0:16 All right. Hello, everybody. My name is Kendall green. I am a divisional vice president of sales over our small to medium business segment here. 0:24 It was our voice. I have been here for a little less than 9 years and I worked within marketing and sales throughout my tenure. And today I'm very excited to be talking to you about how SMB organizations can leverage shopper content. 0:38 So if you are a small business or you are working within a small marketing team, then it's likely that you wear many hats and you are very short on time. 0:48 So this session is for you. You're in the right place. And today I'm going to share practical tips on how to leverage shopper content. And when I say shopper content, that could be reviews, questions and answers, photos, videos, social content. 1:02 And so we're going to talk about how to leverage this social content, the shopper content, to drive sales and increase conversion, engagement and overall loyalty. 1:17 So the majority of shoppers say that they research before making a purchase. And you want to stand out and you want to make shoppers feel confident in their purchase decisions. 1:27 So one of the best ways to instill shopper confidence is with authentic shopper content. So these are all the different areas that shoppers consult before making a purchase that you can see on my screen. 1:39 And to gain that competitive edge, it's really important to appear wherever your customers are researching, whether it's on search, social retail, in-store and online. 1:49 So with that, I want to jump into the agenda to see how we're going to tackle this important topic today. So first, we're going to cover off on why shopper content is important. 2:03 Then we're going to dig into how to actually collect this content. There is definitely strategy behind it. Third is how to activate social commerce. 2:13 So we know that we've seen a significant shift over to social more visual contents. Let's talk through that and how our voice is helping to leverage that content today. 2:24 Then we're going to get into who is doing this well. Let's look at some live examples of some of our current clients that are leveraging all different types of content and making sure that the customer has this throughout their shopper journey. 2:35 And then lastly, how do we measure the return on investment? What does this look like from a returns standpoint? So shopper content, also known as UGC or user generated content is your most important asset. 2:53 Why is this? It's because customers who interact with UGC are 2x is likely to convert. They're seeking out reviews, photos, videos in the shopper journey and these different types of content. 3:07 Work together to make the consumer make sure that the consumer has absolutely everything that they need to feel confident enough to press buy now. So yes, it is important to have your own branded content like your product description and your stock images, et cetera but our research shows that customers trust and crave UGC over anything else. 3:31 So let's take a look beyond the customer opinion data and jump into the real conversion data that we've collected across the Bazaarvoice network of over 11,500 brand retail sites. 3:43 You can see significant uplifts in conversion revenue and even average order value that bizarre customers are realizing. For shoppers who are interacting with our reviews, photo galleries and questions and answers. 3:57 And these metrics are significant. We're doing absolutely everything we can to bring that in-store experience online, and customers are responding positively. 4:08 So we saw a huge shift from in-store to online over the course of the pandemic. We all did. People were not going into stores as often. 4:17 That forced people who weren't typically online shoppers to jump into the game. And we don't see this slowing down any time soon. Your digital shelf space space is now just as crucial as your shelf space and your display in store. 4:35 And that's a great segment into how this impacts in store as well, because people aren't just researching products when they're shopping online, they're doing their due diligence before going into the store or they're even pulling out their phones while they're in the aisle as well to research a product. 4:53 And so the data that you're seeing on my screen is based on our robo study. When robo stands for research online by offline. 5:02 And we conducted the study by partnering with many of our retail partners globally. And we added two questions to there review submission forms. 5:10 So the first one was, did you read reviews before purchase? Yes or no? And the second one was, did you purchase online or in-store? 5:19 And from that data, we got that robo multiplier that you're seeing up on the top right hand corner of your screen that says 3.96. 5:28 And that is a fancy way of saying that for every dollar spent online that's influenced by reviews, we see an average of $3.96 spend in store. 