In our social driven world, businesses and brands know the basic steps to building a seamless social and e-commerce shopping experience — utilizing content, making multiple touchpoints shoppable, and pushing customers to product pages (PDPs).

But actioning your own social commerce strategy is way easier when you can emulate real life social commerce case studies and learn how they drive success for brands like yours.

Shoppers increasingly want to see products being used in real life by other shoppers (who’s using it, how it’s being used, and how they can see it fit into their own life). And as the demand for authenticity skyrockets, brands have to find unique ways to build consumer confidence. 

One clear-cut method to building that confidence is user-generated content. User-generated content, or UGC, is a type of social proof that lets shoppers see trusted individuals using and recommending products. According to our Shopper Experience Index, an annual study into changing shopper behavior, over half of shoppers (55%) are unlikely to purchase a product without seeing related UGC. UGC works in creating community, building customer engagement and trust, and driving social commerce revenue on social and PDPs.

Top 5 social commerce case studies

Let’s take a look at five unique social commerce case studies we’ve seen for some killer UGC strategies.

1. MAM

Calling all parents of little ones! Everyone wants the best for their children, and that’s exactly what premium baby products manufacturer MAM set out to do by creating extra-safe baby products. To maintain an authentic, transparent customer experience, a UGC strategy was vital. 

MAM’s goal was to collect more UGC and showcase it in more places — everywhere their shoppers are. The solution? The brand implemented Social Commerce to complete their full-funnel solution. And it skyrocketed their growth.

Social proof doubles traffic and conversion rates

The tool that drove the most impact for MAM was Bazaarvoice Galleries, an on-site display of content. With Bazaarvoice Galleries, MAM curates authentic social photos and videos posted by advocates. From this UGC, the brand created beautiful, shoppable product galleries to showcase products.

For MAM, Galleries drove a 258% increase in time on site, a 108% increase in conversions, and a 58% increase in average order value. (You heard that right!)

“The [photos and reviews] speak to themselves. It’s the voice of reason almost, like an assurance that this product does what it’s meant to do. And, of course, we knew the end goal would be that we could get that really lovely UGC onto our retailers’ sites,” said Daniel Smith, National Account Manager, MAM.

MAM also drives traffic and revenue with Like2Buy, the first link-in-bio solution to bring shopping to Instagram. They were able to make the path to purchase much simpler with Like2Buy, and never have to worry again about those customers lost on social media. With Like2Buy, MAM saw a 105% increase in click-through rate, a 157% increase in site visits, and a 35% increase in average order value.

In real money, the boost in traffic and conversions from Like2Buy alone drove an extra £96k in annual revenue for MAM.

Read the full case study here for a more in-depth look at a full-funnel social commerce strategy.

2. Hobbycraft

Any art enthusiasts out there? Or fans of over-delivering on your ROI? We love a good DIY project — and so does Hobbycraft, the UK’s largest arts and crafts retailer with a whopping 24,000 different products available for sale. A social commerce gold mine, if you ask us.

Hobbycraft recognized this, too, and wanted to showcase customers’ beautiful projects to help inspire purchases and boost their conversion rate. To do that, they incorporated UGC collected from social media campaigns to their website.

Hobbycraft agrees that incorporating UGC into their content strategy has had a positive impact on the ROI of their business.

“UGC is more authentic to our customers and complements our traditional brand product imagery,” explains Lauren Couston, Digital Product Content Manager, Hobbycraft.

And this shift in content is paying dividends for Hobbycraft. Using Bazaarvoice to display UGC from social channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has increased Hobbycraft’s click-through rate by 95%.

In addition to driving traffic to the website using UGC, Hobbycraft also incorporates Bazaarvoice Galleries on their home page and PDPs. In total, they have seven galleries across five page types.

Boosting conversion with Bazaarvoice Galleries

“We are now very much showcasing the voice of our customer,” Helen explains.

We love to hear it. Not only do customers like to get inspiration from the UGC they see, but they also like to submit their own UGC via submission buttons on Hobbycraft’s website.

This new approach to content is working like a charm. Utilizing Bazaarvoice Galleries on the Hobbycraft website has already led to a 219% increase in conversion and a 24% increase in average order value. Even more, the average basket size for customers who have interacted with Bazaarvoice Galleries has increased from around £25 to around £30 per customer.

And the biggest win of all: Hobbycraft achieved their annual ROI target within eight months of working with Bazaarvoice.

Read the full case study here to learn more.

3. Iconic London

The makeup and beauty industry especially is all about reviews and recommendations, especially on social media. Who wouldn’t want to see how a $30 lipstick performs and looks on someone that looks like yourself? 

To meet this expectation, UGC collection is more important than ever for this specific industry. Iconic London, a UK beauty brand, realized this and positioned themselves as a digital-first brand above all else. 

“We’ve been very good at outreach, making people aware of the voice of the brand, but we’re in a competitive industry with a lot of brands with great messaging and fantastic products. What we needed to do was find a way to make the social piece work for us, both in awareness and financially, and that’s what Bazaarvoice helped us to do,” says Eleanor Assa, CMO, Iconic London.

Yet, building a full-proof, well-rounded UGC strategy was proving to be difficult, especially conceptualizing how UGC could be used across social platforms and the e-commerce site. The first step they took was discovering how Instagram can work hand-in-hand with their e-commerce site.

Building the relationship between social and site

Oftentimes, brands make the mistake of building two distinct, separate experiences: one on their social platforms and one on their e-commerce site. The aesthetic, photos, product layout, and more are just different. This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

When your customer discovers your brand, whether that’s browsing Google or scrolling through Instagram, you want them to feel there’s an authenticity present. When the shopping, community, and brand experience does not match across the board, authenticity is lost.

One way to solve this problem? Do what Iconic London did and turn your social content into a shoppable experience.

Everyone loves the simplicity of Instagram and being inspired to make a purchase. But, one thing many brands haven’t been able to solve is how to bring those new or returning customers to their actual site to make that purchase. Enter: Like2Buy. Like2buy directly mirrors your Instagram feed, making the user-generated (and branded) content shoppable via links to product pages. 

“We know that our customers like shopping in a social environment. It’s the way the industry is going, but especially Iconic. So having Like2Buy allows us to maintain that social shopping experience a bit longer. It allows it to overflow into the website, onto the product page, and the homepage,” says Lizzie Newell, Head of Marketing, Social, and Campaigns.

Make the path to purchase that much simpler with Like2Buy, and never worry again about those customers lost on social media. Furthermore, once they reach the site, make sure their shopping experience goes uninterrupted with Bazaarvoice Galleries.

The importance of time on site

Nowadays, there are more distractions than ever before, especially if you are just in “browsing mode” while shopping. With no intent or purpose, you are less likely to be convinced to shop around if you aren’t interested in the first minute or so.

But, if you see a homepage full of engaging, shoppable content versus static images with no ability to browse, you will want to stay. Bazaarvoice Galleries, an on-site display of content that can exist almost anywhere on site, enables shoppers to really see products in action.

In the last year, Iconic London saw their customers spending more time browsing UGC and product pages because of their Galleries, with a 361% lift in time on site. They positively benefited from taking into account their customers shopping habits and desires when buying makeup.

“Time on site is a really exciting one for us. We were very pleased with that increase because I think that just proves that what we suspected about our audience was right — they like to have a browse, they like to look at people who look a bit like them. And at the same time, they’re looking at multiple images and product pages,” says Lizzie Newell, Head of Marketing, Social, and Campaigns, Iconic London.

Placing UGC across your storefront will not only drive those sales, but it will also drive traffic to almost every page that is important to the shopper. In just 12 months of harnessing the power of social commerce, Iconic saw a 126% lift in conversion rate, and an 11% lift in average order value.

Read the full social commerce case study here for a more in-depth look.

4. Urban Barn

Have you ever been in the market for a new sofa but wanted to know how it looked in the real world, not just a showroom? And so scrolled through countless photos or videos of it, imagining it fifteen different times in your room? Well, if you have, you’re not alone.

