Go Pro Awards – Brand Loyalty with User-Generated Content
Go Pro Awards allows customers to showcase their creativity while generating reams of exciting user generated content. A Win Win for both
This marketing strategy serves as a model for how to effectively use customer experiences. Provide incentives for customers to utilise and share their experiences with your product or service to boost user-generated content. Soliciting and repurposing material that shows actual people using your products has long been a recommended strategy for business-to-consumer (B2C) social media marketing efforts. It combines verification of data integrity, data visualisation, and user-generated recommendations.
When your product enables your customers to take excellent photos and films, showing is better than explaining, and few businesses have embraced User Generated Content (UGC) as well as GoPro. GoPro has discovered the ideal platform to cultivate the dedicated fan base it needs to remain at the forefront of the minds of its target demographic: the world’s most daring customers.
Nevertheless, unlike other UGC approaches, GoPro seldom shows the actual product being used. This is fine with the company since it shows that its most dedicated customers are using the device as intended: to record breathtaking footage and photographs of extreme environments.
In light of the importance of user-generated content (UGC), GoPro has implemented several incentive schemes.
Creators are encouraged to submit their finest GoPro recordings, clips, and images as part of the GoPro Awards campaign in the hopes of being recognised and compensated. There are other ways to win during the campaign, such as the “Photo of the Day” contest, the “Anything Awesome” contest, and the “Be a Hero” contest. Several types of content creators, such as mountaineers, sportspersons, professional photographers, and amateurs, are encouraged to participate in each challenge. The GoPro marketing strategy is brilliant since it not only gets consumers to buy the product but also helps them connect with others who have an interest in photography.
The GoPro Awards reward exceptional footage across several categories with gear, money, tags, and re-shares from GoPro’s official social channels. For submissions to the Million Dollar Challenge, only the most recent high-end cameras are accepted, and any user who has a clip included in the brand’s epic, year-end highlight reel will get an equal portion of $1 million. A great way to demonstrate the superiority of your product?
Consumers who use a GoPro and submit images, raw videos, and edited clips for consideration in the GoPro Awards programme may have their work featured on the GoPro Channel, the company’s brand licencing platform. Creators may contribute works in several genres, such as animal, racing, musical, travel, and action. According to GoPro, “material that emotionally engages, amazes or excites” will be chosen. Winners get $500 for images, $1,000 for raw video, and $5,000 for edited films with an annual payout of $5 million.
Outcomes
Throughout 2015 and 2016, GoPro says it paid out over $1 million in rewards to artists across the globe. The winners also had their movies posted on GoPro’s YouTube channel, which attracted millions of views for the best submissions.
Among the 196 countries where the GoPro programme was available, over 226,000 entries were received. More than 23 million people worldwide saw some kind of GoPro Awards footage.
It also emphasizes the wide range of genres that GoPro camera users are exploring. The most popular video tells the tale of a family who discovered a frozen kitten in the snow and, despite their fears that the kitten was dead, managed to bring it back to life. There have been approximately six million views of the video.
Learnings
The success of GoPro can be traced in part to the company’s efforts to make it simple for its customers to share the content they’ve created with their friends and followers on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and even earn rewards for doing so.
- To establish the type of equity that inspires enthusiasm and devotion, a successful social strategy draws from what works, but you have to put your brand’s distinctive mark on it. GoPro’s strategy, such as naming its user content credits “social stoke,” demonstrates that it recognises the lifestyle it is wanting to be a part of and has established a brand that enriches that lifestyle for its consumers, despite UGC being as tried and true as there is.
- UGC isn’t exempt from the “nothing for nothing” rule. To acquire the type of material you can use to promote your brand, don’t be afraid to incentivize your requests. It is particularly astute that the most attractive incentives are linked to the most recent product launches.
- Make sure your social media profiles are created with the user and the reasons they want to interact with your company in mind. Make sure you’re thinking about not only how your product or service fits into their lifestyle, but also where they live and how that affects their purchasing decisions. By using social media to form subset communities inside your brand’s wider following, you can provide your followers with the feeling of belonging and resonance they need to become devoted to your brand.
- Awareness and loyalty are connected objectives, as they are in every effective user-generated content initiative (UGC). However, the UGC is made possible by what GoPro is attempting to raise awareness about; thus, the two complement each other very well. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then all of this user-generated content is marketing gold.
- Offline connectivity: GoPro has practically embedded social sharing into its product DNA, acknowledging the crucial role that it plays in fostering brand loyalty and promoting the aspirational brand lifestyle. The GoPro app allows users to edit their photographs and videos before posting them to social media platforms like Instagram (with a handy Stories upload option), Facebook, YouTube, and more. This not only makes it easier to use GoPro devices but also solidifies GoPro’s position as a necessary tool in the pursuit of sharing one’s life in real time.
- Important Channels: Millions of people are interested in the GoPro world. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time discussing Instagram, I wouldn’t want you to think that GoPro isn’t also active on Facebook, where they take advantage of the platform’s video-friendly algorithm to share longer-form user videos, and YouTube, where they have a carefully curated channel full of videos showcasing their wares and the exploits of their sponsored athletes and explorers. Maybe most crucially, the company has made the environment inhabited by its customers more useful, attractive, and linked by curating playlists, profiles (including more than 20 geographically different Instagram accounts alone), and ways to engage with other people by recording comparable material. GoPro’s social groups aim to unite individuals with similar interests and experiences, from scuba divers and backcountry skiers to wildlife fans and new parents.
