Article

Power Your Creative with UGC to Drive Authenticity & Engagement

by Caitlin Gunst

Today’s digital audiences crave content that they can connect with. They’ve become disenchanted with the staged scenarios and idealized imagery of traditional ads.

To engage this new generation of audiences, marketers need to replace artificiality with authenticity. By doing so, your content becomes more relevant and relatable, helping lead to higher levels of engagement.

One of the best ways to achieve this is by giving user-generated content (UGC) a starring role in your creative strategy. Powering your creative with UGC enables you to present your product/service in a more authentic, down-to-earth setting that reflects the lives of your audience.

The challenge as a marketer, however, is being able to source reliable, high-quality UGC that suits your objectives and doesn’t take months to produce.

This is where UGC creators come in.

Introducing UGC creators

UGC creators are a subset of social media creators that specialize in delivering authentic content that mirrors posts made by everyday customers. These creators enable you to source UGC without having to hope and wait for it to come in organically.

The UGC provided by these creators also has more marketing utility. Since UGC creators follow your brief and creative direction, you’re able to tailor the content to suit your marketing objectives.

UGC Creators vs. Influencers

There are a few key characteristics that differentiate UGC creators from influencers.

The first difference comes in the size of their following. Influencers typically have more than 200K followers, whereas UGC creators generally have less than 200K followers – and often only have a few thousand.

A low follower count isn’t important when it comes to UGC creators, as the content they produce is intended solely for the brand’s channels. When working with an influencer, on the other hand, you want as large a following as possible as the content will be shared with their audience, not the brand’s.

Influencers rely on status to influence purchase decisions. UGC creators rely on their authenticity. And as mentioned above, today’s audiences crave authenticity above all else. This is why consumers find UGC 9.8 times more impactful than influencer content.

Using UGC to Power Your Digital Creative

Okay, so now that you’re familiar with UGC creators, let’s now explore how you can use the content they produce to power your digital creative.

The first step is to identify a UGC creator that works for your brand and your marketing objectives. Once you’ve found a creator that fits the bill, you’ll then brief them on the content you’re looking for. The creator will then deliver raw UGC footage based on your brief.

To leverage this footage in your creative, it will need to be edited and optimized for your intended placement(s). This involves pulling the best snippets from the raw footage, remixing it with other existing assets such as product shots, and then adding in other essential elements such as branding, copy, music, and a CTA.

The result? Authentic creative that not only engages audiences through its relatability, but also drives action.

Best Practices for UGC-Powered Creative

To help maximize the performance of your UGC creative, here are a few best practices to follow:

Encourage creator's individualism: Authenticity is only possible if the creator is allowed to be themselves. Make sure that creators have the freedom to let their individuality shine through.
Develop a diverse creator roster: Having a diverse roster of UGC creators will enable you to create personalized creative variations that speak to the different audience personas that you’re looking to target.
Communicate benefits and characteristics: It’s important that your UGC creative achieves a balance between being fun and entertaining while still communicating the benefits and characteristics of your product/service. A great way to achieve this is by following formats such as testimonials, unboxings, and try-ons.
Follow platform-native conventions: UGC creative should strive to match the look and feel of organic content. To achieve this, incorporate platform-native conventions into your creative. This can include: organic-style copy, emojis, hashtags, voice-over, and trending storytelling or visual editing techniques.

Shuttlerock Makes it Easy to Power Your Creative with UGC

The process for producing UGC-powered creative can be long and complicated. You need to find reliable creators that are right for your brand, brief them on the content you require; then remix the raw footage into creative optimized for the placements and platforms you plan to run on.

At Shuttlerock, we’ve simplified and streamlined this process, enabling you to produce UGC-powered creative at speed and scale.

Our all-in-one solution includes: