Brief #97: Growing Pains in Marketing

Welcome to Future of Marketing.

Each week, we send you the most relevant trends, resources, and strategies in social and user-generated content (UGC) from leading marketers and brands around the globe.

Today, we're discussing...

The struggles of content production
How UGC solves marketers' growing pains
#BrandCrush: Getty Museum 💘

The struggles of content production

Creating content at a high frequency is easier said than done – and so is distributing and reformatting this content for different platforms.

In the State of User-Generated Content 2022 report, we discovered that:

47% of marketers agree it takes their team too long to create content
60% of marketers feel pressured to continually produce greater amounts of content at a high frequency
60% of marketers take the time to format content for all screen sizes and social media platforms

Additionally, in 2020, marketers needed help and reported that team size was their main challenge. In other words, their teams weren't large enough to support all the content and campaigns they had to produce. The good news is that 48.20% of marketers invested in growing their teams in 2021 – but you can't help but wonder…

What about the other 51.80% still struggling to keep up?

A graphic showing what KPIs are most important in marketers' roles. Results: Engagement: 32.20%, ROI: 31%, Followers/Subscribers 16.40%; Leads: 14.8%; Other: 5.6%

“The hardest thing is knowing what to prioritize,” shared Youri Hollier, Director of Digital and Social for Tim Hortons. “We've been able to navigate that pretty well, but it's a never-ending struggle with constantly evolving platforms.”

Take Action: Content platforms are hungry and it's not realistic to think marketing teams can keep up with increasing demands across fast-changing marketing channels. That's one reason marketers turn to user-generated content; UGC helps fill in your content calendar without having to create content from scratch – and has a 4x higher engagement rate when compared to brand-created content.

How UGC solves marketers' growing pains

We recently went live to discuss consumer expectations and their impact on the current (and future) state of marketing.

Watch this short clip to learn how UGC solves marketers' growing pains – and catch up on the complete conversation on YouTube:

[video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://www.trueloyal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/SOUGC-2022-Webinar_TINT.mp4"][/video]

PS. The short video clip above is an example of how you can reformat and repurpose long-form content (i.e. a webinar hosted by your team) across different marketing channels – and in a way that's easier to consume.

What we're learning

#BrandCrush: Getty Museum 💘

Each week in #BrandCrush, we highlight exceptional brands that are channeling their customers' voices to connect more authentically with their audience.

How do you get your audience to submit content about your brand?

In March 2020, Getty Museum challenged their audience to choose their favorite artwork from the museum's collection and recreate it using three items found in their home.

To give their audience some direction, they offered a few examples – and the user-generated content poured in.

A tweet by Getty challenging fans to recreate a work of art with objects and people in their home. They also provided a few examples to give their audience guidance.

“As images came in, Getty shared them side-by-side with the original artwork,” shared Hootsuite. “The posts showcased Getty's warmth and sense of humor, but also quietly showcased the impressive variety and scope of its collection.”

It also drove traffic back to their website.

The lesson: Research shows 60% of consumers want brands to tell them what content to create. By sharing examples of what your brand is looking for (like Getty did above), you spark inspiration and teach your fans what content you want to see from them.

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