Urban Barn, a furniture and decor company, knew many of their customers visit their website before coming into a store to actually buy the item they’re looking for. With furniture being such a large purchase, too, it’s essential to show a diverse range of products in diverse settings, fresh up the content often, and build inspirational collection pages. 

Although Urban Barn has beautiful brand-owned content, they used UGC to really inspire shoppers to build their own, unique home with Urban Barn products by incorporating it across their social channels and website to meet shoppers everywhere they are.

The art of the hashtag

There’s nothing wrong with directly asking your customer for UGC. Instead, it’s empowering and showcases that your brand genuinely cares about building a supportive, interactive community. 

Urban Barn collects UGC by encouraging customers to post images of its product using the hashtag #Rightathome. From this pool of content, they then select the photos and videos they feel most authentically represent them and their community. 

What people also forget is that UGC, and collecting it via a hashtag, is entirely free. No expensive influencer partnership or brand photoshoot required. Instead, it’s a win-win on both sides. People love being featured on social media and on a website, and you get beautiful content with no heavy-lifting on your end.

Furthermore, sometimes customers know the brand better than the brand does, especially in the furniture industry. There are countless styles and looks out there, which all all worthy of being displayed

“Customer images show the diverse styles of interiors and different angles of the products that are not often captured by our in-house photographers,” said Ainslie Fincham, Director of Marketing, Urban Barn.

When Urban Barn started placing this UGC across their website and social channels, they saw major lifts in time on site, conversion, and average order value. The numbers were great to see but Sasha Becker, Director of E-commerce at Urban Barn, knows the reason they built this strategy was, in the end, to align with their mission — inspiring others. 

“Our end goal is to create beautiful spaces that people can come home to and feel good in,” said Becker. 

To say they did that would be an understatement. The strategy has already led to a 270% lift in time on site, a 59% lift in conversion rate, and a 29% lift in average order value.

Read how Urban Barn utilize UGC beyond just social commerce in the full case study.

5. Samsonite 

We’ve left (arguably) the best case study in social commerce til last. Sometimes all you need is a new campaign to really kick-start your social and e-commerce strategy! Just ask Samsonite.

After leveraging ratings and reviews heavily, they felt it was time to explore more ways they could improve their customer’s shopping experience. Samonite’s two main focuses were driving product discovery and providing content across the site to inspire their shoppers.

Sourcing the UGC and brand-owned content was never an issue for the accessory brand, though. The challenge was driving product discovery and providing consistent inspirational content from social and marketing channels.

By launching and leveraging Bazaarvoice Galleries, an on-site display of content, this solution enabled them to put beautiful, inspirational content on multiple pages rather than just on Instagram, for example.

However, they didn’t just stop there. 

Use campaigns to elevate your content

Not only did they implement galleries, but they also sourced relevant, new images and videos by running a campaign at the same time.

“This year, we had a really robust summer campaign which featured a new product launch, our Elevation Plus collection, at the forefront. We worked with a ton of influencers and got a lot of content added to our galleries, and I think it made for a really engaging experience, both on our own sites and through the content we distribute to our partners,” said Meghan O’Keefe, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Samsonite. 

Samsonite didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. They had plans to run this campaign, but they took it the next level by strategically partnering with influencers and using the #takewhatsyours to gather incredible UGC. It was a low-lift action, yet made all the difference for driving traffic and revenue. 

By the campaign’s end, they’d gained over 27k posts. Furthermore, Using Bazaarvoice Galleries has led to:

• 4x higher conversion rates
• 5x increase in time on page
• 254% increase in revenue

That makes it one of the most successful social commerce case studies to date. Read it in full here.

Become the next social commerce case study

There’s no reason why this time next year (or sooner!) you aren’t one of the social commerce case studies everyone is talking about.

As the social media landscape changes year after year, brands must evolve and act accordingly. Responding to the customer’s needs is the only way to stay relevant and continue seeing a lift in engagement, trust, and revenue. 

Yet, trends come and go as quickly as you can say “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” nowadays. Social media and e-commerce managers are constantly having to keep the pulse on what’s performing and what’s not, which is no easy task. But, regardless of if TikTok or Instagram is winning this week and not the next, UGC will continue performing well for brands.

Global social commerce sales are expected to reach $1.3 billion this year. So take a note from these five brand case studies and rethink your social commerce strategy. Is UGC a part of your conversations? Because it should be. And if it isn’t, get in touch with us and learn how the #1 in UGC according to G2 can help you get started.

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The ultimate guide to social commerce conversion

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Unfortunately, once companies decide to build a customer advocacy program, they often jump straight to the tactics to build programs, like implementing a sampling program, launching a blogger outreach campaign, creating gamification, or starting a social media page on a new platform.

But there’s steps to take and questions to ask yourself before diving in. Before we get into that though, there’s one question that first needs answering.

What is customer advocacy?

Customer advocacy is the method of nurturing relationships with your existing, loyal customers so that they champion your brand, products, or services in return. A strong customer advocacy program will turn your loyal customers into vocal ambassadors for your brand. Why is this important?

Because according to Gartner research, over 75% of B2B buyers consult three or more sources of advocacy before they make a purchase decision.

So the more acts of advocacy you have, the higher your chances of making a sale. But it’s not just new sales that are impacted — the customer advocacy cycle impacts every stage of the buyer journey.

Customer advocates want to share their experiences with your business and help other customers get the most value out of your product or service, which includes upselling and cross-selling. Advocates are who shoppers want to hear from, which is why at Bazaarvoice we have a strong focus on customer advocacy.

Types of customer advocacy program

There’s multiple customer advocacy strategies you can use to enhance the voice of your customers, from simple case studies to guest speakers on webinars.

• Speaking engagements. What better way to advocate for someone than to hear it directly from the customer’s mouth? Inviting a customer to speak on a webinar or at an event is a powerful form of advocacy, which also provides your customer with a brand promotion opportunity.
• Reviews. 88% of shoppers turn to reviews when evaluating a product or service, so having customer reviews on your website and social pages inspires confidence in potential customers. Platforms like G2 are a great source of business reviews.
• Case studies. Probably the most common customer advocacy program, case studies tell the success stories of your existing customers. Prospects don’t need to hear your sales pitch, they want to see how other similar businesses have performed and the potential ROI they could see too. Case studies to just that
• Customer quotes. Often easy to source and even easier to display, quotes are a quick way for customers to share their experience with your brand. They can (and should) be shared across websites, social channels, and email

What to consider when building a customer advocacy program

When there’s more than one strategy on offer, it can be difficult knowing where to start or which is best for your brand. Taking a step back to consider the three points below can help you choose tactics that work best for your advocates and your company — and build a successful program from the start.

1. Why do customers buy your product or shop in your stores?

Often, the answer to this question will be based on research you have already done or insights gained through social media monitoring. As you build your advocacy program, you’ll start to clarify why customers shop with you. But it’s important to have an idea in the beginning to see how to best interact with your consumers.

For example, advocacy programs for a business that knows that people buy its products to belong to a group versus one that knows customers choose its products because of convenience will be completely different, with different messaging and tactics.

2. What motivates customers to be advocates?

This is key for your customer advocacy program. Step into your customers’ shoes and ask why they would want to interact with you. Understanding this will help you bring what’s valuable to your customer to your program.

For example, if you look at what Sharpie did to engage with its fans online, you can see that they know that its customers want to show off their creativity. So Sharpie provides a place for advocates to receive recognition for their creative powers.

Sister company Prismacolor engages its audience in a slightly different way: Prismacolor loyalists define themselves as artists who want to give advice and learn from other artists, so the Prismacolor studio provides an avenue for artists to collaborate.

The tactics are similar, but the messaging and interactions are different, based on differences in their advocates.

3. How do I make it easy for my customers to advocate?

The big question. The easier you make it for advocates to talk about your products or services, the more volume you’ll see. Consider how customers interact with you today and where you could easily add a new touchpoint to encourage them to advocate. Or, how are they already advocating? Are they using particular hashtags or sites more than others? These behaviors might be ones you can noninvasively participate in, too.

