In order to attract customers and drive sales, it’s more important than ever that merchants produce and publish consistently awesome content marketing. This cliché yet ever important term has evolved a great deal over the years, and isn’t restricted or synonymous with blog posts and website copy alone. User generated content is a powerful, invaluable eCommerce tool that can help businesses of every size combat common customer purchasing fears.

According to research, 71% of consumers agree that customer reviews make them more comfortable buying a product, while 82% of consumers consider user generated reviews extremely valuable. If that’s not impressive, consider that a whopping 70% of all consumers will look to reviews or ratings before making a purchasing decision, with at least 41% of consumers reading 4-7 reviews in their quest for product information.

User generated content (UGC) provides a number of benefits for consumers and merchants alike.

Selling products online offers customers a convenient and usually cost-effective means for acquiring their favorite goods. Unfortunately, online retail creates a gap or void, with customers unable to fully picture or imagine the benefits, features, or quality of your product(s). UGC can fill this void, providing the social proof and information shoppers are compelled to validate before purchasing a product online.

One of the easiest ways to alleviate online purchasing fears is to provide customers with easy access to candid, insightful UGC. Customers are eager and earnest to learn about the experiences others have had with your product, and are more likely to purchase your products if they’re able confirm the validity of your product’s claims.

Shoppers are always on the lookout for hot and trending items, and nothing speaks of popularity like a great deal of positive UGC. Billions of people are creating unboxing videos, posting images to Instagram, sharing their opinions via comments and forums, and more. Promoting and featuring UGC creates a sense of hype that’ll lead customers to purchase your product if only for the sake that others are purchasing it too!

Awesome and informative copy in conjunction with great, stylized images may seem like the perfect combination of product marketing material. The truth of the matter, however, is that regardless of your description’s sincerity or the great number of details provided, customers aren’t able to get a genuine sense of how your product can be incorporated into their real, everyday life. UGC gives customers an invaluable sense of real-life worth, use and function of your product/service.

Customer purchasing fear is a leading cause for cart abandonment, and results in countless lost sales for businesses of every size, every single day. Showcasing and promoting UGC is a proven, cost-effective means of acquiring your customers’ trust, and will consequently result in a huge increase to your store’s conversions. Studies show that customer reviews create a 74% in product conversion alone.

If you’re looking for a boost to sales, a strong social following is an absolute essential. UGC is one of the easiest and most effective ways to grow your social following and build a community of followers the share, Tweet, like and most importantly – purchase your products. Your “fans” are your brand ambassadors, and will help to pull in an even larger amount of traffic thanks to their “social proof” by vouching and promoting your brand.

The tried-and-true cliché “content is king” ceaselessly finds itself in eCommerce articles, blogs, and guides time and time again – and for good reason too! A lack of regular quality content can be detrimental to a business’s success, regardless of product or service quality. Fortunately, you’re not the sole creator of content for your brand. UGC can help boost your business’s organic traffic, providing search engines with fresh content that’ll lead straight to your store’s door.

Marketing is a major yet essential cost that affects a business’s growth and profitability. One of the easiest and best ways to reduce the monetary burden of this critical business component, regardless of your industry or business size, is to utilize UGC for your advertisements. You can spread UGC across your social networks, use it in PPC advertisements, blogs, newsletters, or even your product catalog – the possibilities are endless, and best of all, absolutely free.

Great content marketing doesn’t equate or exclusively rely on a big budget. Put time, effort and resources into acquiring a wide and varied assortment of UGC and use it to your business’s advantage.

Countless opportunities and UGC marketing avenues are available for your disposal, allowing you to grow and expand your business faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before. User generated content is a game changer, and with the evolution of shopping trends, will continue to affect and shape eCommerce for many years to come.