strategy guide: unleashing earned content for modern marketing...

1Strategy Guide: Unleashing Earned Content for Modern Marketing Success

© 2016 Olapic, Inc. Want to learn more? Contact Us.

http://www.olapic.com/contact/?utm_source=internal-contact-us&utm_medium=whitepaper&utm_campaign=2016_q1_earned-content-wp

INTRODUCTION

1. Brands aren’t just what they say they are any-more. Consumers control the conversation and brands can either be a part of it or watch from the sidelines.

2. Consumers have become exceptionally good at telling brand stories visually. Armed with more powerful smart-phone cameras, loyal consumers are doing a spectacular job of showcasing their favorite brands as part of their lifestyles. The travel industry is a perfect example of this concept, with individuals capturing the personalized global travel experi-ences they are having and sharing them with their digital communities.

As consumers attempt to sort through and make sense of this endless stream of visual content, brands are often left struggling to find their way into the conversation. The revolution of visual user-generated content (UGC), which we refer to as “earned content,” has had four distinct, yet powerful impacts on brands and their marketing teams:

The volume of content being produced in our world today is, for lack of a better term, overwhelming. And much of that content is visual, as users share their experiences through images on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. In fact, on those networks alone, more than 22,000 images are now uploaded per second.1

1Morrison, Kimberlee. “How Many Photos Are Uploaded to Snapchat Every Second?” AdWeek. 6/9/2015.

Strategy Guide: Unleashing Earned Content for Modern Marketing Success 2


http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/how-many-photos-are-uploaded-to-snapchat-every-second/621488


An international travel brand specializing in adventure travel uses Olapic to help them capture and activate the exception-al experiences being had by travelers on their various trips. After just over a year, the brand has collected close to 10,000 traveler photos through the Olapic platform. They’ve enabled measurement of earned content impact by activating across the entire traveler web experience, including placing UGC in a gallery, on booking detail pages, on the home-page, and on each category page of the website. They also have a checkout pixel that assists in attributing revenue to specific content viewership.

3. The purchase journey has elongated substan-tially. Today, consumers engage with 11.4 pieces of content, on average, prior to making a purchase; and 70% of consumers rely on three or more channels when conducting product research.2

4. Expectations for brand marketing and expe-riences are much higher than ever before. Consumers crave authenticity in all facets of their lives and specifically want marketing to demon-strate an accurate depiction of how a product or brand can provide utility to people like them. They don’t have time for generic experiences.

2Safran, Nathan & Gila Allswang. “The Content That Compels People to Buy.” Blue Nile Research. 10/19/2015.







A travel bureau that provides a guide to local travel, in-cluding things to do, places to stay, and overall inspira-tion, realized that travelers uncovering their own personal experiences would be more powerful than canned travel photography. The organization worked with us to col-lect images that they’ve used to populate email mes-saging in addition to visuals for all of their owned dig-ital properties.

Of course, you understand that earned content is massively important in the marketing ecosystem, however, it doesn’t make the task of collecting, curat-ing, permissioning, and activating all of that content any easier. Most marketers struggle with the pace at which they need to create relevant, engaging content and with the growing need for personalization in mar-keting messaging.

In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, the top challenge for B2C content marketers is “pro-ducing engaging content,” while unsurprisingly the top priority is “creating more engaging content.”




Imagine what you could do with all of that earned content.

Here’s the good news: There is already a wealth of engaging visual UGC, or earned content, being produced without any brand influence or effort. Many of these images represent exactly how products/brands serve consumers in their day-to-day lives, and do so in a more authentic way than traditional brand-produced creative.







6

I. INCREASE BRAND ASSETS

How do you tap into

earned content and turn

it into meaningful brand

assets? There are three

main steps we advocate

to our clients:

Creating hashtags that instigate con-sumers to post photos in an aggrega-table and trackable manner is critical to increasing brand assets. Having a call to action and focused hashtags will help guide consumers on how to sub-mit new content and where they can engage with content their peers are also generating. From our experience, we’ve come up with a set of recom-mendations to help guide your hashtag strategy:

• Create a simple and straightfor-ward hashtag. It should be easy to spell and remember.

• Make sure your hashtag is on brand and one that all stakehold-ers will be comfortable using for the long term.

• Research the usage and popular-ity of your idea prior to implemen-tation. Remember, you can’t “put the toothpaste back in the tube,” and while it’s possible to shift your earned content strategy through new hashtags, it’s a challenge that is best to avoid through some up-front legwork.

• Use capital letters when neces-sary to make the hashtag more eas-ily understood.




