UGC Strategy: Boosting Visibility and Sales With Customer Content

Wish you could easily get great content for your social platforms? Wondering how to leverage user-generated content (UGC) in your marketing? 

In this article, we’ll explore UGC strategy

What Is User-Generated Content?

In today's digital age, UGC has become a powerful tool for businesses to connect with their audience and build brand loyalty. 

UGC is any content created and published by users of a platform or brand, typically on social channels. This can include text posts, images, videos, reviews, and more. UGC is valuable because it provides authentic, relatable content that often resonates more deeply with audiences than brand-created content. It's a way for customers to share their experiences and perspectives about a product or service, which can be incredibly influential for potential buyers. 

UBC is a natural extension of influencer marketing. “The value of influencers is not just the amplification [of products and services], but also the sheer content creation,” says Neal Schaffer, a fractional CMO and author of The Age of Influence.   

The Benefits of a UGC Strategy for Marketing

Incorporating UGC into your social media marketing strategy offers several advantages that can significantly impact your brand's success and help ease you off the content hamster wheel:

• Authenticity: UGC provides a genuine perspective on your product or service from real users. In a world where consumers are increasingly skeptical of traditional advertising, authentic content from peers can be far more persuasive and signal trust.

• Social Proof: When others see customers using and enjoying your product, it builds trust and credibility. This social proof can be a powerful motivator for potential customers who are on the fence about making a purchase.

• Increased Engagement: UGC often generates more interaction and discussion among your audience. When people see content created by their peers, they're more likely to engage with it, share it, and create their own content in response.
• Cost-Effective: Leveraging content created by your users can reduce your content creation costs. Instead of constantly producing new content in-house, you can curate and share high-quality content from your community.
• Diverse Perspectives: UGC brings in a variety of viewpoints and experiences related to your brand. This diversity can help you reach and resonate with a broader audience, showcasing different ways your product or service can be used or appreciated. 

Neal explains that businesses have changed how they create content for social media over time. In the past, it was easier to make simple text posts on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. Then, Instagram made it important for brands to have good visuals. Now, short videos are popular, which can be challenging for many businesses to create well and be seen by the algorithm. 

This is where UGC can help. UGC allows you to create less content yourself and tap into the voices of others to help feed not just your organic social media content but also your paid social media content.

Studies show ads with UGC often work better than ads made by the company itself. For example, a nail polish company, Revel Nail, used UGC of Instagram users showing the nail colors on their nails on their website's shopping cart page. This small change led to a 2% decrease in the abandoned shopping cart rate, which they estimate saved them $400K.

“There's a lot of data that says that the average consumer actually wants more user-generated content,” Neal explains. “And when they see it on the website, they are immediately attracted to it, and they'll start digging through it, and they want more and more.”

#1: How to Encourage UGC  

Change Your Mindset

The first step in starting with UGC is to change your mindset. 

For example, when Disneyland started their Instagram account in 2013, they made a big decision. Even though Disney is a famous brand, they chose to use only content created by their visitors on their Instagram. They did this because they saw that guests were already making lots of great, authentic content about their trips.

While you might sometimes need to post your own content for things like sales or announcements, try using customer-created content for most posts.

This approach has two main benefits:

• It gives you a lot of content to use.
• The content feels more authentic and honest to other customers.

Create ‘Instagrammable Moments’ for Your Customers 

The best way to generate UGC is organically instead of paying for it. Neal recommends designing physical spaces or experiences that naturally encourage people to take photos and share them on social media. 

For example, restaurants might create visually appealing corners or backdrops specifically for photos. Even if you don't have a physical location, consider how to make your product or packaging photo-worthy. 

If you're a business-to-business (B2B) company, getting UGC can be more challenging, but it's still possible. For example, you could send personalized emails to customers, including videos about them. Get creative with how you thank customers. For instance, you could send branded items (like t-shirts) to new customers or give unique gifts to loyal customers who've been with you for a year. 

The goal is to find ways to make your business customers want to share about you visually on social media. Then, you can use what they share in your own marketing campaigns.

For example, Glossier, a popular cosmetics brand, designed their flagship stores with numerous photo opportunities, encouraging Gen Z and millennial customers to take selfies and share their experiences on social media. This strategy has resulted in a constant stream of UGC featuring their brand and products.  