Often the easiest way to build customer advocacy is through a brand community. These communities provide a platform for customers to engage with your brand and encourage them to share stories about you.

Customer advocacy examples

Diving down into these three areas can help you get the most of your customer advocacy program and help you decide on your next steps. The answers to these questions can help you decide which tactics would be most effective — and which to avoid. So, what will your advocacy program look like?

We often hear this from fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands struggling to increase brand awareness and gather feedback. It may not sound like the biggest issue, but your potential shoppers are looking for reviews both on the digital and physical shelf.

The good news is, digital collection isn’t the only way to gather user-generated content (UGC). Sometimes, you simply have to go straight to the source and engage your consumer where they shop. 

What is offline marketing?

Offline marketing is any form of marketing that doesn’t take place online. (You don’t say!). Offline marketing examples include billboards, press releases, newspaper and magazine ads, TV commercials, and flyers, to name a few.

While online/digital marketing is essential for staying competitive, combining it with an offline marketing strategy is how you stay most competitive.

Offline marketing strategies for collecting content

One lesser known benefit of offline marketing though is the ability to collect content. Specifically, the kind of content that turns browsers into buyers. 

But as with approaching any new strategy, it can be difficult to know where to start with offline marketing. That’s why we’re going to look at how one brand, Hardys Wines, has already achieved offline marketing success.

Hardys Wines paired an offline marketing campaign to gather valuable ratings and reviews with retail syndication to boost review volume, increase brand awareness on retail websites, and enhance social media advertising. Here’s how.

1. An in-store campaign to gather reviews

To address the challenge of being a non-transactional company, Hardys decided to test an alternative UGC collection method: an in-store review campaign. Partnering with their Shopper Agency F&BM and online lesson provider Learning with Experts, Hardys launched a “gift with purchase” campaign across major U.K retailers like Tesco, Asda, and Sainsbury’s, using 15 of its best-selling products to draw shoppers in.

The wine bottles featured neck flags that encouraged customers to purchase the product, leave a review, and register for a free course via a microsite. Learning with Experts offered shoppers exciting courses on photography, French cuisine, container gardening, and more. And customers loved it.

Throughout this offline marketing campaign, the website received over 2,500 entries with over 1,100 courses claimed. 

Non-direct-to-consumer (non-DTC) brands often struggle to generate reviews because they lack the online space to collect and display UGC. But reviews are a key factor in conversions. Customers are 2x more likely to purchase a product if it has reviews, and product pages with reviews see a 354% increase in conversion rates.

“We’re looking at social channels, growing the brand, and making sure that Hardys maintains its position as the number one brand in the U.K using the sort of reviews that we’ve captured, ensuring that Hardys is at top of the mind for consumers,” said Alister Dell, Digital Marketing Manager at Hardys.

For Hardys, the offline marketing campaign resulted in over 1,700 reviews, a monumental number for a brand without an e-commerce store. The next challenge was displaying these reviews where consumers could read and interact with them, and the solution came in the form of syndication. 

2. Boost review volume with syndication

The decision to syndicate review content across retailer websites helped Hardys increase review volume and boost product ratings. Since non-DTC brands lack the digital space for ratings and reviews, ensuring partner retail websites offer a large volume of reviews is essential. 

Content syndication gathers reviews from every source and distributes them across major retail websites, creating a sizable collection for shoppers to browse. For Hardys, syndication resulted in a 2,316% lift in review volume across retailers’ sites, most notably Asda, Tesco, and Sainsbury’s.

Without syndication, numerous products would show zero reviews, creating a risk of revenue loss. 

Review syndication also led to an overall increase in product ratings across Hardys Wines’ three major retailers. Because ratings were based on a higher volume of reviews, Hardys product ratings went up from 4.32 to 4.59 stars.

Higher product ratings have major benefits for brands, from increased consumer trust to more prominent store search result placements. 

3. Improve marketing efficiency with UGC

UGC is a powerful tool, with 74% of consumers surveyed by Bazaarvoice agreeing that other shoppers’ photos increase their willingness to purchase a product. Knowing the value of UGC, Hardys chose to integrate it within their paid ads on social media and benefited from increased engagement and cost-per-click savings. 

Before launching the in-store campaign, Hardys used promotional images throughout their social media pages to build up interest and engagement. The images advertised various classes that shoppers could enroll in once they submitted their review. 

Once reviews were gathered, Hardys included UGC from the offline marketing campaign throughout its paid social media ads. This wasn’t a tactic that Hardys had previously used and the brand saw an incredible boost in audience engagement. With a modest budget, the social media campaign led to over 10,000 clicks to retailers’ websites. 

“We’ve captured a lot of reviews that we can use in our marketing collateral and we’re really pleased to report that it has led to an increase in advertising effectiveness in the form of better cost per clicks and more engagement,” said Dell.

Although savings weren’t an original priority, increased engagement also led to a cost-per-click decrease of 60%. This freed up a significant chunk of the ad budget that Hardys could allocate to other paid marketing efforts. 

Offline UGC collection: A strong marketing strategy for brands

Most brands, especially FMCG brands often have to get creative with their UGC collection methods. In-store promotions, sampling campaigns, influencer partnerships, and microsite content are excellent sources of valuable UGC.

Learn more about Hardys’ take on offline UGC collection, and how it impacted their review volume, marketing efficiencies, and impact at retail in the full case study.

Or continue reading to learn more ways to collect content that converts.

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But with so many different types of influencer out there, not to mention the sheer volume of influencers, it can be difficult knowing how to put influencer marketing into practice. The best way to get ahead is by looking at case studies of those who have already achieved influencer marketing success.

According to our influencer research, there’s four types of influencer to work with:

1. Subject matters experts are experts in a specific industry or topic
2. Celebrities who have become known outside of what they’re famous for
3. Social media stars are well-known with large followers, often paid to promote products
4. Every day social media users like me and you who post authentic user-generated content

While different influencers have different influence for different audiences, it’s the everyday social media users who have the most sway with audiences. It’s easy to assume that more followers = more sway, but according to the 9,000 global shoppers we asked, that’s not the case.

So then when it comes to getting started with influencer marketing, where do you begin? Because there’s multiple avenues to go down. Let’s take a look at three of the best influencer marketing case studies we’ve seen, for the best strategies for you to emulate.

Top 3 Influencer marketing case studies

The following case studies all use influencer marketing, but all use a different type of influencer and a slightly different strategy. But they all have one thing in common: success.

1. BEMZ

Have you ever spent a lot of money on a piece of furniture only to stop loving it after a year or two? A lot of customers have. Which is why they turn to companies like Bemz to update their pieces. Bemz is a Scandinavian design company that specializes in creating made to order, high-end covers for IKEA furniture so people can update pieces in their homes to reflect their personal style better.

Over the past year and a half, Bemz has been populating its marketing channels with more visual user-generated content (UGC) to show potential customers what its products look like in real-life homes. A crucial part of Bemz’s strategy is its use of influencers. The brand relies on them to create evergreen content that Bemz continually collects and integrates into marketing programs.

But, the way Bemz partners with influencers is a little different than some of the other brands out there. 

A unique partnership

Bemz mainly works with influencers in its core markets, like Sweden, the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. However, it doesn’t go after the biggest names in interior design like you may think it would. 

Instead, Bemz chooses to work directly with influencers that already have an Ikea product in their homes to make for a more natural collaboration and build trust with customers. Many of the influencers it works with are in the interior design space, but it also goes after those in other sectors like fashion and beauty. 

“We pick influencers on a case-by-case basis depending on what the profile looks like, if we can get content out of it that matches our brand aesthetic, if they have great engagement, or if are really relevant in a certain sector,” said Alexandra Öhrlund, Social Media Manager at Bemz. 

Seeking out influencers who already own Ikea products is a more natural fit for Bemz. The brand ensures that its covers are shown repeatedly when the influencer posts photos of them hanging out at home on the couch, even if it’s not a Bemz sponsored post.  

