Maier Sports is a swabian based brand for outdoor gear and functional clothing. Founded over 80 years ago, the brand has grown to be an integral part of the outdoor industry. As functional clothing is best presented in action, Maier Sports began integrating consumer impressions into their marketing by curating UGC via squarelovin.
The Situation
»We think functionality is common sense. For us at Maier Sports, Clothing for Outdoor Activities and Winter Sports has to be superior in three further aspects as well.«
Just outside of Stuttgart, at the feet of the Swabian Alb lie the headquarters of Maier Sports. This is also where it all started over 80 years ago. After initially only producing gear for the trend sports skiing and tennis, the product range has expanded significantly since and Maier Sports has become an integral part of the outdoor industry.
Nevertheless, locality and sustainability remain central aspects of Maier Sport’s brand- identity. To date, most of the roughly 100 employees come from the Swabian town of Köngen and the surrounding areas. Maier Sports specializes in functional pants that are available in a total of 60 different sizes – standard, long, short, tight, loose – providing the perfect fit for everyone. In addition to high-quality materials and an ethically and ecologically responsible manufacturing, the perfect fit describes one of three corporate principles of Maier Sports.
The Challenge
The corporate philosophy of Maier Sports is based on three principles: optimal fit, high- quality and innovative materials as well as ethically and ecologically responsible production. However, to demonstrate the actual practicability and durability of functional clothing are quite difficult to portray using classic product images. The same goes for the aforementioned optimal fit on a variety of body types.
Professional shootings are often expensive and only offer a handful of settings or selected models. The great diversity of Maier Sports customer community, which results out of 60 different sizes for functional trousers, is almost impossible to represent this way. In addition, the credibility of classic advertisements is steadily declining. More and more consumers demand a personal shopping experience that provides inspiration tailored to them.
The Solution
In order to place the marketing focus on the great diversity among customers and provide authentic inspiration on all channels, Maier Sports decided to work with the squarelovin User Generated Content Management Tool early in 2018.
By now the manufacturer for Outdoor Gear prominently displays customer images as a teaser on the brand website, in a large social wall called »inspiration for your next adventure« and on product detail pages. Moreover, UGC is frequently shared via the company’s own social media channels.
User Generated Content, as the name suggests, comes directly from actual customers and therefore is particularly trustworthy and authentic. Unlike professional photos or paid content from influencers, UGC reflects the normal, everyday use of products and thus offers particularly great potential for identification to new customers.
The Result
Through integrating User Generated Content, Maier Sports has successfully pointed out the most unique aspect of the brand: the diversity of its products. Outdoor clothing in particular only really shows its full potential when presented in action. That’s exactly what Maier Sports customers share on their private Instagram channels – from daily walks with the dog to extreme athletic activities. The User Generated Content thus provides multi- facetted and, above all, trustworthy inspiration for new customers who browse through the online shop or visit the brand’s social media account.
At the same time, customers whose content is prominently placed on the brand’s channels feel incredibly valued. This is also represented by the extraordinarily high approval rate of 98.2% for usage rights requests via squarelovin. Within 2 years, Maier Sports has already collected over 600 high-quality customer images through targeted curating of User Generated Content and achieved an on average 2.3x higher Conversion Rate.
Q&A
Why did you decide to work with User Generated Content?
User Generated Content provides us with particularly authentic images and customers trust recommendations from other consumers significantly more than »regular« advertising. Also, UGC is a great way to collect action shots from our products, which we can use for product detail pages. Another advantage is the increase of reach on our social media channels.
What is your main use for User Generated Content?
We use UGC mainly on our social media channels and on the website. On the brand website, we have integrated a teaser and a social wall for inspiration. In addition, we place out User Generated Content on product detail pages.
What is the biggest benefit of User Generated Content for you?
The greatest benefit that we get from the use of UGC is increasing the reach of our social media channels on one hand and on the possibility of making our product detail pages more creative and attractive on the other.
Which tasks does squarelovin take care of for you? Do we expedite your work?
squarelovin curates User Generated Content based on fixed parameters for us and enables us to link products directly to the content on the website.
Martin Klapczynski | Projektleiter Online Marketing | Maier Sports
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