5:38 That's influenced by reviews. And you can see that this plays out in every industry. We have a handful of industries listed here on the slide. If you aren't seeing your industry or if you have specific questions about this, please reach out. 5:52 We can help get you that data. But in other words, this content on your product pages can be your new best salesperson and impact sales in aisle as well. 6:02 So let your customer sell on your behalf. Now let's take a look at a killer product page highlighting shopper content throughout. 6:14 So shopper content is delivering your social proof essentially on the page. So there's a few different recommendations. We have to make sure that you are all set on your PDP. 6:25 The first is we recommend featuring your star ratings near the top of the product page. So that the customers can see those stars, they can see your total volume of reviews and star rating. 6:35 This is attractive to them. They're looking at it. It's a great way to make this content stand out right off the bat. The next is to feature reviews prominently above the fold. 6:47 And there's a couple of reasons for this. First is that we see a 141% increase in conversion when customers engage with reviews. So we don't want to have that customer scrolling too far down or working too hard to find it because you're seeing a huge lift there. 7:01 But second, we also don't want this content hiding behind a tab because this is SEO rich content that can help drive more traffic to the site to help you populate higher within search. 7:15 And then showcasing social content where your customers have shared images and videos of your products in their lives. That's hugely important as well. We see a whopping 250% increase in time on site when social content is added. 7:28 Because this goes above and beyond stock images or the photos of a model in the product page. We want to see customers that look like us. 7:38 We want to see the product in the wild, in everyday consumer lives. So now let's talk about the interactive features on the page. 7:51 Questions and answers is one of those. So we recommend adding questions and answers either just above or just below the ratings and reviews, depending on your industry and even how many questions you typically receive. 8:03 That's a great indicator of where that needs to go. And this content is interacted with before purchase, but also after purchase as well. 8:12 So you're going to see huge value throughout the shopper journey with this content. And not to mention this content is also going to be helpful from an SEO standpoint as well. 8:23 Another best practice is to add filters within your reviews. So when we're asking for feedback, we're not just asking for star rating and review, but we're also asking a bunch of custom questions like age, gender or location. 8:39 Pros cons of the product. That way, customers can go in and sort and filter that content to find what's relevant to them to help them convert. 8:50 This is also helpful to you from a marketing team standpoint, to use this as your 24/7 focus group to collect all of this content and find out more about who's buying. 9:01 And then. Comment, adding a highlight of your reviews. Above all, the actual individual reviews. And with doing that, you're going to see an increase in engagement of 12% And this simply gives the customer, the cliffsnotes, of everything that they would read if they actually dug down into the content. 9:22 So now that we've seen why this content matters and how it works together on your PDP, I want to dig into how to actually collect a healthy volume of content. 9:31 Volume is key to your success in a program like this, and there's lots of shopper content to be collected out there. You just have to find it and/or proactively ask for it. 9:42 So lots of times it can be sparse for your business. So there's plenty of ways for us to go in and foster it. If we're not proactively asking for it, that's when you tend to get a lot of ranchers and ravers. 9:54 We want to get more of your average Joe customer by being proactive and requesting it. So the first way to do this is actually through our post purchase request. 10:05 That can be through email, it can be through text messages. But if you do have commerce on the site, every time somebody buys, we're going to send out a request for their feedback, typically two weeks after purchase to give them time to try out the product, get it shipped to them, whatever it may be. 10:23 That being said, I do have a lot of clients within our small medium business segment that do not have e-commerce on the site. So there are other creative ways to request this information, whether it's through product warranty or registration or even through QR codes on the packaging or packaging inserts when people do purchase from retail. 10:46 Next is loyalty programs. So you may already have a loyalty program today. That's great. We can work off of those loyal advocates to request their feedback as well. 10:56 We also have recommendations if that is something that you guys are looking into for from a loyalty program standpoint. 11:06 And then trials. So lots of times we have clients that will try out or sample their products out to receive reviews that way. 11:14 This is super common within New product launches. So that you can launch with content ahead of your launch. It's also common for any products that maybe are lacking from a review volume standpoint or visual content standpoint. 