Tanya: 
Hello everybody. It's Tanya Williams, Chief of Everything at Digital Conversations and its Sales Without Socials time. Yep, another episode of the podcast and today we are talking about user-generated content. Now, if you don't know what that is keep listening and we are going to explain all about it. And today, I am talking to Amelia and she's a marketing specialist from Custom Neon. Now, she is going to break down this stuff called user-generated content and how they use it and how it's been so successful for those guys. Because if you've seen some of their stuff, it's pretty darn good and I think they might know a thing or two about this. So, welcome Amelia!

Amelia:
Hi! How are you?

Tanya:

I'm good. Thank you. Do you want to start by telling people a bit about you and your background and what Custom Neon actually does?

Amelia:
Yeah, absolutely! I'm Amelia. I am the marketing specialist here at Custom Neon. I've been with the company for about, I think, over four years now. When I started it was kind of a small team and we weren't as international as we are now. And it's definitely growing and it's been awesome to see that growth. Custom Neon is an LED neon sign company. We were founded in Geelong in 2018 by Jake and Jess Munday and the business originally sort of started selling signage in Australia but as the global orders grew, we sort of recognized that there was a clear need to increase the staff and production capabilities internationally. So, we're now a global company with teams in Australia, the US, the UK, and then we've got other people sort of dotted all over the globe. 

Tanya:
So just a few people.

Amelia:
It's quite a large team now. I think there's over like 30 or 40 of us. So yeah, it's grown a lot now.

Tanya
I love what you guys do. You know, the fact that you can create these gorgeous custom neon signs that people can put up in their business or in their house or wherever they want.  I keep looking at them. I need to get one of these I just need to figure out what exactly it is that I want to get. Because my husband is gonna be like, "You don't need one of those!" I'm like, "It's not about need. It's about want!

Amelia
Yeah! Absolutely!

Tanya:
They just look so darn cool!

Amelia:

Yeah! They're so bright and fun. It's yes, a super fun and positive place to work.

Tanya

Yeah, love it. Love it. Let's talk marketing, of course, which is what we're here to talk about. What sort of marketing do you guys focus most on now? I imagine you probably do all sorts of different things. But is there a particular area that you guys sort of lean more towards?

Amelia:
Yeah. I guess majority of the marketing that we do at Custom Neon is digital. We run paid ads across both social and search. We have a strong email marketing strategy. And I guess one of the main things that we do is our website is entirely optimized for SEO. And our organic SEO brings in a lot of our business.

We've also got a PR team that reaches out to potential business and commercial-based customers. With all of these, one of the most important things that we do in terms of marketing is collect UGC from our customers that we sort of use everywhere.

I guess also with the nature of our product being that majority of the signs we sell are custom made, our customers can choose from various fonts, colors, sizes, everything! Every part of their sign is completely customizable. So it's super important for us to harness user-generated content within our marketing mix as it really shows the breadth of our product offering and different use cases.

Tanya:
Yeah, cool! Now for the people who don't really know what user-generated content is can you explain that to them, please?

Amelia:
Yeah, for sure! User-generated content is content that is created by real people and real customers organically rather than created by the brand themselves or by an influencer. So for us, user-generated content is images, videos, and testimonials that are either posted online to social media, to our review platforms. We're actually get given a lot directly to our customer service representatives. So we hear a lot from our customers who have worked with one of our LED graphic designers. It's a 1-on-1 design service that they offer. The customers really appreciate the attention to detail and personalized design service. We get a lot of positive feedback about that which is great.

Tanya:
There are so many things, I think ,you can do with user-generated content. It's not right for every business, of course. But how do customers embrace it? It sounds like people are just really loving sharing their experience and so forth. In terms of the process, when someone buys something is it typically them reaching out to you going, "Oh my God! Look at my amazing sign!" And taking photos of it? Or do you have a process where you follow up with them and go, "Hey, send us a photo!" or what does that look like from that marketing customer perspective?