7

Of course, there are also some areas you’ll want to avoid when considering a hashtag strategy.

• Avoid generic hashtags (i.e. #LoveIt or #Happiness). You’ll lose the connection to your brand and open it up to an enormous amount of spam potential.

• Don’t solicit answers or content from open-ended questions without considering the responses you may receive.

• Don’t use too many hashtags at a given time.• Choose hashtags that don’t have an adverse

meaning in different languages.

Evergreen Hashtags: Create one or two hashtags that can live alongside your brand indefinitely (read: not tied to spe-cific marketing campaigns). These hashtags may already ex-ist or you may have to create them. Don’t be afraid to do some testing to determine what works best. Once you dis-cover it, you’ll need to make it part of your brand’s DNA, so make sure it is one you like!

Campaign Hashtags: You also will likely need campaign hashtags that don’t live forever, but are tied to marketing programs with a finite scope. When selecting these, the same rules apply that we’ve discussed for evergreen hashtags.

Images: Bogenschlag, Davitydave, Cambodia4kids.org




Distribute the hashtag across all relevant channels, including offline.

Now that you’ve got a hashtag (or a couple) chosen, it’s time to promote it to your loyal audience to begin gaining traction. Obviously, the primary place brands typically promote their hashtags is on social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Generating quality earned content, however, requires thinking beyond social, and truly integrating the hashtag as part of the brand DNA.

• Email Newsletters• Shipping Inserts and Packaging• Brand Website and Micro-site• Paid Search• In-Store Locations• Television• Print• Outdoor• Business Cards

You get the picture (no pun intended). Hashtags are essentially becoming the connective tissue between all the various channels through which a consumer can experience a brand.

For that reason, our clients often choose to promote their hashtag across both digital and offline marketing channels, leveraging in addition to social:

Image: Rob Cruickshank




9

The Earned Content Field of Dreams

By promoting your hashtags in the channels mentioned above, you are inviting your audience to transform from average fans to brand content creators. You have the ability to guide the conversation and advise around the type of content that you wish to earn. You’ll incentivize them by telling them they could be featured by their favorite brand!

Here are a few ways to make sure you inspire them to take the highest quality photos, especially in digital communication:

Display examples of your “ideal” earned content when promoting your hashtag in order to set the bar high around what you’re looking for. Room and Board does a fantastic job of this with their gallery.

Don’t be afraid to be prescriptive. Include a few basic pointers. A good example is how Simple Skincare did it for their #TestTheWater campaign.

Allow the users to connect with your brand on a deeper level, inspiring them to share images that reflect the brand lifestyle. Lucy Let’s Go actively engages their consumers to share the lifestyle that is promoted through the brand.



http://www.roomandboard.com/modern-style-gallery/?attr=share_your_modern_style&iCid=SYS_2016

http://www.roomandboard.com/modern-style-gallery/?attr=share_your_modern_style&iCid=SYS_2016

http://www.simpleskincare.com/know-your-skin/test-the-water.html

http://www.lucy.com/lets-go-blog/lucyletsgo_gallery.html


10

Collect, curate, tag, and permission all new content.

For brands with a loyal digital following, proper hashtag strategy and promotion will yield lots of images. In order to cull down the massive amount of earned content to usable, engaging, and high-value content, brands need to implement a three-tiered process:

Whether your brand needs to drum up more earned content, or simply make sense of it all, these strategies can help.

Curate: Brands need to curate content to determine what is on-brand and what isn’t. We work with many of our clients to help them moderate this process and uncover what they are left with once the review has been executed.

Tag: Next, images must be tagged by various characteristics, including the specific product being featured in the photo. This will help to drive purchase traffic down the line and determine which products are gaining more attention, as well as how they are being used by consumers.

Permission: It is a good practice to request rights from the content creators who are generating usable photos for brands. Olapic works with brands to engage creators and turn them into loyalists and advocates by praising their creativity and use of the brand. In less than a year working with Olapic, one global hotel brand curated over 3,500 rights approved images, tagged to specific properties and amenities.

Image: Josh Felise




11

© 2015 Olapic, Inc.

As another example, one fashion brand captured 250,000 images with its campaign in 2015, highlighting the importance of the curation process. Curation is best when approached two ways: with machine learning and with human inter-action. Olapic uses machine learning to identify the pictures most likely to convert as well as to weed out those that are not relevant to the brand. From there, our moderators further curate to find the precise photos that the brand will be most likely to leverage as assets, according to brand specific guidelines.