11:27 So we can specifically target those items to make sure they have content on their pages. Bizarre voice has a community of over 7 and 1/2 million members that we can go after to make sure that your products are getting into the right hands so we can target members based on their age, gender or location interest. 11:44 From there, they would select the product if they're interested, to actually sample and leave their authentic feedback. And then lastly, we have our community that we can go after. 11:55 So really commonly, we can look at a sweepstakes program. You can say, hey, we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave us a review on get entered to win x. 12:05 So that's another really common way for us to collect reviews and visuals as well. And then there's also a few ways for us to specifically look at photos, videos, social content collection as well. 12:19 Some of these are repeats. Some of them are new. So hashtag campaigns or app mentions. That's a great way for us to find your content across social and pull that in onto your site, make it shoppable, make it all digestible wherever that content lives. 12:37 Next would also be through trial. So we've talked about sampling. We can also sample to collect visual content as well. So not only can we ask for reviews, but we can also ask for social content for them to post photos, videos, whatever it may be. 12:53 Another repeat is community. So we are able to run sweepstakes across your social channels as well. Leave us a photo or video or post about us and get entered to win x or receive x discount. 13:08 And then lastly is our influencer marketing option. So if you already have influencers you work with today, great. Let's leverage them to get some of that really beautiful content. 13:19 Otherwise, these are always also has offerings for you to collect that content through our programs as well. And then once you have a substantial reserve of reviews, images and videos, we need to have a system to distribute them as widely as possible to maximize your return on investment. 13:43 So here are a lot of different ways. Eight ways to amplify your shopper content. I'm going to talk through a couple of these in more detail. 13:51 The first is your website. So we know that customers are going to your website to do their research. So it's important that we have all the different types of content on your product pages or even within your inspirational galleries to impact conversion on your own site, but also to drive new traffic to your site from an SEO standpoint. 14:12 Next is our retail network. So this is one area that makes our voice truly unique out of anybody else there in the anybody else in the space. 14:21 We work with thousands of retailers to also collect and display reviews on their own sites like Target and Walmart, Home Depot at Nordstrom. 14:30 So if we're collecting content with you, we're able to also share that content out to the shared retailers that we have as well to make sure that somebody's shopping on target versus your own site. 14:42 They're getting that same story told throughout that shopper journey. And then the last one I'll touch on is advertising. 14:50 So I highly recommend featuring reviews, photos, videos, social content within your ads as well. We know that customers are craving this content. 15:01 We know it's trustworthy content. So if you're going to spend money on advertisements, let's go ahead and get that added to make it a little bit more attractive for somebody to click in. 15:11 And then pro tip here is that when you are running any sort of ads campaign and driving people back to a specific product page or site, your retail channel, wherever it may be, make sure that you have content there once they get there. 15:26 We don't want to drive them to a naked product page that doesn't have reviews, no social content, no photos, videos. We need to invest and get that content up front so that when you do run an advertising campaign, when we are directing people back to your product pages, that you have the content there to actually get them to convert. 15:46 And so there's actually two really impactful ways that bazaar voice is able to support you that I wanted to go into more detail on next. One is going to be our social commerce capabilities and the other is the Bazaarvoice network. 15:57 So let's jump in to social commerce and let me explain. So we're all familiar with driving brand awareness and traffic on social. 16:08 It's a cost effective way for many small businesses to uncover new audiences and build loyalty and revenue. So with so many channels out there like Facebook, Instagram, pinterest, tiktok, etc., and managing multiple different social accounts, it can be an absolute nightmare without social media management software. 16:29 So when we're looking at promoting on social, our voice can help you do this and do this at scale. And then. 16:37 In more recent years, shoppers are increasingly purchasing on social. So small businesses have been building storefronts on social and making all of their content shoppable or digestible. 