Amelia:
Yeah! In our packaging, we've actually got a little note and a QR code sort of thing that says, "You know we love to see our signs in the wild! Tag us!" And our customers often do which generates a great bank of...

Tanya:
I love that! Such a simple idea - a QR code in a note going this is what you need to do. So simple!

Amelia:
Yeah, and I think also with the nature of our product being bright and fun, people love to take photos of it and share it across social media or even just share it back with the design reps that they've worked with. I guess that's sort of how the main place that we get it.

We also do reach out post-purchase and ask for a review and images if they're willing to share. And we see such a high number of those come in and the things people tell us...it's crazy!

Once a month, we do a monthly wrap-up as a business and just talk about our wins for the month. And one of the segments that we do is reviews so good they sound fake. Because the things that people tell me about our product are incredible and it literally looks like we've written it ourselves. So yeah, it's so good to see that coming through.

Tanya:
User-generated content is not something that's typically included in a marketing plan, right? It's one of those things that's like you know if you can do it, you can, sort of thing. Was that something that just sort of happened organically within the business or was that part of a strategy? Starting out where it's like okay we're doing these amazing signs. How do we get people to share them? Oh, let's focus on user-generated content.

Amelia:
I think it was a bit organic in sort of the way that it started. I guess when the business was started, it was like a small startup and Jake and Jess were running it out of their garage. So there wasn't really at when it started the chance to be doing, you know, full-blown photo shoots and creating content ourselves.

So I guess, that's sort of how it started. We started collecting all the images, videos, and testimonials from our customers and that's what they used for everything that we do in terms of marketing. I think because with the product, you need to see images of it to show off how it looks.

Tanya:
And I think it is an inspiration as well, right? Because you look at other things, "God, Oh I love that!" "I love the way that's done!"  Love the colors!" or so you can literally flick through and get all sorts of ideas on what might be right for your design as well. So by looking at other people's stuff, it's got lots of different, you know, ticks next to it really. Well, it can do this. It can do that. 

Amelia:
Exactly! Yeah! And I think a lot of people, obviously like you said, you want a neon sign but you're not entirely sure what you want it to say. So I think having that back with UGC and it's aspirational for our customers to try and figure out what they want.

Tanya:
Absolutely! And I think the key part of why user-generated content works so well is the authenticity. It's because it's coming from a real customer having a real experience with a real product. In  these days, we we are getting a bit skeptical about marketing. We're seeing stuff going, "Oh My God like that's so fake!" or "Is that even real?" or whatever. But the fact that you guys do so much of this user-generated content people can literally see stuff to go "Actually, yeah, look this is really real!" Like this is stuff that's happening with real clients and I think that makes a massive difference because we are craving authenticity in particularly in marketing these days and from the products and brands that we want to buy from.

Amelia:
Yeah, I definitely agree and the LED neon sign industry is becoming more competitive and there's lots of different players in the market now. So I think what really sets us apart, as a brand, is our customer service and the quality of our product.
By heavily leveraging the UGC, we're showing our potential customers why people choose us and showing that it is real customers that are talking about us. It's not just a random brand that's sort of popped up out of nowhere. We've got thousands of 5-star reviews and people are really happy with the experience that we provide.

And I think further, like you said, influencer marketing especially has sort of made people not trust in brands as much and that loyalty and yeah, it's really important to just be authentic and make sure your customers know and feel confident in who they're purchasing with, I guess.

Tanya:
I think this is so much more powerful than influencer marketing. One, because it is authentic. It's coming from real people. As we know, influencers are getting paid to do it. They're going to say whatever you know like we don't look at it. It's no longer believable. So I think, there's been this massive shift away from that towards getting real customers behind their product because as I said, we are skeptical about it. We we want to believe that something's going to work and it's going to look like it says it's going to look like and the process is going to be as simple as what they say and all that sort of stuff. But I think the proof is in not just the photos but the reviews and the testimonials and and people talking about their overall experience. That's really powerful stuff! 