Images: Luke Pamer, Clark Street Mercantile, Allyson Johnson, Redd Angelo




12

II. REACH CONSUMERS

Now that you’ve collected

a substantial amount

of earned content by

following the strategies

we outlined earlier, you

have the right currency

to begin that two-way

dialogue with your most

important customers.

Not only will it drive additional content creation and increased engagement, but it will also ultimately drive more revenue. Marketers armed with visual UGC have a definitive advantage and are better able to demonstrate the utility of the brand, or how it can make consumers’ lives easier, more efficient, or more enjoyable overall. Put simply, earned content helps brands build meaningful relationships with their most valued customers.

Demonstrate in an authentic way the utility that your brand can provide




13

First, you’ve got to think beyond earned content as fodder to fill your branded social channels. Earned content should become part of your brand’s DNA, and considered the fuel that will power real, authentic marketing experiences for consumers. As such, it can be used in:

• Social Media: Of course, start by retweeting and re-gramming consumer-generated visuals from branded accounts. Celebrate the content creators in the space where they are operating most frequently.

• Website: Display UGC on the brand website: on the homepage, in a gallery, and on the detail pages -- prod-uct, travel, or otherwise -- where it applies. Lead the con-sumer down the path to purchase through authentic im-agery.

• Digital Advertising: Amplify UGC in creative for paid so-cial advertisements, banner ads, and other digital place-ments. Leveraging earned content in media can com-plement your brand creative and perform as well, if not better.

• Traditional Channels: Earned content can live in print catalogues, on television advertisements, and even on billboards and taxi cabs.

Certainly, earned content is only one way that a brand will make contact with its consumers, however, it is one of the most authentic ways you can build relationships with consumers. And by extending the reach to multiple chan-nels and points within the purchase process, you will be increasing the aura of authenticity surrounding the brand. Also keep in mind that consumers are now being heavily influenced through digital channels even if they ultimately purchase in-store. In fact, according to Deloitte Digital, the percentage of in-store sales influenced by digital has gone from 12% in 2012, to a staggering 64% in 20153, and the projection is set to creep even higher.

3Lobaugh, Kasey. “Navigating the New Digital Divide.” Deloitte Digital. 2015




Constant Feedback Loop

An almost unintended benefit of earned content activation is that it will spark additional creativity and thoughtfulness on the part of the consumer community. By engaging consumers in a dialogue, your brand can learn how they’re using a product, and what impact it may be having on their lives. Perhaps in addition to a product’s primary use, consumers discover new functionality or purpose that has a more emotional impact. History is littered with these sorts of examples:

• Cotton Swabs: Actual purpose is for makeup application, cleaning, and arts and crafts. Of course, people everywhere use them as ear cleaners.

• Toothpaste: The actual purpose is quite obvious by the name, but in addition, consumers often use this product to polish silver and soothe minor skin irritations like bug bites.

• Baking Soda: Used primarily as a leavening agent, many households purchase this product to place in the refrigerator as a way to contain unwanted odors.

• IKEA Hackers: An entire web community exists to help consumers share new ways to use IKEA furniture (other than what is intended by the manufacturer). This opens up additional purchas-ing opportunity for consumers and extends the product’s lifetime value.

Of course, we could go on, but you get the idea. Consumers have ingenuity and intelligence, and find utility in different ways. There is enormous value in that realization, and enabling it through earned content can help bring an unexpected personality to your brand. It’s an infinite focus group, helping consumers find new ways of using your product and in turn, helping inform future development, engagement strategy, and increasing the potential of your marketing efforts.




15

This concept rang especially true to our client, Ameri-can Eagle Outfitters, a global specialty retailer offering “high-quality, on-trend clothing, accessories, and per-sonal care products at affordable prices.” Since activat-ing its Olapic Ambassador Community, AEO has identi-fied a number of valuable brand ambassadors who have helped build an even more robust online community by generating 5x as many photos from which AEO could

choose to power its marketing channels. In addition, AEO has seen a 66% increase in conversions after building ambassador relationships. On Labor Day of 2015, AEO realized a 22% increase in sales com-pared to the same period in the previous year. So the bump from earned content isn’t a separate category of growth, instead, it often acts to emphasize growth of existing marketing programs as well.

UGC COLLECTION

UGC ACTIVATIONUGC ANALYTICS




Setting Up Performance Metrics

Here are three ways engagement analytics can be used to evaluate earned content performance:

1. Likes/Shares: The surface-level metric that should be tracked, how much engagement is your earned content getting on native social platforms through likes, shares, and comments?

2. Click-through rate: Not just on your branded social platforms, but when used in paid digital advertising and email marketing, how much added engagement is an image gaining? Mapping that to your over-all understanding of its performance will give you a more complete view.