16:49 Bizarre boys has a light to buy solution, for example, and that was one of the first solutions to bring shopping to Instagram. So that's how we can help you actually sell on social. 17:00 And now this is where it gets interesting for our savvy marketers out there. We can also look at styling with social. So e-commerce displays are bringing social content back to your own site galleries and product pages, whether that's your own brand owned content or influencer content or even everyday shopper content. 17:22 And we see the companies that curate their best content from social media and use it throughout their e-commerce environments are seeing the amazing returns that I mentioned earlier in terms of conversion revenues and average order values. 17:37 And then lastly, we have a cell with social retail. So just like bazaar boys historically has been able to share reviews from a brand site out to our retail network. 17:47 We're now able to share visual content, that social content as well. So bazaar voice overall, we have our social commerce suites that connect to your social media properties and content to your e-commerce presence. 18:02 And we're supporting all four of these ways of activating social commerce in one easy to use all end tool. 18:15 And so we mentioned actually syndicating visual content out to our retail network now as well. So let's look at this full journey of how we're able to help you collect, curate and actually distribute all types of consumer content, whether it's reviews, questions, photos, videos, et cetera. 18:32 So our platform now all under one umbrella, can enable brands like yourself to first and foremost collect valuable UGC across all different channels, many different types at scale. 18:45 From the post-sale outreach to sweepstakes to sampling. There's a lot of different ways to collect. We need to make sure you have that content in the first place. 18:54 Once we get it, we're going to moderate that content to ensure authenticity and compliance. So for example, is it authentic UGC or is it from fake bots or a competitor? 19:06 Is it clean or does it contain any sort of profanity or those naughty four letter words that we don't want displayed on our sites? And then lastly, but definitely not least, is does it comply with FTC or GDPR regulations? 19:19 The czar voice is going to be with you every step of the way to make sure that we don't have any content going live that we don't want, and making sure that all of this content is clean and you do not have to worry about that on your end. 19:32 And then finally, once we have collected and curated all this content, now we have the task of getting this content distributed to all of the places where your customers are. 19:41 So social search your site, your retailers. Our network is going to be able to syndicate your reviews to over 1700s retailers globally. 19:53 And then our visual content network can now syndicate those images as well. So the main takeaway is that our solution can reach consumers with content that inspires discovery and creates enjoyable experiences, as well as content that gives consumers the confidence to buy. 20:13 So I want to jump into who is doing this. Well, let's look at a couple of examples here. Tequila is a SMB company that makes insulated water bottles and pictures for active on the go people. 20:29 I love this example. It's a great example of how to actually sell at retail. Well, so what K is doing is they're taking reviews and social content from shoppers to drive sales on their own site and target.com and many other retail sites as well. 20:45 So they're crediting in this success story, they're crediting UGC with helping to prove the quality of their products and also generating more sales while impacting SEO at the same time. 20:58 So you can see a huge 30% lift in sales that they're touting on this page. That's absolutely amazing. That's what we like to see. 21:07 They're specifically using Bazaarvoice together, reviews, images across all social channels that their customers are using just those photos of them, using them in their everyday lives. 21:18 And then this shopper content is automatically posted on their product pages and then on retail sites like Target to provide an additional layer of rich content that inspires shoppers and compels them to buy. 21:32 And because they touted SEO on that last success story. I really want to jump in there. Seo should absolutely be part of your shopper content plan. 21:42 A lot of people don't know that this is a huge return that reviews can drive for you because you're thinking, hey, stars on a page, you know, all kind of looks the same, but not every provider is created equal when it comes to SEO and driving new traffic to your site. 21:57 So our clients specifically tend to see a 15% to 30% lift in organic traffic coming to their pages with shopper content on it. 22:08 So it's really, really important that we have fresh, relevant consumer content that we're collecting and displaying on your site because we know that Google loves fresh, relevant content, and that's going to be very impactful from a long tail SEO standpoint because people tend to search for products very similar to how they would talk, how they write a review, how they ask the question. 