Amelia:
Yeah, 100% and I think even putting myself in the shoes of the consumer like I want to choose brands that I trust and that I can see people who had positive experience with and I think when you look at it that way. It's a no brainer, too. Use as much UGC as you can.

Tanya:
Looking at all the marketing stuff that you guys do, what percentage of your time do you think is spent on collating all the user-generated content? Obviously you're saving a lot of time because you're not having to create content yourself. But you've still got to collate it, and you've got to put it in places, and you've got to organize it, and you gotta do all that. Do you spend a lot of time doing that once you get that content in?

Amelia:
It's kind of hard to put a percentage on it. All of our marketing team does spend a large part of their time going through and collating all of our UGC. We sort of have a content management system that we put everything and save it. And because we're a global team, having that system allows all of our employees to access it and use it wherever they see fit. Whether it's trying to get a customer over the line and they want to hear about somebody else's experience or images for the site to our socials. Wherever it's sort of relevant.

As soon as we get, you know, a great review or a great image, we're like "where can we put this?" "Let's put it everywhere!" "Yeah!"

Tanya:
How are you collecting that stuff? I know you said there's video content, there's obviously written reviews, and stuff. Is there a particular piece of tech or or something that you guys are using to make that easy or you're just saying hey just record on your phone and send it to us like what is that because I think that's the thing that from a brand perspective. You think oh my God But how are we going to do it? Do we need certain technology and it all sounds really overwhelming and people get a bit scared particularly the tech stuff. What are you guys using to help create that and to you know, obviously get that back?

Amelia:
Yeah, we don't really particularly use any specific platform. I know we have looked into once in the past that you know even Ai -based things that sort of collected all for you but we found it most efficient just to sort of save it all ourselves when we are collecting UGC especially for things like customer images and videos of their sign. Especially if there's people in them and things like that. We always ask permission to actually use the content. And that's really important because essentially especially if it's someone's face or something they are going to be used.
Pretty much wherever, we can put them if they allow it. So yeah, our information is definitely important and then everything gets saved to our Dropbox. We've got like a naming convention and everything like that to make sure it's really organized. 

Tanya:
I can imagine you would all have to be very organized.

Amelia:
As the business has grown, we've realized like you need to organize it. Otherwise it's just going to get chaotic.

Tanya:
Ah, chaos. Yeah, do you get many people that say, "No, I don't want you to share my stuff."

Amelia
Ah, not really. I think we've probably had a handful in the last sort of few years so everybody's really willing to share it I mean maybe unless they've had a bad experience or something but I think with our customers, we always sort of churn it around and they end up happy anyway. So yeah, we don't really see anything like that.

Tanya:

You guys are doing a lot of these things and I know you can't really probably put a percentage on it as well. But like how many people actually that buy will give you a photo or a review? Do you think that a majority of them are doing that and they're happily doing that because it's been a great experience? Like what does that look like?

Amelia:
Our customers are sort of split half B2B consumers that are either buying for the office spaces, events that sort of thing, and then half of our consumers are B2C - so purchasing for their homes, weddings, events, kids rooms.
We definitely would see more of the B2B customers sharing content of their signs. I think , the fact that they're businesses that either taking photos of their retail fitouts or their events or whatever. We do see a lot of a lot of that and I think maybe because they are businesses themselves, they're more willing to tag another business. I think you want to help each other out.

With the B2C side, we still see so many tags and things on from all the wedding photos and home photos.

Tanya
Share the love, you share the love!

Amelia:
I would say B2B customers are probably a little bit more willing to share.

Tanya:
Yeah, okay, cool. why do you think people are so willing to go "here's a photo" or "here's a review." Is it all about the customer experience? Is it about the product? I'm assuming you guys have had conversations about this with customers or done surveys or whatever it might be. But why do you think it works so well for you guys?

