There was a time, as little as 5-10 years ago, when marketing campaigns had a one-way flow. The company told the consumer what they were supposed to like and that was the end of it. However, we are no longer codependant on businesses to know what we want. In fact, the tables have almost completely turned into a relationship where businesses are entirely dependent on what we have to say. Through the utilization of social media, we the consumers are now able to tell our favorite companies what we want out of their products. This new type of relationship gives consumers a real voice at long last. With that voice comes a lot of power; buyers now dictate the direction of companies.
At first glance, this could look scary for companies, however, it actually makes the job of the companies a lot easier. Consumers give the brands new ideas for marketing and it’s completely free for the company! It’s whether or not they take advantage of the information they receive and use social media networks to their fullest potential that will help set apart a good user-generated campaign from a bad one.
User-generated campaigns are great for a few key reasons. First and foremost, they are quite inexpensive in comparison to other marketing campaigns. The users are basically giving you all of the information you need to create the campaign. If you get them involved through tweets on Twitter, watching and creating videos on YouTube, or reposting on Facebook, they are doing a large portion of the PR work for you. If you remember, Doritos did a completely user-generated ad campaign for their Super Bowl commercial. The viral video campaign gained over 2,000 submissions for the prize of a consumer having their homemade commercial become Doritos’ national commercial. These submissions garnered about two million votes and one billion impressions in total. The best part was, even before the commercial was on the air Doritos was getting almost virtually free publicity by giving their customers a voice. People love knowing that they have a voice.
Also, consumers are more inclined to listen to what a fellow consumer has to say about a product over the company that makes it. If a campaign is created out of tweets or comments from customers, people will be more inclined to agree with what is being said. If a product is getting negative comments, the company can then change the way that they market it or do business based on those comments. Client testimonials can be the hand that feeds, as well as the hand that takes a lot away. Lastly, people love feeling as though they were a part of something. #KONY2012 was such a viral success because the campaign was so well done and people felt as though they could actually make a difference. What Invisible Children did not do was keep up with the viral success in their campaign. To have a successful campaign a company has to keep fueling the public fire, hash tags work great if they are kept up with.
The consumer market is changing. Housewives are no longer desperate, they have a voice. Children are very rarely seen and not heard, and the “Mad Men” no longer need to guess what people want. If your customers are taking the time out of their day to tell you what they want then it would be a complete waste of your free resources and their time. So make your life easier and your customers happier; let them tell you what they want and let them do the work for you!
