UGC is content created voluntarily by users (such as customers) of an organization that makes it public on the internet. UGC content reflects the authenticity, and transparency that encourage the customers to rely on their product and services. As genuine communication between your brand and your website visitors, UGC is the perfect tool to enhance the brand image, leading to more interaction and alteration. As such it is much more effective than the other marketing techniques.
To genuinely leverage the potential of user-generated content (UGC), brands must know how high-converting UGC content drives sales and trust. UGC is a powerful form of social proof and a demonstration of actual usage and satisfaction, thus impacting purchases, driving sales, and establishing trust.
Within this blog, let's explore the best way to create UGC content while presenting successful tactics and examples that will assist your brands in taking full advantage of this valuable asset in boosting interactions and sales. Let's start with UGC's impact!
Contents
Understanding The Power of User-Generated Content
UGC is an important aspect of modern marketing methods, but what makes UGC so efficient? The answer requires us to study the psychology of UGC and its impact on the decisions made by consumers.
Social Proof:
The psychological phenomenon of social proof is one of the major forces that make UGC successful. As social creatures, humans tend to rely on others for confirmation and validation. That is the reason customers rely on genuine user recommendations and their word-of-mouth marketing. It allows them to know more about the use of a product or service by others and their positive reviews solidify their belief in its worth. UGC taps into this social proof tool because it presents genuine users of the product in real situations.
Authenticity:
Authenticity is yet another prime element. UGC is seen as more real than another marketing tool. 86% of brands and retailers believe that the use of more genuine UGC in their paid and owned media would enhance the effectiveness of ads and content. But Why? It is because it comes directly from customers. Indeed, potential customers are more inclined to trust a company and its products when they see consumers share their experiences.
Relatability:
Another key factor that comes into play is relatability. The more a brand shows people like the consumers using the product, the more the consumers will feel a personal connection and identify with the brand. UGC provides brands with a rich variety of users to showcase which makes it easy for the consumers to find someone they can relate to.
Customer engagement:
40% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product after viewing user-generated content (UGC) in an ad. The reason behind this increase in engagement is the originality and easiness of UGC, making it more resonate with consumers than conventional marketing. UGC is an important resource for companies since they can make their products more trustworthy and convincing.
Build Trust:
UGC is crucial in establishing reliable connections between the brands and the customers. Customers trust each other’s reviews to make them feel credible and believable and make them more credible and believable than other marketing methods. This kind of open-source feedback gives confidence and assurance to users since they tend to believe their peers rather than the brand itself. Thus, UGC serves as the means to obtain the two most important things: enhanced brand reputation and customer loyalty. Therefore, UGC is a strategic tool in marketing. 84% of consumers are more likely to trust a brand's marketing campaign when user-generated content is featured.
Understanding the psychology behind UGC is essential to building brand trust, and increasing sales. However, in this context, it becomes important to know how to create user-generated content for your brand so that UGC becomes a more authentic and engaging customer experience. Let's explore this in the next section!
How To Get User-Generated Content for Your Brand: Creative Methods to Get More UGC
Create Impact With Targeted Ad-Hoc Initiatives:
The best way to get UGC content - include an ad-hoc in the UGC campaign. An ad-hoc campaign is a short-term marketing activity that targets and responds to particular events, trends, or opportunities. These campaigns are powerful as they are aimed at a specific audience at relevant times, which increases the possibilities of meaningful interactions. With well-defined goals such as creating buzz or getting user-created content, the ad-hoc initiatives turn out to be engaging by the brands, thus making it a real interaction and adapting more quickly to changing conditions on the market.
Oreo launched an ad-hoc campaign during the 2013 Super Bowl blackout, tweeting, "You can still dunk in the dark." This tweet went viral in a matter of minutes, prompting fans to react with their own unique UGC, praising Oreo's brilliance, and making it a trending topic.
Host A Social Media Contest or Challenge:
Contests and challenges represent suitable strategies to enhance consumer involvement and promote user-generated content. By creating a certain theme or task—like requesting a funny product image or video—and rewarding the best solutions, brands can attain great participation rates and receive essential content. For instance, Starbucks' annual Red Cup Contest invites customers to share photos of their decorative cups, while GoPro runs challenges regularly that motivate users to submit active video recordings and reward the best entries. Such activities create enthusiasm and put forward real and appealing content to be shared.
Incentivize Reviews and Testimonials:
Another best way to create UGC content is to motivate customers to provide reviews or testimonials by offering them perks such as discount codes, loyalty points, or giveaways and, at the same time, make sharing their experiences easy. This method enables the collection of genuine feedback while also the production of valuable and relevant content that is directed at potential customers. For example, Amazon frequently motivates users to contribute reviews by giving them points through the Amazon Vine program while Sephora gratifies those customers who provide product feedback with loyalty points, creating an extensive database of customer insights that lead potential customers to decide to buy.
