UGC content as an effective marketing tool

Today, when almost all small, medium and large businesses have switched to the Internet, marketers face serious problems in preparing content that would combine high relevance. The difficulties are mainly associated with fairly high competition in almost all market segments. Each site posts new material with enviable regularity and it is becoming increasingly problematic to present the market with something new, exciting, unusual. The cost of creating quality content is also increasing. In addition, marketers must also set up communication with the user audience, select such platforms for posting material that would be accessible to as many potential business clients as possible. And with all this, it is necessary to comply with the current trends, otherwise the feedback from the market will be very low.

And even if you manage to launch an advertising campaign taking into account all the current requirements, it will also be necessary to monitor its effectiveness. This is what will allow you to determine the correctness of previously made decisions and, if necessary, make adjustments, adapt the strategy to current changes so as not to waste the advertising budget. This already makes it clear how difficult, complex and extraordinary the task is for modern Internet marketers. Those who are already working in this niche have probably already managed to see this in their own practice. In many situations, when there is simply no idea, advanced technologies, such as UGC content, can be a lifesaver.

In today's review, we will take a closer look at the method in question. We will tell you how to use UGC content to build the most trusting relationships with your target audience, attract new clients to your business, improve your company's reputation and maintain your current positions. In particular, we will highlight the features of such material, its main advantages and disadvantages. We will get acquainted with the main types of UGC content, and provide a number of recommendations that will help stimulate the consumer market to communicate with businesses and publish such material, in particular. We will provide additional advice that will allow you to complete the upcoming work with the highest quality and get an excellent result.

What is UGC content?

UGC content is an abbreviation for User-Generated content. In this case, we are talking about any material that is directly related to a company or brand, which was created by the user audience and posted online for everyone to access. These can be photographs, reviews and any other text publications, short videos, etc. It turns out that people who interacted with the brand express their opinions about its products, services, and cooperation features in any format convenient for them.

Most UGC content is created:

• By the company's clients. They can express a desire to prepare such materials themselves or publish them in response to your request or, as often happens, for a certain incentive: a discount on a subsequent order, a gift, the opportunity to purchase exclusive products, etc.
• Current and former employees of the company. In the first case, we are talking about people who specialize in backstage, showing the consumer market how the business works from the inside. Such material is also called EGC content, that is, Employee Generated Content. Former employees can also leave reviews about working for you, express their own opinion about products and services, because they personally encountered them in practice.
• Special employees, who are now commonly called UGC creators. Their responsibilities include preparing and launching organic user content. They can become part of your team of employees, receiving payment for their work or work on a barter basis. The latter option is quite attractive for business. The main thing is to find a specialist who may be interested in your products or services, and on a permanent basis.

As a result, all these people become your assistants in promoting the brand. This means that you need to actively work on attracting them.

What UGC content should be like

If you want to get UGC content that will have a positive impact on your business as a whole, will contribute to increased recognition, improved reputation, and an influx of user audience, it is necessary that such material combines 3 key features:

1. Authenticity. You must understand that we are talking about material that will be as natural, informal, and honest as possible. And it is important that this is noticed not only by search bots, but also by ordinary people. Those whom you want to attract to your business. The absence of a commercial note in it will automatically contribute to an increase in the level of trust from the target audience.
2. Efficiency. Statistics show that material posted on the Internet by real people attracts an average of 30% more user audience than original content prepared by specialists based on the unique technical offer of the company. This is due to natural human psychology. Namely, the tendency to trust reviews from people, even strangers, more than directly from the supplier of goods or services.
3. Creativity. If marketers, when developing their strategies, strictly follow current trends, think through the structure of each publication to the smallest detail, change the content several times, try to bring everything literally to perfection, then UGC content will stand out against this background. At least in its originality. People who do not specialize in such work very rarely follow general trends. This helps them create unique material, which, in turn, can significantly refresh the brand, add a special twist and originality to its online representation.

What advantages does UGC content offer to business?

