Why Customer Content Outsells Your Ads

The most persuasive marketing for your brand is not made by you. In a study that matched a brand's online community to real sales, content posted by customers drove far more purchases than the brand's own marketing posts. Your best salespeople are the people already talking about you.

The study

In a 2013 study in Information Systems Research, Khim-Yong Goh, Cheng-Suang Heng, and Zhijie Lin did something rare. They matched a clothing brand's Facebook community against real purchase data, customer by customer, instead of guessing from surveys. That let them measure what social media actually does to spending.

Two findings stand out. First, simply being part of the brand community was worth about 25 dollars more in spending per customer. Second, and bigger, content created by other customers moved purchases far more than content created by the brand itself. The polished, marketer-made posts mattered, but the messy, real posts from fellow shoppers mattered more.

Why customer content wins

The reason is simple: people trust other people more than they trust advertising. A brand telling you it is great is doing its job. Another customer saying it is great is doing you a favour. One is a sales pitch, the other is evidence. The study showed that customers influence each other through both useful information and persuasion, while a brand's own posts mainly persuade. When you are uncertain about a purchase, the word of someone like you cuts through in a way an ad cannot.

What to do

This flips the usual plan. Instead of pouring everything into your own content, spend real effort getting customers to make and share theirs. Give them something worth posting: a product, an experience, or a moment that is genuinely share-worthy. Make it easy, by asking, by featuring their posts, by building a community where they actually want to show up. Then treat that customer content as the main event, not a nice extra bolted onto the "real" marketing.

That is where smart social media and community work pays off. The goal is not just to broadcast, it is to turn customers into a voice for the brand. If you want a brand people want to post about, see how we work or start a project with us.

Sources

• Goh, K. Y., Heng, C. S., & Lin, Z. (2013). Social Media Brand Community and Consumer Behavior: Quantifying the Relative Impact of User- and Marketer-Generated Content. Information Systems Research, 24(1), 88 to 107. DOI: 10.1287/isre.1120.0469.