When you think of user-generated content (UGC), you probably think of consumers creating social media posts, but user-generated content is also an essential B2B marketing strategy. It accomplishes key business objectives and can take dozens of forms, so marketers are bound to find a method that makes sense for their brand.

Why B2B Brands Need User-Generated Content

User-generated content may look different for B2B brands as opposed to consumer-facing companies, but the goals and benefits are ultimately the same.

Credibility and Trust — Customer trust is always highest with word-of-mouth advertising. Most people are more likely to view user-generated content as authentic compared to brand-created content. This content includes social proof reviews, testimonials, and case studies.
Reach and Engagement — You can only pay for so much reach on a single ad, but word-of-mouth is free. With user engagement, your brand reach will multiply organically. There is also built-in trust when a customer first hears about your brand through a positive testimony. Brands can encourage this kind of word-of-mouth through a referral program or employee advocacy.
Relationship and Loyalty — The goal of UGC in the B2B space is to establish community. When a customer builds relationships with the brand and with other users, they garner loyalty, which can create B2B customers for life. UGC can grow community through online forums and user-generated FAQs.

It’s important for marketers to understand that user-generated content differs from that developed and shared by influencers, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some overlap.

Influencer content has its own merits, with 86% of B2B brands finding success with the medium, but it lacks the authenticity of organic word of mouth. UGC leverages those already promoting your brand who may eventually make excellent partners in paid initiatives.

This was the narrative for Leila Gharani, who created YouTube videos with tips and tricks for Office Suite users, and eventually became a collaborator and spokesperson for Microsoft products.

How Can B2B Brands Put UGC to Work For Them

How exactly does B2B user-generated content look different than B2C? B2B marketers should mine what is useful from the B2C playbook, then move on to initiatives that appeal more to working professionals in their respective industries.

Social Media

For some B2B companies, social media efforts can fall flat because people aren’t interested in talking about work on social networks they view as personal. Other B2Bs, however, have cracked the code on reaching decision makers across all social marketing channels.

StickerMule develops creative packaging materials to help elevate branding. Their products ultimately end up with excited customers who post unboxing videos and pictures. StickerMule uses this content to highlight the difference their product can make to a customer’s journey and satisfaction.

If your product or service isn’t as visually engaging as StickerMule, you can still focus on LinkedIn. Software brand SAP has a massive following of over 1.6 million, and its heavily engaged fans meet each other in the comments of the official posts. Similarly, Xerox will post about social initiatives that followers share on their own accord.

Online Reviews

One of the most natural fits for consumer content is online reviews, which are a vital resource for prospective buyers.

Establishing a presence on Google My Business (GMB) will boost local SEO, improve discoverability, and provide free marketing in the form of backlinks, images, and more. Encourage reviews on this platform because, with over 90% of global internet searches happening on Google, this will likely be the first slice of information a prospect sees about your brand.

G2 is an online review portal, specifically for SaaS brands. This is where prospects conduct side-by-side comparisons with your competitors, so reviews will be a major factor in building trust.

Companies may also want to host or highlight reviews on their own site so prospects can do research all in one spot. Explore Slack’s testimonials page and see all the different types of content in which feedback is incorporated. Images, quotes, videos, and case studies are all over the site.

Crowd Support

Crowd support forums have tonnes of benefits for companies, whether they are hosted on the company site or existing online forums like Reddit. These forums offer a place for existing and potential customers alike to talk about and research your brand. People will share their own tips, insights, success stories, and more.

People will come to the community of other users with questions or roadblocks, and they can receive instant feedback from other users. This creates a user-generated FAQ, where the answers will be much more authentic and personal than what you could create on your own.

A great example is social media management SaaS, Khoros. They host and monitor a community forum called Khoros Atlas. When staff see an issue come up for customers time and time again, they create web content to provide evergreen answers to user concerns. The most active participants are invited to networking events, both virtual and in-person, with exclusive perks.

If you don’t build your own forum, you could create or encourage participation in one on a third-party site like Reddit. Microsoft’s Reddit board is a very busy customer support tool, but the primary function is to encourage user interaction. The fact that the subreddit is not directly owned by the company adds a sense of authenticity to readers.

Community forums are not a way to offload the work of your customer service team — they’re a way to learn more about customer needs and refine your product or service.

In addition, spaces like these create a community for users and fans of your product. They help people get the most out of your product or service, as well as encourage networking. A vibrant community around your product can establish lifelong loyalty.