3. Followers/Likes: Of course, understanding how much engagement an image is experiencing through likes and shares is useful, but what about analyzing the engagement that the content creator experienc-es him/herself? Taking your analytics to a deeper level will uncover potential influencers that can be tracked and rewarded to improve the relationship with a brand.

Today, marketing is very much married to data and analytics. What impact are your programs having? Where should you dou-ble down, and where should you pull back? Earned content is no different. Pushing UGC blindly into the market may increase engagement, but without a solid analytics platform to capture its real impact, you’ll have no idea as to how valuable it may or may not be to your overall efforts.




17

Through the Olapic platform, hundreds of our clients can track engagement analytics and glean insight into their earned content impact. For example, we’ve worked with essie, a top nail-care brand known for its “no-chip” prop-erties, to track engagement with their branded hashtag, #essielove, and measure its impact not just across social platforms but on owned digital properties as well.

Through this effort, essie has been able to real-ize the following performance metrics:

• 200% growth in Instagram followers since integrating UGC amplification

• Visitors to the site engage with an aver-age of 10 UGC images

• 40% of essie’s top Instagram photos were re-grams of visual UGC




Loyalty Programs operate on a transactional basis. As a consumer, I purchase or behave in a pre-arranged manner and thus hit goals that give me rewards.

Earned Content operates on a “surprise-and-delight” basis. As a consumer, I am simply sharing products and brands that I care about. If the brand engages with me or sends me a package of products to thank me for my support, the ele-ment of surprise will create a stronger bond that I’m more likely to share with my network.

Building organic relation-ships with influencers is a fantastic way to extrap-olate the impact of your efforts through activat-ing their large, loyal com-munities of fans.

It’s important to note, however, that the difference between loyalty programs and relationship-building through earned content is subtle, yet profound:




19

How are you reaching your consumers with UGC?

Having a plan in place will lead to more predictable and impactful success.




20

III. CONVERT BYSTANDERS TO BUYERSThere are two truths

in marketing today:

content is king, albeit

a challenge to produce

at scale, and consumers

trust each other more

than they do brands.

User-generated or “earned” content supports both of these truths in a pro-found way. And it goes one step fur-ther; user-generated content turns by-standers into buyers.

Which is why brands need to create a seamless link between their earned content strategies and their point of purchase. But while earned content serves a critical purpose at the end of the buyer’s journey, when deployed correctly, it can also move buyers through every stage of their journey across all different channels.

When a buyer has multiple opportuni-ties to see how a product has served others in real-life scenarios, they are more likely to be able to envision it for themselves. And linking that dream to the immediate opportunity to purchase the product can create significant ROI. The proof is in the numbers. Olapic cli-ents who link product pages on their website to UGC are seeing conversions increase in some cases by over 50%!

But conversions aren’t simply about immediate purchase opportunities. Travel, CPG, Automotive, and even Fin-Serv have the opportunity to turn pas-sive visitors into active “buyers” by con-necting UGC to the right experience.




21

Let’s take travel for starters. A potential vacationer’s journey to purchase is lon-ger and more complex than a consum-er purchasing a hairbrush. A lot more research goes into booking a vacation. Which means hotels and booking sites, in particular, need a great deal of con-tent to appeal to each of the stages on the journey from awareness to con-sideration to booking. But at the end of the day, it still comes down to one thing: when given the option to see a hotel’s stock photos of models on the beach or the chef’s latest creation at the 5-star restaurant on the proper-ty versus a real vacationer enjoying their time splashing around the pool or eating the escargot, which would

be more powerful in convincing you to book your trip? And when those travel-er photos are linked to an immediate booking opportunity and the consum-er has seen enough real-life examples to be convinced, the loop has been effectively closed. Then imagine if you gave a reason to your newest guest to take their own photos and hashtag them -- now you’ve activated a new ad-vocate to help convince future travel-ers to visit your property. This is of con-siderable value since recency is critical in the world of travel and hospitality.

“We Wander for Distraction, But We

Travel for Fulfillment.” - Hilaire Billoc




22

Frederic Gonzalo, one of the foremost travel marketing experts, says it best, “Paid and earned media will become piv-otal to a successful digital marketing ap-proach, in particular using other people’s content (OPC), which is often considered more trustworthy than traditional advertis-ing or editorial content.”

The consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry has an interesting proposition when it comes to earned content strat-egies. The majority of CPG brands sell through retailers and don’t control the point of purchase which means they are beholden, to a certain extent, to the marketing strategies of said retailers.