Capturing the authenticity movement

In some cases, Bemz will work with influencers who don’t match the brand’s aesthetic. For example, the brand doesn’t showcase shabby chic looks or farmhouse interiors on its own site and channels. But they still choose to work with a leader within an influencer’s sector to build brand awareness and trust within that influencer’s community.

“It’s not necessarily something that we then incorporate into our content strategy, but we work with them because they have a great profile. They’re very genuine within their field,” said Öhrlund. 

This strategy works because it taps into the rising authenticity movement. 72% of shoppers now choose products based on a brand’s reputation. Consumers are fatigued by insincere, fake, untrustworthy content and crave authentic UGC from real people — partly why they consider every day social media users the most trustworthy influencer.

Bemz has found that this kind of content resonates much more with its followers. The brand continues to collect this evergreen content and display it on social media, which has seen click-through rates increase by 41%.

You can read the full Bemz influencer marketing case study here to learn more.

2. QUIZ

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, global fashion brand Quiz primarily focused on the in-store experience at its 250 brick-and-mortar locations. However, when stores started to close, Quiz knew it needed to focus more on its social and e-commerce strategies to increase engagement. 

To start, the brand began posting more user-generated content (UGC) images from customers on its social feed, because those types of posts have always had a very high engagement rate for Quiz.

The team also knew that they needed to make these images shoppable to guide interested consumers from the social feed to product pages on Quiz’s site. But they didn’t stop there. 

A micro and macro strategy 

One unique aspect of Quiz’s new social media strategy is its use of micro- and macro-influencers to increase engagement.

• Micro-influencer: Has a social media following between 1,000 and 100,000
• Macro-influencer: Has a social media following over 100,000

For a recent winter party collection, Quiz put together a list of micro- and macro-influencers it wanted to get UGC from for that collection. Then, Quiz shipped those influencers outfits from the new collection, and the influencers took photos of themselves in the clothing and tagged Quiz in the images.

“As soon as the collection is live, we can look through our gallery feed and pull the strongest images into the homepage gallery to showcase different influencers,” said Megan Ashurst, Senior Social Media Executive at Quiz. 

Quiz uses a mix of micro- and macro-influencers to maximize the impact of campaigns. Macro-influencers have a lot of followers, so their posts see a wider reach. But micro-influencers have smaller fanbases, so their followings are typically more loyal and tend to engage more with posts. Instagram’s own research of 8000,000 accounts supports this:

“We tend to find that we do get really valuable content and engagement from smaller influencers as much as we do from the big influencers,” said Ashurst. 

Quiz’s use of influencer content — on its website and social channels — led to a 276% increased time on site, a 23% higher average order value, and a 154% increase in conversion rates, making them one of the great influencer marketing case studies we’ve seen.

You can read it in full here.

3. RIMMEL

There’s only one thing better than an influencer marketing strategy: an Influenster marketing strategy. The Influenster App is a community of over 7.5 million every day creators, eager and willing to create authentic content about your brand.

Actually, they’re already creating this content. You just need to activate the community, which is exactly what British beauty brand Rimmel London did.

Rimmel activated the Influenster community through a hyper-targeted sampling campaign, where samples of products are sent to community members in exchange for honest reviews, product imagery, and social posts.

Because of the ability to choose a highly-specific audience, Rimmel was able to send products to an audience of 18-30 year old beauty enthusiasts in key markets. Recipients were asked to share their thoughts and feedback through reviews and social media posts.

The campaign led to over 1,200 product reviews and 15.7 million impressions on social, driving brand awareness and sales along the buyer journey. Incidentally, the campaign led to a 44% higher sales lift for the featured products.  

Learn more about how the campaign led to increased advocacy, brand awareness, and a 69% higher sales lift for the product categories in which the sampled products compete by reading the full case study here.

Become an influencer marketing case study

Play your cards right and it could be your brand featured here amongst the other successful influencer marketing case studies. We continue to see the rewards our clients have from working with influencers and content creators, so we know it’s the way forward.

Last year, influencer marketing spend jumped from $3.69 billion to $4.14 billion in the U.S alone, according to HubSpot. It’s past time to get started with influencer marketing. But whatever avenue you choose, you’ll first need to know how to reach out to influencers and get a yes in return.

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How to create an effective influencer marketing strategy

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How do you set out to offer the same shopping experience for both your in-store and online customers? How can your customers test your products’ smell, texture, and ingredients when they can’t touch them?

Sure, they can head to a retail store that carries your products, but with 32% of shoppers preferring to make all or most of their beauty purchases online, that leaves out a large chunk of the target market. And that doesn’t include the other shoppers who are increasingly making purchases online.

But before we get to that question, there’s another question we need to answer first.

What is customer engagement?

Customer engagement is every interaction you have with customers, both online and offline, anywhere in the shopper journey. It’s one of those terms every marketer knows, but if you actually pressed them for a definition they’d probably struggle for a concrete answer.

To increase customer engagement means to foster awareness, loyalty, and advocacy with customers. It’s important for businesses of every size because successful customer engagement means your brand is always top of mind for customers in the decision-making step of the buying process. When your brand is top of mind, you’re who shoppers come to first to buy a product.

3 ways to increase customer engagement

There’s multiple ways to increase customer engagement, but every strategy is a hypothetical suggestion until you’ve seen a brand implement them successfully. That’s why we’re going to look at the tactics beauty brand Fresh used to increase customer engagement, create a rich shopping experience through expanded review volume, and increase conversion rates, and drive a $1.65 million revenue impact.

1. Sweepstakes

Imagine buying your favorite product, leaving a quick review, and winning $100. Sounds like a good deal, right? That’s exactly what Fresh offered customers during its summer sweepstakes campaign designed to increase customer engagement and boost review volume. 

89% of consumers consult customer ratings and reviews before making a purchase, so collecting (and displaying) this form of user-generated content (UGC) is essential for every business.

Fresh customers were encouraged to leave a review on their favorite Rose product for a chance to win a $100 eGift card, and the brand immediately saw results. Within the first week, Fresh gathered 217 high-quality reviews, with 11% of those containing visual UGC, like pictures and videos. Throughout the month, review volume reached 549, with review ratings of 4.8. 

High product ratings are essential in marketing beauty products, but they can also be damaging if review volume is low. A recent survey revealed that 68% of shoppers don’t trust high ratings unless they also see a high review volume. Because Fresh — armed with guidance from Bazaarvoice — gathered an extensive amount of reviews, the ratings made sense to potential buyers. 

“Now we’re actually doing one [sweepstakes campaign] per quarter and we know that this is going to be an always-on strategy that we want to continue to grow. ” said Brittany Uhal, Senior Manager of the US e-commerce team at Fresh.

2. Visual user-generated content

According to a Bazaarvoice survey, 66% of shoppers look for visual UGC before buying a product, making customer photos and videos a key factor in persuasive reviews. In the beauty industry especially, this type of content is crucial for increasing customer engagement and selling a product.

Social media, online beauty communities, and review sections provide valuable visuals for online shoppers, which can make or break a product’s reputation.

“I think it was two years ago that a beauty product went viral on TikTok and completely did record-breaking sales. I think every beauty brand, whether they want to admit it or not, is trying to recreate that or understand how to break that algorithm,” explained Uhal.

With this in mind, Fresh introduced photo-first displays, putting visual UGC front and center. Now, when customers shop on product description pages, they’re able to get a good feel for products through detailed photos and application videos submitted by fellow consumers. 

“Photo-first displays lead customers to leave more photos of their own, so it was great to see that within the increased reviews,” explained Uhal. This cycle of consuming and creating visual UGC means higher customer engagement, a better online shopping experience, and increased sales for Fresh. 

“We know UGC isn’t the future — it’s now. So how do we incorporate all of this great social content from the customers that we already have?” said Uhal. 

