand advocates builds trust with other consumers — helping you stand out and helping them feel confident and appreciated.

If you’re struggling to find advocates for your brand or you don’t know where to look, Bazaarvoice affable.ai is an AI-driven influencer marketing platform that lets you easily find your creators, manage collaborations, track your campaigns, and measure your performance.

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Social media and search algorithms reward fresh, relevant content and frequent posting. That’s great news if you have a lot of content and resources to work with. Not so much if you don’t.

Saturated digital spaces and higher standards for content put pressure on brands to elevate and increase their production. The time and effort needed to regularly create and distribute engaging content across channels is substantial. 

Forming a content curation plan is a game-changer for streamlining the production process and supplementing original content creation. Learn how to conquer the challenges of curating authentic content and how to implement a successful strategy.

Chapters:

1. What is content curation?
2. How does content curation benefit e-commerce brands?
3. Hurdles to curating authentic content
4. 8 tactics for curating quality content and distributing it across channels
5. Continue to evolve your content curation strategy

What is content curation?

Content curation is a way for e-commerce brands to share content from outside sources, including individuals and organizations, on their own marketing channels.

Effective content curation sources relevant and authentic content, and shares it with helpful context on appropriate channels. You should have an intentional strategy for content curation to bring value to your audience and drive results. 

Examples of different types of content you could curate include visual social media like images and videos, articles, data reports, podcasts, TV or film clips, and customer reviews. You can share curated content on your most active customer touchpoints, including your product pages, blog, social media channels, and emails. 

How does content curation benefit e-commerce brands?

Content curation offers a range of benefits to e-commerce brands regardless of size or maturity. Some of the top advantages include:

• Eases workflow: Curating content reduces the pressure, time, and effort required to regularly create original content. Instead of ideating, writing, filming, shooting, and designing content from scratch each time, you can supplement by sharing the content that someone else produced 
• Reduces costs: Because content curation reduces the time and in-house or outsourced talent that original content creation demands, it also eliminates the associated costs
• Supplies social proof: Whenever you share the kind of content that features or specifically mentions your brand and products, you’re providing social proof. When your audience sees other people recommending your products and showing love for your brand, it has a persuasive and contagious effect — this is the power of user-generated content (UGC)
• Diversifies content mix: The same type and tone of content can get boring and predictable quickly. And if the content is only coming from your brand’s perspective, that can be a turn-off. 74% of shoppers trust UGC more than brand-created content on product pages and 55% say they’re unlikely to purchase a product without consulting UGC, according to our Shopper Experience Index. Curating content allows you to share diverse voices, viewpoints, and styles of content to keep it fresh and interesting
• Increases engagement and reach: By sharing content from customers, influencers, publications, or other media and tagging those creators, you’re encouraging those sources to respond in kind. When they like, comment, or share your curated content, that’s introducing it to their own audience for further reach and engagement
• Demonstrates thought leadership: When you intentionally and thoughtfully share content, it shows you’re in tune with the latest trends and important voices. Even if you didn’t create the content originally, you can amplify clever takes and creative insights while adding to the conversation

Hurdles to curating authentic content

Content curation seems simple and straightforward enough, but to do it right, it gets more complicated. And by right, we mean consistent and authentic. It’s not just about sharing content to fill holes in your content calendar. It needs to be content created by real people voicing honest opinions that accurately reflect your brand, online community, and products. 

Understanding and addressing these challenges is crucial for e-commerce brands to establish a trustworthy online presence. Here’s some of the top obstacles to seamlessly curating a steady flow of authentic content.

Shortage of quality content

Consumers today are always-on and confronted with more content on every channel than ever. To get their attention and pique their interest, you need to express a unique style and voice along with striking visuals.

That goes for both the content your brand creates and curates. While there’s no shortage of content in every major digital space, finding the kind of quality content worthy of sharing is the real issue. Before you select and share content, you need to ensure it meets certain criteria, like it: 

• Comes from a trustworthy source
• Is accurate
• Is timely and up-to-date 
• Meets your visual and editorial quality standards
• Serves a purpose for your audience
• Reflects your brand values and identity
• Meets your content KPIs, i.e., increases brand awareness and drives conversions

Inconsistencies across channels

Customers notice when a brand’s presence across marketing channels is disjointed, and it may cause them to abandon their journey. The majority (75%) of shoppers expect a cohesive and connected experience on each brand channel. Discrepancies in tone, style, aesthetics, and messaging on different channels can compromise a consistent experience for your customers.

Content formats, audience, and language can all vary from one channel to another. All of these factors need to be in alignment when distributing curated content according to each channel’s unique characteristics. Your email newsletter has totally different capabilities and a more narrow audience than, say, your TikTok profile.

So, while you want to maintain your major brand elements on each, you also have to modify your content to fit each channel. 

Challenges in content verification 

When you’re sharing content from other sources, it’s crucial that the source and the content itself are legitimate. There’s bots, fake reviews, misinformation, and manipulated visuals at play in today’s digital arena. You need to have a reliable fact-checking and content-vetting process in place to ensure authenticity and deliver trustworthy content.

Copyright issues

Before you share content from other creators, ensure you’re not violating any intellectual property or copyright restrictions. To avoid infringement and any associated consequences, follow these best practices: 

• Check the fair use guidelines for any channels you don’t own
• Ask for permission to share the source’s content
• Properly attribute and credit the content source

Partnering with Bazaarvoice takes care of this important step for you with our automated rights-requesting capabilities. This feature enables a streamlined way to ask creators permission to use their content in your marketing materials. 

8 tactics for curating quality content and distributing it across channels

Luckily, you can easily sidestep all of those roadblocks to successful content curation and create a successful strategy by following these best practices. 

1. Understand your audience’s interests and preferred channels

How do you know if the content you curate, share, and distribute will be valuable? First, you need to understand what will help, attract, and reach your audience. Research your audience to understand what their needs and pain points are that your product solves. 

What type of content gets the most engagement? Where is your audience most active, and which of your channels has the most engaged followers? Those answers will reveal what to focus on, whether that’s tutorials on TikTok, reviews featured in email campaigns, shoppable Instagram posts, galleries of customer photos on product pages, etc.

2. Create and follow a content style guide

Establishing and implementing a content style guide is key to maintaining consistency across channels. It also provides a clear framework for your team to follow. Your style guide serves as a rulebook that includes instructions for executing your brand’s content curation strategy. These are some of the elements to include:

• Voice: The unique personality and message of your brand that represents its values and mission
• Tone: This can change depending on the situation, from the norm which could be upbeat and friendly to empathetic and understanding for delicate situations
• Format: When to use short-form and long-form content, images, videos, audio, and other elements depending on the channel
• Verification steps: The process for verifying content is authentic
• Image and video specs: The quality standards, length, and dimensions for visual assets
• Content types: What types of content work best for each platform, including educational vs. entertaining, top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel, etc.
• Tagging and attribution: How to give credit to content sources and tag them on each channel

3. Tailor content for each channel

While consistency is key, it’s also essential to respect the unique characteristics of each channel. Tailor content to fit the specific nuances of platforms without compromising the overarching brand message. Adapt visual elements, messaging length, and content formats to align seamlessly with the expectations of users on each channel.

This approach also helps broaden and diversify your marketing content mix. Different types of content have their own unique advantages, and you can track how each performs. For example, on e-commerce websites, product reviews impact purchasing decisions for 78% of consumers, and product photos taken by shoppers impact purchasing for 69%. Social media is another popular shopping source where lifestyle videos and photos taken by real shoppers thrive.

When you curate content for one channel, you can repurpose it for a different channel to maximize its reach and impact. For example, you can play clips of a podcast that mentions your brand or niche as an Instagram post and link to the episode with a written takeaway in an email campaign. Or, you can share a TikTok tutorial of how to use one of your products on your brand’s TikTok feed and also embed it in a blog post on a related topic on your website.

4. Encourage and foster UGC

You can create a steady flow of authentic content by leveraging UGC to distribute across channels. Besides its authenticity, it’s also very persuasive, giving 78% of shoppers more confidence in making purchases. 

UGC includes reviews, photos, videos, blog posts, podcast episodes, and any other content created by your own audience. UGC can come from anyone who’s purchased a product from you regardless of their online presence or from an influencer with a large following. There’s so many ways to collect and encourage UGC, including: 

• Promoting branded hashtags for users to include when posting UGC for a chance to be featured on your website or social channels
• Using customer satisfaction surveys to collect feedback and reviews
• Requesting reviews via email and SMS marketing 
• Hosting a social media contest or giveaway for followers who submit photos, videos, or reviews
• Launching a product sampling campaign offering consumers samples in exchange for UGC

FAs a good example, The Body Shop entices customers to share their social media photos using #TheBodyShop to be featured on their website gallery. Showcasing UGC galleries earned The Body Shop a 13% increase in average order value.

