With a decline in traditional social media usage and the rise of dedicated online brand communities, 2024 provided a wealth of insights on building authentic, lasting connections with your audience. We’re reviewing our thoughts and predictions from the start of the year. Let’s dig in.

In Case You Missed It: Read our 2024 State of Community Powered Marketing here.

Traditional Social Media Is Losing Its Shine 

Oxford University Press has named brain rot the word of the year. The days of endlessly scrolling major social media platforms are fading. A GWI study shows that global social media usage has declined since 2022. Add to this Gartner’s prediction that by 2025, 50% of consumers will significantly reduce their use of traditional platforms due to quality concerns, and it becomes clear that brands can no longer rely solely on these channels to engage their audience. 

Add the looming deadline for TikTok’s forced sale in the United States, and you’ve got a perfect storm of unenthused users. 

What’s replacing the Instagram selfies and TikTok dances? Private, interest-based communities where consumers can interact more meaningfully—with each other and brands.  

Fun Fact: Brain Rot isn’t a new term. The first recorded use of the term was in Henry David Thoreau’s pivotal book Walden. He writes, “While England endeavors to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

The Rise of Private Online Communities 

Consumers are flocking to spaces where their voices are heard (and listened to). Research from Community Roundtable revealed that 78% of consumers prefer connecting with brands through dedicated online communities rather than engaging via traditional social media. 

Why are these communities so valuable? They offer richer interactions, allowing members to engage in meaningful discussions beyond shallow exchanges. This sense of belonging can’t be replicated on social media feeds. In these communities, members can share their stories, network with like-minded individuals, and receive support, all of which contribute to a stronger community bond… and a stronger connection to the brand that facilitates this network.

This shift towards community-focused platforms gives brands an opportunity to rebuild customer trust. These communities empower brands to showcase their commitment to their customers, unlike the pay-to-play social platforms of old, where authentic connection often feels diluted by advertising and algorithms. 

Connection Wins Over Followers 

Community engagement isn’t just a warm-and-fuzzy exercise in public relations. It delivers tangible benefits for brands. Edelman’s survey found that 67% of consumers feel more connected to brands that foster community engagement than those that rely on social media campaigns.

A connected customer is a loyal customer, and guess what? They’re also likely to buy. HubSpot’s research showed that 77% of consumers are willing to make purchases directly from an online brand community. Authenticity and connection are driving real ROI. 

The End of Influencer Dominance 

Sorry to the influencers reading this, but this wasn’t your year. Influencer Marketing Hub’s benchmark report finds that 71% of marketers say traditional influencer campaigns are becoming less effective. Today’s consumers are prioritizing authenticity above all else, which means your local micro-influencer might have a better shot at delivering trust than a big-name celebrity with sponsored posts galore. 

That’s not to say influencer marketing is totally dead. It’s just evolving, smaller followings, greater community endorsement, and trust-building over time are where it’s headed. 

Navigating AI’s Growing Impact 

Generative AI made waves this year and it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 60% of Chief Marketing Officers will adopt safeguards to combat the risks of deceptive or low-quality AI output. 

For brands, getting ahead means harnessing AI responsibly. Pair AI tools with human oversight for activities like customer support, content personalization, and data analysis. And stay transparent. Consumers value brands that disclose how they’re using tech to enhance—not replace—authentic interactions. 

The Power of Listening 

Want to inspire customer loyalty? Start by listening. The Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that 97% of consumers feel motivated to stay loyal and purchase more often from brands that actively listen to their feedback. 

Creating space for this two-way dialogue through review systems, forums, or community Q&As solidifies trust and boosts brand affinity. These engaged customers are more likely to become your brand’s advocates. 

Community-Driven Content Multiplies Your Reach 

User-generated content (UGC) doesn’t just drive engagement—it drives action. Here’s the proof:

• A BrightLocal report shows that 90% of consumers are more inclined to leave reviews when they feel part of a community. 
• According to Hootsuite, 68% of community members create content about the brands they engage with. 

This type of content also works harder for your brand. Re-shared customer reviews and testimonials don’t just feel more authentic; they are more authentic. That authenticity builds trust, echoed in increased shares, clicks, and purchases. 

Co-Creation Beats Traditional Marketing 

One of the strongest trends in 2024 was brands collaborating with their consumers. A study in Marketing Week highlighted co-creation as a powerful alternative to traditional campaigns. Brands that involve their communities in decision-making—whether brainstorming product ideas or creating ad campaigns, cultivate a sense of ownership and loyalty among their consumers. 

Barriers to Emotional Connections 

Despite the importance of emotional resonance, brands face growing challenges in this area. A McKinsey study revealed that economic pressure has led many consumers to prioritize price over loyalty. This doesn’t mean emotional engagement is obsolete; it just means it needs to evolve alongside changing consumer realities. 

Brands must pair emotional connections with practical value. Offer clarity and reassurance about how your product provides the best bang for their buck and aligns with their values. 

Preview of the State of Community Powered Marketing 2025 

Here’s what needs to stay top of mind as you plan for next year:

• Engagement First: Invest in private, interest-based communities for deeper customer ties. 
• Authenticity Over Hype: Prioritize real connections, user-generated content, and meaningful advocacy. 
• Balance AI and Human Interaction: Use AI to streamline processes, but don’t lose the personal touch. 
• Be Transparent and Inclusive: Build trust by listening to your community and co-creating wherever possible. 

And that’s our Community Powered Marketing Recap 2024! Need help navigating the evolving marketing landscape? We’re here to help. Whether it’s building your first branded community or understanding the latest UGC trends, we’ve got the expertise to keep your strategy ahead of the curve. Chat with a TINT Community Specialist today. 

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“The Can Fan Community is a gateway for consumers to unlock a world of culinary possibilities and discover the gems within their pantry,” said Tami Iverson, Director of Marketing. “The community is our way of inviting everyone to join us in celebrating and promoting the benefits and convenience of canned fruits and tomatoes.” 

By leveraging TINT’s Community Powered Marketing platform, the company aims to showcase the versatility of canned food by delivering engaging personalized content and activities, activating advocates and relevant influencers, and interactive discussions with members.

Sameer Kamat, CEO of TINT, expresses excitement about the collaboration: “TINT is pleased to partner with Pacific Coast Producers for the Can Fan Community launch. Together, we deliver a unique space for canned food fans that mobilizes and scales the power of authentic and trusted voices.”

Read the full press release by clicking here.
Visit the Can Fan Community! Check it out here.

Interested in learning how to give your own community a home?

Schedule a demo today

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Meta recently announced it was going to cut off third-party access to Facebook Groups. This was a surprise announcement telling brands and developers they have 90 days before they are deprecating the ability to schedule and automate posts in Facebook Groups as well as engage with consumers through the Groups API. 

While newsfeed algorithm changes once dominated headlines, today all eyes are on API access, with platforms like X and Reddit imposing hefty charges. Let’s not forget all of this is unfolding against the backdrop of Google’s elimination of third-party cookies. Marketing is fun. 

Community managers and businesses are stating this new change is “devastating” and that “this is platform risk in real-time.” Developers are “shocked,” and one community manager said, “The removal of third-party access to Facebook Groups could significantly alter the digital landscape.”

What does Meta’s change mean for community-building on social networks?

Social media undeniably revolutionized how brands connect with their audience, catapulting many brands into stardom with viral moments. It’s tempting to equate your follower or group count with a thriving brand community. However, Meta’s recent moves serve as a stark reminder of the dangers of over-reliance on third-party platforms.

Today’s modern marketers know that community-building is what separates brands that last from those that fizzle. Actively cultivating connections with brand advocates and influential creators unleashes the power of word-of-mouth, generating authentic, ongoing UGC that translates into tangible sales.

While nurturing audiences on a social network is crucial, particularly for drawing in new brand enthusiasts, the issue arises when social media becomes your primary avenue for community-building. Once you try to scale that effort and create workflows around it (or even a whole business), you’re at danger of having the rug pulled out from under you.

In our State of Community Powered Marketing report, we found 60% of marketers are concerned they are one algorithm change away from losing access to their audience on social. This latest change heightens it as a real fear and risk. 

We’ve seen this film many times before. Meta enticing companies with seemingly unbridled free access, only to gradually tighten restrictions and alter the rules. These changes send shockwaves through organizations, forcing them to frantically adapt their strategies. 

The challenge for marketers in building communities on social media lies in sustaining long-term engagement. Once someone follows your page or joins your group, you must provide continuous and increasing value – and there’s a limited amount of depth you can achieve on social. Consumers have come to expect personalized communication, exclusive and captivating content, and to be treated like a VIP. 

The diversity of interaction on social is limited and ultimately, we are reminded again today that you do not own these relationships. You are simply renting a booth from the social networks. They can change the rules at any time without consulting you. You don’t develop years-long consumer relationships at a booth. 

Your community of consumers will always span various online channels, but having a centralized place for community engagement is paramount. Think of it as your brand’s community headquarters, where brand enthusiasts can connect, converse, and co-create with like-minded individuals.

So, what’s the takeaway? Facebook is teaching marketers another important lesson. Your Facebook Group or social media audience is a stepping stone to community-building. Making it the entire path will ultimately put your brand at increased risk. 

It’s time to take control of your community-building efforts and create a space where your brand can truly thrive. Remember, your brand’s community is more than just a number on a social media profile. It’s an evolving entity that deserves a home of its own. So, start building – on your own turf.

Ready to get started building your owned brand community? Learn how TINT powers community initiatives for the world’s largest brands. Schedule a demo today.

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Thankfully in the midst of so much change, the best solution is a familiar one. Brand advocacy remains the gold standard of marketing strategies for a reason. Mobilizing your biggest fans to go to bat for you and recommend you to their friends and followers has the benefit of trust, relevance, authenticity, and efficiency, making it one of the most effective marketing strategies. 

And at the heart of brand advocacy campaigns is user-generated content, or UGC. After all, seeing is believing. 

For CPG brands in particular, brand advocacy efforts focused on UGC can help breakthrough in crowded categories and organically amplify your messaging to reach mass audiences. It can also personify your brand in new, relevant, and authentic ways to create buzz and elevate consideration from target audiences.  

Below, we’ll highlight how to generate UGC for CPG. But first, let’s talk about why UGC is important for all CPG brands. 

What are the Benefits of Leveraging UGC for CPG Brands?

Increasing reach and brand awareness

Easily one of the biggest benefits of leveraging UGC for CPG brands is the ability to expand your reach. When consumers who rave about your products create shareable content, you can use that content to get the word out about your brand, a new product line, an existing product line that needs some love, or any other aspect of your brand that you want to reach the masses. 

This strategy has nearly limitless potential for scaling, too. As you reach more and more people with shareable UGC, some of these people become fans of your brand and, in turn, will create UGC on their own, and the cycle continues.

Improved trust in your brand

84% of consumers trust recommendations from their peers over all other forms of advertising, such as paid media. 

There’s no type of content that your consumers put more trust in than word-of-mouth. And as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. User-generated images and video bring your brand to life, capturing the interest and imagination of your target consumers. 

UGC’s importance in improving the overall authenticity of your brand can’t be overstated. And its impact is real: According to a recent study by Edelman, consumers said trust in a brand (88%) is even more important than love (81%) in deciding what brands to buy or use.  

Collect valuable insights

UGC for CPG isn’t only about getting the word out about your brand and bringing in new customers. You also get the opportunity to collect valuable insights from your consumers, such as why they love your products. 

These insights can be used to fuel future marketing efforts and product development. 

How an Online Brand Community Helps Generate UGC for CPG Brands

One of the primary draws of an online brand community is how useful it is in all aspects of UGC, from curating the content to measuring brand advocacy.

For CPG brands looking to generate more user content, your online brand community is the best place to start. Here’s how your online brand community helps generate UGC for CPG. 

A ready-made pool of raving advocates

One of the best parts about your online brand community is that you’ve cultivated a group of consumers who are crazy about your brand. Not just the products you provide, but the lifestyle created by your brand and your overall mission. 

These are exactly the kind of people that you want to mobilize to create more content. 

Community platforms make it easier than ever for these brand advocates to share their UGC. For example, the TINT community platform amplifies advocacy by incorporating Single-Click SharingTM technology, giving your advocates a seamless experience for sharing their UGC across all types of platforms, from TikTok to Instagram and Bazaarvoice. 

Simple and effective sampling programs 

Easily the most effective way to generate UGC for consumer packaged goods is with product sampling. By giving your consumers the opportunity to try your products for free, you’re providing value to them in exchange for UGC in the form of testimonials, authentic reviews, and other important content. 

Although product sampling can be done without the help of an online brand community, your community provides several benefits that can help with the effectiveness of your sampling campaigns. 

For starters, sampling campaigns need proper audience targeting. With a community platform, such as TINT, you’ll have ready-made customer profiles that are enriched over time, allowing you to hyper-segment and target the individual needs of each customer with your sampling. 

Once consumers have received their samples, your online brand community is used to generate UGC in real-time as community members post their experience through images, videos, testimonials, and reviews. 

Lastly, many community platforms have robust reporting capabilities. By analyzing sampling data, you will discover ways to optimize and improve your campaigns over time. 

Sampling campaigns powered by an online brand community make generating UGC for CPG easier than ever. 

Providing incentives 

Product samples aren’t the only way to activate brand fans to advocate on your behalf. With an online brand community, you have even more options to incentivize your consumers to take part in UGC campaigns. 

Some of the ways brands incentivize advocates to generate more UGC with a community include:

• Discounts and special offers
• Social recognition (shout-outs, etc.)
• Points and badges
• Exclusive events
• Contests and sweepstakes

For example, let’s look at Drip Drop. With the help of TINT’s community platform, they were able to activate 1,800 community members to share UGC of the product by providing a special $2 off coupon good at key retail websites. In just 8 weeks, the campaign delivered over 5,900 pieces of UGC and increased share of voice by 1450%. 

With a high-value incentive, this campaign resulted in high-quality UGC that delivered results, as the DripDrop Brand Manager shared: “We were thrilled to see not only an abundance of content that drove an increase in online share of voice, but also an increase in sales at our key retail partner.”  

Seamless reporting and analytics

It’s not enough to simply generate endless UGC.  If you want to measure your progress and stay on track with your goals, tracking certain metrics is essential.

Your online brand community can be a one-stop shop for these reports.

Many community platforms allow you to track advocacy and UGC-related metrics such as quantity and type of UGC, impressions, friend and follower engagement, ratings and reviews, and more. 

TINT’s online brand community platform makes it easy to not only capture but track all the UGC your advocates create in one convenient place. You’ll also be able to sort through content to identify high-quality pieces, flag creators of effective UGC, tag and organize UGC for future use, and more.

Conversion tracking is made easier using your online brand community as well. By arming your advocates with a specific link, you can enable tracking on that link and get an accurate representation of conversion metrics.

These analytics will enable you to better understand the impact of the UGC your advocates are creating and can fuel future marketing strategies.

Questions About How to Generate UGC for CPG?

The TINT team are experts in the unique needs of CPG brands, from UGC and review generation to building brand equity and more. Reach out to us. We’re here to help. 

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The 2010s will likely be regarded as the wild wild west of data collection. Browsers had given advertisers a firehose of data to track consumers and deliver targeted advertising messages. 

This has led to an explosion of data-driven marketing and innovative digital practices that ushered in a more personalized and sophisticated online experience. However, companies are now facing backlash from consumers who wish to have more control over the data businesses collect. Let’s be honest, we can all agree we’re ready to stop being followed all over the internet by that pair of pants we looked at once. 

Gartner predicts that by 2023, 65% of the world’s population will have its personal information covered under modern privacy regulations. How should your brand handle upcoming internet privacy changes?

We’ll talk about three big changes happening now and how your brand should respond. This includes the phasing out of third party cookies, enacted and drafted privacy legislation, and shifting consumer expectations. 

In this post you’ll find:

• The (Data) Cookie Crumbles: How Should Marketers Handle Google, Apple, and Others Ditching Third Party Cookies?
• What is Data Collected by Third Party Cookies?
• What Should Marketers Do with Third Party Cookies?
• How Can You Create a Zero Party Data Channel?
• Legislation like GDPR and CCPA Setting the Stage for Future Privacy Laws
• How Do You Stay on Top of Changing Privacy Laws and Regulations?
• Evolving Consumer Expectations
• How Should You Address Consumers’ Data Privacy Concerns and Earn Trust?
• How Can TINT Help You Prepare for a New Era in Data and Privacy?

The (Data) Cookie Crumbles: How Should Marketers Handle Google, Apple, and Others Ditching Third Party Cookies? 

Most marketers know by now that big tech players like Google and Apple are moving away from intrusive advertising tracking piloted by third party cookies. This effort is driven by everyday people demanding more privacy and transparency over who has access to their personal data and how it is used. 