3. Retail syndication

With 19 international sites and three major retailers stocking Fresh products, the decision to syndicate reviews was an easy one. Syndication takes organic reviews from original sources, like fresh.com, and distributes them across all online sales channels. For brands like Fresh, this means a wealth of reviews shared between global sites and major retailers that stock the brand. 

With the Bazaarvoice Retail Syndication tool, Fresh saw a 7,702% increase in review volume, and they also used it to tackle another challenge: limited edition products. Limited edition gift sets and holiday bundles are popular features on most beauty brand websites, but gathering reviews is difficult because they have such a short lifecycle. 

Instead, Bazaarvoice syndicated reviews for the core products within the limited edition gift sets. When Fresh launched the new product description pages, they already contained a strong collection of UGC.

“We know reviews increase conversion and interaction. We wanted our limited edition products to have that as well, and it’s been great to see that,” said Uhal. 

A Fresh way to increase customer engagement

Fresh has big plans for its beauty e-commerce model: integrating more social content, building relationships with influencers, and expanding its sweepstakes campaigns.

“We’re really excited to continue growing our program at Bazaarvoice. At Fresh, we always say the sky’s the limit, and I feel that way working with Bazaarvoice,” said Uhal.

Transform your e-commerce strategy and increase customer engagement by learning more about Fresh’s successful implementation of Bazaarvoice tools here.

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What is content syndication?

Content syndication, or retail syndication, is a method of driving revenue by republishing pieces of content (whether brand or user-generated) on one or more different channels — like e-commerce sites and social media pages. Businesses of all sizes use content syndication because it puts content in front of shoppers wherever they are, encouraging them to make confident purchases.

One such brand that utilizes content syndication is travel brand Samsonite, who wanted to increase branded and influencer content across channels for retail and wholesale divisions. Despite being a household name for travel products, Samsonite has faced several challenges. Namely, they wanted to:

• Boost product discovery
• Increase presence across sales channels
• Effectively distribute authentic user-generated content

In order to meet these goals, Samsonite partnered with Bazaarvoice to syndicate reviews and other content across new channels. 

Being able to more broadly distribute and share this content that we’re so heavily invested in and are spending a lot of our budget on developing really gave us a competitive edge

Meghan O’Keefe, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Samsonite

By leveraging content syndication, Samsonite was able to significantly increase revenue and create an exceptional online shopping experience across all sales channels. 

Expanded product galleries inspire customers and skyrocket sales

Before content syndication, Samsonite struggled with finding the right content distribution channels that were also conducive to product discovery. But they found a solution in Bazaarvoice Galleries. This tool became an essential part of Samsonite’s strategy to deliver travel-inspired content and authentic visuals to their customers while boosting revenue. 

Galleries consists of branded, influencer, and customer visual content and acts as a segway to product description pages. Rather than encountering a boring product description page, shoppers are able to browse a dynamic and engaging page featuring authentic user-generated and branded content, helpful ratings and reviews, and common questions and answers.

Upgrading these product description pages resulted in consumers spending 5x more time on pages, browsing galleries, and choosing to purchase at 4x the average rate. As O’Keefe explained:

When our users engage with our galleries, we’re able to achieve conversion rates at about 4x their normal rate. Not only are people spending more time on our sites, they’re also spending more money, which is a great KPI to consider too

Since 74% of shoppers believe that user-generated content is an important factor in the purchase decision, the authentic visuals of a product gallery act as a trust signifier for consumers. Through Bazaarvoice Galleries, Samsonite experienced a $599K increase in revenue since the last quarter. They also saw a 15% increase in the average order value of products when shoppers browsed gallery pages. 

How to syndicate content

Featuring content on product pages is one thing, but knowing how to syndicate content across different channels takes that to the next level. Which is where content syndication comes in.

For example, reviews are a crucial source of information for shoppers, with 88% consulting reviews before making a purchase. Imagine trying to decide between two products with similar features and price points. One has zero reviews, while the other has thousands of authentic reviews with pictures and ratings. The choice is clear. So it’s imperative to get review content in front of shoppers, wherever they are.

Samsonite struggled to maintain review sections across its many partner sites and retail channels, resulting in a lack of information for shoppers. Once syndicated reviews were launched through the Retail Syndication tool, Samsonite saw a 1,360% lift in review volume on destination sites like Target, Walmart, and Macy’s. 

Websites that had no prior reviews now contain healthy review sections too, providing shoppers with a wealth of information about Samsonite’s products. The Bed, Bath, and Beyond website alone went from zero to 28,260 authentic reviews. 

Retail Syndication leads to cohesive content distribution

Cohesion and consistency across channels creates a seamless customer shopping experience, which is exactly why Samsonite employed the Bazaarvoice Retail Syndication tool for visual content distribution. 

“I think that because we have the two divisions, direct to consumer and wholesale, and they’re always trying to live in harmony, it can sometimes feel a bit just disjointed when our branded content on our own sites, doesn’t quite match, or even exist, on our retail partner sites,” explained O’Keefe. 

Retail Syndication allowed for more brand consistency because UGC gathered from social media and branded content was now integrated throughout all sales channels. Shoppers searching for Samsonite products on popular retail websites like Walmart encountered the same visuals as those who shopped directly on Samsonite. 

Samsonite’s competitive advantage: user-generated content

User-generated content is at the core of Samsonite’s brand. With a balanced mix of authentic reviews and ratings, inspirational travel content shared through numerous channels, and stunning product galleries, they’ve created a cohesive brand experience, drivn product discovery, and increased revenue. 

Bazaarvoice Galleries and Retail Syndication tools play a key role in streamlining these processes. Meghan O’Keefe highlights how effortless it was to work with Bazaarvoice to implement these solutions. 

“It was very seamless and easy. The Bazaarvoice team took a lot of initiative and a lot of work off of our team. We implemented over the Covid-era and, at the time, our team was very lean, so to be able to implement such an important software and having it be so easy, is something people should know.” Read our full Samsonite case study here for more details.

Bazaarvoice makes content syndication simple. With our tool, you can easily syndicate content to our network of over 1,750 retailers — that’s 20x more traffic than other networks. More content in front of more shoppers means more revenue for your business. Learn more about Bazaarvoice Retail Syndication. Or get in touch directly below to get started.

Luckily, we’re going to show you how. And why. And possibly even when. Using global brands, and Bazaarvoice’s own client success stories, we explain exactly how you can rock customer centricity.

Chapters:

1. What is a customer-centric selling approach?
2. Benefits of customer centricity
3. How brands use data to implement customer centricity
4. Use UGC to enable the right strategy

Imagine you’re shopping online for a new social media management tool. You’re checking your LinkedIn account, scrolling through your feed, or listening to your favorite podcast at the same time. Suddenly, you get a DM from a salesperson crowing about their platform. You need to sign up right now! Quick! This is a one-time deal! Aaaand… Close browser.

The truth is, most people prefer to buy from salespeople who first establish a friendly connection and then take the time to personalize their pitch to you and your needs. That’s customer-centric selling at its core.

Most e-commerce managers know customer centricity will help them grow revenue and foster customer loyalty. In fact, a Vantage Partners study suggests that companies that adopt a mature customer-centric approach realize 2.5x revenue growth compared with the average company. But in practice, many brands still end up fumbling around in the dark and not really harnessing the data to make this happen.

Here’s how top e-commerce brands use UGC about real customer challenges to inform their customer-centric strategy.

What is a customer-centric selling approach?

Customer-centric selling is a sales methodology that puts customer needs first to establish a successful, mutually beneficial relationship. Engaging in a customer-centric approach relies on empathy and nurturing a two-way dialogue with customers. It’s the approach that actually provides the best customer experience.

Customer centricity also allows brands to modify their processes, product, messaging, and sales timeline to fit customer needs. A brand that adopts a customer-centric selling strategy becomes its customers’ best problem-solving ally because it approaches customers in a way that benefits the customers.

For a successful customer-centric selling approach, salespeople (and marketers, too!) should engage prospects and customers with key behaviors. In the influential book “CustomerCentric Selling,” co-writers Michael Bosworth, John Holland, and Frank Visgatis break down those behaviors into eight basic tenets, which I’ve adapted and simplified below:

• Actively listen with curiosity — not assumptions.
• Ask curious, open-ended questions that give them the freedom to express themselves in a non-pressured environment.
• Focus on helping them overcome a challenge, solve a problem, or satisfy a need.
• Align with their values.

Here’s a great visual that defines customer centricity on four different levels of maturity:

Customer-centric vs consumer-centric

Customer-centric selling is an empathetic, inside-out approach in which all teams — R&D, product management, marketing, sales, support — seek to learn and understand what your customer’s needs truly are.

Compare this to the more traditional consumer-centric selling, which is a product-focused, outside-in approach. Rather than asking questions, consumer-centric selling seeks to make a sale by judging and assuming what the customer’s needs truly are.

The table below offers an easy way to compare the two approaches, adapted from the book “CustomerCentric Selling” and an article published in California Management Review:

A recent example of assumptions gone wrong comes from the wonderful world of Disney. Taking a consumer-centric approach to marketing Encanto, Disney assumed people would love the character of Isabela. She’s classically beautiful, has that perfect Disney princess singing voice, and so on. So, Disney made tons of Isabela merchandise.

Except… Little girls actually loved Luisa. A character whose signature muscles the film’s development team had to fight with Disney executives to keep. Following the film’s release, Disney has had to scramble to meet customer demand for Luisa merchandise.

Had Disney taken a customer-centric approach, it may have been less shocked by changing tastes and trends for women. And maybe Luisa’s beloved, fan-favorite muscles could have been helping Disney generate even more revenue.

In contrast, Blue Bottle Coffee has taken a customer-centric approach by allowing newsletter subscribers to opt out of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day marketing messages.

The company realized that many people struggle with the constant barrage of messages surrounding those holidays. So instead of assuming that their audience relates positively to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and pushing marketing on them, the company listened to what their audience wanted and took action based on that insight.

Benefits of customer centricity

A customer-centric selling approach is more successful because it’s focused on building a sustainable, trusting relationship. According to Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising Study, most people place the most trust in recommendations that come from people they know.

Sales and marketing reps obviously can’t be a friend or family member to every customer. But, they can strive to do the next best thing — “put the consumer first in every strategy, plan and execution.” In doing so, brands will earn the trust of customers and foster positive word of mouth.

The goal isn’t to become better sellers but rather “buyer facilitators,” said Chris Sargent, senior director of Global Sales Enablement at NICE inContact, during his discussion on sales training.

If employed correctly and combined with the right data-collection tools, a customer-centric selling strategy will help your brand better resonate with customers and bolster both customer success and customer support. It will target their specific needs and pain points.

Your customers will be better served because your brand will be providing a better overall value.

As a result, loyalty and trust will grow. Loyal customers will transform into full-fledged ambassadors who will help positively characterize your brand by word-of-mouth. Your entire company will better understand and empathize with its audience. This will promote more innovative product development and an elevated cycle of inspired, engaged employees.

The more engaged your employees are, the better the customer experience will be. And the better the customer’s experience is, the more customer loyalty and retention will increase — not to mention your revenue.

How brands use data to implement customer centricity

The best customer centricity strategies rely on asking the right questions and actually listening to customer responses. Traditionally, brands hired consumer psychologists to design focus groups and surveys. But this process is long and arduous, not to mention expensive.

Today, brands can utilize sophisticated software to source and use first-party data and user-generated content (UGC) in their marketing and sales efforts.

Enventys

According to Roy Morejon, President and Co-founder of Enventys Partners — a B2B product development, launch, and marketing firm — customer-centric data is often found through interactive data tracking. This involves tracking data such as the number of confirmed purchases, abandoned carts, and returns.

Brands can also collect quantitative first-party data through recurring email subscriptions, Morejon explained, by analyzing open rates and measuring how many customers click the links within the emails they received.

“Analyzing this data in comparison to other user details,” said Morejon, “such as general internet behavior, job, lifestyle, and other personal data (age, gender, etc.), provides insights that you can use to optimize customer-centric selling.”

Morejon mentioned Pardot as a specific tool to help harness this data.

“Pardot is a great feature integrated with Salesforce. This app tracks how customers move through the sales funnel, tracking purchases, abandonments, and returns. It provides data on how customers interact with digital marketing assets, such as social media ads and emails, and even offline interactions. It gathers data submitted through user forms, Salesforce, and other integrable platforms.” — Roy Morejon.

Unilever

UGC, like reviews, and questions and answers, is a common method to bolster customer centricity. Unilever set out to get more user reviews, which it then used as a marketing tool to improve revenue. In doing this, it also improved customer loyalty and satisfaction, and increased organic search traffic and engagement.

This success was facilitated by Bazaarvoice-powered sampling campaigns. Unilever saw a massive increase in customer reviews across all its brands, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. This, in turn, gave Unilever additional leveraging power.

“When we include reviews in social ads and display ads,” said Jenna Spivak Evans, Innovation and Digital Capabilities Manager at Unilever, “we see about a 20–30% improvement in performance.”

“Because UGC delivers such rich content, you can see increases in search traffic of 15–25% as a result of using customer-generated content,” said Evans. “You will also see increases in website engagement metrics such as product page views per visit, average time spent onsite, and return-visitor rate.”

Unilever also cross-referenced the people leaving reviews with the customer data it has about those people in its CRM. Doing this not only helped collect UGC and demographic data, but it helped increase personalization as well.

According to Evans, “Integration of UGC into CRM will give us deeper demographic information and provide an incremental way to understand different customers’ needs.”

For a closer look at Unilever’s path to success, check out the Bazaarvoice case study.

Kärcher

Kärcher, a global cleaning technology company, uses UGC to collect customer insights, drive conversions, and strengthen its relationships with retail partners. By monitoring customer feedback and reviews throughout the sales process, the brand was not only able to create new products customers would love, but also improve pre-existing products and set a company-wide quality standard.

“Having reviews in place just before the retailer releases our products gives consumers the confidence to try our new products right from the start,” said Kevin Wiredu, Senior E-Commerce Specialist at Kärcher. “It’s a key to our success.”

In Kärcher’s first sampling campaign, 98% of sample recipients responded with a review. The brand received hundreds of high-quality product reviews, videos, and images. Currently, it’s collected over 280K reviews across 73 retail sites.

With new valuable UGC data at its disposal, Kärcher was able to jumpstart its latest sales cycle and product launch by having numerous, high-quality reviews ready and available the moment new products went live.

Even better, leveraging UGC data helped Kärcher address some issues with product messaging. After reading some customer reviews, the brand realized that many customers didn’t understand the purpose of one of their products — or even how to use it. So, the company was able to tweak the product messaging and packaging to better communicate the product’s intended use.

This is a key example of customer-centric selling because the brand listened to customers and made relevant changes to address their needs.

You can read Bazaarvoice’s full Kärcher case study here.

Nestlé Canada

By leveraging UGC data, Nestlé Canada improved both its overall performance and its relationship with customers. The types of UGC that proved most beneficial were customer reviews and insights, customer feedback, and customer questions.

Thanks to Nestlé’s broad reach, it receives thousands of reviews on a constant basis. But all that data can be difficult to manage. So the company used Bazaarvoice Insights and Reports to make sense of the flood — and, more importantly, to inform business decisions.

Other helpful solutions Nestlé Canada leveraged were Bazaarvoice-powered focus groups and Questions & Answers. In fact, within three months of enabling Bazaarvoice Questions & Answers, Nestlé Canada received over 700 questions from its customers.

The driving force behind Nestlé Canada’s focus on reviews is that the company wants to listen to customers and solve their needs. “Consumers do the talking for us,” said Lee Beech, Director of Consumer Experience at Nestlé Canada. “They speak, and we listen and take action. ”

By leveraging all these solutions, the Nestlé sales team observed that many of its neutral product reviews contained customer questions. In response, Nestlé implemented Bazaarvoice Salesforce Connector and began devoting time each day to provide responses, enhancing customer support all from a single tool.