But the retailers know they need to rely on their brands or merchants for con-tent if they are going to effectively move product. The more content they can get from their brand partners, the more suc-cessful they will be in converting buyers. Enter syndicated earned content. We already know earned content converts faster and more effectively than brand-ed photos so when a CPG brand invests in earned content strategies and syndi-cates this content directly to their retail-er sites, they’re creating that immediate conversion opportunity.

“Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.” - Elon Musk



http://fredericgonzalo.com/en/2015/12/04/5-online-marketing-trends-in-travel-for-2016/


23

A great example of innovative ways hotel brands are using guest photos comes from Hyatt. The re-nowned hotel brand tapped Olapic to launch social.hyatt.com, a new hub of more than 85,000 Instagram pho-tos shared by Hyatt guests showcasing their experi-ences while staying at any of the more than 575 Hyatt hotels and resorts worldwide. With experiential filters like beaches, golf, family friendly, and weddings, the site allows travelers to seek inspiration and book their next Hyatt stay without having a specific destination or hotel brand in mind.

Ellen Lee, VP of eCommerce for Hyatt explains the strat-egy to embrace traveler photos, “We want to build long-term relationships with our guests, and that means offering them digital and physical experiences that keep them com-ing back. If you don’t know where you want to go, but you do know you want sun and sand, the ‘beach’ filter showcases real guests’ experiences in beach destinations around the world. Filters like ‘meetings’ or ‘weddings’ can help planners find inspiration and see what others have done in those exact spaces.”




24


As mentioned previously, even for of-fline purchases, online engagement is critical, particularly for CPG. Accord-ing to Deloitte Digital, “70% of consum-ers are now leading their own shopping journey (becoming aware of products through means outside of retailer or brand communications), while only 30% get their initial inspiration from a retailer or brand’s advertisement.”4

Unilever’s Simple Skincare publishes earned content on their brand and retailer partners’ websites. Simple Skincare has seen significant increases in traffic driven to retailer sites through their retail channels while maintaining complete control of their brand DNA.

Doug Straton, Head of eCommerce Center of Excellence, Unilever, said “Consumers trust current users of a product more than some-thing a brand may put forward. By syndicating our UGC content with five major retailers, Olapic helps us get more consumers exposed to that trusted content.”

4Lobaugh, Kasey. “Navigating the New Digital Divide.” Deloitte Digital. 2015.



https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-cb-navigating-the-new-digital-divide-v2-051315.pdf


25

Food brands have an incredible opportunity to engage consumers to create UGC and then in turn use that UGC to drive purchases. According to Jeff Fromm, president of millennial marketing consultancy FutureCast, “... millennials are obsessed with sharing their experiences with one another; they rely on social media sites, such as Instagram and Pinterest, to document their lives. Food is no exception; the increase of food-related content online has created a generation of ‘visual eaters’ and is directly linked to the fact that millennials look at food preparation as an experience.”

Financial Services is similar to Travel in that marketers are challenged to “sell a dream.” But with the right strategies to entice your past buyers to create UGC representing how they’ve realized their dreams by working with your brand, you can create a truly engaging story through the eyes of real people.

Imagine how this earned content could make an im-mediate impact for FinServ brands: “Mary and Joe Smith just finished the gorgeous addition to their house thanks to a HELOC from ACME Bank - #livinthedream #ACMEBank #HELOC”

With Financial Services, the dots need to be connected a bit more as they are selling against much bigger life decisions, but UGC can be a really effective piece of the marketing puz-zle for these brands as consumers look for the best fit for their needs.

Being in Control of Your Finances is a Great Stress Reliever



http://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2015/02/18/six-trends-cpg-brands-must-embrace-to-win-with-millennials/2/#5aaa73e62be4

https://www.instagram.com/p/8L9ieuvj06/

https://www.instagram.com/p/8L9ieuvj06/


Pimp My Ride, Xzibit

The auto industry is ripe with oppor-tunity for visual marketing at each stage of the buyer journey, but where the rubber really meets the road is in aftermarket auto parts. Projected to reach 7.4 billion in ecommerce sales by the end of 20165, and with con-sumers who are highly-competitive and highly-engaged, the aftermarket auto parts industry provides the op-portunity for ‘show and tell’ at its best.

And the products aren’t so expensive as to prohibit purchase opportunities in real time.

A seller of car parts who is able to showcase a gallery of UGC show-ing how their #rims or #strutbar or #shocks were the winning touches on their customers’ cars is able to sell both the dream and the necessary tools to realize it. At the end of the day, it’s not

simply about posting just any UGC or traveler photos. Understanding which photos have the highest propensity to convert, choosing photos that are on brand, and removing photos that ar-en’t, is critical to success. That’s why a combination of machine learning and human judgement has become the holy grail in employing effective UGC strategies that change passive visitors into active consumers.

