As consumers become more aware of social media marketing campaigns, eCommerce brands are shifting towards more authentic ad creative formats. User-generated content (UGC) is supporting this shift.
UGC allows brands to highlight real customers interacting with their products, effectively cutting through the noise of overproduced ads or social media content. This increases relatability and engagement, ultimately driving higher conversion rates.
In this article, we will dive into why UGC outperforms traditional ad creative formats and the most effective ways you can incorporate them into your marketing strategy.
What Is UGC?
While UGC typically refers to content created by customers rather than brands, many eCommerce brands strategically outsource their UGC to professional content creators or influencers. This approach allows brands to mirror genuine customer experiences while maintaining control over content quality and consistency.
The videos can then be used across different marketing channels.
Some popular types of user-generated content include:
- Reviews & testimonials
- Unboxing videos
- First impression videos
- Tutorials
Why Is UGC So Powerful for DTC Companies?
UGC helps DTC brands build trust, is more cost-effective, and boosts sales. Here are some benefits of UGC campaigns:
- Building Trust: A Stackla study found that UGC is 9.8x more impactful than influencer marketing content. The same survey reports that 79% of people say UGC significantly influences their buying choices.
- Driving Sales: A 2024 Bazaarvoice study reported that brands that incorporate UGC into their marketing see a 144% higher conversion rate.
- Gaining Customer Insights: By incentivizing your customers to produce UGC, you can also gain insights into your target audience, helping you refine your overall marketing strategy and product.
Difference Between UGC and Traditional Ads
User-generated content and traditional ads take two distinct approaches to marketing. To optimize your advertising strategy, it’s important to understand the differences between them:
So, while traditional ads focus on delivering a polished message to promote products, user-generated content is created to push social proof and build authentic connections with your target audience to increase conversions.
6 Ways to Repurpose UGC Across Your Marketing Strategy
Besides driving more brand reach, you can repurpose different types of content from UGC within your marketing strategy to maximize their impact and attract new customers.
A well-defined creative strategy is essential for maximizing the impact of UGC across marketing channels. Before launching a campaign, brands should identify key themes, messaging, and audience preferences to make sure that user-generated content aligns with their goals.
Here are six effective strategies for DTC brands to leverage user-generated content to promote your brand effectively:
1. Use UGC for Paid Ads
Incorporating user-generated content marketing into your paid ad campaigns can increase engagement and improve conversion rates.
Unlike traditional branded content, UGC resonates with audiences because it feels authentic and relatable. Therefore, ads featuring UGC build trust and create a stronger emotional connection with potential customers, making them more likely to engage with your brand.
Malouf, a home and lifestyle brand, effectively used UGC to drive traffic to their Amazon listings. They shortlisted 11 creators to produce engaging content, added a clear call-to-action (CTA), and started running TikTok Spark Ads with that.
Brands that see strong performance from UGC ads should consider developing long-term partnerships with high-performing creators. A structured ambassador marketing program helps brands secure a consistent flow of high-quality UGC while deepening audience trust.
⭐️Tip: Post your UGC organically on TikTok or Instagram Reels. If it performs well organically, put some money behind it.
2. Add Them to Your Website
UGC is a powerful way to build trust with your audience, especially when added to Product Detail Pages (PDPs) and checkout pages.
Featuring customer reviews, photos, and videos on touchpoints where purchasing decisions are made can encourage customers to complete their transactions. This approach creates a sense of reliability, as shoppers see real people enjoying your products.
Digital Beauty Group, a skincare and beauty brand, achieved a 38% conversion rate (CR) per product on their Amazon listings by using different types of UGC (photos, videos, and reviews). Their strategy reduced the need for expensive in-house content production and improved their ROI (Return on Investment).
3. Include Them in Your Organic Social Strategy
Incorporating UGC into your social media marketing is an effective way to engage your audience and showcase your products in a relatable, authentic manner.
Here’s how to use UGC across key social platforms:
- Feed Posts: Share high-quality customer photos or videos to highlight real-life usage of your products.
- Stories And Highlights: Share stories to get high-visibility to snippets of customer testimonials, reviews, or unboxing moments. Save the best ones as highlights so that new followers who browse your page can instantly see how trustworthy your brand is.
- Reels: Publish short, engaging UGC videos like tutorials, unboxing videos, “before and after” clips, and product demos.
Golde, a DTC brand offering natural skin care products, effectively incorporates UGC into its Instagram strategy. Their posts and stories often feature real customers using their products, creating deeper connections with their target audience and increasing brand loyalty.
TikTok
- Partner with creators: Work with UGC creators to generate content that aligns with trending challenges or branded hashtags.
The key to high-impact influencer partnerships is finding creators whose audience naturally aligns with your brand. Rather than selecting influencers based solely on follower count, focus on engagement rate, audience demographics, and past content performance.
- Spark Ads: Promote top-performing UGC ads to expand reach while maintaining authenticity.
- Call-to-action (CTA): Encourage creators to add CTAs like “Check out [your product] on Amazon” to drive external traffic.
