Land O’Lakes uses UGC to strengthen partnership with its retailers

Land O’Lakes drives value throughout its business with a best-in-class UGC program

As one of the largest agribusiness and food companies in the U.S., Land O’Lakes boasts a long legacy operating some of the country’s most successful brands. With a focus on dairy products, the company finds itself in an industry not often associated with voice of the customer content.

However, the company uses Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews and leverages the user-generated content (UGC) in a variety of ways to give shoppers the authentic content they trust and provide the company with benefits spanning many areas of the business.

“Reviews are obviously very important in delivering a good experience for the consumer, but they are also rewarding to our broader business,” said Kirsten Salmanowicz, Digital Marketing Platform Manager at Land O’Lakes.

Reviews equip the company with insights and surface new opportunities

Customer feedback plays a vital role in Land O’Lakes’ ability to understand its customers and identify ways to continue offering products they love.

“The voice of the customer helps us discover use cases, trends, and ideas that we might not have thought about on our own. How our marketing, consumer affairs, and recipe creation teams think about our offerings can be very different from a customer’s point of view. The learnings we get from reviews guide many of our product and recipe development decisions,” said Gabi Winkels, Content Marketing Associate at Land O’Lakes.

In one recent example, reviews helped Land O’Lakes catch an issue with a recipe that it could easily rectify.

“Our customers called out that the cinnamon rolls weren’t coming out correctly. We spotted an error with the recipe, and our development team quickly revised the recipe. Hearing from our customers helped make us aware and empowered us to take appropriate action,” said Winkels.

Reviews serve as just one vital component of the company’s success in acquiring a detailed, holistic understanding of its customers.

“We combine data from reviews with our other sources of information and operationalize it across different business units. This includes data visualization platforms and dashboards to give us a quick snapshot into details like average ratings, sentiment, and customer demographics. All of this integration gives us the bigger picture and lets us build the story of the consumer across web, social, and email to really build their profile,” said Salmanowicz.

Increasing retail channel review volume fuels sales success

Sales in the digital retail channel are crucial to the company’s overall success, and UGC strengthens the partnership between Land O’Lakes and its retailers.

“Reviews help demonstrate our value in meetings with retailers. We can show them our thousands of reviews and the added benefits the content is bringing to the product pages on their site,” said Winkels.

Land O’Lakes has distributed more than 30,000 reviews to retail sites in the Bazaarvoice network. This increases the company’s digital shelf space and reaches shoppers where a majority of them buy. In fact, the company sources a vast majority of the reviews on retail sites, meaning those sites did not have any reviews prior to syndication.

Land O’Lakes recently used Bazaarvoice Sampling to collect more than 1,000 of the reviews. The company sent butters and spreads to a select group of customers, and 100% of those who received a sample submitted a review.

Bolstering customer engagement and satisfaction

Brands have many opportunities to interact with customers, but only a few channels showcase a company’s concern for the customer as effectively as responding to reviews. Land O’Lakes sees interacting with customers via reviews as a powerful way to compliment the company’s other efforts in building a positive brand perception and demonstrating its devotion to customer satisfaction.

“We consider reviews another touch point for consumers to talk with us, no different than a phone call or social media post, and they require the same timeliness and care. Consumers are sometimes skeptical of big companies and publicly replying on the website reviews helps build trust,” said Vicky Cherne, Manager, Consumer Affairs & Customer Concerns at Land O’Lakes.

The company also understands the value in negative reviews, which all brands occasionally receive, and leads the way in leveraging the benefits that kind of feedback provides.

“Negative reviews can be a gift. They give us a chance to learn more about a consumer’s experience with our product or recipe, and we can turn around a negative experience to end up with a more loyal fan,” said Cherne.