Blog

Why Your Marketing Needs User-Generated Content

User-generated content, or UGC, is any internet content that’s created by a person, not a brand. UGC is usually in the form of a review, testimonial, image, or video. For example, it could be a photo of you enjoying a delicious Thai meal that you upload to Instagram with the restaurant tagged. You’ve just provided the restaurant with some great UGC. If you’re neglecting UGC for your business, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity in your marketing strategy.

Why Add UGC to Your Marketing Strategy?

People Trust Other People More Than Brands

Let’s say you’re in the market for new noise-canceling headphones. You know about a few brands, but you aren’t sure which one is best. You’ve seen advertisements, visited websites, and talked to a store salesperson about Brand A and Brand B, but all of those avenues are trying to sell to you. Your next step is to look at product reviews from verified customers. You find that people like you prefer Brand B because the headphones sound better.

The reviews end up influencing you to buy Brand B because you are more likely to trust another person than a targeted brand marketing message.

Authenticity Establishes Trust

UGC is perceived as the most authentic content. As unbiased information shared by individuals, it plays a part in humanizing your brand. Authenticity has become even more important with so many of us shopping online during the pandemic.

UGC Saves You Time & Money

Think about the amount of time you spend generating content for social channels as part of your marketing strategy. You need to plan, create imagery, edit, upload, and write a caption for every post. With UGC, your social community is creating content for you. Intersperse users’ content in your feed. It takes less time than creating your own and the time savings add up—especially if you’re posting frequently.

UGC Improves SEO

Consumers love UGC, especially reviews. And Google wants consumers to have access to the most useful, valuable, relevant content—so it loves sites with embedded customer reviews. In fact, sites that leverage customer reviews generally see significant, measurable benefits such as increased organic traffic and click-through rates.

Statistics Don’t Lie

According to a study from Stakla:

  • 90% of people believe that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support
  • Consumers are 2.4x more likely to say user-generated content is most authentic
  • 79% of consumers say that UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions
  • Consumers find UGC 9.8x more impactful than influencer content when making a purchase decision

Take advantage of UGC marketing by adding user-generated content to your marketing strategy now! Ask us how to get started today.

Post author
Madison Flashenburg
March 1, 2022
min read
Category:
Explore

Related Posts

How to Create a Free Giveaway for Your Marketing

How to Create a Free Giveaway for Your Marketing

Whether you're looking to increase excitement about your new product, to boost your customer engagement, or to expand your subscriber list giveaways are a great place to start.

Kimberly Portuondo
|
April 21, 2020
READ MORE
Creating Marketing Easter Eggs

Creating Marketing Easter Eggs

Spring is generally seen as a time for a fresh start, so when it comes to marketing, companies should use this season as a time to focus on new ideas and strategies. Every marketing strategy needs a spruce up every so often. One of the first things that comes to mind in the spring is Easter.

Kimberly Portuondo
|
April 7, 2020
READ MORE
Keep Up with Content Marketing

Keep Up with Content Marketing

As coronavirus cases continue to increase, you may be scrambling to navigate the pandemic -- both personally and professionally. Everything from concerts to conferences are being canceled and even going to the grocery store has become a huge ordeal. When it comes to your business, it’s time to switch gears and think of alternative outlets to keep moving forward. One way to do that is to keep up with your content marketing.

Madison Flashenburg
|
March 31, 2020
READ MORE