5“Auto Parts Marketing: Online Parts Sales to Reach $7.4 Billion in 2016.” Hedges & Company. 2016.



https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2016/01/online-parts-sales-pass-7-4-billion-in-2016/

https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2016/01/online-parts-sales-pass-7-4-billion-in-2016/


27

Use earned content through-out all marketing channels to ensure you’re reaching your consumer throughout their entire journey:

• Post through your social channels and make Insta-gram shoppable

• Use social ads to target specific consumer types

• Retarget consumers who have visited your website and not converted

• Use email to entice past buyers to consider new products

• Create package inserts with UGC and encourage buyers to create more

• Drive consistency between online and offline channels by using UGC in-store

• Start with a homepage carousel (example A) of your best earned content and the products you’re most interested in driving interest. Also con-sider adding specific navigation to your earned content from the home page

• Link the carousel to a broader gal-lery of photos (example B) as well as individual detail pages

• Add filters on the gallery page to enable consumers to easily navigate to what interests them most

• Vary the use of image sizes to make the experience more engaging

• Create category pages that aggre-gate UGC based on a specific type of product

• Link every piece of earned content to individual detail pages (examples C and D) that include product imag-ery with multiple different examples of earned content representing the product

• Make sure you place the earned content as close to the stock imagery as possible to provide the best user experience

• Measure, measure, measure. Make sure that all of this is tied to an analytics platform that can help you understand how much revenue your earned content is driving, which im-ages have the most engagement, and more

Provide a path from your home page through to your product purchase pages:

Here are some quick tips to ensure your earned content is driving action.




Examples

a) Homepage Carousel

b) Gallery Page




29

c) Mobile Detail Page

d) Web Detail Page




30

IV. ACTIVATE LOYALTY

In today’s

customer-centric

world, consumers

have the ability to

make or break

a brand.

When a consumer takes photos or vid-eos of him/herself enjoying a product, they are explicitly telling you they are advocates of your brand. Being able to nurture this advocacy, celebrate it, and reward it, are what turn simple advo-cates into true brand ambassadors.

So how do you identify these advocates in the first place? Contrary to popular belief, the people with the largest fol-lowings on Instagram or Facebook are NOT necessarily the most influential. In fact, celebrities themselves have very little influence on people’s pur-chase behavior. Why? Because what these users produce feels much less authentic than the people we relate to on a daily basis.

Fabrizio Perrone, CEO and co-founder of Buzzoole, a self-service Influencer Marketing Platform, calls the people who have the most influence Long-Tail Influencers, “These are the individuals who do not intuitively make it to the list of top social media stars. They are simply the individuals people love to follow and their opinions carry weight. While a social media star with 3 million subscribers may give more exposure to your brand, engagement driven by long-tail influencers are more likely to turn audiences into actual customers.”



http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/move-over-kardashians-why-average-joes-are-more-influential-than-celebrities-on-social-media/633265

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/move-over-kardashians-why-average-joes-are-more-influential-than-celebrities-on-social-media/633265


31

Source: Phil Willburn6

6Willburn, Phil. “Tipping Point vs. Peer Influence: Infographic.” PhilWillburn.com. Accessed 02/24/16.




32

Identify Your Current Brand AmbassadorsWhen using a platform such as Olapic, you can easily see who is generating content that represents your brand. Our data gives brands the ability to understand the power of each ambassador not simply based on the number of followers or volume of en-gagement they have, but specifically by seeing how much reve-nue each ambassador’s photo has generated.

Through Olapic’s Ambassadors tab, you will see: • Number of followers• Likes per photo & total number of likes• Revenue generated by photo & by user

Olapic’s data supports this. When our clients deploy UGC across their marketing channels, it is more often than not the photo from the everyday consumer that will generate the most engagement, conversions, and revenue.

So how do you activate your loyal customers?

Follow these tips:




33

Create New AmbassadorsCreating promotions or contests with the intent to increase UGC assets is a great way to engage your consumers.

An Olapic client in the retail space who specializes in curat-ing a mix of clothing, accessories, gifts, and home décor is a great example of how engaging your consumers helps to turn them into ambassadors and loyalists. In 2015, through a number of different promotions, this brand was able to collect more than 250,000 user-generated photos. By us-ing these photos on their website, they have a returning visitors interaction rate of 25% and have increased website conversion rates by 2.1x!!!