Amelia
Yeah, I think it's because it is the nature of the product. It is such a shareable [product].  I think also just with the social media industry today I guess people are always wanting to share images of their life.
If you've got like a really aesthetic neon sign, you probably want to take a photo of it. But I think when you've had a positive experience and you really like a product, especially our product is a little more high value and does cost for some people, when you are doing that and you're getting a product back that you absolutely love I think you want to talk about it. [You'd] want to share it with your friends and especially for those B2B customers. We do hear from a lot that people are actually asking about their signage whether they've got signage in-store or at an event people are like, "Where did you get that?" And then they'll share and talk about it or share it on their socials or let us know that people are actually asking about it.

Tanya:
I've spoken about word of mouth on the podcast before. It is so powerful if you can harness that and the fact that your product is so visually appealing and people are going, "Oh my God That's amazing! I want one. Where did you get it?"

Amelia
Oh, absolutely.

Tanya:
In itself is such a powerful thing. Your clients are creating new clients for you as well. That's that blow-on effect, right? Because it's just the nature of that type of product, I think.

Amelia:
Yeah, absolutely.

Tanya:
Do you think user-generated content can be used by service businesses as well or do you think it really lends itself to having a particular product?

Amelia
I think it applies for both. Yeah, service-based businesses and products because essentially if you're offering service, it is a product. And again, people want to hear about your experience and how you found it. So I think it definitely applies for both.

Tanya:
Yeah, I agree. But I think people just don't think of it like that. I think oh no I have to have this like pretty product that people have to show people rather than as you said. A service is something that they can get people talking about and generating content for as well. But I think it's just a different mindset. And a bit of a shift in how they think and get a bit creative with it as well.

Amelia:
Yeah, exactly. And it might look different for that. For example, you're probably not taking a photo of it. You're probably maybe giving testimonial or, you know, recording yourself talking about your experience or something like that.

Tanya
Yeah, absolutely. Do you think the fact that you guys have so much user-generated content has contributed to loyalty and repeat business for you guys? Because I imagine that once people buy once they' like oh we're coming back and we're getting another one like there' they're probably not going to go anywhere else if they've had such a great experience. Do you think because you have so much that user-generated content that actually helps people stay more loyal to you?

Amelia
Yeah, I think so. Sharing UGC on our socials and tagging our customers like if we see somebody that's shared an amazing photo, we'll reshare it ourselves and I guess that gives us an opportunity to build on that relationship with the customer. Um, and I guess yeah, this sort of public dialogue leads to advocacy from them which is great for us. And I guess it's again mutually sort of beneficial. More exposure for us. But then if we're tagging people. It works both ways. Yeah.

Tanya:
Yeah, so I imagine you're  you're obviously leveraging on that as much as possible. So it's the content going on your website. It's probably going out in email marketing campaigns. You know I don't if you do any sort of video marketing like it's probably like where can we put it and can we put it everywhere. Is that the premise or do you only sort of go, "We're only going to use it in particular channels or particular ways."

Amelia
Yeah, I think we use UGC pretty much in all of the marketing that we do. Like you said majority of the content on our website as UGC we've got so many customer images and testimonials. We also even do sometimes like a showcase page where we'll do just a feature about 1 customer typically their business customers. But it might be a boger store that's purchased our signage and we ask them, "Can we create a page just about you and how you've put all this awesome custom signage in?" It's in all of our email campaigns and email flows and then obviously our socials. Lots of images and videos of their custom-made signs.

Tanya
I love it. Plaster it everywhere like this and why not? I mean, when you look at this from from a business perspective, the fact that you have so much content that is generated by other people must save so much time because for you guys to have to go and I imagine you So I know you guys still create your own content. You're still doing that stuff yourself, but in the scheme of things when you look at what you've got from a user-generated content perspective and what you're creating I mean massive you know saving in time and resources and all the rest of it.

Amelia
Yeah.