In 2021, Apple released its iOS 14.5 update with AppTrackingTransparency, which allows iPhone users to deny or approve third party tracking across apps. Apple’s browser companion, Safari, and other browsers like Firefox have already blocked tracking. 

That leaves all eyes on Google, where Chrome remains the most used browser. Google will join Safari and Firefox in blocking third party cookies, however, unlike those browsers, Google intends to take a phased approach. 

This has led to multiple extensions of their timeline while they figure out the best strategy moving forward, most notably through its creation of a “privacy sandbox” where websites can gather some information but ultimately will hit a wall where the browser cuts them off.

The stakes couldn’t be higher; third party cookies drive a giant proportion of online ads. The disappearance of cookies will leave many brands blind to data-backed insights, gambling with marketing dollars, and risking customer loss. 

As of now, Anthony Chavez, a vice president at Google, wrote in the post: “We now intend to begin phasing out third party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.”

What Data is Collected by Third Party Cookies? 

For years, brands and website publishers have placed text files with small pieces of data (aka a “cookie”) on their websites that are then used to identify and store various information about a specific user. 

When a user returns to a site in the future, the cookie will recall data from previous sessions to deliver a more relevant experience. 

When a cookie is placed on a website by someone other than the site owner, it is called a third party cookie. Any information collected is considered third party data. These third party cookies are often set by ad-based vendors or networks that a site has partnered with to drive revenue. 

Third party cookies monitor online activity and browsing across various sites to create behavioral tracking and serve relevant ad units. These cookies are available to any website that loads the third party server’s code, which means they can be tracked across domains to create user profiles. This is why your screen gets filled with ads for pants on multiple websites after a search. 

Third party data has been a critical framework for brands to work with advertising networks to promote their products to people in their ideal target market. The primary goal is to drive conversion using a consumer’s stored data. 

However, as we all know, consumers have grown weary of businesses “following” them and accessing information about their online habits. Big tech companies are now adjusting their strategies to meet consumer and regulatory demands for more privacy. 

What Should Marketers Do Without Third Party Cookies? 

One of the primary ways marketers should approach this new data era is by building up their own brand data channels. This includes cultivating touchpoints that collect first party data and zero party data. 

First party data is typically passively-collected site metrics. It can include anything from login credentials and site preferences to pages viewed, scroll depth, time spent, and much more. 

Zero party data is different from first party data as it is information that a consumer proactively shares with your brand or website. It relates to emotional leanings, lifestyle behavior, and personal values. Zero party data is considered the most prized data set. 

Using zero party data, brands can deliver personalized engagement that drives emotional loyalty, which research consistently shows boosts customer lifetime value and keeps consumers from going to your competitors. 

Senior Director of Marketing at Microsoft Advertising John Cosley said, “Zero party data is the foundation for a relationship built on trust and a value exchange. For consumers, it holds the promise of a personalized and more relevant experience with brands. In return, brands and businesses receive better insight and a longer-term relationship.”

With intentionally shared data, it’s important to remember there is extra workload and trust involved. Zero party data and first party data collection should accumulate over time and balance between giving and receiving to secure trust and deliver value. 

How Can You Create a Zero Party Data Channel? 

Online brand communities are an excellent way to build an enticing, interactive world between data and engagement. With the right online community platform, a brand community can be a living and breathing extension of your website, where consumers can feel deeply connected to your brand without worrying that their privacy and personal data are being exploited. 

Frozen food brand, Veggies Made Great, created the VegHead Community as a gathering place for consumers passionate about Veggies Made Great products where they could also collect information surrounding shopping habits. This helps them understand buying decisions that are not easily accessible in other channels. 

Put in action, Veggies Made Great launched a “Plant a Coupon” campaign through their community. This campaign identified shoppers who frequent specific retailers like Target and offered them a voucher for a free Veggies Made Great product. They also armed them with high-value coupons to “plant” at their local store for other consumers, prompting them to spread the word on social media. 

With an engaging place to collect and act on zero party data, Veggies Made Great was able to generate retail distribution awareness, boost brand advocacy online, and drive conversion in-store. 

Zero party data is just the beginning. Let’s switch gears and talk about privacy legislation. 

Legislation like GDPR and CCPA Setting the Stage for Future Privacy Laws 

In 2018, the European Union (EU) drafted and passed one of the world’s toughest privacy and security laws, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This legislation sent a strong signal that the EU is taking a firm stance on data privacy and security, with significant fines issued for businesses not in compliance. 

The important aspect of GDPR to focus on is its seven protection and accountability principles. They serve as a good indicator of how other countries could follow suit. This includes: 

• Lawfulness, fairness and transparency — data processing must be lawful, fair, and transparent to the data subject.
• Purpose limitation — You must process data for the legitimate purposes specified explicitly to the data subject when you collected it.
• Data minimization — You should collect and process only as much data as absolutely necessary for the purposes specified.
• Accuracy — You must keep personal data accurate and up to date.
• Storage limitation — You may only store personally identifying data for as long as necessary for the specified purpose.
• Integrity and confidentiality — Processing must be done in such a way as to ensure appropriate security, integrity, and confidentiality (e.g. by using encryption).
• Accountability — The data controller is responsible for being able to demonstrate GDPR compliance with all of these principles.

When it comes to the GDPR, the overarching theme is consent and security. As Steve Jobs once said, “Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain language, and repeatedly. I believe people are smart. Some people want to share more than other people do. Ask them.”

Since the implementation of the GDPR, legislation has expanded at the U.S. state level. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect in 2020, and the California Privacy Rights Act will soon follow, going into effect in 2023. 

The CCPA gives consumers more control over the personal information that businesses collect and how it is used and shared. It also governs consumers’ right to delete personal information collected and opt out of the sale of their personal information. 

Virginia is seeking to make a similar impact by instituting privacy legislation, which will go into effect in 2023. Another 30 states have started down the path of developing privacy laws. 

In New York, a law proposed would tax Meta (Facebook), Google, and other companies for using personal data. It would tax companies for the revenue they earn on consumer data. If the law passes, it would apply to any company that derives profit from controlling or processing personal data, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and many others. 

How Do You Stay on Top of Changing Privacy Laws and Regulations? 

New security and privacy regulations will no longer be legalese for the legal department to decipher. The marketers of the future will need to understand data regulation as competently as they do advertising jargon. 

Marketers are understandably concerned over the prospect of complying with dozens of state-level regulations. Federal regulation is on the horizon to battle this complexity. 

The challenge for marketers to stay up-to-date will require careful thought and effort. Marketers need to catch up in this arena, as McKinsey found in a recent study that only 17% said their companies have a dedicated data governance committee that includes risk and legal professionals.

When faced with the challenge of data work happening in an uncoordinated fashion among many different departments, Verizon created its Analytics Center of Excellence dedicated to developing strong data practices. These kinds of internal structures are a prime place to ensure that there is a balance between innovative data-driven marketing and changing privacy expectations. 

Philip Jenkins, director of Verizon’s Analytics Center of Excellence says that the goal of the center has been “to make our data more powerful so that we can have better outcomes — what we call ‘simple, smart and connected experiences’ — with our customers, so that we don’t waste their time, we make more personalized offers, and whatever actions we take are more relevant to what’s important to them.”

Building a company strong in data ethics and up-to-date privacy standards won’t happen on its own and cannot be a side activity. Organizations need to have dedicated teams who focus on data policy.

Evolving Consumer Expectations

Government regulations are almost always reactionary measures taken after a groundswell of citizen demand. To stay relevant with consumers and maintain market share, brands cannot rely solely on regulatory bodies to dictate data and privacy strategies. 

Brands should take a proactive and thoughtful approach to understand what consumers expect in real-time. As one executive said to McKinsey, “The bar here is not regulation. The bar here is setting an expectation with consumers and then meeting that expectation—and doing it in a way that’s additive to your brand.”

It used to be that a brand was considered trustworthy when people could believe in how the company was run or how its product was manufactured, or service was performed. And for younger consumers, in particular, whether corporations were focused on the footprint they left on the planet.  

Today, however, brands are no longer just manufacturers or service providers. They’re technology companies in disguise. Some brands openly admit this, like when Dominoes famously coined themselves a “tech company that sells pizza.” 

While consumers certainly care how your product is made and how you market yourself, trustworthiness means something more when you become a technology company. 

HubSpot found that 80% of consumers believe data privacy is a human right. Furthermore, 75% of US and UK consumers are not comfortable purchasing from a brand with poor personal data ethics.