5. Use social listening and search engine alerts 

Social listening tools and search engine alerts are excellent content curation resources because they track content that tags or mentions your brand, industry, or relevant topics.

Social listening means monitoring online conversations across social media platforms that mention your brand or a specific hashtag you’re tracking. With social listening, you can gain valuable insights into consumer sentiments, preferences, and emerging trends. By actively listening to your audience, you can identify content to share, reveal relevant topics to focus on, and gauge the effectiveness of current content.

Setting up Google search alerts keeps you informed about industry trends, competitor activities, and relevant keywords. These real-time notifications allow brands to keep up with fresh content to share and current interests. You can set up alerts for any topic you want and receive them in your email inbox.

6. Add context and your brand’s perspective 

Merely sharing curated content isn’t enough. When you post content from other sources, add your own feedback, recommendations, or thoughts. If it needs explanation outside of its original location, provide that for your audience. Add to the conversation and tie it back to your brand’s message and content goals.

MAM Baby does a great job of this on Instagram. The brand curates relevant content from their customers and shares it on their Instagram page. They add their own message to each post, like more context on featured products or their own reactions showing their brand’s personality.

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A post shared by MAM Baby (@mambaby_usa)

They also combined their UGC curation with social commerce to make their Instagram feed shoppable, leading to increased site visits by 157% and an extra £96k in annual revenue.

7. Streamline and centralize content planning and distribution 

When you have multiple people juggling all the content for your various marketing channels, you need an easy way to manage it all. You can do that by having a content supply chain that everyone can access for all your content planning, drafting, approval, and scheduling tasks. That could be folders with multiple documents for content calendars, drafts for review, your style guide, and other resources. 

Or, you can invest in one centralized platform to access everything you need, including Bazaarvoice tools like Social Media Manager. This tool lets you create and schedule content, plus analyze performance and competitors all in one place.

8. Implement authenticity review processes

Establish a process and guidelines to ensure the content you’re sharing is trustworthy and true to your brand pillars. Make sure you collaborate with influencers who create genuine content and whose presence aligns with your brand values. Check each review and piece of content you source to make sure it’s not fraudulent. 

If you’re a smaller business, it might make more sense to vet each piece of content and its creator manually, one at a time. If you’re scaling your business or marketing efforts, you could partner with a team like Bazaarvoice that uses fraud detection technology, algorithms, and analysts to ensure authenticity.

Continue to evolve your content curation strategy

Once you have your plan and process in place for curating content, put it to the test and then measure the results. Use analytics to see what’s working and what’s lacking engagement. Then, use those insights to refine your strategy, continue what’s performing well, and address what isn’t.

Find out more about how to find, analyze, and apply consumer insights to optimize and elevate your content strategy in our guide: The smart marketer’s guide to finding and using customer insights.

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Masterclass: Fuel your content engine with quality content at scale

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Think about it, if you pay for a front-row seat at the ballet, you expect to see a spectacle of coordination and grace. After all, you didn’t spend good money to witness one dancer headbanging to Tchaikovsky while another is pirouetting across the stage. That would be a disappointment (and probably, a little weird).

Audiences have similar expectations for your brand. They want a synchronized visual identity, precise messaging, and a steady experience across every touchpoint. In short, they want consistency.

With so many channels to manage, each demanding more and fresher content than the last, how can brands keep consistency at the forefront?

Chapters:

1. What is brand consistency and why is it important?
2. 8 strategies to keep your branding consistent
3. Examples of brand consistency
4. From consistency to authenticity: the next step for your brand

What is brand consistency and why is it important?

Brand consistency means delivering content and experiences in line with your brand’s identity, values, and strategy across all channels. It’s about creating a cohesive narrative that threads through every Instagram story, every Google ad, and every PR package. 

This unified approach makes your brand instantly recognizable, whether through the color palette of your ads, the tone of your content, or the personality of your social media posts.

With consistent branding, your audience is enveloped in the essence of your brand with every interaction, slowly building trust and familiarity. 

Enhance brand recognition

Think of how a green mermaid signals a Starbucks, or how a checkmark instantly brings Nike to mind. These symbols are the shorthand for the brands they represent — not by chance, but by careful consistency, respected and maintained over the years and across channels.

You want your brand to become a friendly face in the crowd, a welcoming sight to customers. Repeated exposure to the same visuals, slogans, and brand ethos helps you accomplish that. When your brand is consistently represented, it doesn’t just stand out. It stands for something in the minds of consumers. It becomes a story they remember and trust, one that feels comforting in its familiarity. 

And trust is the foundation of successful customer relationships: if people trust you, they will reward you with purchases, recommendations, and long-lasting loyalty.

Foster brand advocacy

Consistent branding transcends visual elements. Uniformity in logos, colors, and typography matters, but it’s just as essential to deliver on your brand’s promises and provide reliable experiences. 

When customers encounter consistent messaging, the same level of service, and the same commitment to quality in every interaction, they turn into vocal advocates for your brand.

Advocates aren’t just sharing a logo. They’re sharing powerful stories that can make other people excited about your company. They’re the ones who celebrate your brand and carry it forward, all because they have come to trust in its unwavering presence in their lives.

8 strategies to keep your branding consistent

Let’s dissect eight actionable steps you can take to lay the groundwork for a strong brand identity and maintain its integrity across all platforms and initiatives. 

1. Establish and enforce brand guidelines

Let’s go back to our headbanging and pirouetting dancers. In this scenario, there’s an obvious disconnect. Everyone is doing something different because there isn’t a clear set of steps to follow. The same level of chaos ensues when a brand operates without guidelines.

Guidelines are a blueprint for how your brand shows itself to the world. They ensure that everyone, from the marketing team to external partners, understands how to represent the brand correctly. 

Here’s the key elements that should be included in your guidelines:

• Logo usage: Instructions on how to use the logo (and its variants), including sizing, spacing, what to avoid, and variations for different contexts
• Color palette: An explanation of primary and secondary brand colors, including exact color codes for print, web, and digital
• Typography: Detailing the typefaces and fonts your brand uses, including hierarchies and how they should be used in various formats
• Imagery and iconography: Guidance on the style and types of images, illustrations, and icons that fit with the brand’s aesthetic
• Voice and tone: Outline of the brand’s personality in writing, including how it should sound in different types of communication
• Editorial style: The particular style choices your brand makes in writing, which can include grammar, punctuation, and preferred spelling
• Brand story: A narrative that communicates the brand’s history, mission, vision, and core values
• Applications: Examples of how to apply these elements in different contexts, such as social media, advertising, website design, packaging, and more

Once the guidelines are in place, store them in a central location, like a shared drive or an intranet, where they can be easily accessed by anyone who needs them. 

The enforcing part is just as relevant as the establishing portion. Guidelines won’t do any good if no one uses them, so conduct regular training sessions for all employees, especially team members directly working with your brand’s identity. These sessions should walk through the guidelines in detail, explaining the rationale behind each element and showcasing examples of correct and incorrect usage. 

2. Regularly audit your brand across channels

Maintaining brand consistency is an active process. While creating guidelines lays the foundation, audits keep the performance in line and synchronized across channels. 

Here’s a step-by-step process you can follow for your brand consistency audits:

1. Do thorough channel reviews. Review every channel where your brand is present, from social media platforms to your website and ads. Look for discrepancies in brand elements like logo placement, color schemes, and font usage. Check that your brand’s core messages are clear and that all content supports your overall brand story, and evaluate whether the tone and voice are uniform
2. Monitor brand touchpoints. Consider the customer journey from start to finish. Is there a consistent level of service and brand presence at every touchpoint, from initial discovery through post-purchase support?
3. Evaluate partnership and affiliate representation. Make sure partners, influencers, and affiliates are adhering to your guidelines. Their representation of your brand should be as accurate and consistent as your own channels
4. Conduct a competitive benchmarking. Regularly compare your branding efforts with your competitors to evaluate whether your brand stands out while adhering to industry standards

The frequency of these audits will depend on the size of your company and the scope of your branding efforts, but they should be regular enough to catch issues before they become ingrained in your brand’s presentation. Quarterly or bi-annual audits strike a balance between being thorough and adaptable. 

3. Create and maintain a social media posting schedule

Social media channels are often the most dynamic touchpoints of a brand, buzzing with updates and conversations. So much activity means they’re particularly vulnerable to inconsistencies, but creating a social media content calendar curbs potential issues on this front.

A disciplined posting schedule helps you evenly distribute content across important dates and events, so that your message is timely and relevant. It also allows you to cater to the nuances of each platform while maintaining the thread of your brand’s voice and visual style. For instance, the fast pace of X (formerly known as Twitter) might require multiple updates a day, while Instagram may benefit from a well-crafted post every other day. 

Keeping a consistent schedule also means you can plan better for active engagement — answering comments, joining conversations, and updating followers with fresh and relevant content that reinforces your brand promise.

4. Monitor and respond to feedback

Customer feedback, whether it’s in the form of online reviews, social media comments, or customer surveys, provides precious insights into how your brand is perceived across different channels. 

Regularly monitoring this feedback helps you understand the customer experience and identify any inconsistencies in brand communication. If customers frequently mention a disconnect between your brand on social media and your website (very friendly and humorous vs extremely serious, for example), that’s a clear sign that your brand consistency needs attention.

Actively responding to feedback also shows that your brand values its customers and is committed to maintaining a dialogue with them. This doesn’t just apply to positive feedback, either! How your brand addresses criticism or negative comments can significantly impact customer perceptions. A consistent, respectful, and solution-oriented response strategy helps reinforce your brand’s ethos, even in the face of challenges.

5. Practice what you preach

As we already touched on, consistent branding is also about living up to the expectations set by your brand’s promises. When your company’s actions align with its stated values and mission, customers take notice. And the opposite is also true.

Say your brand positions itself as an environmentally friendly and sustainable company, but then customers discover your products are packaged with non-recyclable materials. This discrepancy will lead to a loss of trust in your commitment to sustainability. Customers expect the brands they support to be transparent and genuine in their practices, not just in their messaging. 

Part of practicing what you preach involves regularly reviewing and reassessing your business practices and products to ensure they stay in sync with your branding. It’s okay to stumble, as long as you own up to it — according to Sprout Social, 89% of people say a business can regain their trust if it admits to a mistake and is transparent about the steps it will take to resolve the issue.

6. Don’t sleep on customer service

Customer service is a public performance of your brand’s commitment to its values, and consistency on this front is just as crucial as in any other aspect of your branding. 

If your brand is known for being cheerful and friendly, each service interaction should reflect that. Every email, phone call, and live chat should display the same level of enthusiasm and warmth that customers have come to expect based on your brand’s messaging and personality. It’s not just about resolving customer issues — it’s about doing it in a way that reinforces your identity.

This is another area where your promises are put to the test. If your brand touts its commitment to swift customer service, every aspect of customer interaction should be optimized for speed, from the first response to the resolution. 

Train your customer service team to understand and embody your brand’s identity and values. Arm them with the knowledge and tools to provide a consistent level of service that matches your standards and voice across all channels.

And, of course, collect feedback from your customers and use it to refine your service approach and align it more closely with their expectations.

7. Work with partners that source the right content for your brand

Producing enough content to keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media is a common challenge for brands. One of the best solutions to this conundrum is sourcing and sharing UGC (user-generated content), which is any piece of content produced by customers and not brands. 

While this takes the weight of creating content off brands’ shoulders, there’s the issue of curating it. UGC brings the voice of the customer into your brand narrative, but not every piece of content is guaranteed to resonate with your brand’s voice or adhere to your guidelines. And sifting through all the UGC to ensure it does is time-consuming and out of reach for teams short on time.

Solutions like Creator Partnerships take on the heavy lifting of content sourcing and curation, allowing you to tap into the power of UGC without risking brand consistency. Connect brands with a network of content creators to produce high-quality, on-brand social content that amplifies your brand story through their engaged followings. 

The process is simple — you provide your content goals, ideal audience, and core messaging, and Bazaarvoice handles the rest. We make sure that the content not only resonates with your audience but also follows the guidelines, feeling like a natural extension of your brand.

8. Don’t follow trends blindly

The pressure to jump on the next TikTok trend or Instagram fad is hard to ignore. And trends can be a powerful way to put your brand in front of new audiences, show off your personality, and humanize the company. But doing so without strategic thinking can muddle your brand and dilute its consistency.

Before adopting or adding your own spin to a social media trend, ask yourself whether it aligns with your values and messaging. Not every viral hashtag challenge or meme format fits the narrative your brand is building, and that’s okay. The key is to be selective and integrate trends that complement your brand identity rather than overshadow it.

If your brand is on the more sober and professional side, suddenly participating in a quirky dance will disorient your audience (yes, the headbanging dancer metaphor is still relevant here.) 

On the flip side, if a trend naturally aligns with your brand’s persona, it can be woven into your marketing strategy to feel organic and enhance engagement without sacrificing brand consistency.

3 examples of brand consistency 

What does brand consistency look like in action? Here’s what three successful brands can teach us about maintaining a cohesive narrative across channels, products, and marketing campaigns.

1. Duolingo

You know the bird, we know the bird, your grandma probably knows the bird. Duolingo’s green owl has become an emblematic figure for language learning worldwide. And it’s not just about the bird, but rather the personality that Duolingo consistently manifests in every platform. 

From its friendly push notifications to its playful social media presence, Duolingo maintains a cohesive narrative that’s equal parts instructive and entertaining. The brand leverages its quirky tone of voice and approachable visual style to create a learning experience that feels less like a chore and more like a conversation with a witty friend (who is sometimes a tad menacing).

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A post shared by Duolingo (@duolingo)

Whether it’s through their app or social media posts, Duolingo stays true to its core message: learning can be fun. It has turned language education on its head by keeping a consistent theme of gamification and light-heartedness that resonates with a broad audience. The signature green color palette and the playful illustrations are instantly recognizable, and also present across the website, app, emails, and social media.

Plus, even when the brand innovates, it’s imbued with the same personality that audiences have come to love. The Duolingo ABC app for kid literacy, for example, carries over the same brand aesthetics and ethos, providing familiarity and reliability to users.

2. Amazon

Amazon set the bar high for brand consistency across every single customer touchpoint. The iconic smile etched onto its logo represents what Amazon promises to deliver with every package, service, and interaction — customer joy and satisfaction.

This pledge to put customer happiness above all else is consistently present in all aspects of Amazon’s branding. Its website is intuitive and takes a no-frills approach to design and navigation, its voice maintains a professional and informative tone across channels, and every new business venture, from cloud computing to entertainment, remains unmistakably Amazon. 

The e-commerce giant only got this far because it walks the walk. Amazon doesn’t just say it’s customer obsessed, but proves it with fast and hassle-free deliveries, personalized recommendations, swift resolutions to customer issues, and generous return policies.

3. Glossier

We live in an aesthetics-obsessed world, particularly where social media is concerned. When cosmetics brand Glossier arrived on the scene, it quickly captured the hearts and wallets of its target audience — millennial and Gen Z women. And a lot of its success can be attributed to the aesthetically pleasing, pastel-glazed branding that spoke directly to what consumers craved.

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A post shared by Glossier (@glossier)

From the simple, functional, and feminine packaging to the minimalistic yet ethereal store decor, every aspect of Glossier’s branding reflects that it “was built to make beauty accessible and uncomplicated.” It hit the sweet spot in projecting an aspirational but very approachable persona, a “big sister” the audience looks up to and is more than happy to engage with.

The brand’s social media presence, particularly on Instagram and TikTok, was vital in establishing Glossier’s identity and building a community of mega fans that spread the word about the company. Each product picture aligns with the brand’s visual identity, while each tutorial further emphasizes Glossier’s ethos that beauty doesn’t have to be complicated.

From consistency to authenticity: the next step for your brand

Consistent branding is key to becoming a familiar and steady presence in your audience’s lives, feeds, and inboxes. But in a saturated and highly competitive market, consistency alone isn’t enough to thrive. Brands that truly wish to stand out and build lasting bonds with their customers have to be authentic.

Authenticity is the linchpin of customer trust. Today’s shoppers have more choices and power than ever, so it’s up to brands to be transparent, human, and reliable. For a complete set of strategies for building consumer trust with authenticity, try our e-book: The authenticity movement: building consumer trust.

But what’s interesting is that while most brands recognize this, most are still catching up in fine-tuning their content strategies and channel investments to meet this new demand.

If you’re one of the brands looking to transform your shopping experience but aren’t sure of the best way to go about it, our new research has the answers to help you get started.

All stats are from our Shopper Experience Index report, unless stated otherwise.

Chapters:

1. What is voice of the customer?
2. 8 ways the voice of the customer transforms the shopping experience
3. How to successfully navigate using the voice of the customer
4. Get started with the voice of the customer

In today’s economy, where every purchase is given a second thought, delivering an exceptional shopping experience is essential — 98% of shoppers value experience over price. Even shoppers minimally affected by inflation and rising prices are looking to cut costs wherever they can. They’re questioning non-essential purchases, shopping around for bargains, and turning to more private-label brands.

But here’s the thing. Shoppers don’t want to hear about how great your products are from you — they want to hear it from your customers. Case in point: our research revealed that 74% of consumers trust shopper content more than brand-provided content on a product page.

So what can you do to meet their needs? 

Develop a voice of the customer strategy that helps you gather conversion-driving shopper content. Your voice of the customer content can also reveal insights that can be used to improve products, services, and the shopping experience. 

What is voice of the customer?

Voice of the customer (VoC) is the process of collecting and analyzing shopper feedback and then using this information to understand how consumers perceive a product, service, or brand. The feedback captures consumers’ opinions, preferences, and expectations through surveys, reviews, social media, and other channels.

Keeping a customer first mindset and learning from the outside in is a powerful tool for brands and retailers that want to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. And given that 78% of consumers feel more confident in a purchase when they view content from other shoppers, it’s what consumers want to see.

User-generated content (UGC) is the voice of the customer in physical form. This shopper-created content, in the form of customer reviews, Q&As, and social imagery and videos, is a reflection of a customer’s authentic voice. It can be used on your website, product pages, and social media channels, and every part of your digital shelf to transform the shopping experience — and drive growth.

VOC value for brands and retailers

It’s no surprise that 67% of brands and retailers intend to increase UGC spend in the next year. Currently, brands and retailers are using UGC to:

• Improve the shopper experience (80%)
• Increase product discovery (79%)
• Increase conversions (78%)
• Improve marketing messaging (76%)
• Improve product pages (74%)
• Boost SEO (68%)
• Reduce returns (67%)

But how does your organization view the voice of the customer? And does it include user-generated content today? If not, it’s time for a review.

8 ways the voice of the customer transforms the shopping experience

From more sales to more satisfied customers, here’s eight ways voice of the customer marketing can help you boost engagement throughout the buying cycle. 

1. Drive more sales  

For many brands and retailers, the most appealing aspect of tapping into the voice of the customer is that it helps them increase sales.

• Over half of shoppers say they’re unlikely to buy a product that doesn’t feature any type of customer opinion-sharing content
• More than 75% of consumers say reviews and Q&As affect their purchase decisions 
• 69% agree photos of products taken by other shoppers have an impact on their purchases 

When it comes to UGC, consumers want to see a variety of content. A 5-star rating is nice, but shoppers need more context to feel confident in their purchase.

In the first 20 seconds of landing on a product page, consumers say high-quality reviews will have the biggest impact on their shopping experience, followed by average star ratings. The number of reviews will also determine whether they add the product to their cart (we’ll have more on how much user-generated content you need in a minute). Shoppers also want to see reviews that are relevant to their experiences and use cases.

Consumers are willing to do their research. For high-cost items, 89% of shoppers will spend 5 minutes or more reading user-generated content like reviews, images, and social content before making a purchase. Even for low-cost items, more than half of shoppers are willing to spend at least 5 minutes reading other shoppers’ reviews and feedback. 

Voice of the customer doesn’t just affect your online sales, either. When we look at our network data and omnichannel research, we see consumers relying on opinion-sharing content even when they’re shopping in-store. 

For example, the average ROBO (research online, buy offline) multiplier for brands in the Bazaarvoice Network is 3.91x — meaning that for every $1 of revenue influenced online, VoC content influences $3.91 in-store.

Each industry has different ROBOs. For example, health and beauty products see an average of $5.26 of additional in-store sales for every $1 of sales influenced by voice of the customer content online.

2. Stand out in search 

With 70% of consumers open to trying a new brand or product during the present economic downturn, now’s the time to stand out on search.

Voice of the customer content, like reviews and other user-generated photos and videos, provide a consistent stream of fresh content, a major factor in Google’s ranking criteria.

When someone else searches for the same terms found in product reviews, those product pages will appear higher in search results. The clickthrough rate of long-tail keywords is also 3% to 6% higher than broad searches, and they’re also less competitive to rank for than shorter keywords.

But search is changing. One of the biggest revelations from our study is that social media is the new search engine. While traditional search engines (Google, Bing) are still the primary place shoppers start their online journey, social media (Instagram, TikTok) is also playing an increasingly important role, with 58% of shoppers saying they discovered a product or service through social media (as opposed to 49% through search engines).

Over half (58%) of shoppers say they often discover a product or service through social media, and 49% agree they’re more likely to find products and services on social than any other channel. 

Social media influences the full shopper journey especially for younger age groups. For example, while 50% of all shoppers have bought products via social media in the past year, this percentage increases to 73% among 18-34-year-olds and 64% among 35-44-year-olds.

To effectively meet shopper expectations, it’s crucial to engage with customers on their preferred platforms. Meet them at their watering holes. Nowadays, that’s predominantly on social media.

3. Acquire new customers

Another takeaway from the report is that current economic conditions and changes in buyer behavior present a unique opportunity for retailers and brands. 

To save money during the financial downturn, shoppers are open to trying new brands and products. More than 2 in 3 shoppers (70%) say they’re willing to consider switching to a new brand, even for products they normally buy.

The changes in where people shop are also providing additional opportunities to meet consumers where they are in their buying journey and give them the extra info they need to move forward. 

4. Reduce content creation costs

Let’s be real. Content creation takes time and not all of your products will have the same content resources allocated to them. And whether you have a team of full-time writers or are paying an outside agency, branded content creation can be time consuming and expensive. It’s a much more cost-effective to have a content supply chain of branded and non-branded content than producing all your content in-house.

To add to these challenges, many brands separate branded top-of-funnel content and bottom-of-funnel content and the teams that manage them. The beauty of UGC is that it can serve multiple purposes at multiple stages of the buying process. With UGC, you have a largely untapped resource of full-funnel content to curate and ignite to add to your current branded content.  

It’s also more likely to inspire trust than anything your team or an outside agency develops. On a product page, 74% of consumers trust shopper content more than the brand-provided content.

5. Build brand consistency across channels

We found that 75% of consumers expect to get the same experience from a brand regardless of the channel. This sounds a given, but in the digital age, your brand’s reputation is largely shaped by what customers are saying about you online. To protect your brand image and reputation, and deliver a consistent brand experience wherever shoppers are, you’ll need to embrace and share the voice of the customer (more on that to follow), listen to their feedback, and adapt strategies accordingly.

Voice of the customer content works across the funnel and enhances all of your customer acquisition channels. It can inspire a top-of-funnel blog post on your website or it can serve as a standalone social media post. And it can make for a more powerful product page experience. By telling the same story at multiple customer touch points, voice of the customer helps create a more consistent shopping experience. 

6. Collate customer feedback and trust

Showing that you’re interested in your customers’ opinions and feedback helps cultivate a sense of brand loyalty. By showcasing and taking action on user-generated content, you’re showing customers you care about what they think and are eager to learn from their experiences.

• 16% of shoppers consider themselves to be proactive creators who actively seek out opportunities to share their opinions
• 36% identify as reactive contributors. They’re happy to share their opinions — when asked

So how do you tap into the power of proactive creators and boost the contributions of reactive shoppers? 

• 43% of shoppers say they prefer to receive an email asking for their opinion on a product they have purchased
• About 20% say they prefer to receive prompts via text messages, the retailer’s app, or an in-person interaction
• 35% say they would prefer to receive a sample to review
• 70% of consumers are open to a brand asking to share their social media post or video — as long as they’ve given the brand permission to do so

The bottom line is this: consumers want to see shopper content about your brand. And consumers want to leave feedback about your brand. You can easily foster a customer loyalty loop by enabling both.

7. Build trust — especially during a downturn

During a downturn, shoppers are turning to user-generated content to make sure they’re getting the best value for their money. They want to make sure they are getting the right product for their needs.

This trend is more extreme in the US, where 43% of shoppers are turning to other customers’ opinion-sharing content to make sure they’re making the right decision. Younger shoppers, including 50% of 18- to 20-year-olds and 51% of 25- to 34-year-olds, rely on user-genrated content to discover, consider, and purchase new products and brands.

8. Set expectations

A customer wrote a negative review. Time to freak out, right? Not necessarily. Negative reviews can actually be a boost to your voice of the customer program. 

In a separate survey we recently published, over half (60%) of respondents said that negative reviews are as important as positive reviews in their decision to buy a product. They give consumers a true sense of a product or service.

• 75% of shoppers say it’s important to read a balance of positive and negative reviews when purchasing to set expectations correctly

Negative reviews also provide an opportunity to engage with consumers. By responding to, and acting on, negative feedback, you’ll foster more trust and loyalty with customers. 62% of consumers expect a response from the company when they leave a negative review, so give them one.

How to successfully navigate the voice of the customer

Knowing the benefits of tapping into the voice of the customer and how it can transform your shopping experience is one thing, but knowing the tactics pitfalls to watch out for is another. There’s a few best practices to follow that ensure you provide the most authentic voice possible and keep up with content demands.

Keep up with consumers’ need for shopper content

When it comes to user-generated content, consumers want to read a lot of reviews and ratings before they feel comfortable completing their purchase:

• 63% of shoppers need a product to have more than 10 reviews 
• 28% of shoppers need a product to have more than 50 reviews

And it’s not just reviews. The vast majority of consumers also want to see user-generated images in addition to branded photos:

• 76% say they need to see shopper photos to make a confident purchase
• 64% of shoppers expect to see shopper photos on product pages
• 69% of shoppers want to see user-generated videos to feel more confident about their purchase 

But a slew of good visual UGC and reviews from 2019 won’t cut it. Around half of shoppers say recent reviews are more reliable than older ones. The majority of shoppers (55%) are confident in reviews when they’re less than 3 months old.

Some tactics for easily collecting fresh UGC include product sampling, where you send product samples in exchange for honest feedback, or review request emails, which automatically request a review post-purchase. You can also tap existing communities of everyday content creators like the Influenster App.

If you can, consider translating your existing reviews. The majority of shoppers (62%) say they trust translated reviews. That trust is higher in places like Canada (67%), France (67%), and Spain (75%).

Brand safety and authenticity are paramount

As voice of the customer content like reviews and user-generated videos become more popular, so do the efforts of bad actors who are trying to scam the system. 

Fake reviews can come from a variety of places, be it disruptive or trolling activity, commercial messages, generative AI submissions (we’ll talk more about those in the next section), illegitimate or degrading content by a competitor, and self-promotion by employees.

Protecting your brand from fake reviews is essential — you want to showcase the authentic voice of your customers, not fake or fraudulent voices. According to a recent Bazaarvoice survey, typically the behaviors that cause the most suspicion among consumers are:

• Multiple reviews with similar opinions on the same product (55%)
• Review content not matching the product (49%) 
• Bad grammar/spelling mistakes (36%) 
• An overwhelming number of 5-star/positive reviews (35%)

Fake reviews aren’t just making it harder for shoppers to trust voice of the customer content. They also put your brand at risk of legal recourse. For example, in the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced two important regulations to battle fake reviews:

• They published the final Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. This is the first refresh of the guides since 2009 and it provides new and updated guidance around endorsements by social media influencers as well as ratings and reviews 
• The proposed Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials clarifies what constitutes a “fake” review

Regardless of how you collect your voice of the customer content, remember that you should never ask for or incentivize positive reviews.

If consumers are offered a free product, promotional material (such as discounts or coupons), or a chance to win something of value in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then we recommend adding descriptors such as “this reviewer received a free product in exchange for their honest feedback” to any reviews collected via a promotion. 

The future of the voice of the customer

Like we mentioned, emerging tech like generative AI — the advanced technology that powers applications like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard — can be used to create fake reviews. That’s the bad news.

But it can also make providing high quality user-generated content far easier for shoppers to provide and brands/retailers to personalize and learn from, which is better news. The goal is to ensure AI supports the the customer voice, not replace it. And in a separate research peak we recently undertook around AI and UGC, we learned:

• About half of consumers (49%) would like to write a review on a website where generative AI guides them on what categories to cover
• Almost half (45%) say they would trust websites more if they put measures in place to protect against voice of the customer content fully generated by AI

Get started with the voice of the customer

Voice of the customer is a commerce goldmine. Especially so during an economic downturn. 

With shoppers becoming more cautious about their spending habits — and being more open to new products and services — tapping into the voice of the customer in the form of user-generated content can help savvy brands and retailers stand out in a crowded marketplace.

It provides a treasure trove of insights that, when used effectively, can significantly enhance the shopping experience, drive conversions and revenue, instil trust and loyalty, and provide essential guidance to consumers in a rapidly evolving retail landscape. 

Brands and retailers that embrace the voice of the customer and use it to adapt to the ever-changing shopping experience have the unique opportunity to thrive. Eager to get started? Learn more about how the voice of the customer is affecting the consumer journey in this year’s full Shopper Experience Index report.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Shopper Experience Index: Volume 17

Read here

What is brand trust?

Brand trust is the amount of loyalty and support customers have for your brand and how strongly they believe you can fulfil your brand promises. It’s based on customer experiences with your brand as well as company messaging and reputation.

Brands and retailers who can’t establish trust with consumers, or even worse, who lose established trust, will struggle to win business. We’re in an age when consumer opinions are shared on a massive scale and directly influence brand perception. 

In a Bazaarvoice study, 54% of consumers said that if a brand hasn’t broken trust, they’d still buy from them again — even after a negative experience. 

5 ways to build brand trust

It’s simple. When your customers trust you, they’ll be loyal to you almost no matter what. Here’s how to build consumer trust in your brand. 

1. Work with a trustworthy UGC provider 

One way to increase brand trust in e-commerce is by getting your consumers to advocate for your brand for you. Shoppers trust user-generated content (UGC) in the form of reviews more than they trust family and friend recommendations. Instead of trying to control what people are saying, brands and retailers should embrace this conversation and amplify it.

However, to maintain brand trust, reviews must be authentic. According to our survey of 10,000 global shoppers, if shoppers suspect a product has fake reviews:

• 81% will avoid using that brand again
• 48% leave a negative review
• 25% wouldn’t purchase from the website
• 16% will post negatively about the brand on social media

That’s why a good UGC program requires strong content moderation. A trustworthy UGC provider that values authenticity can help your brand sort through reviews and eliminate fake ones that hurt your credibility and destroy consumer trust.

For example, Bazaarvoice evaluates UGC through a process of machine learning and human moderation to ensure it isn’t fraudulent and that it represents a customer’s genuine opinion about their experience with the product(s).

27% of consumers think brands with fake content should be fined up to 30% of their revenue — and governments are taking note. The FTC recently fined one company over $4 million for suppressing authentic content, so not only will fake content harm your reputation but it will harm your wallet too.

2. Publicize company values

According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, consumers today grant brand trust based on two attributes: competence and ethical behavior. Like doing the right thing and working to improve society.

Consumers want to see what your brand believes in and how you follow through on those beliefs. And with the various significant events taking place across the globe, they especially want to know how your brand responds to your community in times of crisis. This is particularly true when it comes to Gen Z, who value brand trust, transparency, and authenticity above all else.

Creating content about your values for your website is a good start, but make sure this messaging is also visible on your social channels. About 35% of consumers look to a brand’s social media to seek out content about company response and values. 

You also need to be mindful of who your brand partners with. Any influencers or partners you collaborate with should share your brand values and have a solid reputation. They’ll connect with consumers in ways that are relevant and sensitive to their needs and help authentically communicate your brand’s values. 

3. Focus on great customer service 

90% of consumers say a brand’s level of customer service is an important factor in their choice to become a customer. A proactive customer service strategy should include responding to customer feedback and reviews, both negative and positive.

Around 60% of consumers say that negative reviews are just as important as positive reviews in their decision to purchase. And the way you respond to these negative reviews can speak volumes about your brand’s values and may even convert more browsers into buyers. A consumer’s willingness to purchase a product with a negative review doubles when seeing a brand’s response, as opposed to seeing the negative review by itself. And, up to 70% of dissatisfied customers will do business with a company again if their complaint is resolved.

When you see a negative review, take the time to craft a quick, but personal, response. Consumers want to talk to a real person, not a review response bot. Show them that you sympathize with their issue and that you’re learning from criticism. Mention that their feedback will be used for future improvements. This will only boost your brand trust.

In your online response, ask the customer to contact you offline. And be clear about why. Are you trying to understand the problem because your team is working on product improvements? Are you looking for details on the issue so you can prevent it from happening again? Was there a defect, and you need their contact information to send the new product?

Don’t forget to give the customer a way to contact your brand, whether that’s via a preferred phone number or email address. 

4. Create high-quality products

Reviews are excellent sources of information to analyze how consumers feel about your products’ quality. When you pay attention to common customer pain points, you have the opportunity to fix issues before your products earn a negative reputation and win back customers before you lose them entirely.

Look for key topics in your negative reviews. Do customers complain about particular product features? Long shipping times or damaged delivery? Is there something missing that they wanted from the product? Was the product description inaccurate?

Share this customer sentiment with your product quality or manufacturing team (or with vendors if you’re a retailer) to make improvements that keep your products competitive and meet consumer expectations. 

5. Price your products fairly 

According to Prisnyc, a competitor price tracking and monitoring company, about 60% of consumers consider pricing as the very first criteria of their buying decision, and 86% say it’s important to compare prices from different sellers when shopping. 