Tanya
But how much like compared to what you guys create yourself and what's user generated. What do you think that split is? Is there mostly user generation? You guys do a little bit of other stuff to round it out or like how conscious are you of of what the content piece looks like in that respect?

Amelia
Yeah, I think in the past we were maybe a little bit more focused on doing our own shoots and creating content ourselves. And we did a few shoots a year or trying to get as much content of us like our own content as a bit of a mix.

But I think in the past few years, we've leant towards more the UGC and less of our own stuff I think we've seen across our paid advertising that the UGC actually tends to perform better. It has higher engagement and again it's more...

Tanya
Authentic! It's real.

Amelia
Then people trust it. So I think that's why it is performing a lot better. And based on that learning, we've really decided to maybe we're still creating some of our own content but definitely less than we were in the past and I think it probably also makes sense with people wanting. The stuff we do is a lot of the time by a videographer and it's quite professional and things like that and it looks very different to UGC that's typically shot on an iPhone or just a photo taken in someone's house or in their business. So I think consumers realize that UGC is more authentic.

Tanya:

Yeah, and I think the thing there is when we mentioned before about what you guys do is really produce because it's you know you're using Professionals and all the rest of it. I have this conversation a lot with clients and say you don't have to have professionally produced videos to be using videos for your marketing because the stuff that you are putting that someone's creating with an iPhone or you know a smartphone or whatever. It's not perfect and people like that imperfection. They like to go, ""It's not perfect. That's fine I can relate to it because I can't create a perfect video," right? So you know there's a relatability factor. That's there.

Amelia
Exactly.

Tanya
There's the authentic factor. That's there. And I think that in itself has so much power because people can go, "Oh Thank God I don't have to have this perfect-looking video for my marketing! I can have marketing that is not produced. It's just me talking into a camera. You know, I've got people that I know they'll be walking down the street to the office talking about something doing video content and it gets really good engagement because it's just part of their day. It's an authentic conversation that they're having. It's not this Oh my God I'm going to film this and it's all going to be like have a top and tail and this and all the rest of it. So Think there's a lot of power in the in that user-generated content space just because of those reasons like the fact that they aren't perfect. That they aren't produced. That they are real gives them a totally different edge to something that comes from a marketing department. Because you know we can always see marketing pieces right? I'm a market of myself. We can always see it. It's written in a different way. It's produced in a different way. It just has a totally different vibe. I just think there's there's so much power in using our happy clients to generate content for us because it just speaks for itself.

Amelia
Yeah, exactly. Your customers are your biggest brand advocates. They're the people that are actually spending their own money on products. So it's absolutely worth it to use them as much as you can and I think, what you said before as well. Taking that learning of your own content also doesn't need to be super produced. I think that's something else that we've learned is we've tried to sort of create content ourselves that is similar to UGC and I think that has worked for us, too.

Tanya
Yeah, I saw a video recently and it was like all different staff members going and talking about all different parts of the business and stuff like that and it was like this is so fun because it had. You were showing real people within the business there was you were showing examples of the different signage and also showcasing the values. Which I thought was really clever and a really simple way to get your message across as well. 

Amelia
Yeah, definitely. I think that there's been speak about even employee-generated content which essentially is user-generated content but our costs are our employees receive a neon after six months of working with us and we use that content of them getting their sign and opening it and everything like that because yeah, they are our customers Essentially when they are getting that.

Tanya
I love that idea! I love the fact that staff are being rewarded for you know, being with a company and doing such a great job with your own product and because most of the time some some of the companies that you work for you. Go I don't want that. But. But a neon side I mean who's going to say no and like and and be like not not over the moon to get something like that I love that concept because I think that Cri can also create employee loyalty as well, right? because he got move goes e value me and look after me. Love it. Okay, um, can you share some tips for us so you know B2B business owners are super busy, especially ones that are running B2B businesses. They might be thinking,  "Well I love the idea of this but I really I don't know where to start." What's some some simple tips to either help them get some ideas or how they can actually use user-generated content in their business.