Feature Customer Stories on Your Channels:
The inclusion of customer stories and experiences on your social media or website can be an effective way to call on more users to create content. Brands regularly share footage of adventures submitted by users, which can lead others to recreate and share their moments. Besides, brands also feature workout stories from customers on Instagram so followers become more loyal to them and get inspiration from other people who set their journeys. Customers feel more connected to the brand when they see their content featured. Furthermore, they are more likely to inspire other people to become contributors.
Create Interactive Polls and Q&As:
To make sure your audience plays a role, involve them in polls, Q&A sessions, and write-ups that include personal stories of brand involvement or usage. The brand also has an easy way to create polls, for example, through using Instagram Stories, and Ask a Question on Twitter or via Flashfeedback like on their website.
Collaborate with Influencers:
Collaborate with influencers or brand ambassadors who have dedicated followings to drive engagement and generate UGC. Glossier, for instance, associates with micro-influencers that genuinely narrate their skin routines, pushing their followers to try and post their results. Moreover, Gymshark collaborates with fitness ambassadors to give out gym vouchers, thus encouraging their followers to document their fitness journeys. Such partnerships are beneficial to both parties as they widen visibility while at the same time ensuring a steady stream of user-generated content. For creating high-performing influencer-based UGC campaigns for your brands connect with a well-experienced influencer marketing agency that has proven success stories of brands and is trusted by top companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Puma, and Yamaha.
Harness The Power of Trending Hashtags:
Hashtags are the best way to get UGC content videos more convincing because they help persuade users to join the campaign by sharing personal videos of them linked with your brand thereby making the content easy to find and reach the widest audience.
The use of hashtags facilitates the quick discovery of your posts and UGC campaigns by your audience. The way it operates is as follows: when individuals respond to your questions or post media such as pictures or videos, they use your hashtag. Their followers can click on your hashtag and view all the related content. As a result, the UGC that is related to your brand gains more eyeballs.
Moreover, how about you encourage the audience to post a hashtag that showcases your products and later, put a spotlight on the UGC such as the retargeting ads? Such retargeting ads have a click-through rate that is 35% higher and a cost-per-click that is 60% lower compared to ads that do not contain UGC (According to Bazaarvoice).
Leverage The Latest UGC Trends in Your UGC Campaign With an established UGC Agency:
The best way to create UGC content with the latest UGC trends and stay ahead of the highly influential competitors is to partner with a well-established UGC agency. Such agencies are experts at the creation and curation of real customer and influencer content, which is something that your intended audience would love. Using their expertise guarantees that your UGC is in line with your brand's messaging, reaches the right audience, and drives engagement. A UGC agency's support brings a simplification to the process enabling you to still work on other things in your company. They take charge of content creation, distribution, and tracking for the best results.
By methodically managing and marketing content created by users, you can develop a more genuine brand identity, enhance trust, and hasten your business expansion.
Real-World UGC Success Stories That Accelerated Sales Growth
Starbucks: White Cup Contest:
Starbucks has introduced its user-generated content campaign called the "White Cup Contest."
Via this campaign, Starbucks guided its customers to display their doodling art capabilities on a small number of limited edition reusable Starbucks plastic cups. Following this, they would be required to publish pictures of the final product on social media accounts using hashtags related to the brand, #WhiteCupContest.
The campaign attracted roughly 4,000 people in only three weeks and altered a winner’s life with $350 worth of gift cards complemented by a $150k skilled job. The campaign spotlighted the robust, reusable cups of Starbucks, which is one of their methods of making sustainability a point of differentiation.
LEGO: LEGO Ideas:
LEGO came up with an exclusive initiative named LEGO Ideas, wherein aspiring designers could send their designs created by LEGO. If a design is selected by 10,000 supporters, LEGO takes it up for a review aimed at making it into a commercial product. The designers are credited by way of royalties for the production of their idea as a real product.
It turned out to be a great opportunity for LEGO as they received the greatest product suggestions from fans and at the same time the customers promoted LEGO products. Certainly, it remains one of the best UGC campaigns up until now.
Conclusion:
Understanding how to get user-generated content, it is necessary to master the generation and dissemination of engaging and authentic user-generated content. It is a fact that UGC is the most powerful factor that builds trust, develops community, and provides social evidence that leads to sales. Your brand is capable of creating a UGC strategy that sells by focusing on what your target audience likes, giving people the chance to be themselves when providing the content, and having the same content on different platforms. Always measure performance so you can adjust the strategy, and, hence, long-term growth and customer loyalty are assured.