When someone buys your handmade products, you of course want them to buy more and tell others about your shop and your products.
I call this turning your customers into “fans.”
Incentivizing your customers to post about your product is a VERY smart idea and a very cost effective way to market your products when you don’t have a big advertising budget.
But you might be wondering:
“How can I get my customers to market my products?”
And that’s exactly what we’re going to focus on in today’s article, so keep reading to learn how to get your customers to create content and market your product for you so that every sale that you make helps to make more sales!
So, ready? Let’s dive in.
Before we jump into how to get your customers to market your product for you, I want to quickly talk about something called UGC. You might have heard this term thrown around a lot lately, and it stands for user generated content.
Now there are two types of UGC.
One is when you pay someone to create content for you that you then can use on your own social media as if it was from a customer or someone who genuinely reviewed your products (when in fact they’re being paid). I have an article all about using paid UGC to boost your handmade sales that you can read after this one.
The other type of UGC is the original UGC which is using your customers to market your products for you – so in this case, the term “user” means the ACTUAL user or customer – and that’s what we’re talking about in this video.
So in this more “genuine” UGC you will encourage your customers to post pictures and write reviews of your products on their social media and tag your business.
Now of course you might have some people that just naturally want to do that, but there are many, many more customers who don’t, and you want to give those customers a bit of encouragement – a reason to do it – because you want more customers posting and reviewing about your products vs. the few that do it on their own.
When you are planning your strategy for asking customers to post UGC, there are four things you need to consider: when to ask your customers to post UGC, what you want them to do, what incentive you will offer, and what the best way to do all of that is.
THIS FREE PLANNER WILL HELP YOU CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN FOR YOUR HANDMADE SHOP. KNOW WHAT TO POST, WHEN TO POST IT, AND WHAT TOOLS TO USE!
The first thing we’re going to talk about is WHERE in the customer journey you should solicit customer UGC.
If you look at the customer journey, it starts when someone purchases your product, and this is the first opportunity for you to incentivize customers to post UGC.
At this stage they are excited about their new purchase, and you can put an incentive on the checkout confirmation or thank you page.
You can also put it in the automated email that you send, so something like “Hey, thank you so much for your order, we’re taking care of packing it and will ship it soon! Do this while you’re waiting for your order and you will receive this great incentive!”
A third place to put your incentive is in the automated shipping email you send saying congrats your order is on the way.
Another great touch point is when they receive their product. You can put a note in the packaging, thanking them for their order and including an incentive if they post a video, picture, or review of their unboxing experience.
The third opportunity for customer UGC is by scheduling follow-up automations. These are spaced out a bit more, say a month or so after the customer receives the product — then you have an automation set up that sends them an email asking how they like their product, and offering an incentive for them to post pictures and reviews of them using, wearing, or displaying your products.
This is a great way to get people seeing and interested in your products.
Once you’ve decided when you’re going to contact customers and solicit UGC, you need to decide what UGC you want to gather.
Do you want people to take pictures of themselves with products?
Do you want videos of the products themselves?
Do you want written reviews? Or maybe written or video testimonials?
Do you want word of mouth recommendations to friends and family?
Next you need to decide what you will give them for doing these things.
Of course you can decide to not give them anything and just ask them politely to do it, but you’re going to have a lot less success than if you actually incentivize them with a good offer.
Here again you have different options. You could give them a coupon for a certain % off their next order, or enter them in a drawing to get their order completely refunded or win a prize.
Once you decide what it is that you will offer you want to communicate it very clearly to your customers.
The last detail you need to think about is how you will present the incentive to your customers. This is a detail many sellers don’t put enough time into, but you need to think very carefully about it because it can really affect how many customers will take you up on your offer and post UGC.
Like I said earlier, if you say something kind of generic like “we’d love to hear from you – let us know what you think about your purchase!”, most people will ignore it.
You will want to be specific, as in “Take a picture of yourself wearing your new bracelet and post it with the hashtag #mybrandname on Instagram and I’ll enter you in a monthly drawing for a $15 gift card!”
Or, “make a video of yourself drinking coffee in your new handmade mug and tag me @myshophandle on Instagram and I’ll send you a coupon for 5% off your next order!”
Being more specific like this ensures you will get the type of content you want, showing your product the way you want, with the hashtags you want.
Once people have posted the requested UGC, there are many places you can re-use or share it, such as
Before you use their UGC, be sure you still ask for permission to use it, and then make sure you credit it properly each place you post it. I know that seems obvious but it’s always worth a mention!
So I want to give you a quick example of how effective a well-thought-out UGC incentive can work.
A few months back, I flew to France with my son to visit my family, and before I went I purchased an inflatable pillow to use for him on the plane. About a week after I ordered it I got an email saying
“Hi Deborah,
You recently ordered from me and not only am I eager to hear your feedback, I would also LOVE for you to share your images of the product in use!
Each month, I’m giving away to one lucky customer who leaves a review, the opportunity to win back their purchase!
Just submit a review with photos attached of the product in use, and email me with the images and your order number for a chance to win your purchase back!”
And so this totally motivated me, because I wanted to win this pillow for free even though I already had paid for it!
I loved the product on our trip, so I went and wrote a really great review and I added an image of Vali sleeping on the plane using this pillow.
Then I posted the review and emailed it to them in the hopes that I would get a refund. I didn’t win unfortunately, but you know what? Their incentive worked, they got a really nice review out of it.
And even though I didn’t win, I got an email that said “thank you for your five star review, and here’s a coupon code for your next order”.
So, win-win!
You can see that by sending me that message at the right time and offering an incentive that I was really keen to earn, they got a great review and a great photo to use – and I’m sure many people like me did the same for this company, so they generated a lot of great marketing!
Now that’s just one example, and there are many MANY ways to be creative when asking for UGC, so I would love to hear from you guys how you’re doing it — as in what kind of things are you doing in your business to encourage people to post UGC?
Be sure to tell me in the comments below, I love hearing the creative ideas people come up with to motivate their customers to post UGC!
Thanks for reading and until next time, aurevoir!
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