Being a trusted brand today is also about your data practices and privacy transparency, and it is an integral part of any company’s interaction with its audience. 

All organizations should come together to create a data usage framework that captures a shared vision for the company’s data philosophy. 

How Should You Address Consumers’ Data Privacy Concerns and Earn Trust?  

A great step to make your brand more trustworthy is to create a brand mission statement on data collection or a Data Bill of Rights. 

Consumers want to know not just the who, what, where, and how of data collection but also the “why.” Why does your brand believe data is useful? How does it connect with your overall brand story and your unique value proposition? Data is an undeniable part of our lives now. Take a stand on how your brand believes data plays a role. 

Many global brands are pivoting to make sure data ethics is a pillar of their brand experience. IKEA’s retail chief digital officer spoke on data strategies saying, “It is crucial for businesses to think beyond legal compliance and consider ethical aspects when it comes to consumer data. It’s no longer good enough to think only about what we can do with people’s data, the question must be what should we do.”

IKEA is not alone. Unilever’s general counsel for global marketing and media, Jamie Barnard, said “Demonstrating your commitment to ethical principles is courageous and will ultimately build trust.”

Barnard continued that “Pioneering companies are looking beyond compliance, as tough as that sounds. If people think a company’s data practices are unethical, then a demonstration of legal compliance will not protect their reputation. This is why brands have to set and follow a code of ethics.”

Another proactive approach to understanding privacy and data expectations is to build an always-on engine for collecting consumer feedback. Online brand communities powered by the right platform are an excellent way to access consumer insights through surveys, polls, discussions, and more. 

Using Vesta’s online community platform, Unilever’s Sir Kensington’s created its Taste Buds community to tap into zero party data insights using surveys, polls, and other engagement activities. 

Sir Kensington’s has conducted focus groups to direct product development efforts and fielded brand sentiment and loyalty surveys to elevate their consumer knowledge. In less than one year, they collected a whopping 638,000 total survey data points! With this data, Sir Kensington’s better understands what resonates most with their audience.

A proactive strategy to collect consumer feedback arms this challenger brand with a massive weapon to compete against established market players. 

How Can TINT Help You Prepare for a New Era in Data and Privacy? 

When the social movement for “free software” accustomed users to surrendering data in exchange for free services, few users were aware of their data’s value and role. We are now entering a new era where consumers are not just concerned but downright passionate about securing control over their online habits. 

TINT helps you solve the marketing paradox of designing an effective strategy that builds emotional loyalty while also creating owned data channels that respect consumer privacy and don’t rely on third parties. 

Our all-in-one, online brand community platform secures your consumer relationships, mobilizes your brand advocates, and captures zero party data to accelerate the ROI of all your marketing efforts.

The post New Privacy Legislation is Coming: How Zero Party Data is Your Answer appeared first on TINT.

You might have heard of third party data or first party data, but what the heck is zero party data, and why is it being considered a goldmine for marketers? 

What is Zero Party Data?

Zero party data is information a consumer shares directly and intentionally with a company or brand, and it typically includes personal preferences, emotional leanings, and lifestyle behaviors. 

When it comes to the future of marketing, successful consumer interaction will be more empathetic, purposeful, and customer-first. Zero party data helps brand marketers achieve this.

What is the Difference Between First Party and Zero Party Data? 

It might seem like many parties are going on here, so let’s review what each means. 

• First Party Data: This is behavioral data collected as you interact with a particular site or app, and it is entirely owned by the company or brand that runs that website (for now). It typically happens in the background through website cookies tracking on-page behavior or through profile information and transaction history. It can also be collected through loyalty program participation or digital marketing engagement, such as email opens and clicks.
• Second Party Data: This kind of data is essentially accessing another organization’s first party data. It involves direct communication where both companies agree on terms and map out the exchange of data. While second party data still puts a middle man between you and your consumer, the data is considered valuable as you have full visibility into where the data came from, but it must be continuously purchased from another organization.
• Third Party Data: When a bunch of websites take their first party audience data and package it to someone else through an aggregator, to that buyer, the data is now considered third party data. This data can then be used for advertising and targeting purposes. While third party data has been widely used, the buyer has no direct relationship with an individual consumer, which means data can become outdated and unreliable. Eventually, this impedes the effectiveness and quality of campaigns. 
• Zero Party Data: Unlike the passivity of first, second and third party data, zero party data is given by a consumer directly, and it usually relates to more high-order attributes like values, lifestyle, and preferences. It is unique access a consumer provides for how to interact and recognize them. This makes zero party data one of the most prized data sets. 

Why is Zero Party Data Important?

Marketers face two key challenges that make zero party data so important today. The first (and often most pressing) issue is navigating and maintaining market share in a cookie-less world. The second is the demand for personalized brand engagement to secure long-term loyalty. 

Ultimately, zero party data allows you to stop using guesswork to engage with consumers and drive real emotional loyalty that boosts customer lifetime value. This is why we’re seeing headlines like “Zero Party Data is the New Oil.” 

Navigating the disappearance of third party cookies with zero party data

We can all agree that limitless data collection has led to many innovative digital business practices over the past decade. Consumers benefited from more tailored messaging, and marketers enjoyed better targeting, higher conversion, and more reliable measurement. However, unchecked data collection has led to a flurry of privacy, security, and transparency concerns. 

Google shook the advertising world when it announced that it would do away with third party cookies. While it is approaching the change in a phased manner, recently delaying plans till 2024, it has still forced many brands to change their approach to advertising and overall consumer relationships. 

The disappearance of cookies will leave many brands blind to data-backed insights and will result in gambling with marketing dollars and risking customer loss. 

Google is just the beginning. Consumers are becoming well-informed about the uses of their data. They increasingly demand control and transparency, leading to legislation like the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) abroad. 

Marketers need to be prepared for a world where they won’t have the firehose of third party data made available to them. 

Marketers are turning to zero party data to cultivate direct relationships with prospective customers. In a recent study from Forrester, 90% of marketers are actively responding to data depreciation by capturing zero party data within the year. 

Using zero party data to meet the demand for personalized brand engagement that secures loyalty

When it comes to brand engagement, the marketing landscape is undergoing a paradigm shift. While content used to be “king,” today it is experiences that takes the crown. 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences. 

Research from McKinsey found that personalization can deliver five to eight times the ROI on marketing spend and can lift sales by 10% or more. It is worth the investment to connect with consumers. 

It might feel like you are being asked to pull off a spectacular magic trick. The majority of consumers support data transparency and privacy. Still, they also want a customer experience rich with personalized interaction and convenience. 

That’s precisely why zero party data can be the ace up your sleeve. 

When collected and used with intention, zero party data can enable you to achieve a more holistic customer view and align your brand more authentically and meaningfully with consumers. 

This kind of data can fuel a replicating cycle of greater sharing and personalization, driving progressively higher levels of trust, insights, and loyalty while simultaneously helping you to “future proof” against widespread industry changes. 

How to Collect Zero Party Data 

It is vital to remember that consumers don’t automatically give up their data to brands. Something like a zero party email campaign doesn’t work, nor does traditional website data collection. And don’t even think about a zero party advertising campaign. 

Zero party data is best collected through engaging digital touchpoints that ask consumers directly for further information. It should be done progressively and accumulate over time. This fosters relationship building that secures consumer trust and delivers brand value. 

Amassing zero-party data should be a delicate dance of asking and receiving, and it only works when the consumers believe they are receiving something valuable in return. If you can adequately demonstrate value to customers, research has found that 79% of consumers would be willing to give you their information. 

One of the best ways to do this is through an >online brand community. 

Marketers must invigorate loyal customer communities and cultivate a living, breathing, consumer-facing world for zero party data to be collected and acted upon.

An online brand community integrated into the marketing strategy is a powerful way to connect data to the bigger picture and encourage consumers to participate in something they believe in. 

Zero party data can be collected through things like profile questions, surveys, polls, quizzes, or discussions. This differs from traditional market research or customer feedback because the right technology platform can append the data to an individual’s customer profile. 

For example, suppose you delivered a survey or lifestyle quiz asking consumers to share their hobbies, and a consumer identified they had an interest in photography. It’s important to find a technology partner that can help you “store” this information in the consumer’s profile so you can then deliver a relevant offer like a photo contest. 

Popular food delivery service, Grubhub, started its Tastemakers online brand community specifically to build a zero party data relationship with passionate diners and engaged college students. With always-on access to their TINT-powered online brand community, Grubhub can obtain predictive insights that make delivering relevant offers to college students easy, and most importantly, it is easy to scale. 

Data must be collected with intention, and you should plan strategically how each solicitation should be used to enhance the consumer experience. Otherwise, consumers will grow weary of giving and giving without anything of value in return. 

How to Use Zero Party Data 

Once you start collecting zero party data, the question becomes how best to use it to maximize consumer loyalty. Marketers should no longer view data as a passive activity happening in the background but as an active expression that a consumer knows and trusts you. 

Ultimately, data can be viewed as a currency of trust, which leads to lasting loyalty. Here are some keys ways to use it: 

Offer unique content and helpful resources

When you get a window into consumers’ interests and passions, you can offer branded content that is considered helpful instead of irrelevant and intrusive. 

For example, if a consumer tells you they frequently look at reviews while shopping in-store at Target, you can send them a link to your product’s online review page. 

Or, if your consumer said they were thinking about renovating their home soon, you might send them an article or video with idea boards and decor inspiration. This can also be used in creating a valuable ecommerce or app experience for them. 

A company like Yelp has created a preference center dedicated to acting on zero party data. To personalize recommendations, Yelp uses zero-party data to highlight restaurants’ attributes that align with customer preferences so customers can come to their own conclusions.

Invite targeted consumers to relevant brand experiences 

A brand experience can be anything from an interactive digital activity to a free product sample or attendance at a local event. You can invite consumers to engage with your brand online or offline when you have zero party data. 

It’s essential always to let consumers know that they are receiving this invitation because of the shared data and always to thank them. This helps reinforce the usefulness of sharing information. 

Build a connection with other like-minded consumers 

We’ve all experienced clicking with someone by saying, “oh I love that brand!” Especially today, brands are a prominent backdrop for creating community connection. Zero party data is a great way to start a lively discussion thread on the most important topics to your consumers.

With other kinds of data, a baby brand might get behavioral information about moms buying diapers. You might even know the purchase frequency, the brands they buy, and which sites they frequent.

But with zero party data, that same baby brand can identify the moms in the trenches of parenting who are struggling with a diaper blowout from the baby while the toddler throws their food across the room and the dog throws up. This is emotional information that you cannot get from cookies, and it can create connection opportunities for people to vent, exchange tips and tricks, and express themselves to people who get it. 

Deliver tailored promotions and incentives 

One of the best ways to create value in consumer data sharing is through tailored promotions. Consumers can easily connect the dots when they receive a special discount code or coupon for their information. 

When you’re first building your zero party data engine, this is a great way to show value to consumers immediately. 

Arm & Hammer’s Cat Litter brand started its Kitty Krew community as a home for passionate cat owners. To boost the community’s launch and fuel zero party data collection, consumers were entered to win a special cat charm bracelet.

Customer Appreciation 

Sometimes, we can think of consumer data as a behind-the-scenes practice, but people notice when you’re paying attention to them. Zero party data can be used to build brand equity by simply showing that you care. 77% of consumers say they favor brands that ask for and accept customer feedback. 

Zero party data helps you go above and beyond in customer appreciation. It can be anything from surprise and delight moments, offering complementary products or services, personal notes, or even involving consumers in upcoming company decisions. 

Fast-growing condiment brand Sir Kensington’s often includes hand-written thank you notes and provides additional resources like nutritionists to its online brand community, Taste Buds.

How TINT Can Help with Zero Party Data  

TINT believes in empowering brands to take back their consumer relationships from third party sites. Our all-in-one, community powered marketing platform secures your consumer relationships, mobilizes your brand advocates, and captures zero party data to accelerate the speed to ROI of all your marketing efforts. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post What is Zero Party Data – Everything Marketers Need to Know appeared first on TINT.

Think of it like trying to go on a road trip without a GPS – you can try and guess which direction you should head in, but if you make one wrong turn, you can quickly become lost. And getting back on track might be no easy task.

That’s why having the right consumer intelligence tools at your fingertips is critical for your brand’s journey. 

Why Tap into an Online Community for Insights?

With an online brand community, brands get direct access to consumers to gather critical information that helps to map consumer journeys, create accurate and detailed personas, gain validation for investments, and stay ahead of trends. 

In turn, that owned zero party data can then be spun into action by enabling brands to personalize and elevate brand experiences both inside their online brand community and among the greater consumer population. 

To demonstrate the depth of insights that can be gained from an online brand community, we tapped into our Smiley360 community of over 1.1 million consumers to collect real, valuable insights for brands in the rapidly growing Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drink Markets. In doing this, our team of Insights Experts uncovered powerful and compelling consumer intelligence that shone a light on the power of an online community as the ultimate research tool. 

Let’s explore the benefits of leveraging an online community to power greater consumer insights that fuel informed and strategic brand decisions.

Speed and Efficiency

With trends and market shifts moving faster than ever, brands need on-demand access to consumer data and insights to maintain their competitive edge. An online brand community acts as an always-on consumer panel to get you the data you need right when you need it. 

While market research firms will take months to deliver results that will be obsolete by the time they reach you, an online brand community can be tapped into whenever research needs arise, delivering results on a dime and empowering brands to make rapid and informed decisions.

And with engaging activities, offers, and discussions, online brand communities can keep consumers engaged and ensure their accessibility to gather insights on the fly. 

In our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and the Hydration Drinks study, we were able to tap into an online community to gain critical insights and strategy recommendations for brands in the booming industry in just a few short weeks.  

Brands striving for growth in competitive categories can’t wait several months for actionable data and that’s why an online brand community is the most efficient channel for real-time consumer insights.

Robust Audience Segmentation and Targeting

Your consumers are united by little else than their affinity for your brand. Their different motivations, influences, personality types, lifestyles, and shopping habits are all factors that can impact receptivity to your brand, product, messaging, and more. 

Knowing who your consumers are on this level empowers your brand to deliver tailored and personalized messaging that resonates with each consumer. Additionally, it helps identify new growth segments, prioritize investments, drive innovation, and increase conversions. 

When you tap into an online brand community for audience segmentation, you’re able to identify attitudinal traits, demographic characteristics, shared behaviors, and more that allow you to quickly gain a firm understanding of how to best serve your consumers’ needs. 

With our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and the Hydration Drinks study, our insights team segmented our Smiley360 community of 1.1MM+ consumers to those who identified as consumers of these wellness brands – ensuring that we were getting the data we needed from the people we needed it from.

After getting powerful results like these, brands with the right online brand community platform will have the ability to harness the insights gained to power targeted activations, offers, and discussions based on the results of their research, making for a true personalized brand experience. 

Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and Reviews are an integral part of the consumer journey today – consumers are 63% more likely to trust and buy from a company with good reviews. And in our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drinks study, we found that 90% of consumers turn to retail reviews to help with purchases in those product categories – an example of a significant actionable insight gained from an online community study. 

Luckily, with a TINT-powered online brand community, review generation is a piece of cake. 

By identifying and mobilizing targeted consumers with community activations to share their brand experiences, brands secure a steady stream of high-quality, authentic reviews from loyal brand advocates that syndicate to key retail sites. Not only does this help amplify advocacy and user-generated content at scale, it also gives brands another way to gather consumer feedback. By monitoring online reviews, brands can get more information about potential product issues, customer service experiences, or even spark new ideas for messaging or product innovation. 

By having an effective review generation strategy powered by an online brand community, you’ll paint a clear picture of your brand and products that will act as an ongoing feedback loop for your brand.

Sampling Programs

Speaking of product reviews, let’s dive into one of the easiest ways to drive more reviews – product sampling. As a natural way of collecting consumer opinions, it’s also an activity that easily gets consumers excited and eager to participate.

Product sampling allows brands to increase trial and awareness of new and existing products while gathering actionable feedback from targeted supporters to troubleshoot issues, identify strengths, and optimize concepts. 

And with zero party data that gets collected through an online brand community, brands are enabled to hyper-target their sampling, increasing its efficiency and effectiveness. The kind of insights gained from this help brands ensure the success of products, reduce risk, and accelerate new product launches.

In our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drinks study, we found that all generations were interested in the idea of personalized supplements. Imagine the feedback and insights you could gain from delivering targeted samples uniquely tailored to each consumer based on the zero party data that they’ve already supplied within the community. With a TINT-powered online brand community, it’s already possible and brands are actively gaining key competitive intelligence to help ensure product success in this very way.

