Employ UGC To Increase Engagement And Maximize Your Budget
Is business the same as usual? Maybe it shouldn’t be
With rapid technological advances that keep the playing field in flux and impact consumer behaviors, marketers can’t get too comfortable. If we do, we risk losing our competitive edge and fading into the background.
Stay ahead by identifying a few trends that produce effective results. One example of a growing trend that companies could use more creatively with great success is user-generated content (UGC).
User-generated content is just what the name says: original brand-related content (from images to podcasts) created by consumers and shared on their channels. This Forbes article predicts it will be a top 10 marketing trend dominating in 2024 – and for good reason.
The power of digital word-of-mouth
The sore reality for marketers is that consumers have developed a distrust of advertising and the shrewd skill of tuning it out. This allows UGC to step onto center stage and sing the praises the brand can’t sing itself.
The win is two-fold. Nudging your audience to create brand-specific content increases audience engagement and activates the power of social proof to build trust with your market in a way paid advertisements can’t. In fact, one report noted that 72% of consumers found customer testimonials more credible than what a brand claims about its products. It also lends to a feeling of authenticity while improving conversion rates. Power Reviews reported that audience members who interacted with UGC were 100.6% more likely to convert.
Calvin Klein was willing to experiment with UGC’s potential. They created a whole campaign and landing page around the hashtag #MYCALVINS, encouraging their customers to share their personal Calvin Klein style with a chance to be featured.
Types of user-generated content
Organic content created by real-life customers is the most authentic, and perhaps most exciting, type of UGC a company sees. Some come as the natural outpouring of love for a product, but you can also encourage customers to post about your brand.
In an age where people are looking to share their everyday lives and provide fresh content on their accounts, delivering a visually appealing storefront, beautiful products, and live events can inspire people to make brand-specific social media posts without asking them to.
There’s no shame in asking your audience to post, though. From a straightforward request put out to loyal brand advocates to crafting a campaign that includes a contest, companies have great success at generating low-cost organic content.
Your marketing department should actively and regularly search for online mentions (use an aggregator tool to help you do this) to curate your content collection for repurposing on your various channels.
Here are the main types of user-generated content:
Reviews and testimonials - Brimming with social proof, this form of UGC can be shared across your website and social media.
Photos - This is one of the most common types of UGC where customers share images of themselves using a product or their results with the product. Here’s a tip: when kicking off a UGC marketing campaign to motivate customers to share their photos, be sure to offer hashtags for easier collection, searching, and sharing.
Videos - Social media and YouTube videos are a beautiful partnership of video (another top 10 marketing trend for 2024) and UGC. Many YouTubers share “product hauls” of items they’ve purchased and will feature and explore several brands in a single video. For the marketing teams, this means you have access to engaging content – produced by someone else. Take the video clip where your product is mentioned and share it across your channels for low-cost, authentic marketing.
Social media content - Any mention, tweet, post, etc. that shines a positive light on your brand is marketing gold. Repost if you’re on X (Twitter) or share as a screenshot or graphic on platforms like Instagram.
Blog posts - Bloggers often share personal experiences with a brand, either as a standalone review or a short mention in a larger post.
Whatever type of UGC you choose to share, here’s one best practice you should always implement: give credit to the content’s originator.
To pay or not to pay?
Lastly, while it may seem contrary to the points above about the power of user-generated content, paid UGC is becoming increasingly popular, especially for fledgling brands that don’t have a large customer base to mine for content. While you’re still ultimately paying for the content production, UGC creators are different from influencers in a few ways but where marketing is concerned, what’s most important is that they are way less costly and generally seen as sincere.
Whatever route you take, get creative and stay true to your audience. The rest will come.
Written by Rebecca Collins