If you don't have an obvious “Instagrammable moment” for your brand, remember that these moments are about customers experiencing your brand. Create word of mouth on social media if you're just starting and don't have customers yet.

To do this, get your product into people's hands. This is called “influencer gifting.” Find people who talk to the audience you want to reach, and offer them your product for free in exchange for creating content about it. They can share this content on their own social media or give it to you to use.

For example, let's say you're promoting your new book. You could send gift boxes to influencers who might talk about your book. The boxes could include fun trinkets, a small treat, fluffy packaging, and the book itself. Essentially, you want to create a fun, photo-worthy unboxing experience for the influencer, making it more likely that they will take a picture with the book and all the other items and share it on social media.

When users share content featuring your brand, engage with them. Like, comment, and share their posts. This interaction can encourage them and others to create more content. For example, Neal posted a story about a sangria flight at California Pizza Kitchen. When they reposted his story, he wanted to post more about them in the future.  

Remember, the key to successful UGC is fostering genuine connections with your customers and making them feel valued as part of your brand community. 

Collaborate With Influencers and Content Creators

Partner with influencers or professional content creators to generate high-quality UGC. This can jumpstart your UGC efforts, inspire your regular customers to create content, and bring diversity to your social feeds, website, and marketing materials. 

UGC has become so popular that an entire industry has grown around it. Now, professionals called “UGC creators”specialize in making content that looks like it's from regular users, even if they're not actual customers or influencers. You can find these creators on various platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram (using #UGCcreator), Fiverr, or Upwork. These creators often charge small fees to make short videos featuring your product.

These professionals can create authentic content that aligns with your brand, giving you more control over the quality and messaging. For example, Neal hired someone on Fiverr for $60 to create a 15-second TikTok video about his free LinkedIn eBook. All he had to do was send them a picture of his book cover, and they made a compelling video that he plans to use in future advertising campaigns. This example shows that getting UGC-style content doesn't have to be expensive, which can be helpful for businesses just starting out with this strategy.

Neal recommends choosing the type of person that will attract your target audience. When working with these creators, give them creative freedom rather than strict scripts. Be open to diverse interpretations of your brand. This approach often results in more authentic and diverse content that can resonate with different segments of your audience. 

“The golden rule of influencer marketing is you're collaborating with content creators that are better at what they do than you are,” Neal says.

Use Hashtags Effectively

Next, develop a unique, memorable hashtag for your brand, product, or specific campaigns. Place this hashtag prominently on your packaging, in your store, on your website, or in your social media bio. Encourage customers to use the hashtag when sharing content related to your brand.

For example: “Check out our gallery of happy Samsung customers. Do you want to get featured here? Make sure you upload a photo of what your Samsung frame looks like with this hashtag.” This approach encourages customers to share content and makes it easy for the brand to find and curate that content. 

Even small businesses or communities can successfully implement UGC marketing strategies to boost their online presence and engagement using hashtags.

Neal shares a success story about a travel consultant in Australia who effectively uses UGC for small beach towns. She manages Instagram accounts for two tiny towns, running them like tourism bureaus. Her strategy is simple but effective: she encourages visitors to use specific hashtags for each town and fills the social media accounts almost entirely with this UGC. This creates a cycle where people use the hashtags hoping to be featured, providing more content for the accounts. 

The results are impressive, especially considering the scale. The two towns have a combined population of only 22K, but the hashtags have been used over 16K times. She achieves this by consistently reminding people to use the hashtags and then sharing the content created with those hashtags. 

Run Contests and Giveaways

To generate UGC and increase brand awareness, you can also organize contests encouraging users to create and share content featuring your product. To motivate participation, offer prizes like product discounts, gift cards, or exclusive experiences. But make sure the giveaways and contests are relevant to your product and business. 

For example, ELF Cosmetics created a song and asked users to create lip-sync videos showing off their eyes, lips, and face. The campaign went viral, generating billions of views. This creative approach generated a massive amount of UGC and increased engagement.

Another example is Lululemon's “Sweat Life” campaign, which encouraged customers to share photos of themselves working out in Lululemon gear. This campaign tapped into the brand's existing active community and generated thousands of entries, creating a wealth of authentic content for the brand.

The more influential your brand, the easier it is to generate UGC, as more people want to be part of your channel.

