One of the most helpful marketing materials for businesses is obtaining excellent customer reviews and testimonials. Every time customers purchase or buy services, they interact with the company, such as by developing User-Generated Content, or UGC, on their social media platforms and channels.
Running a podcast is very similar to a business, and likely it’s associated with your brand. You need to leverage customer reviews and testimonials and promote the use of UGC to gain more brand awareness and listeners.
So how do you do that? You can do key things to ensure your client’s satisfaction is shared to help promote your podcast, build more subscribers, and increase sales.
Why Use Testimonials?
Podcasters can make the most of our customer testimonials by repurposing them or integrating them within promotions or ad campaigns, showcasing their satisfied clients. A great way to do this is to highlight testimonials directly on your podcast, maybe by offering some incentive for clients to receive their own “shout out” in your episodes.
Simply asking for a review once a customer has been satisfied and developing a strategy so that they can easily supply a review is crucial. You can even offer an incentive with this to get more reviews, such as a small discount on products or their own referral code for affiliate status.
What is UGC, and Why is it Important?
Any material or content created by users that aren’t associated with your business is known as User-Generated Content (UGC). When someone likes your product or services so much they post it across social media channels and rave about your business, it’s more organic because you’re not paying them to do it.
UGC and customer reviews are excellent ways for your brand to build trust and credibility with prospective buyers. People are far more likely to buy from a company they feel they can trust. Online reviews increase conversions by up to 270%.
How to Use Testimonials and UGC
There are many ways to gain testimonials and customer reviews that you can use to help your podcast reach more people. Here’s a look at some of the top ways to start using UGC and reviews and how you can incorporate them within your podcast:
Use testimonials as feedback.
You can analyze and look over multiple reviews for valuable feedback, allowing you to understand what users and listeners care about the most. It provides your podcast and brand with more value to help improve the customer experience when examining your services and products.
Check out the tools and services your podcast hosting site offers to give you opportunities to provide for your listeners. Once you have a good idea of what your customers look for, you can better focus your podcast episodes on fitting those needs.
For example, suppose you have specific intro or outro music for your podcast that doesn’t resonate with your listeners. In that case, it can easily have them switching to another podcast to listen to, so you may want to update your podcast music license and find music that truly reaches and has a genuine pull for your audience to tune in.
Continually working to enhance your offerings and create an atmosphere that your listeners want will boost your audience and sales. The more you can give back to your clients, the more trust you build.
Broadcast reviews on your podcast.
You can effectively increase the number of people tuning into your podcast when they want to know if they’ll be the following testimonial featured. You may even include some aspect of your business that you can provide as a “prize” to engage and entice more customers to leave testimonials for your podcast or your business.
Post UGC on your socials.
Social media channels are a great way to gain more visibility. So, when you look for tags or hashtags specific to your business, you can see what people say about your podcast or your business. Then you can effectively turn around and use those UGC videos, reels, or posts, tagging the customer, so you reach your existing followers and clients.
You can request honest video testimonials and then upload them for extended outreach. You build more trust across the marketplace, which will, in turn, result in more conversions. Take more than one customer testimonial or review and create a video story stringing them all together to prove your podcasts’ worth.
Reach out to ambassadors.
Brand ambassadors can help create UGC, more specifically in video form. You can use those videos as content, in email marketing, on your website, in advertisements, and across social media channels. The great part of using UGC content is that you can quickly get new content without developing and creating it yourself while demonstrating more authenticity.
Respond to your customers.
Once you ask for feedback, you can also respond to your client’s reviews to leverage them. Customer testimonials may pose a question or need follow-up, and you can comment and respond to demonstrate someone hears them, is listening, and is there to help. The care your brand or podcast shows its listeners shows there are humans behind the user experience and can help elevate for a more positive testimonial.
Put reviews on website pages.
Don’t just use your UGC and reviews across social media - they can get lost and disappear if you use them on your stories. Ensure that your podcast website or brand pages have a place for people to look at those stellar reviews of your products or services.
A great example is the Glossier brand and how they display reviews per product:
They highlight reviews that customers find helpful, too, so they can draw your eye. You can also include UGC that customers have made for you. Everything from unboxing to demonstrative videos can be a part of your website to help display value.
Don’t forget the hashtags.
Encourage customers to post about your podcast through a specific hashtag, which is an excellent method to generate free-to-use UGC for your brand. Consider adding something like “tag #(your podcast) to be featured!” since it engages happy customers to share their experiences with the option of being showcased on your website or podcast. It provides you with free content and more visibility.
Take Advantage of Customer Reviews and UGC
Customers are at the forefront of your brand, and you need to find ways to leverage client reviews, testimonials, and UGC in your podcast. From sending review requests or customizing an easy-to-use “click button” feedback survey, you can gain valuable knowledge on how to drive more conversions and align your podcast (and brand) with your prospective customers.
Using them is easy if you know how, and it can be as simple as tagging your UGC creators in their content to showcase on your own socials, website, or landing pages to promote your podcast. It won’t take long to see an uptick in subscribers, listeners, and ultimately, buyers.