When’s the last time you compared your product price to the competition? If it’s been a while, it’s time to re-evaluate. How do your prices differ from competitors? 

Consumers value transparency. If your product is significantly more expensive than the competition and there’s a reason for it (like you use a higher quality material), don’t be afraid to call that out on your product pages. 

Build brand trust with the voice of the customer

To protect consumer trust, your brand must prioritize honesty and transparency in everything you do, from reviews to customer service to product pricing. One of the best ways to gain insights into how customers feel about your brand and communicate trust is through ratings and reviews. 

Leverage the authentic voice of your customers to build brand trust and sell your products. Taking the time to invest in your ratings and reviews program will help you build the foundation for long-lasting relationships and brand trust with your customers, leading to more sales — after all, customers who interact with UGC are 2x as likely to convert.

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Masterclass: How to grow and protect consumer trust

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Chapters:

1. What is word-of-mouth marketing?
2. Why word-of-mouth marketing is so effective
3. How to increase your word-of-mouth marketing
4. How to implement word-of-mouth marketing (with examples)
5. Measuring your word-of-mouth marketing

Think about the last time you used a product or service that solved your problem so well, you wanted to tell everyone you know about the experience. Perhaps you found the perfect pair of headphones for work. Or handmade chocolates that you can send as a cute gift. Whether you talked to a friend or relative directly, posted about it on social media, or left a review, telling others about your experience is word-of-mouth marketing in action.

This powerful form of marketing fuels a whopping $6 trillion of annual consumer spending globally. It can also be more effective than paid ads, resulting in 5x more sales. 

This form of marketing isn’t just for big brands. Any company that provides services or sells products can benefit from word-of-mouth marketing strategies. For instance, in a survey by Alignable 85% of 7,500 small business owners reported word-of-mouth referrals as their top source of new customers.   

Here’s everything you need to know about word-of-mouth marketing so you can start benefiting from this powerful form of advertising.

What is word-of-mouth marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing is when consumers share positive experiences with a product or service with their peers, whether in person or online. In the connected marketplace where shoppers are always-on,

Because the information comes directly from your customers, word-of-mouth advertising is authentic and cost-effective. It’s also highly valuable. Over 50% of consumers read at least four reviews before buying a product, and 93% say online reviews have influenced their purchasing decisions.

What is the digital version of word-of-mouth marketing?

Digital word-of-mouth marketing is how your customers speak about you online — in product reviews, social media posts, blog posts, and emails.

In the consumer-to-consumer commerce world we live in, digital word of mouth is how potential customers find out about your brand.

Why word-of-mouth marketing is so effective

No matter what strategy you pursue, word-of-mouth marketing helps increase your social exposure, create excitement about your products or services, foster brand loyalty, and build trust. 

Considering that consumers talk about brands casually at least 90 times a week, this type of marketing can have a substantial impact. Word-of-mouth marketing can help grow your business in the following ways

1. Consumer trust

Think of the last time you needed a recommendation for a doctor. What’s the first thing you did? You likely asked a friend or family member who they use or posted a question on social media.

The positive experience of others becomes a key factor in your buying decision. You’re more likely to buy or use a service because you trust the feedback from your peers.

Brands and retailers can “borrow” that trust to gain new customers with minimal effort.

2. Brand loyalty

When it comes to building trust and loyalty, businesses need all the help they can get. 

According to HubSpot Research, 65% of people don’t believe advertisements and 71% don’t trust sponsored social media ads.

Yet people do trust their peers. 88% of consumers regularly consult online reviews from other shoppers to help make confident buying decisions. Since the information comes from actual customers — not the company — word-of-mouth marketing helps build a strong, loyal community. 

The more businesses can encourage or make it easy for happy customers to share their experiences, the better. As loyal followers talk to others, those individuals get excited, become customers, and tell more people — creating an ongoing source of word-of-mouth advertising.

When you consider that about 65% of sales are from existing consumers, you want to ensure that you’re keeping your loyal base happy and making it easy for them to spread the word about your company. 

3. Increase brand awareness

People can’t buy from you if they don’t know about your business or products. Therefore, getting the word out about your business organically, especially new products and services, is essential. 

Word-of-mouth marketing is a perfect way to make people aware of your brand and what you have to offer. 

Sometimes word-of-mouth advertising can catch hold, especially on social media. This excitement can quickly spread among your ideal audience causing a powerful viral effect. 

How to increase your word-of-mouth marketing

There’s two ways to increase the influence of word-of-mouth marketing: organic and amplified. 

1) Organic word of mouth

Organic word-of-mouth marketing occurs naturally. Customers freely talk about your brand, service, or product. This can occur online, over the phone, or in person. Examples include reviews, ratings, social media comments, or conversations in the checkout line.

It’s unlikely you can control consumer conversations in the street. But these conversations are also happening in the reviews, social posts, and other forms of user-generated content (UGC) shoppers are creating about your brand — you just amplify their voices across your e-commerce site and beyond.

You can syndicate product reviews and display them across all your customer acquisition channels. Or you can browse your tagged posts on Instagram and take the photo of a customer happily sporting one of your products and feature it on your product pages. Featuring this UGC can increase average order value by 15%.

2) Amplified word of mouth

Amplified is when companies offer rewards, affiliate programs, freebies, discounts, contests, or they partner with influencers.

The goal is to motivate people to talk about their experiences. Example: A business may receive more entries to a contest if they tell others about the competition on social media. 

These types of word-of-mouth marketing strategies can be easier to track than organic ones, but they require more effort from your team.

How to implement word-of-mouth marketing (with examples)

Now that you know how word-of-mouth marketing works, here’s six ways you can use it to increase engagement and boost sales.

1. Create a referral or loyalty program

Whether you use them to generate awareness about a new product launch or a subscription service, referral programs are designed to get your customers talking.

Additionally, a referral or loyalty program that’s created with your ideal audience in mind can build trust by showing customers you care about their needs and interests.

Before launching Girlfriend Collective, the brand decided not to use paid ads. Instead, they launched a referral program that allowed people to get a free pair of $80 leggings by sharing a referral link on Facebook. 

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The approach worked so well that the had brand received 10,000 orders on launch day.

2. Reward customers for creating and sharing user-generated content

When someone is excited about your brand, service, or product, you want to make it easy for them to share their enthusiasm. 

Customers who are excited about your brand might post user-generated content on your company page, share stories of using your product, create videos, and more. These people are your super-sharers. They care about your business and want it to succeed, so reward them. 

Comment on their posts. Provide positive feedback on their videos. Share their posts on your social media channels and in your emails or newsletters. 

You can also motivate others to share their UGC by asking people to post, or running events that encourage followers to create their own content. The coffee and tea company Top of the Mornin posts user-created artwork on its homepage. Artists are clearly credited and a social link is provided so people can see more of the person’s work. 

By amplifying the work of its fans, Top of the Mornin helps foster a loyal community of super-sharers.

3. Connect with influencers who are a great fit for your brand

Influencers are a valuable resource for many companies, with 93% of marketers relying on influencer marketing. 

Pairing up with an influencer who fits your products, services, and company values can help increase your brand awareness and bring in new customers. The key is finding someone who already has the right type of followers for your brand.

For example, food and beverage giant Kraft Heinz wanted to drive buzz and word of mouth around new product releases, so they sent product samples to the Influenster App’s community of everyday influencers who matched the brand’s target market. They were then encouraged to create authentic feedback and other UGC about the products.

According to Elizabeth Northrup, Associate Brand Manager at Kraft Heinz, the campaigns, “over-delivered on our targets for the program, delivering 2x the product reviews we expected, and the earned media was over 5x our program investment.”

4. Ask customers for reviews

Reviews are the pinnacle of word-of-mouth marketing. They’re organic testimonial ads in action. If you come across a positive review for a product on your social feed, it’s likely to catch your attention. It’s likely to get you to check out that product. Maybe it convinces you to purchase.

But people are busy. Sometimes, they forget to leave a review after making a purchase. But most will happily share their experiences — all you have to do is ask.

You can schedule a social media post requesting reviews from current customers. You could also send an email inviting customers to leave a review or a testimonial after they make a purchase. Or leave QR codes next to checkout tills in-store.

The key takeaway here is to make it easy and quick for people to share their feedback — and then display it on your channels.

Hardys Wines for example uses customer reviews as their word-of-mouth marketing, displaying the positive customer feedback in adverts.

5. Create content that people are excited to share 

Take time to create posts, emails, videos, and articles that interest your followers and are easy to share. As a result, they’ll keep coming back for more and tell others about your content.

The niche clothing brand CLOAK knows its followers. The brand consistently posts unique and engaging content that customers are excited to share. 

