Customer reviews, videos, articles, Instagram, Facebook, or other posts… It’s in every company’s interests to create a content strategy for attracting new clients. UGC Ads are among the new formats arriving on the market. What are they? How do you use them? What benefit do they provide? Get all those answers and more right here!
What are UGC Ads?
UGC stands for User Generator Content. Simply put, user generated content is content that users of your brand post online.
Also called Earned Media, UGC Ads come in many different shapes and sizes. Customer reviews are definitely the most common on e-commerce sites, but there are other possibilities, such as posts on social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) or even videos, which are particularly effective.
Be careful not to confuse UGC Ads with sponsorship campaigns – remember, users that create and post content about a brand are not paid. However, unlike influencers, they don’t necessarily have a large following or influential platform. UGC creators are mainly made up of nano-influencers, who impact the purchasing decision of millions of visitors.
With UGC Ads, the customer is directly integrated into a brand’s marketing strategy.
Note: user generated content works mainly for B2C, but it’s also possible to use it in a B2B context, regardless of the sector of activity.
How to use UGC
In concrete terms, there are several solutions to encourage customer participation in your digital strategy. Here are some examples:
Contests and giveaways
This is all about involving your audience in your social media strategy. For example, if you’re a holiday company, start a giveaway campaign to win a romantic trip for two for the user who posts the best holiday photo in the comments. Then, you get to repost the photos in question for X days, and ask the community to vote for their favourite pictures.
This gives your company ready-made content, and gets you comments and likes from thousands of unique visitors.
For UGC Ads to work, however, several rules must be established:
- Define a schedule (start date, end date)
- Define the final objective and the conditions of participation
- Offer a small reward to those who share
Hashtags
With social media (Instagram especially), user generator content quickly goes viral. This can allow you to reach a large audience and increase your exposure.
For it to be effective, you can use hashtags to start a challenge among followers. This is precisely what Red Bull did with its hashtag “#putacanonit”.
Experience sharing
This is all about offering your customers beautiful experiences, in particular visual ones, or at least Instagrammable ones. For example, a high-end fashion giveaway or a free meal in a 3-star restaurant. Users can then post their experience on Facebook or other social media. Apart from photos, video sharing is definitely the best option. For good reason, too, video is the most compelling content format. It could be an organised trip, a hotel, an activity, etc.
What are the benefits of UGC Ads?
85% of internet users consider UGC Ads to be more relevant than content produced by the brand itself. This digital marketing technique is therefore favourable to consumers, but also, and above all, to businesses.
For consumers
With UGC ads, consumers benefit from a double advantage:
Potential buyers can get more authentic and honest information about products and services.
The client also participates in the company’s digital communication strategy by creating content for it. In doing so, it contributes directly to its brand image.
For online retailers
For companies using UGC Ads, there are multiple advantages:
- The cost: unlike an advertising campaign, the cost of this content marketing strategy is zero. Remember, customers are not paid to leave their opinion.
- Content quality: who better than happy customers to produce opinions, videos, or articles that are realistic, authentic, and credible?
- Customer acquisition: through the many customer recommendations published on social networks, companies expand their audience, sometimes reaching millions of users.
- Conversion rate: 82% of internet shoppers take customer reviews into account before buying online. By integrating UGC Ads into your media marketing strategy, you have every chance of convincing them to make a purchase.
- Engagement rate: involving your customers by creating a community of ambassadors is an excellent way to make them feel valued, and therefore more likely to be a return customer.
- Brand image: a UGC Ads-oriented web marketing strategy improves branding, both with existing and prospective customers.
- Boost traffic: by accumulating content from a multitude of sources, companies boost their natural referencing, both on traditional search engines and on social media.
- Better knowledge of your target: by encouraging customers to communicate about your brand, you develop the tools to better understand their needs, their desires, etc.
So, if you haven’t already done so, now’s the time to embark on a UGC Ads strategy.
By Nathan Elmaleh
