Don’t Overlook This Marketing Tactic this Black Friday

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It’s not too late for brands to win big with Customer-Generated Content during and after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

 
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Why, it’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday of course, a time where e-commerce brands all around the world are gearing up for one of the busiest weeks of the year for online retail. But while your competitors might be ready to offer the living heck out of everything they have for sale, is it possible they might be losing sight of the True Meaning Of Black Friday? We’re here to tell you that Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the perfect opportunity to lay the groundwork for sales for the rest of the year, by gathering up what is arguably one of the most valuable marketing assets your business can use and leveraging it to deliver something deeper than mere offers. So don’t be satisfied with a quick peak and trough of sales, check out these tips so that you can get lasting value from this moment of cyber madness.
 

The calm before the storm: Action points before Black Friday

 
In the collective consciousness, Black Friday is known for being the last chance to snag huge offers before Christmas, so you can safely expect most brands will be offering mega deals such as 60% off. With everyone discounting heavily, how do you stand out from the competition?

 

It’s likely that most brands who are serious about winning big during this frantic time of the year have already got their ducks in a row, with marketing and promotions already signed-off. However there is one vital tactic that is often overlooked. The great news is, employing this tactic is so simple, that it can be done even now, ahead of Black Friday!

This tactic is marketing with content generated by your customers. Adding earned media to marketing channels is one of the most effective ways to get the edge and even better – this gold dust is likely to already exist – it just needs to be found. User-Generated Content, or UGC for short, is content created by engaged consumers about or featuring your product. It can take many forms: written reviews, video reviews and video demonstrations sit alongside more creative and unusual content.

If UGC can be harnessed, it can provide social proof for would-be customers at key points along the purchase path on your website. By providing a bit of social proof alongside your Black Friday offer, you distinguish your brand with authenticity and give customers confidence that they’re not buying stuff just because it’s a bargain. Additionally, at a time when valuable opportunities for in-person word-of-mouth recommendations are limited and disposable income is shrinking, seeing a relatable customer giving a glowing review of, or demonstrating a product, can give that extra much needed nudge towards checkout. In fact, 92% of consumers trust earned media such as reviews and other types of UGC much more than traditional media.

You could search manually for this kind of valuable UGC, but who has time for that? This is where we come in. Using a technology such as Miappi, allows you to easily find, collect, license and curate your brand’s UGC, as well as republish your rights-approved customer content to placing where it can influence others.

 

In the eye of the storm: What to do on Black Friday and immediately after

 
The rush of sales on Black Friday presents a huge opportunity to encourage more UGC to keep you well-stocked for the rest of the year, and knowing how powerful UGC can be, it makes good marketing sense to try to grow the amount you have.

 

We expect the most engaged customers to post about their purchases with minimal encouragement, so if you’re ready with a platform like Miappi, you can discover, license and republish this gold dust to your marketing channels. However, other customers might need a little more encouragement to share their Black Friday haul. By setting fun challenges, providing incentives and giving clear instructions with suggested hashtags to use, you can increase the chances that your Black Friday customers share their purchases on social media. This doesn’t just apply to social media – don’t be afraid to reach out directly to customers  after delivery of their purchase with a call to action in post purchase emails.

 

The aftermath: Now you’ve got your Black Friday content, what next?

 
If correctly licensed, you can republish and remix all of the valuable UGC you gathered on Black Friday to your heart’s content. Miappi comes with an in-built digital rights-management system that enables marketers to engage with content creators and seek the appropriate permissions for their use case. Brands can then decide to republish this content to their owned channels for visibility for example. And when you find some UGC that generates more social engagement than others, it’s a good bet to boost it with some of your precious paid promotion budget, in order to widen your social reach far beyond your followers and immediate contacts.

 

But the beauty of UGC is that wherever it is placed, whether it is republishing on owned channels or paired with product pages, it is sure to increase engagement and your bottom line. At Miappi we prize ourselves on being able to help enterprise brands publish their rights-approved content to a plethora of marketing channels.

If you are still undecided whether leveraging the voice of your happy customers for your marketing is something worth doing this Cyber Week, here are some telling statistics:

  • Websites with UGC enjoy a 29% higher conversion rate than those without it according to Adweek.

  • Miappi eCommerce clients are finding that average basket size of those who see UGC on an eCommerce websites is 4% larger than those who do not.

We hope we’ve managed to convince you that by using the flash-in-the-pan sales action around Black Friday, you can establish the bedrock for brand advocacy with the relatively small outlay of a Miappi license. With this in place, your brand will have the resilience to weather the ups-and-downs of consumer and business uncertainty in 2020 and beyond.
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