This includes quizzes related to CLOAK’s products and images of the company’s owners modeling the clothes. 

6. Authentically connect with your community

Loyal customers want to feel connected to your brand. Instead of just focusing on increasing your followers, make your social media channels a 2-way conversation. This will play a huge part in boosting organic word-of-mouth marketing. Reply thoughtfully to customer comments and thank them for leaving a review. You can even spotlight UGC by sharing it on your own channels.

Growing your community with intention can also provide you with valuable consumer insights, allowing you to better serve them while strengthening your brand. 

Threadless evolved from a T-shirt company into an e-commerce marketplace fueled by the brand’s Artist Shops community. 

Knowing that its ideal audience was creative and fun, Threadless created contests and challenges designed to showcase its followers’ creations and build its community. This helped Threadless attract 10,000 members in its first 2 years of business and earn $6.5 million in less than 4 years. 

In an interview with Forbes, Threadless’ then-vice president of marketing, Cam Balzer, stressed the importance of building social media followers organically. 

“We believe the more organic the growth, the more loyal the fans, the more likely they will be repeat customers.”

Currently, the Threadless website provides multiple ways for customers to connect with artists and the community, like the Artist of the Day section on its homepage.

Measuring your word-of-mouth marketing

Accurately measuring word-of-mouth marketing can be tough. You won’t always know when someone recommends your product or service, especially if it happens offline or in a private Facebook group. But you can get a sense of how well your word-of-mouth marketing is working overall. For instance, you can:

• Ask customers at checkout or after their purchase how they learned about you
• Use a customer satisfaction survey to gleam relevant information
• Start a loyalty program that includes promo codes or other trackable links to monitor if the information is shared

Word-of-mouth marketing lets you authentically build brand awareness, trust, and loyalty. All for very little cost.

As the stats show, people trust family, friends, and online reviews from their peers. And as a business, you want to encourage word-of-mouth marketing by embracing the strategies that fit your brand and audience.

Because the more you understand your followers, engage with them, and provide quality content, the more excited they will be to share their positive experiences with everyone they know. Which means more traffic to your pages. Which means more sales. And who doesn’t want that?

The best way to get started is by activating content creators and existing vibrant communities you can tap into. Our on-demand masterclass below will teach you how.

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Masterclass: The future of marketing: creators and communities

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This comprehensive guide to thought leadership strategy for brands and retailers will explain the benefits of thought leadership marketing and what quality thought leadership content actually looks like, including examples from consumer brands.

Chapters:

1. Thought leadership marketing benefits and metrics
2. How to get started with thought leadership content strategy
3. Create brand momentum with owned media 
4. Convert momentum into revenue with earned media
5. Fuel brand momentum with shared media
6. Why a thought leadership strategy needs authenticity to work

Tech and finance workers in New York City adopted a new look after 2008’s economic downturn, one that reigns supreme today: a button-down, slacks, and a Patagonia vest. Patagonia, an outdoor brand known for their commitment to sustainability, was an incongruous staple in the “midtown uniform,” but a staple it became. One might see a sweater knit, a Nano Puff, and a fleece on the same Murray Hill city block, but all three vests will be Patagonia. And until recently, the finance worker’s vest might have included a logo of Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, or Goldman Sachs.

In 2019, Patagonia decided to stop selling logo-clad fleece vests to finance firms through their corporate sales program, a move that was lauded by the press and Patagonia’s core audience of outdoor enthusiasts alike. While the decision came with accolades, it also carried risk: in excluding finance companies from corporate sales, Patagonia intentionally walked away from a cash-flush market of consumers who were unexpectedly loyal to their products.

Patagonia initially said they’d continue to work with “mission-driven companies that prioritize the planet” in corporate sales, but in 2021, they doubled down on the strategy, deciding to transition away from corporate logos altogether. The move impacted Silicon Valley tech workers, in particular, who often donned a similar uniform to their East Coast counterparts.

Shutting down their practice of adding other companies’ logos to their clothing was a landmark move in Patagonia’s brand marketing, one that gave credibility to decades of thought leadership strategy.

Patagonia’s brand has its roots in climate impact — before launching Patagonia in 1973, founder Yvon Chouinard was working on a way to reduce rock damage from steel pitons. Until the early 1990s, they were more product-driven, focusing thought leadership campaigns on textile innovation in the 1970s and 1980s. Patagonia returned to their sustainable roots in the early ’90s, pivoting their brand and marketing strategy toward sustainability without abandoning textile technology completely. 

Patagonia’s pivot paid off. But it took time, consistency, focus, and action to succeed. Patagonia’s decades of commitment to sustainable practices — using cause marketing to evangelize their message — earned the brand a meaningful reputation as a commercial thought leader in sustainability in the modern era. Today, Patagonia is considered one of the world’s most powerful brands.

Thought leadership marketing benefits and metrics

At its core, thought leadership is about building credibility as a brand. By showcasing unique strengths and passions that exist at the heart of a brand through content, consumer marketers build trust, foster loyalty, and stand out from competitors.

Why focus resources on building brand strength when about three-quarters of brands say that economic pressures will impact media budgets and performance marketing is easier to prove? Ignoring brand strength isn’t about vanity metrics — it’s about revenue and resilience. 

Brand strength makes everything else in marketing — including direct response — easier and cheaper. A strong brand is the basis of a resilient consumer business, one with a large base of loyal customers who repurchase, engage, and evangelize. 

Revenue-resilient thought leadership takes alignment between a brand, its consumers, and industry experts. If a brand is beloved by experts but not by consumers, it can’t grow. If it’s beloved by consumers but side-eyed by scientists, it can’t sustain its market share indefinitely.

How to get started with thought leadership content strategy

No brand is equipped to become a thought leader about everything. If your brand doesn’t know itself well enough to focus on one core message, you’ll have a harder time building enough traction with consumers or media to develop a reputation as a thought leader. A thought leadership strategy takes depth, experience, commitment, and focus over a long period of time, and successful thought leaders pick one topic and stick with it. 

Brands that have developed momentum in thought leadership marketing tend to focus on either values or products but rarely both in the same measure at the same time. 

It’s possible to be value-driven and product-driven as a brand. However, successful thought leaders put one or the other at the center of their thought leadership marketing strategy to fuel momentum in a single direction over time.

Value-driven thought leadership uses emotion to examine why a company exists and showcases their positive impact on the world. Product-driven thought leadership uses logic to showcase proprietary technology, unique product expertise, or original opinions about a product category. 

Compare Dyson, another one of the world’s most powerful brands, to Patagonia. While both have used a thought leadership marketing strategy to build and retain brand strength over decades, Patagonia now focuses on values, while Dyson continues to showcase their engineering expertise. Dyson’s relentless commitment to invention and innovation gives them a competitive edge over alternatives in multiple verticals — something they reinforce with content marketing.

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A post shared by Dyson (@dyson)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dyson (@dyson)

Product-driven thought leaders like Dyson build trust through expertise and logic. On Dyson’s blog, the brand showcases the curiosity and brilliance of their engineering team to humanize and clarify product features. This interview with Dyson engineer Tim Jukes takes customers behind the scenes of a proprietary technology. Jukes details a summer-long meteorological study he conducted to recreate the feeling of a natural breeze, which was eventually incorporated into Dyson’s air purifiers.

Value-driven thought leaders rally their existing audiences around a cause. Patagonia’s video about plastic called The Monster in Our Closet, featured prominently on their website, is an anxiety-inducing manifesto about the problems of plastic in apparel, including Patagonia’s own products. 13 seconds into the video, climate advocate Maxine Bédat says, “The planet freaking needs this, and we don’t have time to be d****** around. Excuse me.”

There’s emotion in Bédat’s voice, a call to action for Patagonia’s audience to create change in collaboration with the brand.

1. Create brand momentum with owned media 

Owned media, like email, is the ideal place to create momentum toward a brand goal by seeding advocacy with happy customers.

Patagonia collaborated with Bédat, an existing thought leader in textile sustainability, to strengthen their own brand. In a case where a company’s founder or executive is value-driven and vocal themselves, brands often leverage the founder’s own voice in thought leadership content.

Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of values-driven spice company Diaspora, uses owned media to showcase her brand’s commitment to ethical sourcing. When Diaspora launched Surya Salt in 2023, Javeri Kadri focused the brand’s email announcement on ethics, not product, and signed the email herself. By detailing the mistreatment of Indian salt farmers during British imperial rule and explaining the “awful labor practices” that still exist in the salt industry, Javeri Kadri issued a rallying cry to Diaspora’s customers to help the brand solve an important societal problem through a commercial product.

On product pages, Diaspora reinforces their commitment to ethical sourcing by surfacing regularly updated wage statistics for each product. As of August 2023, Diaspora’s living wage for Surya Salt was more than 14x higher than the Fair Trade International price.

