Content Strategy Tips in UGC Campaigns

Using a successful UGC advertising campaign for your brand can elevate you from your competitors. Not only will it resonate with your audience, it will increase their trust in you if done correctly. UGC campaigns require careful planning. Each piece of content must be curated before it is licensed. Let’s say you’re getting ready to plan your first UGC campaign. You’ve finally gotten the C-levels on board and are ready to start. Now what?

1.     First, research is key. You must find out who your customers are and what makes them tick if you don’t already know this. this way you can tailor your content to what will strike a chord with them. Will they enjoy seeing something that will tug on their heartstrings? What about something funny?

2.     Define your objectives for this ad campaign. Do you and the team understand the brand values, voice, and overall mission? The UGC campaign must stay true to the brand. Ask questions like, “Why does our brand do what they do?” “What problems are we trying to solve for our customers?”  “Why are we better than our competitors?” “How will this campaign help us overall?” Aside from this define whether this campaign will:

a.     Increase brand awareness

b.     Promote a new product

3.      Identify where your ad will run. This one is important as the length of the campaign will affect how many pieces of UGC content you will need. Multichannel campaigns tend to perform the best since they reach a wider audience. Safe practice is to create a longer campaign that can be cut into shorter ones.

4.     Create a good brief for your UGC sourcing agency. It’s important to define your creative, allow for expansion and pivots, and keep it brief. No pun intended here. This is where you want to define your content requirements. Think about things that did well in past campaigns.

5.     Lastly, measure the performance. Once your UGC campaign goes live, track how it’s doing. This can help you to create an even better ad next time around. UGC is beautiful because it never runs out, it never gets old, and it always resonates with the audience. However, the type of UGC videos you want to curate, source, and license can always be improved based on performance.

It’s no secret that having a good content strategy is important. But, having a good UGC strategy is also very important when moving forward with it as part of your overall advertising strategy. It’s one of the most powerful advertising tools a brand can utilize and for half the cost of traditional. Making it seamless from start to finish will ensure the efficiency of your efforts.

Don’t Be a Car Salesman: Best Sales Practices for Your Brand to Follow

Ahh, sales. Nobody loves it. Well, maybe some people do. Those people are born with a certain knack for it and are probably in roles that are specific to that. However, if you’re an entrepreneur, sales are part of your job to grow your business and it may not be where your strengths lie. It is a necessary evil, and a very important one at that to drum up new business and succeed. If you’re one of these people, do not fret, there are some tactics that you can take to keep up with best practices in sales. Here are some of our tips.

1.     Know your audience: In B2B sales, you need to know what other businesses are looking for. What do they want from you? What can you offer them that others can’t?

2.     Sell in a buyer-responsive way: Provide the buyer with what they want, when they want it.

3.     Establish trust: Be transparent with your prospective clients. Honestly goes a long way and showing them that you are human will strengthen this.

4.     Demonstrate your expertise: How is your brand the best out there? Why? What makes you stand out? Let prospective clients know your worth and show them you’re an expert. This will increase the likelihood that they will go with your brand instead of someone else’s.

5.     Be a good storyteller: We’ve said this in the past and we’ll say it again. Telling good stories is important for so many aspects of business and this is one of them. When selling, it’s important to sell your story too. Let businesses know who you are and why you do what you do. This will show your humanity as well. Everyone has a story to tell. What’s yours?

6.     Personalize: Do research on prospective clients before reaching out. Let them know you’ve done your homework and it will show your desire to want to work with them.

7.     Try multiple marketing tactics: Send emails, try cold calls, social media DM’s, etc. You never know what the best way to reach someone will be and everyone’s preferred method will be different. That’s why it is important to try multiple forms of contact.

This list is just somewhere to get you started on your sales journey but it can help you begin to understand the strategies necessary to meet sales goals. Not everyone is born good at selling but the good news is that it can be improved on. “Become the persona who would attract the results you seek.” -Jim Cathcart

Scratch Baking: How to Build an Email List

Email marketing is one of the most effective. A stat according to Statista said that “companies make an average of $36 for every U.S. dollar they spend on email marketing.” That’s some pretty good ROI, right?! But… how do you get a quality email list? First, you have to get quality contact information. Second, you need relevant prospects who will want to buy what you are selling. Lastly, you will need to grow that quality, relevant list to BIG numbers. Here are a couple of ways to start an email list for your brand.

1.     Add an Opt-In button on your website: these could be in the form of “sign up for our newsletter” or “join our community.” It could even be a contact form for inquiries. No matter which one you go with, it should be on every page of your website.

2.     Collect emails in person: if you throw an event or have a brick-and-mortar store, you can collect emails with a sign-up sheet. In-person connections are still the best and produce the best results. Transition your encounters from IRL to URL.

3.     Pop-up offers: these can offer some type of discounted product/service for a signup. This speaks to the gated content we wrote about last week. Offer discounts for submitting email information to receive promotional codes.

No matter which methods you choose to build your email list, it’s important that you obtain permission for their information and never buy email lists. You want quality contacts that fit within your niche. With email marketing your efforts are more precise with targeted audiences and you can personalize their experience with your brand.

Marketing Mix Modeling

The purpose of marketing mix modeling is to understand how various marketing inputs are driving the business metrics of a product or service. A simple way to put this is what is working and what’s not? Otherwise known as MMM, it will determine how each marketing input is contributing to a sale. In turn, you will determine how much to spend on each aspect. There are incremental drivers and base drivers that promote marketing techniques.

1. Incremental: generated by marketing activities like TV, print ads, digital spends, discounts, social, etc.

   1. ATL (above the line) marketing: non-targeted with a wide reach

   2. BTL (below the line) marketing: specific, direct ads on targeted audience

   3. TTL (through the line) marketing: mix of both

   4. Competition

   5. Halo effect

   6. Cannibalization effect

**more on these last two in future articles**

1. Base drivers: reached without any ads. Equity over years being the driving factor

   1. Price

   2. Distribution

   3. Seasonality

   4. Macro-econ variables

There are a few reasons to implement MMM, some of which we mentioned already,

1. Efficient spending

2. Efficient execution of campaigns

3. Scenario tests

You can really go down the mix marketing rabbit hole online. There is a vast amount of knowledge out there on the topic that includes words like regression analysis and mathematical equations. We only wanted to touch the surface of the MMM waters in order to hopefully inform someone who didn’t know about it. Now it’s your turn to dive in.