Wonderskin, a DTC beauty brand, leveraged UGC on TikTok to drive brand awareness and boost sales. They collaborated with micro-influencers who showcased the unique application process of their peel-off lip stain, creating engaging tutorials and first-impression videos. By promoting the top-performing content through TikTok Spark Ads, Wonderskin expanded its reach while maintaining authenticity, ultimately leading to a significant uplift in sales and brand engagement.
- Community engagement: Share UGC within groups that share the same interests to spark conversations and build trust.
- Carousel ads: Use these images and videos in ads.
- Live videos: Feature them within live sessions to highlight how customers use your products.
Nurture Life, a healthy food brand, achieved improved CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) by running its UGC ads on multiple Meta platforms, including Facebook.
YouTube
- Product Reviews: Collate in-depth customer reviews or tutorials from your audience.
- Shorts: Turn UGC clips into YouTube Shorts to attract a different customer segment and increase brand awareness.
- Playlists: Spotlight customer experiences with a playlist of UGC content.
Javvy Coffee, a concentrated coffee brand, successfully boosted its social media presence by integrating UGC into its YouTube and Instagram strategy. They encouraged customers to share recipes, hacks, and product reviews.
4. Feature Them in Your Marketing Emails
We don't have to tell you how effective emails are for nurturing potential buyers. If you already run regular email campaigns, why not add some social proof using UGC?
Adding user-generated content in your email copies adds evidence to your claims. It shows that the products you are talking about solve problems for real people. This makes them more likely to take action from your emails.
Kai Collective, a DTC fashion brand, regularly sends emails that are embedded with user-generated content to connect with its customers.
Bonus tip: To add a little more credibility and reduce abandoned cart rates, add UGC reviews to your abandoned cart emails. For inspiration, check out this Adidas abandoned cart email strategy that effectively uses UGC to reduce cart abandonment.
5. Add Them as Reviews on Your Product Pages
Product pages with UGC photos or videos give your brand more credibility to new website visitors who are considering your products.
This is especially helpful if visitors don’t have context to your brand from other channels and want to evaluate its popularity and value. With opinions from real customers, they will be more inclined to give your product a chance.
Colorscience is a skincare brand that features UGCs on its product pages and makes them more compelling with star ratings.
Bonus tip: Add a carousel on product pages where users can scroll through product pictures and UGCs. Similarly, if your products have transformative results, add customer-submitted before-and-after pictures.
6. Use Them as Tutorials
Tutorials help answer common customer questions while demonstrating real-life product use cases. They provide transparency and clarity, making them especially valuable for new or innovative products that customers may not fully understand yet.
Repurposing user-generated content into tutorials allows brands to highlight product benefits through the voice of real users, adding credibility and trust. Leverage UGC to create step-by-step guides, walkthroughs, or “how-to” clips that feel more authentic and relatable to potential buyers.
But tutorials don’t just educate. They also sell. Many eCommerce brands incorporate UGC tutorials into social selling strategies, where content is seamlessly integrated into shoppable videos, livestreams, and interactive product demos. A social selling approach allows brands to turn engagement into direct conversions by allowing customers to watch, learn, and purchase…all within the same experience.
For maximum impact:
- Place tutorials on product pages
- Use them in social commerce (TikTok Shop, Instagram Reels, etc.)
- Leverage them in email marketing to answer FAQs and reduce abandoned carts.
Bonus tip: You can curate clips from different UGC videos and create longer tutorials as well. However, make sure the steps that customers talk about portray your products accurately.
Conclusion
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool to engage your audience, build trust, and drive conversions. Whether you’re looking to create ads for conversions, increase brand awareness on social media channels, or optimize your sales through authentic customer experiences, UGC can significantly impact your marketing efforts.
The challenge with UGC is sourcing high-quality content at scale. Many brands struggle with finding the right creators, managing campaigns, and securing usage rights for repurposing.
That’s where the Insense platform comes in. It connects brands with 20K+ vetted UGC creators and simplifies everything from creator sourcing to content licensing, so you can launch high-impact UGC campaigns with ease.
Ready to get started? Book a demo with Insense today!
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Collect More UGC?
You can gather more user-generated content (UGC) by using platforms like Insense, which allows you to connect with vetted creators across various industries. An Easy A Media case study found that product seeding campaigns helped them acquire 100+ UGC assets in 45 days by working with 100 creators from different niches. This strategy resulted in authentic product reviews and testimonials at no cost, boosting their marketing efforts.
What Platform Should I Use to Source UGC?
To source UGC efficiently, you can use Insense. We offer a marketplace of over 20K+ vetted creators across various categories and demographics. Also, you can easily find creators, set your budget, and launch campaigns with features like portfolio reviews, audience data, and campaign tracking.
How is UGC Different From Influencer Content?
UGC is content that customers create about a product or brand, typically in the form of reviews or testimonials, making it more relatable.
Influencer content, on the other hand, is made by creators who are compensated to promote a product, usually with a more polished approach to align with brand messaging.
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