Despite the fact that UGC content began to be used on the market several years ago, it is considered a fairly new technology. In practice, it has already shown good results and has become a kind of trend in marketing in many business niches. Over 80% of specialists who have already used this tool speak positively about it, in particular pointing out that UGC content allows you to solve a number of pressing business problems:

• Increasing loyalty from the target audience. We have already said that such user content provides a more truthful and objective view of a certain product or service. People express their own opinions, share their impressions. This is what allows others to understand what products they are dealing with and make a decision for themselves about the advisability of buying it. There is no editing, staged effects. This is relevant for many areas of business. As an option, in the beauty industry, potential buyers are interested in knowing whether there was an effect from this or that cream, mask. They want to hear the real opinion of people who have already tried them on themselves. This is quite reasonable, as it can save money by refusing a rash purchase. If the overwhelming majority of customer opinions are positive, then the rest of the audience will be more loyal to the store and its products. As a result, this will affect the increase in the number of orders and, accordingly, profits.
• The opportunity to find out an unbiased opinion about your products and services. Here you need to be prepared for the fact that not all reviews will be positive. In any case, among your customers there will be those who will not like the product for a number of reasons. Do not be too upset about this. On the contrary, you should carefully study the negative reviews, evaluate their objectivity, and correct the problem that the buyer has identified in your products or services. Also in this case, it will be necessary to contact the dissatisfied customer, offer him, as an option, an additional discount or a new product in which the shortcomings have already been eliminated. This is what will allow you to regain the trust of a certain person, get a repeated, already positive review from him, and also show the audience that you are objective about reasonable criticism and are ready to correct your mistakes.
• Significant savings on advertising and content preparation in general. Any advertising campaign is, first of all, the preparation of a fairly impressive volume of original content. This requires time, money to pay for the services of specialists who will write it, the use of special equipment, services, and programs. For those who are just starting out in the market, such costs can be quite significant. And does it make sense if a significant share of materials can be obtained completely free of charge from your customers? In this case, it will be quite simple to develop an interaction strategy in which buyers would voluntarily leave their own opinions. Motivation works well here, in particular offering discounts, bonuses, cashback, exclusive products, etc. In any case, the costs for this will be significantly lower than paying for full-fledged commercial content making.
• Positive impact on the SEO indicators of the site. UGC content has a positive impact on the ranking of the site by search bots. It is characterized by a number of parameters that crawlers pay special attention to. In particular, we are talking about the uniqueness of the content, its authenticity, and its usefulness for the consumer market as a whole. As a result, the pages to which this content will lead will earn a higher authority among search engines, which will contribute to better ranking. In addition, detailed reviews or feedback will in any case include key queries that are directly related to the product, company, as well as backlinks, which can rightfully be called one of the main components of external optimization of the resource. In addition, the presence of reviews, comments on pages from buyers is what will make other people stay longer on your site. This will also play a positive role in improving behavioral indicators. That is, the presence of UGC content on the official representatives of your business on the network is this is what will help improve its position in search results.
• Expanding the user audience. When people share their opinions about your business, for example, in their social media accounts, they will advertise you and your products, and absolutely free of charge for all their subscribers. At the same time, the reach of the target audience will increase, engagement will increase, which will have a positive effect on interest in the business and its development as a whole. Moreover, it is quite simple and effective to ensure communication with the brand through social networks.
• Increasing the effectiveness of launched advertising campaigns. We have already mentioned above that the user audience is more willing to interact with the materials of ordinary people than with carefully planned and professionally prepared content, advertising campaigns on which a considerable amount of money was spent. But we want to draw your attention to the fact that UGC content, with all its advantages, cannot replace the classic advertising strategy. It will complement it, will contribute to improving the results, but it is impossible to completely exclude commercial promotion of the business.

However, along with these fairly significant advantages, UGC content still has its weaknesses. They must be taken into account without fail in order to avoid serious mistakes in practice.

The Main Disadvantages of UGC Content

When using UGC content in practice, you should also be prepared for the fact that this strategy can play a cruel joke and damage the reputation of your business. Here are the main points you need to know:

• The presence of negativity in user materials. So many people - so many opinions. This means that even the highest quality product or professional service can cause not only satisfaction but also disappointment in the user audience, which they will mostly express in their publications. Above, we have already briefly discussed how to deal with negative reviews. In particular, you should understand what caused them and try to eliminate the existing problem. This will give more benefit to your business than exclusively positive reviews. On the contrary, the latter are alarming to the consumer market. They are often perceived as ordered and the level of trust in them drops sharply. That is, you should not be afraid of negativity: show your target market how professional your service is, how sincerely you want to help solve the problem.
• The need for constant monitoring. As a business owner or representative, you must clearly understand what content about you is left online by clients and former employees. It's one thing if we're talking about services owned by your company and quite another if these are personal accounts of people on social networks or any other platforms. But in any case, all such publications must be carefully monitored. In some cases, it would be a good idea to involve additional specialists who will monitor UGC content and promptly identify offensive content, negativity, and spam. These tasks can also be automated by using specialized services designed to track reputation both on social platforms and in the media. In this case, you just need to set the appropriate settings, namely, specify the words that the program will focus on when monitoring publications. Often, the name of the company, brand, or type of product that you supply to the market is specified.
• Distrust of reviews from the target audience. Due to the fact that the Internet has recently been literally flooded with custom reviews, the launch of hidden advertising by bloggers, people are gradually losing faith in such responses. What is especially alarming is that all publications have a similar style, similar content and an exclusively positive meaning. That is, you must understand that even UGC content that is obtained naturally will still not work 100%. There will still be people who will not believe it.

As you can see, the negative component of UGC content is not so clear-cut. This means that you should not discard this technology from consideration, because it is ready to provide a lot of advantages for almost any business. But you just need to delve into this topic in more detail and understand what exactly you are dealing with.

User UGC content: main types

Different marketing channels can be used to promote a business on the Internet using UGC content. You just need to navigate their varieties and choose one or more options that will be more convenient and effective in your case. So, the following types of UGC content are the most popular today:

1. Reviews. One of the most important types of UGC content, as it has a direct impact on business development indicators. Reviews can be posted on any sales channels, including the official website of your company, on marketplaces, message boards, social networks, Google maps, etc. This is what allows potential buyers to study the opinions of those who have already placed orders with you and draw conclusions about the advisability of the purchase. The more reviews are collected on the online representations of your business, the better. This will indicate to the target market your active work, and will also help to form a brand reputation. Again, if among the mass of positive ones there are periodically negative user opinions, it is not a big deal. Just try to respond to them in a timely manner and smooth out the conflict situation. The most valuable for you, as a business representative, will be reviews supplemented with photos or videos. This will indicate that the opinion was left by a real person who tried your product in practice, was convinced of its quality or, on the contrary, identified certain shortcomings for themselves.
2. Comments. This is one of the simplest formats of UGC content. Most people leave such publications spontaneously, even without prior motivation. Alternatively, they saw a post on one of the social networks about a product that interests them. So they can immediately ask a question about it to determine the feasibility of purchasing it for themselves. In the same way, they can leave their own opinion under a post with a product that they have already used, take part in a discussion, etc. The material, where comments are present, will indicate that the publication itself caused a particular reaction in users and they would like to express their opinion. In this way, you can cover a fairly large user audience. Moreover, the discussion will be caused not only by your material, but also by all the comments that other readers will leave. In this case, it is advisable for you to add your own statements in response to the user ones. This way, you will ensure interaction with your target audience, and will be able to show that you are interested in people's opinions. By the way, comments can be placed under absolutely any type of posts.
3. Post publications on social networks. Such UGC content will include all the materials that people post on their personal pages, but at the same time indicate the name of your store or add the appropriate hashtag. These can be both regular posts and reels, stories. Each individual such material can be completely dedicated to the product or brand, or simply mentioned, as an option in the form of a hashtag. That is, the presence of any mark related to your business or product is a mandatory condition for classifying the publication as UGC content. That is, if this or that person writes a post about your product on their account, posts a photo of your product, but does not mark the store or company in any way, this will not bring any benefit to your business. The fact is that others who see this publication will not be able to associate it with your company and, accordingly, will not go to your site, will not place orders. Tell your clients this and ask them to add a hashtag or your company name to the materials they publish on their social networks.
4. Reviews. A fairly large volume of UGC content, which can mostly only be obtained from interested, creative people. These are mainly those who specialize in blogging, content makers. Such material will be as informative as possible, well-thought-out in structure, supplemented with high-quality edited video, original photographs. There will also be an objective assessment, mostly without taking into account personal preferences. For those who specialize in content making, writing such reviews is a great way to show yourself, confirm your expertise, and attract customers. In this case, you have the opportunity to get professional material absolutely free of charge. But still, the work of the specialists who will prepare such publications for you should be paid for in most cases. Not everyone is ready to spend time preparing professional material, so to speak, for free. Reviews are mainly published on social networks, as well as on YouTube.
5. Ambassadorship. UGC content, which can rightfully be called top. In this case, we are talking about a fairly long-term cooperation with a person who can be called an opinion leader. In this case, the influencer will periodically publish material dedicated to your brand in their online presence, attracting the attention of their subscribers to it. But in this case, you should already understand that you will have to pay for such services. This can be either a full fee or free use of the product, provision of bonuses or some other benefit. Unlike classic influencer marketing, ambassadorship is different in that you interact with people who really value your brand, constantly use your products and are quite sincerely ready to share their own opinion with their audience. In some cases, you can find a person who will promote your favorite company completely free of charge. The only thing left is to find such an ambassador.
6. Video content. Over the time of UGC content existence on the market, we can confidently say that such materials posted on the YouTube platform, on average, attract 10 times more views than professionally prepared publications from the brand itself. A similar situation is also observed in social networks, as an option in the same Instagram or TikTok. And this is not surprising, since it is video content that allows you to reveal in detail all the features of the product, to show it, so to speak, from all sides. Modern users are very into reviews, unpacking and other similar formats. They engage the audience, help increase brand awareness and loyalty to it.
7. Launching a campaign with hashtags. This solution is often used in the process of launching challenges and contests. In this case, the brand specifies the conditions for such an event on its pages, and other people strictly follow the instructions and complete the task. A mandatory condition here will be indicating the hashtag. But again, here you need to somehow interest your audience, as an option to offer additional discounts or a trial product to people who are active and prepare the most publications. That is, you need to cover as large an audience as possible. The presence of such publications in the same social networks of people who take part in the campaign will attract the attention of their subscribers, which will automatically ensure good audience coverage and attract attention to your business.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can use either one of the UGC content options or combine different solutions, thereby ensuring maximum coverage of the potential audience, getting an influx of people into your business and, as a result, increasing profits.

We encourage clients to create UGC content

The fact that UGC content works in practice and gives quite good results is already a fact. But the main task here is to encourage the user audience to create and publish such material. And this is quite a difficult task. Some people simply do not like to leave comments and reviews, others physically do not have enough time for such work, and others simply do not consider it necessary to talk about their own experience of interacting with your online store or any services. But still, it is important for modern businesses to receive UGC content. And this means that it is in your interests to motivate your audience accordingly. And the following solutions can be used to implement this task:

• Providing bonuses. It will be much easier for people to whom you offer a certain reward for their publication to prepare such content. They will have a good incentive to do so. And today, this type of reward can rightfully be called one of the most effective and popular. The main thing is not to be too modest and greedy. Offer bonuses even for a small comment. But if a person tries and prepares a full review, supplemented with their own photo and/or video content, then the size of the bonuses should be more impressive. To begin with, make it a rule to send out a newsletter to customers who ordered goods or services from you a few days after they receive the product, use it, and check the quality. Alternatively, this could be a message to email or messenger. Specify the terms and rewards, such as a discount on an additional purchase, bonus points that they can use at any time, free shipping, the opportunity to be among the first to buy limited-edition products, etc. But in any case, it should be equivalent to the effort that a person will spend on preparing UGC content for you.
• Release a product to the market that people will want to sincerely tell their subscribers about, and the whole world as a whole. It should be something exclusive, unusual, but at the same time useful. Something that will significantly simplify people's daily work, increase the comfort of their lives. At the same time, the product itself should not be too expensive. Such that it could be used en masse. This is what will allow you to reach a large target audience and ultimately get the maximum UGC content. This is the case when you can get user material absolutely free. Figuratively speaking, one person will use your product, tell others about it. They in turn will also want to try it, buy it and will also tell their audience further, as if bragging that they also have a similar exclusive. It is advisable to brand such products well so that the consumer market develops a clear association with your company. This will help distribute other products more effectively. But here you will have to rack your brains a little over what kind of product it should be.
• From time to time, launch various giveaways, competitions and other interactive activities through your online presence. This is what will attract the user audience to your brand, facilitate communication and, as a result, publish UGC content. The only thing is, don’t be too clever with this. Complex tasks that require a lot of effort and time from people to complete are unlikely to cause a massive stir, which means they won’t bring you the desired result. The simplest solutions here are to leave a comment under a particular post, make a note in a story indicating your company. But still, if you require creativity from your clients, then the prizes in such giveaways should be worthwhile. Otherwise, you won’t get the return you expect.
• When involving ambassadors in the creation of UGC content, you should also understand what you can offer them. We have already mentioned above that these should be people who really appreciate your product and are ready to tell others about it in their publications, as an option in social networks. But you must understand that such material is primarily interesting to you. Therefore, offer a person a good reward and you can be sure that he will show himself to the maximum and prepare publications that will attract a huge number of new clients to you.
• Use little tricks. To encourage your clients to leave UGC content after working with you, do so in order to surprise the person, offer him something that was not available in previous orders. As an option, you can use designer packaging, which will make the product visually more attractive, expensive. You can also add small compliments to each order. Even a small postcard with wishes can evoke a pleasant emotion in a person, make him smile and note this moment in his comment or review. Another interesting idea is to release limited collections of goods on the eve of the holidays. This way, you can stimulate the creation of creative videos or posts for a certain event, which have every chance of going viral and being widely distributed across social media accounts. The main thing is to launch everything in time.
• Personalize your products. Let us note right away that it will be much more difficult to implement this in practice than other methods of motivating people to create UGC content. In addition, it is not suitable for all products. But still, if you manage to provide a special approach to each client, you can be sure that there will be a response. Here you can bet on the introduction of certain services specifically for a particular client. In this case, engraving can be used, providing a small gift that will be an addition to a completed purchase, etc. That is, do everything that can increase loyalty on the part of the user audience and make them want to contact your store.

All these methods mostly come down to one thing - providing your customers with some additional benefits, privileges. Think about what it could be. But again, don't be too stingy. And then the return will be maximum - you will fully justify all the invested funds.

Additional tips for working with UGC content

Here are some simple tips that will help you set up the most effective and trouble-free work with both the UGC content itself and the user audience as a whole:

• Never leave user reviews and comments without attention. Be sure to respond to them, both positive and negative. In the latter case, your task is to minimize the negativity. Show the person that you are sincerely sorry and want to fix the situation. This is what will make you interested, loyal, and reliable in the eyes of your clients.
• Never distribute your clients' publications without permission. If you see that one of your customers has left a review of your product or service in their feed, contact them and ask for permission to post this material on their pages. It is possible that people do not want excessive publicity, and they posted the content on their pages exclusively for a narrow circle of friends. Having permission is what will allow you to avoid problems related to copyright infringement.
• Even if you managed to get the appropriate permission, be sure to indicate the copyright when transferring content to your pages. This way, you will show the person that you appreciate their work and do not take credit for their merits. Moreover, anyone who wants to can easily verify that this is not a commissioned material, but a real review from a specific person.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated in these recommendations, and you can easily implement them in practice. But you will act within the law and will not cause any negativity from the consumer market, namely those people who prepared and published UGC content.

Let's sum it up

UGC content itself is an extremely effective tool that should be used in practice by any Internet marketer, regardless of what products or services they work with. In any case, here you will need to select a creative methodology that will stimulate people to interact with your brand, and this will be voluntary and mostly free. This is what will ultimately ensure the rapid development of your business, increased recognition, loyalty from the consumer audience, and improved trust. The only thing is to approach the implementation of your ideas as comprehensively and professionally as possible.

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