Diaspora is vocal about one thing — ethical sourcing — on every channel. Diaspora’s focus, consistency, and commitment to a specific brand value is why the brand has a reputation as a thought leader in spices, a notoriously competitive space, in a relatively short time.

All of that brand advocacy turns into revenue. When Diaspora launched a $145 salt cellar in the shape of a tiger to complement Surya Salt, the first production run sold out in 41 minutes.

Thought leadership tactics to try on owned media:

• Conduct an in-house research project and publish the results to build credibility, like Dieux’s clinical study on cannabinoids in Deliverance Serum
• Promote a value-based blog post on a store page to deepen brand affinity, like apparel brand Eileen Fisher’s feature on their Regenerative Cotton, which they featured on their cotton collection page
• Surface user-generated content (UGC) that promotes key differentiators or resonant brand values on your product page to improve conversion rates, the same way Iconic London did with their liquid highlighter 
• Humanize a brand value with personal narratives to resonate on an intimate level, like perfume brand Scent Trunk’s Q&As with their perfumers

Leverage owned media to clarify brand positioning and deepen affinity with a core audience before growing traffic and purchase intent on other channels.

2. Convert momentum into revenue with earned media

Earned media, or content that others create to celebrate your brand and your messaging, is great for converting an audience of non-purchasers to loyal customers. UGC, press, and PR are all earned media and can all be used to convert awareness into revenue. 

A product-driven thought leadership marketing strategy tends to produce UGC about products but not values, while value-driven thought leadership campaigns result in a mix. Diaspora’s audience posts UGC about the brand’s values and their products, while Dyson’s customers overwhelmingly create content about Dyson’s products. A search for “dyson” on TikTok is full of demo videos from real customers using their hair styling tools and stick vacuums. One demo of the Dyson Airstrait has 15.9 million views. 

East Fork, a pottery brand, has earned glowing features in media publications that celebrate their thought leadership in both ceramics and equitable business practices. The New York Times celebrated chief executive Connie Matisse’s candor and commitment to issues like wage equity. Architectural Digest focused on founder Alex Matisse’s artistic distinction in ceramics, highlighting his family connection to both Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp. 

Together with their co-founder John Vigeland, Connie Matisse and Alex Matisse have leveraged traditional media to turn East Fork into a thought leader and resilient business by each focusing on their areas of passion and expertise. As East Fork grows, their thought leadership messaging leans more and more in the direction of Connie Matisse’s focus. Their owned media platforms now feature values front and center, a cue to earned media that East Fork is about equity. 

Traditional media and industry outlets can be powerful advocates in building thought leadership, or they can negate a brand’s claims and disrupt momentum toward thought leadership objectives. In 2023, NPR and The Washington Post both published skeptical, even critical, articles about the prebiotic soda industry, questioning the validity of health claims from brands like Poppi.

Harper’s Bazaar was more forgiving of the industry but still refused to validate prebiotic soda brands as thought leaders. Writer Katie Intner concluded, “The wellness benefits of these tonics might be hard to quantify, but the experience of sipping one — and Instagramming it — makes me happy, and isn’t that a benefit in and of itself?”

Poppi has since removed thought leadership content from their website, including a consumer study about gut health and blog posts detailing prebiotic benefits. Instead, Poppi is doubling down on UGC, sending free products to popular influencers like Miriam Ezagui to generate buzz and featuring UGC from creators like Cassie Yeung on their homepage. 

Poppi competitor OLIPOP is testing the opposite approach to combat skepticism with thought leadership — their gut health study is still available on their website alongside resources on probiotics and the microbiome. 

Surfacing UGC in a prominent place builds trust, improves conversion, and reinforces a thought leadership campaign’s core message. In a regulated space like consumer packaged goods, UGC is helpful but not enough to build credibility as a thought leader. Pair UGC with PR campaigns to generate industry press on thought leadership campaigns and foster more trust in the market.

Thought leadership tactics to try with earned media include:

• Quantify the revenue impact using earned media value (EMV) to identify valuable placements and influencers to extend your best experiments
• Leverage UGC as a source of inspiration for thought leadership campaigns to resonate with consumers using their own words

Brands have limited control over earned media. Promote and surface the placements and UGC that reinforce core messaging to build momentum for thought leadership objectives.

3. Fuel brand momentum with shared media

Shared media refers to a channel where you have access to an audience through a third party but cannot access that audience through another tool — like social media. Leverage channels like TikTok and Instagram to reach new audiences and build awareness of thought leadership marketing campaigns. 

Established brands like Everlane pair conversational videos on shared media with long-form content on owned media. Everlane uses long-form thought leadership content to clarify their brand position and connect values to corporate action, while short-form content on shared media distills thought leadership into bite-sized messages for the everyday consumer.

Everlane focused their lens of transparency on recycling, taking customers behind the scenes of their partner recycling facilities on TikTok and publishing personal narratives of recycling professionals on their blog. 

Intimates brand Cherri, founded in 2019, uses grassroots techniques and a shared-media-first approach to build thought leadership in their marketing strategy. In a 2023 interview, founder Gabriella Scaringe said, “It wasn’t until 2021 when I discovered TikTok that Cherri was really born.”

That year, Scaringe went viral on the platform with a video talking about insecurities and underwear. It received supportive comments from other consumers who shared her frustrations, which inspired Scarine to focus on gusset sizing in her thought leadership content. 

Scaringe built on her overnight popularity with a research campaign to study whether gussets on the market actually fit the modern consumer. According to her study of over 5,000 people, the average vulva is 2.5 inches wide, while intimate brands’ average gusset is 1.8 inches wide. Scaringe’s videos generated millions of views, inspiring a new area of brand focus and catalyzing a groundswell of brand advocacy for Cherri. Scaringe continues to build on the success of her thought leadership campaign, criticizing other industry studies for only focusing on Caucasian women and inviting her audience to participate in Cherri’s ongoing research.

Dieux, a skincare brand founded in 2020, uses opinionated thought leadership content on social media to stand out in a crowded space. Dieux’s approach is still about product but with progressive values woven through to build advocacy with their target audience. In CEO Charlotte Palermino’s popular Sunscreen Diaries series, Palermino frequently criticizes U.S. sunscreen legislation. 

Palermino explains the challenges of formulating a sunscreen that doesn’t leave a white cast through videos of herself and Dieux’s team trying lab samples with mixed results. In August 2023, Palermino even collaborated with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to spark conversations on sunscreen filters, claiming that the U.S. is lagging behind countries like South Korea due to regulation practices.

Thought leadership tactics to try on shared media:

• Share key insights from a research project similar to Diaspora’s recent Instagram update on their Farm Worker Fund
• Build in the open, like Dieux’s TikTok series about the obstacles they face in trying to formulate a sunscreen that doesn’t leave a white cast
• Experiment with UGC on paid social campaigns to improve click-through rate, like Parachute, which improved click-through rate by 35% using UGC in paid social ads

Shared media is powerful but volatile. Balance shared media with more predictable channels, like email, to avoid disruptive peaks and valleys in engagement metrics.

Why a thought leadership strategy needs authenticity to work

Brands fall short of becoming thought leaders when they aren’t committed to backing their marketing messages with meaningful — even risky — actions. Yes, even the ones that spend a lot of money on their thought leadership marketing strategy.

Thought leadership takes more than high-quality content and high marketing budgets. Publishing a clinical study doesn’t automatically make a brand a thought leader. Writing an opinion piece doesn’t either. Over a long period of time, those pieces of content can fuel the groundswell necessary to strengthen a brand’s reputation — if they’re focused on the same core message and backed by meaningful action.

Otherwise, it’s just fluff. And in an era when consumers are exhausted by marketing, fluff isn’t enough.

In order to generate momentum, not scandal, thought leadership content must be grounded in truth and backed by action. Diaspora doesn’t just talk about ethical sourcing — they’ve structured their entire company to support that goal. Dyson doesn’t just talk about innovation; they hire inventors who routinely invent new technologies.

It’s not enough to pick a buzzy topic and post an opinionated take on the blog. It’s not enough to claim a brand value on a website and run a splashy campaign to improve a brand’s image. Without years of focus, commitment, and systemic action, those tactics aren’t a thought leadership strategy — they’re just PR.

A well-crafted thought leadership marketing campaign can break through the noise and engage rather than exhaust consumer audiences. Thought leadership takes time to pay off, but getting started is easy. Start asking high-value customers for UGC to kickstart inspiration and foster trust almost immediately. Not sure how? Try this on-demand masterclass: How to collect content that engages and converts.

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How UGC strengthens customer relationships to grow your brand

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