But it’s important to think bigger. While your short-term need may be to increase your brand assets, your long-term goal should be to turn these content providers into loyal ambassadors.

Essie does it right by celebrating their brand ambassadors when they use their photos.

It’s simple, but it works. Give your customers some love back to encourage them to keep sharing more photos and pass the word along to their friends: ‘Like’ and comment on their photos.




34

Request RightsThe first step in cultivating the relationship with your audi-ence is to request their permission to use their UGC. And once you’ve received rights, you can use these pho-tos across all of your marketing channels, celebrating your consumer, and giving them even more reason to create ad-ditional content.

A few things to keep in mind when asking for rights:

• Personalize the message• Choose a simple # to answer, such as Journeys’

#ShareMyJourneys• Add a link to Terms of Use, if you have one

Ambassadors are a brand’s biggest asset. When you take the time to identify, engage, and cultivate your ambassa-dors, it will pay dividends.




35Strategy Guide: Unleashing Earned Content for Modern Marketing Success 35



36

V. ENGAGE CONSUMERS ACROSS THE ENTIRE JOURNEYMany of the strategies

discussed earlier in this

paper provide ways in which

earned content can be

activated to accomplish very

specific goals, but earned

content is most powerful

when used across the entire

consumer journey.

Unfortunately, this is where many brands struggle to succeed. In a mar-keting ecosystem where “omnichannel” is the most popular buzzword around, achieving an omnichannel connection with consumers is far easier said than done. Why is this? Well for one, market-ing organizations, despite the incredi-ble growth in strategic importance, are still extremely siloed within brands. Al-though primarily organized under the CMO, marketing channel owners are rarely interacting, and seemingly are not aligned on goals or metrics. This makes it almost impossible to achieve true customer-centric marketing.

Earned content strategies can serve as the great equalizer across a marketing organization because as we’ve seen, ALL marketing channels become more effective when earned content is de-ployed. And with a centralized earned content strategy, marketing organiza-tions can better ensure they’re consis-tently engaging their consumers with new, relevant content at every touch-point.




37

Increase Brand AssetsBy systemizing your earned content collection through a visual marketing tool and intelligent hashtag strategy, your brand will be able to tap into the conversation consumers are already having to extract meaningful, valuable earned content to power the brand’s marketing efforts. Recall that among other elements, a smart hashtag strat-egy involves:

• Choosing branded hashtags that are short, unique to the brand, and that will fit the tone and overall per-sonality of the brand

• Remember the earned content “Field of Dreams:”

• Display examples of your “ideal” earned content when promoting your hashtag in order to set the bar high around what you’re looking for

• Don’t be afraid to be prescriptive. Include a few basic pointers

• Allow the users to connect with your brand on a deeper level, in-spiring them to share images that reflect the brand lifestyle

• Proliferating the hashtag on all dig-ital channels, such as organic and paid social media, website/landing pages, and banner advertisements,

as well as traditional marketing channels like television, print, di-rect mail, and outdoor

• Maintaining a healthy mix of hu-man control and artificial-intelli-gence to maximize the potential of your efforts

From here, you should experience a steady stream of valuable user-gener-ated content.

Let’s recap the steps you will need to take in order to set up your brand for success:




38

Reach ConsumersNext, it’s time to turn the focus back onto the consumer segments that matter, and initiate a dialogue through authentic earned content, showcasing how your brand and its products can add utility to the lives of your consum-ers. In other words:

Demonstrate in an authentic way the util-ity that your brand can provide.

Earned content will become the con-nective tissue that threads through all of your marketing channels, creating a consistent and meaningful market-ing experience for consumers. Use this opportunity to create a constant feedback loop to gather new ideas for product development and brand enhancements. Also, install a robust

engagement analytics process to mon-itor how your strategy is working, and to put muscle behind the visual earned content that is driving the most en-gagement with existing and new cus-tomers.

Convert BuyersEngagement with earned content is helpful to inform marketing decisions, but ultimately, you’ll want the content to drive consumers down the pur-chase process and to convert them into buyers. Doing so requires similar discipline to what we previously dis-cussed on the engagement side - spe-cifically in activating earned content on all channels:

• Post through your social channels• Make Instagram shoppable

• Use social ads to target specific consumer types

• Retarget consumers who have visit-ed your website and not converted

• Use email to entice past buyers to consider new products

• Drive consistency between on-line and offline channels by using earned content in-store

Remember, not all conversions will happen online, and an enormous per-centage of in-store purchases will be influenced by online efforts.