While it's easier for big, well-known brands to get people to create content about them, there are still ways for smaller companies or startups to encourage people to create content about your brand:

• Make sure the content relates to your brand.
• Try to connect with what your community wants or needs.
• If you're trying to reach younger people on TikTok, make it fun.

Remember, creating a hashtag relevant to your brand and community is a great starting point for building a larger community around your brand. The key is to find creative ways to engage your audience while staying true to your brand identity.

Ultimately, you want to create a flywheel of UGC where you use hashtags on your profile, remind people to use them, share content people make, and run contests/giveaways regularly. You probably won't get every customer to participate, but even if a small number do, you'll have lots of content to share on your own pages. You want people to post to social media in a way that would encourage other people to do the same—to check out your business or potentially buy your product. 

“I think at the end, it's really continuing that relationship and ideally driving those people that you engage with and hopefully creating some sort of deeper relationship with them. Because they are content creators, they are willing to go to bat for you and take a photo or video and post it on their personal profile, which is actually asking a lot,” Neal says.

“And if they really enjoy your product, then hopefully they'll want to take the next step. To me, that is the establishment of a more formal community where you can activate user-generated content on a more regular basis. That's where we begin to get more into the influencer marketing of having an army of people that will want to talk about us on a regular basis.”

#2: Take Your UGC to the Next Level: Build a Brand Ambassador Program

If you're ready to take your UGC strategy to the next level, consider creating a brand ambassador program. This involves cultivating a community of passionate customers who regularly create content and advocate for your brand.

Key elements of a successful brand ambassador program include:

• Exclusive Benefits: Offer special discounts, early access to new products, or other perks to your ambassadors.
• Regular Engagement: Host virtual or in-person events for your ambassadors to foster community and provide value.
• Education and Support: Offer training or resources to help your ambassadors improve their content creation skills.
• Collaboration Opportunities: Facilitate connections between ambassadors for potential collaborations.
• Product Feedback: Use your ambassador community as a source of valuable feedback on your products or services.

For example, Adobe's brand ambassador program for Adobe Express generates content, provides Adobe with crucial product feedback, and fosters a sense of community among creative professionals. Adobe invests in flying ambassadors to events like Adobe Max, which results in a wealth of content, social interactions, and valuable product feedback, which in turn creates a great return on investment (ROI) 

“The true community is one where the brand is not doing the talking, but it's the community doing the talking with each other. And the brand is always the center of the conversation, “Neal says. “I think any brand, whether you have 5 customers, 50, or 100, if you can just start with a small group of customers, you can get together even virtually on a regular basis and start there.”

Another example is a European consumer packaged goods company that brings in professional influencers to train their smaller brand ambassadors in skills like photography, videography, and personal branding. This approach helps improve the quality of UGC while also providing value to their ambassador community.

Tips for Implementing a UGC Strategy

As you begin incorporating UGC into your marketing efforts, keep these tips in mind:

• Start Small: You don't need a large following to begin leveraging UGC. Start with your existing customers, no matter how few, and gradually build from there. 
• Be Clear About Usage Rights: Always ask for permission before using someone's content, and be transparent about how you plan to use it. This helps build trust with your community and avoid potential legal issues.
• Maintain Quality Control: While authenticity is key with UGC, ensure that the content you share aligns with your brand values and messaging. You may need to curate the content you receive to maintain a consistent brand image.
• Experiment and Iterate: Try different approaches to encouraging and using UGC. Pay attention to what resonates with your audience and adjust your strategy accordingly. 
• Make It Easy for Users: Provide clear instructions and make creating and sharing content as simple as possible for your audience, like providing specific hashtags and guidelines for content creation.
• Recognize and Reward Contributors: Show appreciation for those who create content about your brand. This can be as simple as a shoutout or as elaborate as featuring them in your marketing materials. Some brands offer loyalty rewards, discounts, or even monetary compensation for top contributors.
• Integrate UGC Across Social Media Channels: Don't limit UGC to just social media. Consider incorporating it into your website, email marketing, and even physical marketing materials. For example, some brands use UGC on product pages or in the checkout process to boost conversions.

Measure and Analyze Results: Track the performance of your UGC efforts. Look at engagement rates, conversion rates, and other relevant metrics to understand the impact on your business. Use this data to refine your strategy and demonstrate the value of UGC to stakeholders in your organization.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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