“It saves, on average, eight minutes to code a case,” according to Kristina Rapljenovic, Website Manager at Nestlé Canada. “We previously didn’t have the capacity and had to let go of engaging with as many of the reviews as we wanted. It would have taken eight minutes to open a case and transfer all of that content. Now, it’s all automated.”

For a more in-depth look, check out the Bazaarvoice’s Nestlé Canada case study.

KidKraft

Like Nestlé Canada and Kärcher, KidKraft uses data from UGC to make product changes. It’s been able to fine-tune its product positioning and fuel its marketing messaging due to the automated ways it can now collect customer feedback, reviews, and customer-shared product photos.

As a mark of its success, KidKraft has collected over 100,000 reviews across the Bazaarvoice Network and achieved 100% review coverage on retail sites as a result of syndication.

“We work really closely with the product development team,” said Heather Stables, the Director of Consumer Engagement at KidKraft, “to make sure that if we see consistent issues or questions being raised by consumers, we can go back and address that by making changes to the actual product.”

One example of this comes from KidKraft’s playhouses. Using Bazaarvoice Insights, KidKraft was able to quickly observe that many customers were DIYing one of the playhouses to have a white, more modern appearance. Recognizing the need, KidKraft released their own white, modern-style playhouse and saw a huge uptick in sales as a result.

Check out Bazaarvoice’s KidKraft case study to learn more.

Adeo

Adeo, a French home improvement retail company, launched a successful UGC program across all its brands. It also implemented strategies to handle fake reviews by collecting UGC data directly after a sale and including a verified purchase badge. Even more, it accessed new markets that, until recently, had low brand awareness. Its latest goal is to reach an overall customer satisfaction rating of four stars.

To begin implementing its customer-centric selling approach, Adeo began collecting UGC data such as customer reviews and ratings. Similar to Nestlé Canada, it also took into account customer questions. And like KidKraft and Kärcher, it utilized customer product photos.

UGC was particularly important to Adeo because its products are often used to complete technical projects like plumbing and electricity that require a degree of expertise. UGC helps to solve a common customer problem — confidence.

“Incorporating reviews, photos and questions by our customers on our products and services pages provides this reassurance and complements the expertise of our sellers,” said Nicolas Fillat, Marketing Business Leader, Customer Care and Feedback at Adeo.

Adeo also places a high value on reviews written in a language that customers can read. With the Bazaarvoice Translated Reviews feature, Adeo has been able to ensure both ratings and reviews are always presented in the customer’s preferred language. This way, customers benefit from reading insights from other customers.

“Bazaarvoice, with its strong global network, allows us to support our customers regardless of country or language,” said Fillat. “This has allowed us to collect, moderate, and display product reviews throughout ten group business to date.”

Check out Bazaarvoice’s Adeo case study for more info.

Wayfair

Wayfair stands out as another example of successful customer centricity. For its UGC campaigns, Wayfair encourages customers to share their design ideas using the branded hashtag #WayfairAtHome.

By measuring both demographic and UGC data, Wayfair has been able to deepen its understanding of its audience and deliver a hyper-personalized experience. It’s achieved this through analytics and predictive AI. Wayfair creates a detailed buyer persona through this AI system. This helps to show customers only the products most relevant to them. Wayfair simply has too much content not to do this.

Customer centricity isn’t just a choice for Wayfair. It’s a necessity.

“On average, we capture and store four terabytes of data every day and over the course of a year, we track approximately 40 billion customer actions on our site. Data has been democratized across the organization — it can be accessed and used regardless of whether an employee works in marketing, logistics, or engineering. Data has allowed the company to better execute on its strategy through improved personalization.” — Steven Conine, Wayfair Co-founder

By focusing on customer centricity, Wayfair has avoided the problem of customer experience becoming overwhelming and time consuming, which would certainly hurt sales metrics and decrease Wayfair’s overall revenue.

Instead, Wayfair has successfully streamlined the buyer process, thanks to its machine learning technology.

Use UGC to enable a customer-centric selling strategy

Customer centricity is a better approach to selling. To do it well, you need the right data and tools to collect it:

• Sampling campaigns
• Focus groups
• Insights and Reports solutions
• Questions & Answers
• (Translated) Ratings & Reviews
• Integrated reviews with CRMs

Now that you know how and why to put the customer first in sales, enable customers to make those sales for you by using product sampling and user-generated content. Or get in touch directly below to request a free demo.

You can check out more of our Long Read content here for more marketing strategies, tips, and insights.

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Building communities is incredibly important to the way we all work and interact. They’re not new, they’ve been around for literally thousands of years, but they’re continually evolving. How can we work better with them?

JP Morgan’s strategy is about humanizing their financial products and brand. They have a community of 600 wealth advisors who use social media to distribute information to their prospects and existing clients. Taylor Alston’s very familiar with using social listening and monitoring to drive engagement, but social media remains the wild, wild west, constantly shifting and changing. 

There’s one constant, though: Building communities is about people who have a shared interest. With a strong brand, you have people who are interested in it, and that’s a community in itself. We have to make content that’s relevant to them.

But you might also want to tackle and engage with new communities you see value in. What are the strategies to move the needle with those groups, to meet them where they are, to talk their language? These are the two groups of people that she concentrates on. 

What content does your community need? 

The major goal is to take your platform as a brand, and figure out what you want to be known for. JP Morgan Chase intends to be a go-to source for investing, market news, and wealth-planning conversations. It’s a complex topic, and the target market is aspiring affluent millennials. So, they’re doubling down on education and giving them the information they need, that’s applicable to their lives.

It’s about making a complex topic less complex, so they walk away feeling smarter. What really helps is them is listening. They spend a lot of time using social listening tools and working with their insights team to access new research. And they look at our they performance, at content metrics, and monitor if people engaged and comment. It turns social media into a real-time focus group. 

Learning how to nurture conversations is really important. That might be making things more understandable, but its also answering questions from the community. How do you create ongoing discussion with your audience? Can you match tactics to audiences? 

Helping students celebrate success and transition into work

Here’s a great example: In 2020, countless brands were trying to figure out how they could help in the early stages of the pandemic when people were hurting. 

“We wanted to be really thoughtful about how we did this, and the topic we chose to address,” said Alston. “Online, we were seeing many students taking to social media to express their frustration at not getting to walk across a stage during their graduation. It’s a Super Bowl moment for them.”

So, they rallied the company around the idea of a virtual graduation event using social and a livestream. They had a live commencement address, used your ambassadors and figures like Barack Obama. They saw over 1 million streams that day, and trended, which was amazing.

But off the back of that, they provided tools and information for people transitioning from student to working person. And they had a user-generated campaign to complement it, asking students to share their cap-and-gown walk. It was a beautiful moment they were able to share online, a community moment of shared experience, involving over 30,000 people’s content. 

It was, in effect, an invitation for new people to join their community. They used their ambassadors to welcome people, they worked with the universities to draw people in, too. 

Adding new platforms to your content mix

How do they decide when to add a new platform into the mix? The beauty of social media is that it changes every day, so you never know when there will be a new platform, a new opportunity to penetrate into a new community. They have a presence across every platform, bar TikTok, but they aim to get there soon. They’re already looking to it for inspiration, especially around short-form video edutainment. 

But it’s also a good research tool. What content is bubbling up and getting a ton of engagement around wealth planning? Alston wants to address those questions. 

“For our community, we look at success in two ways,” she says. “Every day, we’re looking at channel health, follower growth, engagement works, sentiment around content. These are key areas for success. And then when we do paid media, we look at business impact. We set the objectives up front, and track that.”

At any given time, you can have different goals and KPIs because there’s so many ways of driving community.

Inspiring brands building communities

Alston takes inspiration from brands outside the financial sector. Starbucks is doing great work in social, she thinks, and they bring their fans into their content pretty frequently. It gives the audience an incentive to be part of the community. Nike has always been so brave and unapologetic about what they do, in her view. They know what their community cares about, and they address that, and they have no fear of backlash. 

