Why UGC videos matter-and knowing what is being said matters more.

We are asked every day why as marketers we should know what consumers are saying about our brands via UGC video. This is obviously a very important question to ask and not as complex as one might think. In order to answer this question let’s first define UGC video. User-Generated Content Video is any form of video media that is created by users/consumers made accessible via social media, personal blogs and other digital platforms. Next, we need to review why marketers see results from UGC video (UGCV). There are four main reasons marketers see results:

• UGCV Is Trustworthy Videos made by customers of your product are the purest form of earned media. When a customer posts a post-purchase video of your product on social media that video is literally a 5-star visual review of your brand. In fact, 71% of consumers trust vloggers over brand video posts. (CrowdRiff, 2017)
• UGCV Is about Relationships Videos created by consumers are built in their voice for their audience. With this authentic and focused means of communication, your brand is being inserted between important and trusted relationships. This is the place where brands want to live!
• UGCV Drives Purchase Intent From Millward-Brown Digital norm study, purchase intent increases as much as 63% from user-generated video content. (Millward-Brown, 2017)
• UGCV enables 360 views of your product and service In a world, where online e-commerce has experienced explosive growth led by Amazon with 16% growth in 2017 over 2016 (Digitalcommerce360, 2017), a video enables a 360 point of view of the product with depth, size, sound and motion, enabling faster and quicker purchase decision.

Okay, so back to the core question. Why, as a marketer, should you know what consumers are saying about your brand? As you could expect, this is a question which could take volumes to unpack. To this end, here are the main reasons:

• Understand how consumer sentiment has a direct impact on your brand: In knowing what consumers love (and sadly not love) about your brand are you able to identify key implications (negative and positive sentiment) have on your brand. With this information, you are able to take these key findings for product updates to drafting customer service scripts. A video lets you see the sentiment in three ways: Audio, Facial expression and the person, enabling greater authenticity than a sentiment conveyed in a comment. • Consumers are always on-always talking about your brand: Don’t wait for a string of poor reviews to then try to understand what is happening. In consistently tracking what consumers are saying about your brand via UGC video you will have a historical data set on how people feel about your brand over time. With this data set, you will have a better pool of information to make better-more informed decisions when an issue arises. • Understand the why: When you see sudden shifts in how people feel about your brand, dig into why it’s happening. Does it correlate with a new product release? Was your website down for a period of time? Or maybe a news story broke about your brand. The more you understand, the easier it is to fix negative sentiment or capitalize on the positive. • Understand the what: In capturing what consumers are saying you can use this information to drive all parts of your business. Understanding the positive and negative comments allows you to drive what consumers are saying they love about your brand to quickly fix what they are not. From customer service to packaging and product distribution, to quantifying your marketing campaigns. • Understand the who: For our customers understanding who the actual person is who is posting a video UGC generates a massive amount of insights. Here, a brand is able to identify new influencers, uncover new/growing segment groups and creative messaging insights normally not found in the best of focus groups