Boost Consumer-Generated Ads’ Persuasiveness

Your store can build shopper excitement and customer loyalty by inviting those shoppers and customers to suggest ideas for you to use in advertising. Consumers get excited by contests, and winners of store contests build allegiance to the store.
     You might very well decide to employ the services of an advertising expert to turn the consumer’s golden idea into pay dirt copy. Also acknowledge that business professionals give legal cautions about consumer-generated ads (CGAs). Some of these cautions are about non-disclosure agreements and rights to subsequent use of the designs. Still, the upside is that, with CGAs, every nugget is coming from people who know what sold them or would sell them on buying from you.
     Should you let all those in your target audience know the ad ideas were developed by other consumers? Researchers at Georgetown University say you’re sometimes wise not to. Such revelations arouse a mix of two conflicting attitudes in your prospective shoppers—skepticism and identification. People are skeptical that a store depending on others to create ad copy is sufficiently reliable as a retailer. And the same people are attracted by the arguments in an ad designed by someone they view as being more similar to them than is the retailer.
     The Georgetown research findings suggest two steps to tilt the balance away from skepticism and toward identification, and thereby boost the persuasiveness of your CGAs:

• Reserve their use to ads for products and services where the methods or benefits of use are hard for your typical shopper to understand or appreciate. For instance, this could be because the item is novel or because your typical shoppers don’t give close attention to ads for this type of item. 
• Describe the ad creator with background information which highlights the creator’s similarities to at least one of the major segments of already loyal customers in your target markets. Keep the background information brief, though. Remember that you’re aiming for an audience who are finding it hard to understand or appreciate what you’re saying. 

     Once you’ve done this, other research findings indicate that you’ll do best to spread the news of creators widely. Conduct the project as a contest. If your acceptance of ideas is ongoing, declare winners regularly. Research finds that after a CGA competition, even the multitudes who didn't win are likely to build a kinship with the business, feeling they’re part of a community.

Click below for more: 
Game On with Consumer Competition 
Incorporate Crowdsourcing When Designing 
Use Ideas Designed by Users