Discussion Forums

A discussion forum can be an invaluable asset to your brand by offering real-time feedback from consumers while also keeping your brand top of mind. This two-way dialogue is a win-win: brands will develop deeper emotional bonds and gain insights that will help make impactful brand decisions. And community members feel heard and valued, and see their input being taken into account. These conversations enable brands to develop the connections and insights that make brand loyalty flow naturally.   

In our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drinks study, we found that 68% of consumers said that online communities of like-minded consumers are an important source for wellness brand purchases. What better way to foster a sense of community than by having your consumers connect and converse with each other? 

Not only do discussion forums help fuel brand love, the gathering of real-life stories and metrics help brands to crowdsource new ideas, validate R&D plans, and encourage co-creation in a way that builds the trust that ultimately turns brand fans into advocates. 

How TINT can help you achieve greater insights through the power of community 

TINT’s community powered marketing platform was designed to empower brands to gather insights that drive true business impact. Brand partners can utilize TINT to access insights from their own consumer set via an online brand community, or they can gain broad consumer learnings from TINT’s proprietary peer influencer community, Smiley360 –  a group of over 1.1 million socially engaged, connected, and opinionated consumers who share their thoughts and feedback about brands, shopping habits, and much more. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Turning Data Into Action – Why an Online Community is the Ultimate Insights Solution appeared first on TINT.

That’s why a Community Powered Marketing strategy can help your brand survive and thrive in a crowded space in this decade and beyond. 

At TINT, we believe every brand has a consumer community. It’s just a matter of how you interact with them, how much business value you get from that engagement, and how you can maximize your relationship with your consumer community. 

Is your community sitting in an untapped database collecting dust?

Is your community trapped behind a gatekeeper called Meta who requires you to pay up to talk to your audience? 

Is your community slowly turning into Transaction Drones in a rewards program where they will quickly abandon you for the next shiny thing? 

Or is your community engagement a combination of headache-inducing Excel spreadsheets that require manual management? 

Perhaps you already have a dedicated community strategy, or your brand IS your community. You may need new ways to nurture your audience into the future. 

No method of engaging with your consumer community is wrong, nor is Community Powered Marketing about throwing away everything you’re doing and starting from scratch. Let’s talk about the ingredients of a Community Powered Marketing strategy and what it can offer to your brand. 

What is Community Powered Marketing?

Community Powered Marketing is an organizational mindset centered on identifying, integrating, and maximizing engagement channels to foster community connection, ultimately increasing customer retention, driving new acquisitions, and delivering valuable insights to move your brand forward. 

Why is a Community Powered Marketing Strategy Important? 

Our digital communities have become an immutable part of our overall social connection, especially in the past few years. Marketers have taken notice. 

In our landmark study of more than 4,900 consumers, The Big Online Brand Community Study, we found 56% of consumers said their online community involvement has increased in the past three years, and 84% of consumers say the community surrounding a brand has an impact on how they feel about the brand. This was especially prevalent for Gen Z consumers, with 92% saying community has an effect. 

Communities are becoming increasingly valuable (vital even!). The study also found: 

• 79% say community is important when it comes to engaging with their favorite brands
• 74% say a brand community makes them more likely to write a product review
• 78% say a brand community makes them more likely to try new products/services from the brand
• 88% of consumers who participate in a brand community say they share content and offers from the community often 

Combining this information with shifts in ecommerce demands, the disappearance of third party cookies, and a heightened focus on privacy, marketers are putting considerable emphasis on direct consumer relationships to maintain market share amidst sweeping changes in the next three to five years. 

It’s clear brands of the future will be defined by the community of consumers they cultivate. These power brands will prioritize building relationships supported by shared values and experiences. 

You don’t just have to take our word for it, either. A McKinsey report recently named “community” as the big idea in 2020’s marketing. Harvard Business Review’s article “When Community Becomes Your Competitive Advantage,” quotes, “Communities are going to change the nature of how we interact with brands, products, and other people.” 

Additionally:

• In a study of 400 marketers, 86% believe having a branded online community positively impacts core operations, and 85% believe it improves the customer journey and increases trust
• 49% of businesses with online communities report cost savings of 10% to 25% annually
• Consumers rely on emotional connection, personalized marketing, and values alignment to determine whether to purchase your brand
• The average community ROI increases with age, reaching as high as 5,000% after ten years 
• A brand community was shown to produce a 13X greater customer lifetime value than any other marketing channel 

A recent report from Gartner identified the top priorities for CMOs in 2023 that included: 

• Aiming for high-value personalization
• Customer journey orchestration creating value 
• Restructuring teams for operational effectiveness
• Build teams that drive short- and long-term digital growth 

A Community Powered Marketing strategy is exactly the digital experience to win over consumers and provide an efficient powerhouse to your marketing efforts. Community Powered Marketing helps you to:

• Create a digital ecosystem for consumers to feel connected to your brand
• Deliver personalized brand experiences fueled by zero party data
• Streamline your marketing stack and amplify existing marketing efforts
• Achieve immediate results with word-of-mouth advocacy as well as long-term loyalty 

Steps to Building a Community Powered Marketing Strategy (And Who Is Getting it Right)

With more than 13 years of experience engaging millions of consumers in online communities on behalf of brands, our team loves to share the wisdom we’ve collected to help you cultivate a thriving community for your brand. 

Step 1 – Assess How You’re Currently Engaging With Your Consumer Community 

Look at your overall marketing channels and identify how and where you engage your audience. 

Some marketers may find that most of their community engagement happens in their email list or database. Others may say it is their loyalty or rewards program, while many might see it’s their social media brand page or hashtag. 

Again, none of these channels are wrong when it comes to community engagement, but it’s essential to understand how you’re currently engaging with your audience.

How Hero Cosmetics Assessed Community Engagement 

Hero Cosmetics, creator of the popular “Mighty Patch” acne product, is a leader in utilizing digital and ecommerce platforms to build a booming business. The brand knew it had a passionate consumer base but needed help activating consumers to help achieve ecommerce goals – namely, driving authentic product reviews and user-generated content. 

The brand created its Hero Skin Squad as a destination for consumers to connect with the Hero brand, sample new products based on personalized information, and share their thoughts and opinions with others. Consumers feel valued and empowered to be a part of the brand’s growth. 

VP of Marketing at Hero, Amy Callhoun Robb, says, “We are incredibly excited to see the immediate impact our community is having on our brand. The Hero Skin Squad is actively sharing their positive experiences with our products, participating in product development, and helping us spread the word about our new launches. The activities and insights coming out of our community are creating great value.” 

Step 2 – Identify Gaps in Current Engagement 

Typically, marketers run into the same three gaps regarding their consumer community engagement. These gaps are: 

1. Community ownership – includes data ownership and having to pay third-party gatekeepers to access your community.
2. Community activation – involves your ability to go beyond one-way communication and get your community to take action. Marketers may be challenged by delivering personalized communication to drive purchase conversion, participation in brand promotions, or generate word-of-mouth advocacy. 
3. Community connection – many brands struggle with connecting consumers in a meaningful way through either knowledge exchange or shared values 

Once you identify the gaps in your community engagement, you can prioritize how a Community Powered Marketing strategy can best serve your brand. 

How Clio Snacks Identified Engagement Gaps 

Fast-growing yogurt brand, Clio Snacks, struggled with creating an effective strategy as most of their community interaction lived on their brand’s Facebook page. 

In addition to having their community owned by a third party, they were stuck using Excel spreadsheets to try to run activations with their consumers. They realized it was not a sustainable model for long-term engagement and decided to cultivate their community as an extension of their brand website. 

They started the Clio Cravings Club, where they can directly engage with their community. In just 100 days of launching, they saw an 18% increase in Net Promoter Scores and a 25% lift in brand loyalty. 

Step 3 – Find Areas to Leverage Community Throughout Your Brand Funnel 

Community Powered Marketing is about utilizing your strong consumer base to amplify your marketing initiatives. 

Your consumer community can help throughout the business funnel. This can include anything from:  

• Product ideation
• Product development 
• Audience research
• Marketing and creative testing
• Product testing and feedback
• Reviews and recommendations on key ecommerce channels
• Traffic to your website
• User-generated content
• Conversion and promotion amplification 
• Purchase follow up 
• Continued loyalty 
• Brand advocacy

How DSE Healthcare Utilized its Community in Go-To-Market Strategies 

DSE Healthcare Solutions, a provider of specialty health brands, created its Upside Community as a place to fuel innovation and success for new product launches. 

