John Tackett

Social Media: How to turn customers into brand advocates

April 11th, 2014

For many marketers, user-generated content is the upcycling opportunity of a lifetime. It’s free content created by customers turned brand advocates with a margin of credibility money can’t buy.

Sadly, this content often goes to waste in marketing, or worse, unnoticed altogether.

The challenge, however, for savvy marketers like Evin Catlett, Digital Marketing Manager, Amer Sports, often rests in finding strategic ways to repurpose content effectively.

In a recent MarketingSherpa webinar, Evin explained how Amer Sports was launching its first U.S. Instagram campaign in support of a new product. According to Evin, the launch would also focus on the overall goal of increasing social media engagement with U.S. consumers.

“We didn’t have a ton of reach,” Evin explained, “And while we did have really strong engagement, it was with a very small community.” 

social-media-engagement

 

Before Evin began, she realized one important element to the campaign was the need to inspire social media interaction with customers.

invitation-to-inspire

 

To help accomplish this, the team brought in key brand athletes to have a fairly robust part in interacting on social media with the product, and invited the social media community to do the same.

suunto-ambitions-instagram

 

Evin’s strategy on the brand side of the campaign with the athletes generated some fantastic photos for the brand’s Instagram launch. Evin’s team also linked social media platforms to one another to drive some of the photo content to Facebook and Twitter.

Most importantly, the team also showcased user-generated content at trade show events.

trade-show-booth

 

Evin’s team incorporated user-generated content into a trade show booth. The Instagram wall quickly became popular at trade show events, helping to generate even more buzz around the brand.

“We really felt like it really made the booth more interesting, but for the buyers coming around, it helped us showcase the brand,” Evin said.

To learn more about Evin’s strategy for repurposing user-generated content to drive brand awareness, check out the MarketingSherpa webinar replay of “Social Media Marketing: How a sporting goods company increased Facebook reach 366%.”

 

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  1. April 14th, 2014 at 10:05 | #1

    Such a fascinating idea, and one that could really be made to work for smaller companies as well. Thanks, John!

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