🏴‍☠️ ⚡️ Issue #17 - OKR Tear Down: Launching a UGC Campaign

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Sep 23, 2023

🛠️ OKR TEARDOWN

📺 WATCH:

📻 LISTEN:

As a point of departure, I’ve included the full OKR below to set the foundation for a teardown of our approach thus far…

OBJECTIVE: Distribute blog content on social and test video to improve new visitor website sessions >330 / wk

KEY RESULTS:

Finalize content themes and add internal links to historical posts to improve SEO
Translate and share 100% of new blog content on our primary social channels within 48 hours of publishing.
Distribute 10 key webinar content snippets across our social channels
Successfully launch our first ambassador UGC campaign, aiming for a minimum of 20 content submissions.

SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH OUR 1ST AMBASSADOR UGC CAMPAIGN, AIMING FOR A MINIMUM OF 20 CONTENT SUBMISSIONS

Before we jump in, let’s get squared away with a definition and data points to inform a world view:

DEFINITION:

User-generated content refers to any form of content that is created and shared by unpaid creators, advocates and fans of a brand. This includes social posts, videos, photos, reviews, and other multimedia that is authentically created by users rather than the brand itself.

TRENDS & DATA POINTS:

UGC has become ubiquitous across social platforms and websites, with 92% of consumers trusting UGC over branded content. (Stackla)
63% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product featured in UGC. (Stackla)
UGC generates 2.5x more engagement on average over branded content. (AdWeek)
Video UGC results in 4x higher views than branded video. (Wyzowl)
Customers exposed to UGC convert 5.2x more than those not exposed. (BigCommerce)

WORLDVIEW:

UGC outperforms branded content on every dimension; thus, it us ubiquitous with marketing in most circles. It is worth noting that UGC is much more prevalent in B2C today, though these trends almost always make their way to B2B. After all, it’s a consumer at the tail end of any business transaction. Needless to say, we are bulling on UGC, especially in the small business (SMB) market, where there is even less distinction between B2C and B2B.

UGC IN B2B

There are some notable differences in how user-generated content (UGC) is utilized in B2C vs B2B branding and marketing:

B2C UGC

Widely used across major consumer brands like retail, restaurants, CPG, beauty, etc.
Focuses heavily on leveraging customer reviews, social shares, visual content like selfies and videos.
UGC used prominently in advertising and ecommerce to influence purchase decisions.
Consumers find UGC highly influential for evaluating products/services.
Majority of top brands report UGC is core to their content strategy.

B2B UGC

Slower adoption compared to B2C but steadily increasing.
Relies more on customer testimonials, case studies, and advocate created content.
UGC used primarily in nurturing prospects during awareness/consideration phases.
B2B buyers still influenced by UGC but rely more on direct sales interactions.
Employee generated content also gaining traction, especially on LinkedIn.

KEY DIFFERENCES

B2C focuses on volume and variety while B2B emphasizes depth and expertise.

B2C uses UGC to drive conversions; B2B applies higher in funnel to build credibility and trust.
B2C features broad customer base; B2B draws on smaller client pool for content.

THE CONCERNS / HURDLES HINDERING B2B ADOPTION

The risks center on loss of control, compliance, revealing competitive intelligence and unproven ROI compared to other lead gen investments. Here’s a deeper rundown:

Maintaining confidentiality - B2B clients may be hesitant to create UGC to avoid revealing sensitive information about their business or partnership details.
Fear of sharing competitive intelligence - B2B brands worry about clients sharing details that could benefit competitors.
Mixed credibility - B2B buyers rely heavily on subject matter expertise. UGC from random customers may lack influence compared to B2C.
Narrow customer base - Many B2B firms have a smaller client roster, limiting the variety of potential UGC creators.
Lack of control over messaging - B2B firms tend to be more cautious about putting customer messages directly into market.
Compliance concerns - Heavily regulated B2B sectors like financial services require tighter controls over UGC.
Difficulty measuring impact - Lack of metrics showing UGC's impact on pipeline and revenue compared to other tactics.

For proper enterprise SaaS, UGC is indeed a tricky thing to navigate. Just imagine a user conducting a screen recording / demo, preaching the benefits of your software…and accidentally revealing someone’s credit card number. Not great.

In the world of Micro SaaS, the risk is lower, though any UGC program is reliant on the willingness of your users to be open and transparent about their business and how your SaaS changes the game for them.

GENERAL APPROACHES TO UGC

As you start to consider the value drivers of UGC and the tradeoffs, I’d like to suggest it boils down to the following:

Quality vs Quantity
Diversity
Cost
Speed

In terms of establishing a spectrum of options, here’s what you’re likely looking at:

ONE SIDE — A small and focused subset of users

Pros:

Already engaged with your brand, likely to participate
Can activate them quickly, focused resource needs / direction
Minimal resources needed
Content quality more assured
Focused resource needs

Cons:

Smaller pool to draw from
Content may lack diversity
Narrower content variety

OTHER SIDE — An open call to all users

Pros:

Broad reach to drive awareness
Provides user diversity
Fosters organic community engagement

Cons:

Time to activate and direct
Resource intensive to manage submissions and participants
Less control over content quality

THE PATH WE CHOSE:

Start with 1x super engaged user with a solid following. Optimize for a tight feedback loop and great quality. From here, you have a solid playbook you can scale up accordingly, though our strategy will always be focused on ~10 power users who are well aligned with our brand values and world view.

ESTABLISHING PARAMETERS / DIRECTION TO ENSURE QUALITY

As I often say with webinar agendas and execution, ‘the goal is to provide enough direction that the topic is well covered, without suffocating organic and creative contributions, as that’s the secret sauce.”

This translates well to UGC, where the challenge is balancing what serves the business against whatever the user is most inspired about. All things considered, we’re happy to index toward authentic / inspired in any context.

Share the goals - Bring users into the huddle and articulate how they play a role in your firms success, as a function of UGC contributions.

Share examples of ideal content - Provide a few examples or samples of UGC submissions that exemplify the level of quality and alignment you hope to receive. This visual guidance can help set expectations.

Give prompt ideas or templates - Consider narrow prompts or templates that users can easily follow to create relevant content. For example, "Show us how you use [product] to accomplish [task]" or "Describe a time when [product] helped you [achieve goal]."

Highlight product features to emphasize - Identify specific product attributes, use cases, or differentiators you want creators to focus on in their content.

Offer rewards incentives - Structure rewards or prizes to incentivize submissions that align with your content needs, like rewards for top videos showcasing a key feature. Lots you can do here to gamify via ‘bounties’ for specific topics or a bonus for the most upvoted submission, etc.

Provide a submission review process - Review content prior to publication and provide feedback to creators to ensure better alignment moving forward.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

We don’t trust brands. We trust our peers. UGC is a rational evolution of marketing, in light of the internet as the great democratizer and mobile / social providing a platform for creators of every flavor. Put simply, anyone can create the equivalent of an advertisement for any brand under the sun from their phone at any time. The goal is to provide a product or service that gets people excited enough to tell their story. The trick then, is to make it easy as hell to share their story with the world. Hand them a mic and get out of the way.

Lastly, a well executed UGC strategy has amazing implications for the business model and cost structure, where you essentially decentralize and outsource content marketing. You turn variable costs into success fees. As an example, you trade a digital content marketer (struggles to grasp your customer’s pain points) who charges by the hour or per asset (inputs) for a user (lives the pain points everyday) you pay for impressions or new trial users (outcomes). All. Day. Long.

Share Acquire & Operate - Micro SaaS

Skaling Ventures

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