Converting buyers requires that you create a path to lead them using earned content:

• Start with a homepage carousel• Link to a broader gallery of earned




39

content, adding filters to enable navigation and varying image sizes to improve engagement

• Create category pages that aggre-gate earned content based on a specific type of product

• Link every piece of earned content to individual detail pages

• Measure constantly, ensure that all of this activity is tied to an analytics platform

Activate Loyal CustomersOf course, the customer lifecycle doesn’t end after the point of pur-chase. In fact, many marketers are discovering that after a purchase is the biggest marketing opportunity in the entire lifecycle. If executed prop-erly, brands can create loyal, authentic marketing relationships with custom-ers and influencers that can drive in-

creased lifetime value as well as am-plification to much larger networks of similar consumers.

It isn’t as simple as looking at your cus-tomers with the most social media fol-lowers. In fact, the “Long-Tail Influenc-ers” may be far more impactful for the brand, unleashing the power of small-er networks and communities built on high levels of trust and authenticity.

As a brand, activating loyalty is a three-step process:

1. Identifying existing brand ambas-sadors: Assessing the clout of a content creator, engaging with their earned content, and tracking revenue that is being driven by their UGC.

2. Creating new brand ambassadors: Launching promotions or contests to increase image creation from your consumers is a great way to unearth new ambassadors. More importantly, celebrate from brand-owned platforms the content cre-ators when they share experiences with the brand.

3. Asking for rights: Brand/consum-er relationships need to be built on trust. Asking for permission to use earned content in marketing efforts not only is a way to protect the brand, but it’s a way to further emphasize that this is less a trans-actional relationship, and more a symbiotic one.




40

One brand that is tying all of the earned content com-ponents together quite well is West Elm. Of course, as a home decor brand, the company is exceptionally aligned with the user-generated movement, and has worked with Olapic to empower its loyal consumers to share visual con-tent through the hashtag #MyWestElm.

West Elm has breathed earned content into the brand’s entire marketing ecosystem, including the website, social spaces, email, blog, digital advertisements, and even the print catalog, which in turn has facilitated amazing engage-ment and conversion opportunities for the brand. Use of UGC across the broader web takes place as follows:

Through the Olapic platform, the brand gathers images from Instagram and Twitter using primary hashtags #WestElm and #MyWestElm. From there, the brand identifies suitable images and sends links to the creators requesting rights. Approved images are placed on corre-sponding product pages across the website, and West Elm collects data on how well the images perform. This data is used to inform creative decisions for display and paid social campaigns. Our recommendation system optimizes using machine-learning algorithms on a weekly basis, adjusting to changes in success metrics. In our ex-perience, brands that have experimented with this strategy have seen up to a 43% increase in click-through rates.7

7 “L2 Intelligence Report: Instagram.” L2 Inc. 3/10/2015.




42

NYX Cosmetics, the LA-based professional makeup brand known for high-quality, professional makeup at accessible prices, is a leader in the global color cosmetics industry. The brand has also realized significant performance through a cohesive earned content strategy. Here are just a few highlights:

• Shoppers who engage with UGC on the site convert to customers at a rate 320% higher than shoppers who don’t

• Shoppers interact with an average of 7 user-generated photos per visit

• Customers who interact with UGC have a 93% higher average order value than those who don’t

NYX has also taken earned content activation to a higher level by using it to connect the in-store and digital consumer experience. Olapic’s platform enables NYX to tag its visual UGC to specific products - down to the shade level - and publish it across their site, which has become invaluable to consumers, as well as the brand. In order to translate that online experience offline, NYX introduced digital screens throughout their stores, allowing users to scan a barcode and see UGC associated with that product, implemented a “Selfie Wall” to encourage consumers to share their photos via #NYXCosmetics, and developed new tools to educate on their products. The success has led to plans to roll out earned content on 10 additional regional sites in 2016.




WHAT NOW?You get the earned content movement, and are ready to begin activating the potential of your loyal consumer-base. Or maybe you are already somewhere down the path and want a gut-check to make sure your brand is heading in the proper direction.

Here is what we would advise:

• Conduct an earned content audit to determine how many assets you already have, where they live, and what is currently being done with them

• Implement an analytics tool to help measure engagement and conversion through earned content

• Begin testing earned content in existing marketing programs, and introducing it as a part of the brand’s DNA

Of course, Olapic can help guide you and your brand to success. If you’re interested in a complimentary earned content audit or to speak with us about how earned content can improve your marketing efforts, contact us.

From all of us at Olapic, we’re hopeful this guide is useful, and will set you in the direction of more meaningful, valuable, and authentic marketing experiences for your consumers.








[email protected]

+1 888-458-1491

olapic.com

Contact us today:



