User-Generated Content
Everything You Need To Know About It
The marketing ecosystem is highly volatile and ever-changing with nee trends, tools, and technologies coming to the marketers’ rescue every day.
Most of these are successful for the short term but rarely there comes a mantra that can deliver long-term success. And user-generated content (UGC) falls in the long-term category.
UGC has been called “The future of marketing” by experts from the industry. We have explained everything about UGC to prove this statement.
What Is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content or UGC is when users create & share content on digital platforms especially social media – be it images, selfies, videos, gif, texts, or any other.
In the marketing context, brands term UGC as any form of content created & shared by users that relate to or affects the brand & its products. Social media platforms with 3.5 billion active users have become a hub of user-generated content.
Why Is User-Generated Content Important For Marketers?
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Build Trust Among Consumers
User-generated content is driven by users’ real experiences, honest opinions, ideas, valuable feedback, and reviews. Therefore, due to these elements, UGC is the most trustworthy content which brands leverage to build trust.
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Showcase Authenticity & Credibility
Credibility and authenticity are extremely crucial for brands & marketers as it helps the users to trust the marketing information and messages of the brands.
For marketers, they put a lot of effort to display credibility so that they can attract & engage with maximum consumers.
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Displays Brand Advocacy & Loyalty
What is that brands and marketers crave for? It is having a lot of loyal customers that voluntarily create positive word-of-mouth about the brand to other users.
User-generated social media displays are a great presenter of brand advocacy and how existing customers are satisfied and had positive experiences with the brand. It creates a curiosity & desirability for the brand.
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Access To Pool Of Valuable Content
The great part about user-generated content is that it is created by the users voluntarily and is accessible for a brand to leverage in their marketing campaigns.
Creating content in-house requires huge investment into labor and time whereas UGC is available free-of-cost which the marketers can curate and repurpose easily.
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Enhance User Engagement & Interaction
Firstly, UGC is greatly vibrant and diverse that it entices the users to engage with the marketing campaigns. This is as users can relate to the content leading to engagement.
Secondly, when you create hashtag campaigns, it helps in generating a lot of user engagement and UGC creation & contribution to the campaign. So, you get successful campaigns, user engagement, and more UGC with UGC marketing.
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Increases Brand Conversions & Sales
Since UGC is highly trustworthy and engaging for the users, it leads to increased conversions and sales for the brands. As UGC immensely influences the users’ purchasing decisions.
That is why brands have started turning the user-generated content into shoppable content over social platforms to sell their products.
Facts About User-Generated Content
- Over 90% of users trust UGC while making online purchase decisions.
- 85% users say that UGC on a website influences their purchasing decisions
- Over 55% of the users say they want to UGC images & videos from brands
- Sites featuring UGC get 20% increase in return visitors
- UGC increase email click-through rate by 73%
- Ads featuring user-generated content get 5 times higher click-through rate
- UGC posts shared on social media platforms receive a 28% higher engagement rate
Key Challenges With UGC Marketing
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Content Authenticity
It is not necessary that every piece of content from users is authentic and reliable. So, it is important to check & review the authenticity of the content and remove any fake adulterated content.
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UGC Rights
Managing rights for users’ content is crucial since as a brand you do not own that piece of content and the rightful authorization from the user is important for you to leverage it in your marketing campaigns.
Best UGC Marketing Campaigns From Brands
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GoPro
First & foremost is this amazing brand – GoPro. It is an American technology company that builds globally-popular action cameras. They are at the forefront of UGC marketing.
GoPro’s social media profiles are filled with user-generated images and videos captured by their customers using the GoPro cameras. Be it Instagram or Facebook, or even YouTube.
They perfectly leverage hashtag campaigns and gamification strategies to entice users to engage with the brand and create UGC for them. They then repurpose this UGC to build trust and increase sales.
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CLUSE
Cluse is a global fashion brand that has taken the UGC marketing to the next level. Cluse features a UGC gallery on their website where the users can shop the look seen in these UGC posts.
They encourage users to share images of them wearing Cluse merchandise and share it with Cluse on social media or upload directly to the website. Then they turn these UGC posts into shoppable posts and display it as a shoppable gallery where visitors can shop the displayed look.
Cluse even shares UGC posts on their social media profiles especially on Instagram where they leverage shopping features to sell their products.
How To Create A UGC Campaign For Your Brand
There are a lot of solutions to leverage user-generated content for marketing but one of the best solutions is to use a UGC platform.
A UGC platform is a tool that helps you discover and curate all the relevant and valuable user-generated content into a single feed and display is across different marketing channels.
These channels include but not limited to websites, events, digital outdoor advertising, email campaigns, social advertising, eCommerce stores, etc.
With a social media wall or UGC platform, you get the amazing functionalities like making customizations to the UGC feed, moderating the content quality, adding your own promotions & offers, integrating sponsorship, CTA, shoppable content, and much more.
Some of the platforms offer highly valuable UGC rights management features as well.
Also, the process of curating and displaying is extremely easy that does not require any complex or technical knowledge base. It can be done with minutes with easy management.
Conclusion
User-generated content holds great potential for marketers to create result-driven marketing campaigns and increase their returns on investments.
The best part here is that it is all beneficial for marketers and brands. So, choose a UGC platform and get started with your UGC campaign now to drive positive results for your brand.
