Retail in 2023 is set to be challenging. Consumer sentiment in the UK is hovering around record lows, according to GfK, and the cost-of-living crisis is impacting customers’ capacity to spend as well as businesses’ ability to drive revenue and invest in growth.
But the number of channels on which retailers require a presence to engage with consumers and sell their products and services still continues to grow. TikTok, for example, has gone from a fledgling ‘for the younger generation’ social network pre-pandemic to a platform the biggest retailers can’t do without and the likes of Marks & Spencer are shaping Christmas campaigns around.
From in-store media to websites, and the social media channels and other digital marketing platforms in between, there are a plethora of customer touchpoints that now require brand-to-consumer communication.
As a result, marketing teams might find they are stretched in 2023, according to Doug Straton, chief customer evangelist at technology company Bazaarvoice. Talking on a webinar broadcast earlier this year, he calls on brands and retailers to lean more on user-generated content (UGC) in the year ahead for internal and consumer demand reasons.
As Straton says in the webinar, the cost of using brand marketing alone might be too overwhelming in the current economic environment – but there are new approaches businesses can take.
Retail Gazette has picked out the key points from the webinar and spoken to an industry expert to help shape retailer and brand thinking around UGC in 2023.
1. “Customers are itching for a large volume of great content”. These are the words of Straton, who compares the number of minutes people spent watching Netfix (estimated 9.6 trillion) versus the minutes spent watching TikTok (estimated 22.6 trillion) in 2021.
Those numbers show that most of the consumption of content globally is coming from the user-generated or creator-generated world, and highlights consumer thirst for the “authenticity” of it, Straton remarks.
2. It’s impossible to create enough brand-led content to fill the void. Once again, this is the view of Straton, who explains there is only so much brand marketing that can be created – and he argues it’s more expensive to create than UGC.
With so many channels for brands and retailers to develop content for, they continually require fresh content to make sure they avoid “creative wear-out”, he adds. “The ability to really build reusable fit for purpose content that ultimately drives ROI is a really difficult one.”
3. Align the organisation around content strategy. According to Straton, it is important to work out who will own certain types and mix of content within a brand or retailer – and then they must decide how it is going to be delivered and the metrics behind it.
“As soon as you agree on that and [you’ve] thought about the importance, you need to get the balance of supply [and] you can activate against what is demanded,” he explains.
Straton adds that businesses regularly focus on where there’s most money invested, but warns the end consumer is engaging with and making decisions about a brand in multiple ways – not just in places where the majority of marketing budget is spent.
4. Build a content supply chain. Straton suggests the concept of a “content supply chain” is still in its nascent stages, but urges retailers to map out where they might need content marketing in the future and work back to ensure the supply meets demand.
Reflecting on the role of traditional business supply chains, he says: “With the right forecast it allows a company to make the products or deliver the services to [a specific] demand, store those products, distribute those products to the outlets that sell them, where they get bought and consumed.
“And that data can be pushed back into the next forecast to understand how much of what needs to be made to meet further demand.”
Straton adds: “It’s a really simple concept and you can just apply it to content. Design a content supply chain that delivers content at scale. Once you have the process, you have the benefit of turning it into an efficient system.”
He suggests Bazaarvoice can help its partners build content via seasonal sampling, for example, which helps brands have UGC ready to help promote new product launches or time-sensitive campaigns.
5. Just focus on getting the fundamentals of retailing right. Andy Mulcahy, strategy & insights director at etail trade association IMRG, tells Retail Gazette the best way for retailers and brands to get people talking about them and commenting favourably is simply by delivering on promises.
“If you’re doing a bad job, what do you think people are going to say?” he asks.
“If you convince people you’re a strong business and a decent brand, and that you do the right thing and chime with their values then ultimately what people say about you is going to be good. The right approach is to execute what you do really well and people will gravitate to saying nice things about you.”
Retail Gazette will be working with Bazaarvoice on two events focused on the subject of UGC in January 2023.
Want to learn more about how to map out a content supply chain? Sign up for a Retail Gazette-Bazaarvoice webinar, which takes place on 24 January 2023.