Iron supplement brand, Fergon, utilized its consumer community throughout the go-to-market strategy for its Fergon Iron Restore product. 

Michele Muhammad, the company’s Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, stated, “Fergon Iron Restore was completely developed with the help of the community. They helped us name the product, sampled it, and gave us reviews. That whole thing happened within The Upside community.” 

Step 4 – Mobilize Consumers in a Dedicated Community Space 

For many brands, an online community can be the missing piece to a complete digital presence. It’s important to determine the right online community platform for your brand. 

With TINT, we empower your team to mobilize your consumer community easily through a customizable community platform that can be set up in as few as four weeks. 

You can create a community destination that matches your brand’s look and feel and link directly from your website. We also integrate a wide selection of existing tools for streamlined efficiency in your tech stack. 

Inside your brand community, consumers can access a personalized dashboard of brand activities – from surveys to polls to sampling programs, word-of-mouth campaigns, exclusive content, and much more. 

Consumers can also access a dedicated community discussion forum where they can interact with other community members to ask questions, share stories, and engage in an ongoing way in-between purchases. 

Step 5 – Grow Ongoing Community Value

A cautionary finding from our Big Online Brand Community Study was that 78% of consumers believe brands are overusing the term “community” without providing a real community experience. 

Community must be more than a buzzword marketers use to entice consumers to engage with them long-term. 

Creating a community engagement strategy that will produce long-term results and lasting business impact is essential. 

At TINT, we developed the Comm-U-N-I-T-Y engagement model to give brands a structure for creating a positive experience for consumers. A strong community strategy will: 

U – Use Reliable Frequency – ensuring community members have regular opportunities to participate and will achieve the “Goldilocks” zone of engagement (not too much, not too little, just right). 

N – Nimble in Growth – embraces evolving growth with time and welcomes opportunities to co-create the community culture. 

I – Impactful Motivators – deliver engagement efforts focusing on fulfilling research-backed high-impact emotional motivators for consumers. This includes making consumers feel like they “stand out from the crowd,” “have confidence in the future,” “have a sense of thrill,” and “have a sense of belonging.”

T – Trusted Environment – offering a dependable, easy-to-use, mobile-optimized platform. A brand will also keep itself accountable to the community, do what it says it’s going to, and maintain consumer privacy and security paramount. 

Y – Yields Value – provides a strong value exchange for what consumers will receive for participating. This value can be in personalized experiences and discoverable activities that surprise and delight consumers. 

How TINT Can Help With Your Community Powered Marketing Strategy 

TINT’s online brand community platform empowers you to mobilize your consumer community in a dedicated branded destination and cultivate lasting relationships. With more than 20+ engagement activities available to brands, consumers can be assigned a wealth of activities to participate in – including writing product reviews, creating user-generated photos and videos, completing surveys and polls, participating in discussions, amplifying eCommerce, and in-store efforts, and much more.

Using TINT, brands can drive new customer acquisition significantly, secure emotional and long-term brand loyalty, and “future proof” with agile insights and ongoing data collection. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post How to Create a Community Powered Marketing Strategy appeared first on TINT.

Everywhere you turn, people are talking about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on the world. Some perspectives seem positive, with AI allowing professionals to do more with less, performing to never-before-seen levels of efficiency with a computer providing support along the way.  Other perspectives decry AI as the beginning of the end. These tools will eventually evolve into SkyNet, the omnipresent intelligence from the Terminator franchise bent on destroying humanity.  

I fall into the positive camp. As a marketer working across hospitality, tourism, and events, this technology holds great promise to allow me to work faster, take repetitive tasks off my plate, and take my creative efforts and syndicate them across mediums. 

Humans have many perspectives on what AI will do for this industry, but what does AI have to say? 

I asked ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, what it thought about events.  

“What effects will artificial intelligence have on the festivals and events industry?”

It expects to affect the industry by enhancing customer experience, increasing communication efficiency, automating event planning, analyzing data, and increasing accessibility.  

As with all current uses of the technology, some of these uses of ai for special events are aspirational. Many tools are in early iterations and require additional development before fully available (and affordable) to the masses. Until then, there are some places where event professionals can immediately start adding AI into the mix. 

Smarter Emails

Email communication is critical to event planning but can be incredibly time-consuming. Event organizers must email attendees, sponsors, vendors, volunteers, and more. As events get larger and more complex, the required segmentation within these groups creates even more emails to write.

While tools like CRMs have made the “bucketing” of emails into different sequences or drips easier, most email or database tools still require someone to do all the writing. This is where AI comes in. 

As AI gets more intelligent, it will be easier to feed in the event information and have artificial intelligence produce different iterations of content designed to make the most significant impact on their target audience. AI for special events will save hours of writing. Imagine uploading all the details of your event, then having AI generate email sequences designed to influence VIPs, family attendees, foodies, or other ticket types. With a few more clicks, you have sharable event guides for vendors and exhibitors. 

Specialized tools like Lavender.ai are already hitting the market, and some people in sales and sponsorship are seeing great results using them to write better outbound emails. These tools use AI to analyze data and generate personalized email content that resonates with recipients. This means that event organizers can spend less time writing emails and more time focusing on other projects.

Creating Teams

Volunteer and staff organizing is often a significant time sink. Volunteer A can only work certain hours on Saturdays, and Staffer B can’t stand for extended periods. Accommodating and creating meaningful experiences for your front-line service workers is instrumental to retention. Rather than having your staffing teams spend weeks trying to piece together, a smart AI-assisted tool can swiftly map out staffing areas, create schedules, build shifts, and match people to those spots.  This saves time and ensures that everyone is assigned to the right position.

But AI-assisted tools aren’t just limited to scheduling. Tools like Taskade take it a step further by mapping out a project and assigning staff based on skills and the order in which those skills must be applied. This feature streamlines the project management process, making it easier to visualize the work and create timelines or Gantt charts. As deadlines are met or missed, the tool will automatically update workflows, making it easier to manage the entire project.

Incorporating AI-assisted tools into event planning can significantly improve efficiency and save time, making accommodating the needs of volunteers and staff easier. 

Better Media Monitoring and Social Listening

Whether you realize it or not, AI has become essential for brands to monitor media coverage and social media conversations. With AI-assisted media monitoring and social listening, organizers can quickly and easily analyze data and gain valuable insights that can help them improve their events and increase safety.

AI can help event organizers by automatically collecting and analyzing data from various media sources, such as news articles, blog posts, and social media platforms. This data can be used to track the buzz around an event, monitor sentiment, and identify key influencers who can help promote the event. AI can also provide real-time notifications when specific keywords or topics related to the event are mentioned online, allowing organizers to respond quickly and engage with attendees and potential attendees.

TINT has deployed machine-learning-assisted automation to help large-scale events and brand activations work with the massive content creation machine that is a special event.  The AI learns what content should be shared across displays and social channels based on moderator input. It can analyze objects in images and look for logos. This improves the speed and efficiency of a social media manager. 

In the aftermath of Astroworld, one of the major recommendations was ongoing monitoring of social media and digital mentions of an event, including content from attendees, performers, and exhibitors. This information needs to be quickly analyzed, with the results made actionable by presenting it to event leadership. This can drastically reduce the time it could take for event safety teams to respond to incidents.  

Another benefit of AI-assisted media monitoring and social listening is the ability to identify patterns and trends in the data. By analyzing large amounts of data over time, AI can help event organizers identify what types of content resonate with their audience and which topics generate the most buzz. This information can be used to tailor event messaging and content to meet attendees’ needs and preferences better.

Thought Leadership

As IFEA members, we are the festivals and events industry leaders. We are often called upon to share perspectives on events and their impact on the world around us. This could be as editorials in our local newspaper, a letter from the director in the event program, or an article in IE, the business of international events. Writer’s block or struggle with eloquence can affect even the most experienced event professional. AI can help organize ideas, brainstorm new ones, and serve as an editor. 

AI is revolutionizing communication, organizing, and planning festivals and events. Expect to see even more innovative AI solutions to help us be more effective and efficient. AI for special events is the future. Are you ready to embrace these latest technologies? 

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TINT has created the advanced content AI: the most powerful engine to discover stunning content through visual search, UGC recommendation scoring, personalized content experiences, automated content analysis, and TINT Attention Score, a tool that lets you test and optimize your visual content before you publish. Learn more about our UGC AI tools. 

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Consumers love seeing brand communities and customers share their experiences. They’re asking brands to post UGC – and scrolling past brand-created content at a, seemingly, faster rate than ever.

