How amazing would it be if the customer journey was as easy as online shoppers heading to your website, adding products to their cart, and clicking ‘checkout’ without hesitation?
While ideal in theory, we all know it doesn’t work that way.
Humans are complex beings, and shoppers often go through various stages before purchasing – and even more when staying loyal to a brand.
Because it’s rarely a straight path, we call it a journey. The customer journey defines all the interactions between a customer and your brand. It acts as a roadmap to conversion and helps illustrate the various stages of a buyer’s purchase decision. Savvy brands understand the customer journey phases, the people within them, and the relevant content needed.
However, in 2024, the customer journey demands a fresh perspective – and that’s leveraging user-generated video content (UGC videos).
Why UGC videos? People are binge-watching videos more than ever before.
Stats say 82% of people binge-watch 2-10 videos before buying. Social media is exploding with UGC videos that capture attention and drive action. Brands that leverage these videos on their website have the potential to significantly drive sales and enhance the entire customer journey, one stage at a time.
While you’re likely already familiar with the stages of the customer journey, here’s a quick refresher.
Stages of the Customer Journey
Awareness
This is a ‘pre-sale’ stage of the buying process. In this discovery stage, people identify they have a problem or a desire and that there is likely a solution to help. Their focus is on gathering information, researching, and problem-solving.
Consideration
Another “pre-sale” phase, potential customers in this stage are comparing products and looking at price, brand credibility, features, and benefits. They have bought into the general solution to their challenge and are looking for the right fit for where to obtain it.
Purchase
In this stage, customers have made buying decisions and are taking action. Here, you need to make it easy for your customers to purchase by providing a seamless checkout process and answering any questions they may have about the product.
Retention
As you likely already know, the customer journey is not over once the sale is made. The retention stage, also known as the loyalty stage, focuses on engaging with your customers post-purchase to give support, improve customer satisfaction and foster retention.
Advocacy
Lastly, this stage aims to turn satisfied customers into brand advocates. Here, the focus is on encouraging customers to share their experiences with a brand, recommend products and services, and leave customer reviews.
Mapping UGC Videos to the Customer Journey
When developing content for each customer journey stage, your focus should be producing videos. 90% of people say they watch videos about the products they’re interested in buying, and an impressive 90% of marketers say video has given them a good ROI.
More specifically, focus on producing UGC videos like video reviews, video stories and video FAQs. The key is using the right kinds of UGC videos during the correct customer journey stage.
Let’s explore how you can integrate UGC videos seamlessly.
Here are Four Strategies to Master the Customer Journey With UGC Videos:
1. Create Awareness & Consideration on Your Home Page
Your home page is the digital front door to your brand. It’s the place where web visitors come to discover who you are and what you offer. Prospective customers in the awareness and consideration stages may rely on your home page to learn more about your brand.
This is the starting place where you need to grab attention to nurture prospective customers and encourage them to browse your site further. To do this, consider adding videos by real people on your home page. Such as video stories from customers sharing their experiences with your brand or even influencer marketing videos you share on social media. The idea is to inspire web visitors with binge-worthy videos that spark curiosity about your products or services.
2. Build Confidence to Buy on Product Pages With UGC Video Reviews
As customers transition to the consideration stage, they’re looking at the details of your products and seeking proof of your brand promise.
Your home page introduced your brand; now it’s time to focus on product detail pages (PDPs). PDPs are where you can leverage UGC video reviews to showcase authentic social proof and build shoppers’ confidence to buy.
UGC video reviews allow prospective customers to learn more about your products from a trusted source – your real customers. They deliver an unfiltered look into the performance and quality of your products. As a result, they are highly authentic and trustworthy – the perfect combination for prospective buyers.
To take it further, you can pair your UGC video reviews with video FAQs that address common questions on your product pages to reassure shoppers before buying.
Once you’ve established confidence with video reviews, the next stage is the purchase phase. Here is where you want to ensure a seamless checkout process and make it easy for prospective customers to complete a purchase.
You can do this with UGC video reviews by making them shoppable. By adding a call to action, shoppable videos direct web visitors where to buy or allow them to add items to their cart directly from the videos. Interactive shoppable videos ensure a smooth and easy checkout process, guiding your shoppers from prospective buyers to customers.
3. Empower Retention & Loyalty On Support Pages With Video FAQs
Next comes the retention stage. Here, you should focus on providing support and strengthening the customer experience. In this journey phase, you want to retain and nurture your existing customers by answering any questions or concerns they might have. Do this by creating a self-service portal with video FAQs on your support pages.
Video FAQs address common customer questions through videos created by real employees. They empower customers to self-serve by delivering the video answers they need exactly when they need them.
Video FAQs can answer questions, showcase product features, address concerns, and more. They aim to build ongoing customer loyalty and satisfaction through the power of convenient self-service videos. It’s also possible to let your customers submit questions online and have your staff respond with video answers.
As a bonus, video FAQs often reduce call centre volume, as your customers have the resources to answer most questions themselves.
4. Turn Customers into Brand Advocates
Lastly, as the final stage of the customer journey, this is where you want to transform your once first-time customer into a lifelong brand advocate. Here is where the cycle of UGC videos comes full circle.
Use this stage of the customer journey to get your customers talking about your brand on video. Ask them to produce UGC video reviews and video stories about their experiences for you. To encourage participation, offer incentives such as product discounts or loyalty rewards.
Focus on producing UGC videos that highlight the best of what your customers have to say about your brand. To get videos at scale, consider investing in a video platform, like StoryTap, that makes producing thousands of videos easy.
Ready to Master the Customer Journey with UGC Videos?
As we continue into 2024, integrating UGC videos strategically throughout the customer journey is more important than ever before.
From your home page to product pages, support pages and beyond, UGC videos hold the power to captivate attention, build trust, and drive conversion.
It’s time to embrace the binge-worthy nature of UGC videos to master the customer journey and leave a lasting impression on your audience.
To do it, you need a video platform to automate the production of your UGC videos. Enter StoryTap.
StoryTap is the leading eCommerce video platform that automates the production and distribution of UGC video reviews, video FAQs and Shop the Look influencer videos. The video technology will help your brand produce and share thousands of binge-worthy videos that drive action on your website.
StoryTap customers see an average 40% increase in conversions among video viewers.
Book a demo with our team today to learn more about using UGC videos throughout your customer journey.