Marketing Research

One of the most important ways you can make UGC work for your brand is by thinking about it as market research. We've seen that brands like Khoros and Microsoft leverage crowd-supported forums and benefit from being able to identify holes in their business. If the same pain points come up time and time again for customers, their developers can work on a solution.

Consider UGC as an extension of the social listening and focus groups your brand might be doing anyway.

Through all of the channels listed, customers are using their own voice to talk about your brand. Learning how your customers communicate - the language they use, as well as their needs and concerns - should help to refine your messaging. Speak to customers the way they speak naturally online, and seek to meet their expressed needs.

User generated content can also help you to identify features and benefits that your marketing should be highlightling. Reviews might show that your customers love a particular aspect of your product or service that you hadn't previously identified as a killer feature. Alternatively, they might regularly request that an existing featured be added, indicating that you have some work to do on highlighting its existence.

Use your findings to create useful marketing materials, build better buyer personas, and customer experiences.

Set Goals for User Generated Content

UGC is a vast landscape, so in order to see results and quantify success, it is important to look at each initiative as a distinct campaign with its own specific business goal.

Maybe the goal is to generate leads, and your method is to offer a referral program — perhaps with referral discounts. Determine a time frame and how many referral are needed to make the campaign a success.

If your initiative is to increase online reviews, pick a goal star rating or review quantity for various channels. If you have a customer satisfaction goal, you may want to measure the number of forum questions that come into the platform and customer sentiment.

The metrics a business chooses should not be arbitrary or for the sake of vanity. Don’t encourage a bunch of online reviews just so you can pat yourself on the back. Make your goals and measurement relevant to your business' strategic objectives.

Getting Started

Launching a UGC campaign can be intimidating. There’s nothing sadder than a brand hashtag or contest with no participation.

Due to its organic nature, UGC is usually an affordable marketing initiative. Keep your goals reasonable to match the modest budget of the campaign, establish a baseline, and build out from there.

Here are some low-risk and cost-effective projects to get started:

Use email marketing to encourage existing clients to post online reviews.
Ask high-value customers for video testimony. Make the barrier to entry for these as low as possible to encourage participation.
With permission, use customer quotes and images in case studies on your website, across social networks, and in email marketing.
If your product works well in a visual medium, include a hashtag on your packaging and branded collateral so that enthusiastic clients know how to join the conversation and connect with other users.

Most of these initial UGC opportunities are simple feedback mechanisms that make it easy for people to engage. These simple initiatives build your brand authority and are the first steps to building a loyal community.

For every initiative, no matter how low-stakes, brands can incentivise participation, but be careful not to buy reviews, as any trace of this can get you dinged by platforms like Yelp and GMB.

Employee-Generated Content

Don’t ignore your own employees. Creating an environment where employees can represent the brand in a more personal way will open the door for customers to engage, as well.

A great place to get started with this is LinkedIn. Provide your staff with creative assets and talking points to unify employees’ voice. Encourage (or incentivise) employee engagement including sharing posts, connecting with co-workers, and posting day-in-the-life style videos, etc.

For brands that already have internet forums established, each employee should be able to speak as an individual on that channel. The diversity of backgrounds and opinions on your forum, all with the guaranteed professionalism of your staff, will help set the tone for the whole community.

Salesforce recently launched a YouTube series of “Boss Talks” which gives real employees a chance to talk about specific topics related to the brand. The conversations are guided by a host across the series to make sure all employees are comfortable in front of a camera.

These employee initiatives remind people that whatever product or service you provide, you and your team are still human. This encourages customer participation by making the content feel more like a conversation.

Get Started Today

Most B2B companies will struggle with typical B2C UGC strategies, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t be active in the user-generated content space. Encouraging the participation and engagement of your user community is important to both B2B and B2C marketing. All you have to do is work out how to curate and leverage what your fans are already doing.

Turn customer content into a conversation. Incorporate content throughout your site to cultivate an culture of involvement in your brand. Expand reach and engagement by staying in constant dialogue with customers.

No matter how far you’ve dipped your toes so far, taking the next step in gathering more UGC could be key to cultivating more brand trust, authority, and ultimately leads. If your B2B marketing team hasn’t dabbled in the field at all, there are plenty of campaigns that you can have success with right away, no matter your resources.

Contact 1827 to help craft your communications in a way that encourages your customers to take the next step.

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Why B2B Brands Need User-Generated Content