Each year, we compile a list of user-generated content statistics (and a few supporting stats!) that help marketers plan their campaigns and overall strategies. These statistics come from our 2023 State of User-Generated Content report, as well as past reports, and statistics from other sources.

Check out the need-to-know UGC statistics leading the 2023 marketing trends, and make sure to read the last section to get advice on how to take action.

Key User-Generated Content Marketing Stats to Remember

1. Consumers rank authentic UGC as the most trustworthy content. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
2. 69.08% of marketers feel ratings and reviews are important to their conversion rates. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
3. Only 23.03% of marketers always request rights to other people’s content – which means the remaining 76.97% could do a better job at doing this. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
4. 78.51% of marketers are investing in video content in 2023 which isn’t surprising considering the 3 platforms marketers plan to increase activity on are TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
5. 54.17% of marketers feel their team has the methodology to know what visual content will convert across marketing channels. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
6. Only 19.52% of marketers feel like they have the resources and team to create visual content. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

UGC and Social Media Marketing Stats

1. 75.78% of consumers have used social media to search for or discover products, brands, and experiences. Get ready, social media is turning into a search engine! (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
2. 68.75% of consumers have purchased something they saw on social media. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
3. Overall, consumers mostly use Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube (in that order) to search for new products, brands, and experiences. However, Gen Z and younger millennials (18-34) prefer Instagram for search. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
4. 68.2% of marketers agree social contests and campaigns boost engagement and conversions. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
5. Marketers are most active on Facebook, Instagram, and Linked In with Pinterest beating out TikTok for the fourth spot (TikTok is #5 most active platform). Marketers are the least active on YouTube. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
6. Marketers plan to increase activity on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube in 2023. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
7. The top 3 challenges marketers are facing when producing social and visual content are budget, time, and engagement (in that order). Compared to 2022, time has replaced content quality as the second biggest challenge for marketers. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

User-Generated Content for Email Marketing Stats

1. Email click-through rates can increase by about 73% and produce more conversions when they include user-generated content.
2. Email is the preference for buyers over 45 years old in comparison to social media and other marketing channels. (State of User-Generated Content)
3. Email or social media? 4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email marketing.
4.  A 760% increase in revenue has been seen when marketers use segmented email campaigns.
5. Marketers are mainly publishing UGC to social media, advertising, and email marketing channels right now. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

Digital Advertising Meets User-Generated Content

1. 62% of consumers report that they are more likely to click on content like ads, websites, social posts, or emails, that feature customer photos rather than an image created by the brand. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
2. Buyers admit to being 4-6X more likely to buy from “purpose-driven” companies and advocate for them (through UGC and word-of-mouth referrals).
3. Cost-per-click has been seen to decrease by 50% with the addition of user-generated content in social media ads.
4. 65.6% of consumers believe there is a difference between influencers and creators and 72.59% of marketers agree there is a difference between influencers and creators (here’s the difference).
5. 53.73% of marketers agree influencer content converts higher than brand content. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
6. 6 in 10 marketers report that their audience engages more with UGC in marketing and communications channels than branded content. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content)
7. Only 18.2% of marketers always measure the performance of their content across marketing channels – which means the remaining 81.8% could do a better job at doing this.  (State of Social &  User-Generated Content 2023)
8. 59.87% of marketers rely on stock video and photography for visual content even though 80.47% of consumers prefer seeing photos of real customers. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

User-Generated Content and Web Content Stats

1. The #1 marketing channel used is social media with a brand’s website as the #2 most used marketing channel.
2. In 2021, marketers took SEO more seriously with 69% of marketers investing in their strategy.
3. When websites feature UGC, they can see an increase of 29% in web conversions, a 20% increase in return visitors, and a 90% increase in time spent on-site.
4. 79.69% of consumers look at ratings and reviews before making a purchase. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
5. 69.08% of marketers feel ratings and reviews are important to their conversion rates, but only 35.75% of marketers often or always use UGC in their strategies. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
6. 57.03% of consumers feel stock photography should be replaced with the diversity of real customers and teams. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
7. Only 18.2% of marketers always measure the performance of their content across marketing channels – which means the remaining 81.8% could do a better job at doing this. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

Brand Marketing Stats

1. 66.41% of consumers believe that brands that use video and audio stand out more than those that don’t. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
2. Inconsistent brand messaging is a frustrating experience for buyers.
3. Only 35.75% of marketers often or always use UGC in their marketing strategies. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
4. 44.3% of marketers are investing in audio in 2023. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
5. The top 3 reasons marketers use social listening are to understand their audience, analyze trends, and conceive new ideas. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
6. In 2022, the number one challenge marketing teams faced when creating social and visual content was budget related. Yet in 2023, it looks like that challenge continues with 35% of marketers saying their budget stayed the same over the past year. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
7. 60.97% of marketers feel they don’t have enough resources for the amount of content they need. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

eCommerce and Social Commerce Stats

1. In 2023, online purchases are predicted to reach 20.8% of sales. This could be due to the 5-year acceleration in online shopping that experts predict the pandemic caused. 
2. Currently, eCommerce websites contribute 22.3% of total retail sales.
3. Purchases made on smartphones were predicted to take up 6% of the total retail sales in 2022.
4. It’s predicted that online retail sales will reach $6.51 trillion by 2023.
5. In the US, 20% of online shoppers said they took part in live commerce. 
6. Buyers have said that they’re about 4x more loyal to eco-friendly businesses in comparison to non-eco-friendly brands.
7. 75% of consumers claim they know when they are being advertised to. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
8. 77% of shoppers are more likely to buy from brands that personalize their shopping experience. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
9. The majority of buyers surveyed by PayPal, 57%, said that they shop from international brands (almost 2 in 5 survey respondents had made an international purchase in the last quarter).

Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Stats

1. The majority of millennials, 66%, book their travel trips using their smartphone. A higher majority, 74%, said that they use their smartphone for research related to their travels.
2. With an $8.9 billion value, Booking.com is the #1 most valuable travel and tourism brand in the world.
3. In 2023, it’s predicted that 2,934 hotels will open in 2023.
4. 2023 sees a rise in the return of meetings and events with 86.9% of meetings and events predicted to start back up this year.
5. 89% of global business travelers have said they want to add personal holiday travel to their business trips in the next year.
6. 42.98% of marketers experienced the most success with in-person events. (State of  Social & User-Generated Content 2023)
7. 42.98% of marketers plan to host or sponsor more in-person events in 2023 and  20.61% plan to host virtual or sponsor events. (State of Social & User-Generated Content 2023)

What Do These Marketing Stats Mean For Your 2023 Strategy?

Statistics tell you which direction to look – but they don’t give you the map to find your destination. Looking at the macro landscape tells us that there are some major trends to tap into that will increase your engagement and conversions. Better yet, it can build a stronger bond between your brand and community.

Here are some actionable tips for adding these statistics to the micro parts of your marketing strategy.

Social Media

As social media grows into a better search engine, it’s up to marketers to create searchable content. Add in buyers requesting user-generated content along their buying journey and all signs post to creating UGC with clear value propositions (that can get picked up by the social media algorithms!).

Email

Personalization in email is winning. Subscribers want less of everything you do and more of what they care about. Use lead magnets, contests, and specific ad campaigns to segment subscribers as they come into your list to ensure you’re only talking to them about what they care about. For people already subscribed, send out a quick “What do you want to see from us?” email with links that automatically segment the subscriber when clicked.

 Digital Advertising

The shift to video is here. It’s no longer on the horizon – something to worry about later. Marketers need to create video and audio content that meets the latest in consumer trends to meet their community where THEY are. To get a boost on video content, use TINT to find videos your community has already posted.

Web

Your buyers want to read reviews from other customers just like them. By adding reviews to your website and product pages (alongside user-generated content), you’ll create the feedback loop that your audience is looking for. You’ll also warm up buyers to leaving their own reviews after purchase. 

Brand

Consumers are asking for video and audio content, but that doesn’t magically make time appear for it on your to-do list. Avoid putting off this necessary shift in content and add user-generated content to your marketing channels to publish high-quality, highly converting content that your buyers are already asking for.

Let these statistics serve as a compass that can show you the way to create a high-performing marketing strategy in 2023. Start to build out your brand’s social content strategy (and start grabbing UGC from the web in no time!) with TINT. We help brands like Canon, Nestle, and more connect with their audiences through the power of UGC.

Schedule a demo to see what TINT’s all-in-one platform and UGC experts can do for you.

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