22:29 So if you're interested in learning more about how shopper content impacts seo, there's an entire bazaar based webinar on this. So this next example is super cute. 22:42 I want everybody to look at this sweet puppy snuggling up with some shoes. You can see it on Instagram and then in Lincoln bio where you can actually buy and then also on the Skechers site where you can purchase as well. 22:54 So by investing in your content on social, you're investing in content that can be used on your website as well. And then you can also build on this by adding that same content into email, ads, blogs, et cetera overall, Skechers is doing a great job of inspiring their shoppers from social all the way to their PDPs. 23:15 And then on the PDP, PDP, I think it's interesting to point out that we tend to see rational decision making information. 23:23 However you want customers to be within that emotional context that brought them there originally. So this photo ties it back to the reason why they came here in the first place. 23:33 And then once they get there, we're also able to show additional similar photos around that product just to build the confidence up even more and ultimately the decision to buy. 23:46 And then this last example is Kit craft. They are a manufacturer of children's products with modern touches. They are near and dear to my heart. 23:55 I actually worked with these guys directly. I love their company, I love their products, and I think they have a great story here. They're actually doing quarterly reviews of what customers are saying about them within questions and answers, reviews and more. 24:10 And then from there, they're making changes to both their marketing copy and informing product development on any common issues or even additional future product ideas as well. 24:24 So according to Bazaarvoice research, this is a great best practice. We know that reviews can not only inform marketing copy, but also identify product improvements or new lines of products. 24:37 Like I said, I like to consider reviews our own 24/7 focus group. So this is a great way and a great example of how to do this. And then this leads us to the topic of actually responding to shoppers. 24:50 So shoppers expect you to respond when they give negative feedback. And they also expect you to respond when they get positive feedback. 24:58 So it's very important, no matter what, to be listening to your customer and to have that open dialogue. We also have an entire webinar on responding to customer feedback, and bazaar voice offers tools to help you do this at scale because it can be a lot. 25:13 But fun fact on this one. We know that when shoppers see a negative review with a brand response underneath, it actually doubles their intent to purchase. 25:23 So responding to reviews doesn't just impact the single customer that you're responding to, but all future shoppers that engage with this content as well. 25:35 Now all for an accurate assessment of why you can expect for your small business the return that you're looking at. I highly recommend that you check out. 25:44 That was our voice Roi calculator and it's going to show you how much you can boost your bottom line and it'll break it out into four different sections, the first being SEO. 25:53 So how much traffic do I expect to drive to my site by making sure that I'm getting the full benefit from an SEO standpoint for all of my consumer content? 26:05 The next is syndication to retail. So we know from A/B testing that brands that syndicate to our retail network see a 15 to 26% lift in online sales alone, not including in store. 26:19 So it's going to take that conservative 15% metric to look at that return from a retail perspective to see what that looks like. 26:27 We're also going to look at increase conversion impact. So what does that new conversion rate look like on your site and at retail now that we have all of this beautiful consumer content at your fingertips and displaying across the shopper journey? 26:43 And then lastly, we'll get into robo again research online by offline. So how is this impacting my in-store sales as well? And so we'll be taking that robo data that we've collected that's specific to your industry to show you what that return looks like in store as well. 27:02 Now before we get into our Q&A, I want to summarize the key takeaways from today. First is that shoppers are your new sales people. 27:11 This is the best way to supercharge your marketing efforts with high converting content. And then once you've collected this content, it's important to get this into all the different places that you sell. 27:22 So your own site search social retail. And then shopper content is going to help you reach new audiences. So it's going to help you drive discovery and inspiration and then traffic from social and search. 27:37 And then lastly is to choose a partner that can take that heavy lifting off of your shoulders and help facilitate and manage your program at scale. And that's a wrap. 27:48 Thank you guys for listening. I'd like to open it up to conversations now. So if anybody has any questions, go ahead and jump in.