Amelia
Yeah, for sure I think, putting yourself in the mind of the consumer. You know we're thinking about where they would want to see that content to try and make them sort of purchase I think is super important. Like for us, so Many of our clients and businesses like I said they tend to post images of their signs So we've actually captured that and offered some of these businesses a discount or an affiliate code that they can share with their customers. because we've heard from Them. We are asking about where to get this from. So yeah, it just makes sense. Yeah, um, it just. Yeah, makes sense for them to be able to you know, have ah have a 10% off code to share with their customers and obviously that's beneficial for us. So Yeah I think your your customers are your biggest brand advocate. So yeah, use that as much as you can.

Tanya
Absolutely! And even just sitting down and doing a bit of a brainstorm and going right? like what you know what are we doing? What do we want to promote? How can we get people to share that with us. How do we make it as simple as possible I think as well because if it's too hard people go. I'm not doing that you're asking me to jump through Hoops. It's going to take too long I can't be like it's you want me to download this program Blah Blah blah and if it's too hard people just go. I think really making it easy for people to do it and I love the fact that you guys have this QR code that goes out with the product go his you know.

Amelia
Um, exactly yeah.

Tanya
Here's a code. Here's s simple simple instructions on what you need to do to share it. You make easy for them to do your work for you right? because you're like well you do like I'm going to make it simple because then if I make it simple. You're going to do it and then you're going to send it back to us and that's great stuff that we can use in our marketing piece.

Amelia
Ah, hundred percent or you know even incentivize your customers say if you get a review, we'll give you $5 off your next order or whatever is you know a for your business. But yeah, make it easy for them because yeah I think your customers want to share but the easier you make it for them and also do it when they're getting the product because when somebody's getting a product or a service. That's when they want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. Two months later they probably have forgotten about it. So yeah, yeah.

Tanya
Yeah, absolutely I think that's so important make it easy for them and do it in a timely way because that's when you're most excited right? because when you open that box. Youre like oh my God look at this. It's amazing or when you're putting it up and you can see it all lit up on the wall. It's a perfect time to
 capture that excitement and that you know that you know the happiness around look at this great product that we've that we've we've purchased and we want to share it with everybody I Love it. Is it anything else that you want to share before we finish our chat I Love it Look I Love the fact that you guys are embracing user-generated content so strongly and that it is working so well for you guys? Um, and you know I think you're really leading the way in a lot of this stuff as well because you don't see a lot of companies using generated content these days or certainly using it in the way that you guys do so. Um I Love it. I Love you know, looking at what you guys are doing and um, getting ideas and inspiration for my own sign at some point as well. But ah, but thank you Thank you for sharing. Um, all of that I think anyone that hasn't considered user generated content before hopefully they now get some thinking. Oh okay, maybe that is something we could actually do.
Um, and maybe it's not as hard as what we thought because I think sometimes when we hear these things we think oh wow that sounds like really hard and big and it's all a bit scary. Um, but when they see how people are actually doing it and how simple it can actually be I think that can change the whole thought process behind it which is really important business.

Especially for busy business owners who are just like I don't have time to do stuff or if we can make it easy. Um for you then there's no reason why you can't fantastic. Well thank you so much for your time Amelia I'm inspired now to jump back on and look at some Neuro Science My husband might not be as impressed I go honey I Want to buy this I I am buying this by the way. Um, but ah yeah I I keep looking at stuff going. Oh my God I Love it I'd love to have a room full of them I Just think they're so gorgeous.

Amelia
Yeah, so thank you Thank you for having me. It's been great.

Tanya
Thank you for being part of the show and we will share all the contact details for custom neon in the show notes. Um and you know if you guys want to jump on and have a look and and have some inspiration for your. Business or for your home then um I know that you will find plenty of it with them. Thanks Amelia.

Amelia
Thank you.