And then there’s Target, who have a really great voice on Twitter. Very relatable, and it taps into cultural trends. And that’s important because people want to be seen, to be heard. There’s lots of social justice issues going on. 

“We put out statements in support of some issues when I was on the Chase side of the business. It was scary because it was new, but the feedback we got from our community for standing up for them was so beautiful to see. You have such power as a brand to do the right thing. I’m proud we were able to do that.”

Know what your community cares about, and be the partner and friend they need. 

What’s next for JP Morgan Chase? 

Next on JP Morgan Chase’s agenda for building communities is evolving their content in the TikTok edutainment style. They’re also thinking about online to offline experiences, especially for their fans. Fun way of deepening relationships are something they’re exploring — especially surprising and alighting them with unexpected gifts or experiences. 

After all, gifts are one of the ways that building communities helps people bond with each other.

The retail industry is as strong as ever. And consumers hold the power like never before. They decide how a brand is perceived, and the risk of boycott in today’s cancel culture is very real. The dramatic power shift to customers has led to heightened actions and vocalizing for authenticity, improved experiences, and above all, for consumers to feel heard. Catch up on Bazaarvoice Summit to see how to win hearts and minds of today’s consumers.

Before we think about an influencer strategy, you need to force yourself to think as broad as humanly possible: macro, macro, macro. Consumers are truly global. What’s the current state of the world? That’s going to shape the frame of mind of the consumer.

For example: What’s the state of the markets today? Is the Dow Jones hitting the floor, or is it up? What pressures are impacting consumers? Inflation is at a 40 year high right now. So, the cost of business is increasing, and the dollar doesn’t go as far for consumers.

Is there a political crisis? Is there a looming war? These impacts on costs, as we’re discovering right now. And the state of the planet heavily impacts on Gen Z and their view of companies. They really care about sustainability. 

What’s changing the consumer mood?

Before starting an influencer strategy, we need to look at consumer behavior. Going a layer deeper from that extremely macro, global view, what’s happening with consumers? How does the macro pressure shape the trends and beliefs of the consumer. Consumers are getting more and more diverse every year. Diversity is critical to modern consumers. And they’re deeply content obsessed. Content creators and influencers now make up a $13.8 billion market, up from $1.7 billion in 2016.

That’s a testament to the insatiable appetite for content form consumers today.

Modern consumers are always on. They’re always connected. The online and offline experiences are truly blurred. Retailers and brands are expected to deliver for consumers in their chosen environment. Transparency and authenticity are a bare minimum for them now. 

Consumers encounter messages at every turn. How do we cut through that clutter? How do we get our messages out to where consumers are? 

The best influencer strategy is an Influenster strategy

Well, 86% of women use social media for purchasing advice. That’s huge. They’re looking for that authenticity. 70% of teens trust influencers more than celebrities. They’re genuinely the new celebrities, occupying the same spot. When you’re building an influencer strategy, you need those points of connection built-in.

For example, L’Oreal partners with Bazaarvoice’s Influenster community. You can really work within the huge community to get the right hyper-targeted audiences, so your campaign resonates with the tailored universe for your messaging. For example, last year they used Influenster to target a campaign for a hair product.

Redken, a L’Oreal brand, wanted an influencer strategy that focused on women aged between 20 and 46, who have oil prone hair, who frequently hit the gym, or who have a busy schedule. They used shopping habits, like Sephora and Amazon, as well.

How did it go? They got 7.7 million impressions, and sent out 2,500 boxes of product, generating 1,700 reviews. There were 84,000 posts, shares, likes, and so on. “We didn’t spend that much, so the performance was incredible,” Salas says. They didn’t spend $567,0000 on the campaign — but that’s the estimate of the earned media value of it. 

On Instagram specifically, they had 69,000 like and comments off 6.2 million impressions. Talk about building buzz, chatter, and relevancy in a really authentic way! Across posts and stories, they had a 3.2% engagement rate, which is great. It’s great seeing women really enjoying the product — there’s some beautiful imagery. It’s accounted for $501,405 of the earned media value on its own. 

Think about the buzz that comes with that — that’s what we’re looking for. It drives repurchase intent, and brings people into the brand.

The after survey

One of Salas’ favorite pieces is the post-survey component, and the insights that come in. Over ⅓ of respondents had already bought a different Redken product by the time of the survey. Talk about loyalizing customers in a really effective way. There was also a real interest in trying the new products coming down the line, too.

What a beautiful way to build out an influencer strategy in a relevant way. Learn more about Redken’s influencer strategy here.

The retail industry is as strong as ever. And consumers hold the power like never before. They decide how a brand is perceived, and the risk of boycott in today’s cancel culture is very real. The dramatic power shift to customers has led to heightened actions and vocalizing for authenticity, improved experiences, and above all, for consumers to feel heard. Catch up on Bazaarvoice Summit to see how to win hearts and minds of today’s consumers.

The digital age is reshaping how we, as marketers, are showing up for our consumers. The simple fact that we can browse, research and shop online, has us all trying to keep up.

But I’m a consumer too, and my personal shopping journeys can also shape the journeys we build at J&J. A few years ago, as a first time mom, I went to a brick-and-mortar store to create a baby registry. It was overwhelming. I had to make so many decisions I wasn’t prepared to make.

I walked through the store, scanner in hand, trying to chose between multiple models of the same thing: swings, bottles and more. As I walked around, I scanned everything, worried that I’d miss something. Great? Not really. My work had only just started. I had to go back home, grab my phone and laptop, and research every single product in the registry. Some flew off the list. I added new ones I hadn’t seen in the shop. Weeks later, I had something to share with my family and friends. 

This story shows how reliant we are during impulse and vulnerable purchase to research, to asking others their opinions, to see what they loved and didn’t. This is how persuasive we are as as community of digital shoppers. 

Listening to consumers

Putting consumers first has always been a fundamental part of how we bring new innovation to market, ensuring we meet the needs of our consumers, by improving the personal health of people everywhere. We’ve implemented ways of listening to their feedback, and through that, implementing optimizations across the consumer journey.

We make sure we allow customers to get the information they require most efficient and easily, where they are, crating unique, personalized journeys. 

So, of course, we have a framework for monitoring consumer sentiment with regards to user-generated content (UGC). This includes things like:

• Star rating
• Number of reviews per product
• Recency of reviews
• Coverage

These success metrics allow us to judge how we sit in the consumer landscape, and inform our strategic planning and optimization. Talking of which, if we don’t optimize based on the feedback we get — are we truly listening?

From insights to health

I’d like to think that consumer feedback is the sole reason we do what we do at J&J. In fact, buy combining consumer insights, expert science and digital-first thinking, we help 1.2 billion people live healthier lives. 

We draw insights like new product claims we never anticipated from the data, and apply these learnings to consumer touchpoints along the journey. This includes creative assets, display pages, and even product innovation.

We also use UGC to discover where people are shopping, and were we can start to meet them to provide personalized experiences. At the end of the day, if our goal is to drive conversion, we need to show up where they are: social media, video, streaming, website, e-retailers, and even brick-and-mortar stores. And the material we produce needs to authentically reflect how people use our products in their everyday lives. 

After we create our content, we aim to make every touchpoint along the consumer journey shoppable. We want to provide consumers a seamless experience, allowing them to convert when it’s most convenient for them. 

In summary

We put consumers first by:

• Putting them at the forefront of every decision
• Validating information by listening and optimizing in real-time
• Focusing on where people are spending their time

I hope you feel inspired to really take the time to hear what your consumers are saying about your products and your brands, and optimize your approach in putting consumers first. And remember: you’re one of those consumers, too.

The retail industry is as strong as ever. And consumers hold the power like never before. They decide how a brand is perceived, and the risk of boycott in today’s cancel culture is very real. The dramatic power shift to customers has led to heightened actions and vocalizing for authenticity, improved experiences, and above all, for consumers to feel heard. Catch up on Bazaarvoice Summit to see how to win hearts and minds of today’s consumers.