How to Harness UGC for Brand Storytelling

Understanding the Power of User-Generated Content (UGC) for Brand Storytelling

In modern day marketing, brands leveraging real people and real stories has become one of the most widely used tactics as brands look to build authenticity around their products. 

Creating engaging content with truly relatable people allows consumers to fully understand how products can be a part of their lives and rather than brands shouting about how great they are, real people giving their story of how a product has positively impacted their life has, for many, become one of the go-to tactics when marketing their products. 

For any brand that is not tapping into this, they’re missing a key element of their brand storytelling as it becomes difficult to truly build an authentic brand. Not only does UGC build long term brand loyalty, but in many cases it can drive short term success with effective UGC campaigns driving sales for brands. 

Choosing the Right UGC to Tell the Story of Your Brand

Whilst the power of UGC is undeniable, there are some critical conditions that come into play when deciding which UGC to use when creating your content. The key conditions to consider are: 

• Relevance to your brand: As with working with any new partner, the UGC you choose to work with should embody your brand values. This should be a natural step, and one your brand team will thank you for, but when considering the content you’re creating to tell the story of your brand, the subject has to align with your brand. 
• Relevance to your audience: As above, a natural step is to ensure anyone you work with aligns directly with your audience, ultimately the UGC you work with must resonate with your target customer.
• Consistency of brand: Any content published by your brand follows your brand guidelines, whether that’s written or visual guidelines, UGC should be no different - there is some allowances as the UGC does have to be authentic, however ensuring there’s ultimately a link back to your brand tone of voice is key for consistency. 

These things matter when it comes to UGC because it can be just as easy to get these things wrong, which then has the reverse effect that we’re looking for. We want to create authentic content that our target audience can resonate with, resulting in them wanting to purchase from us - if we do the reverse of this and create inauthentic content, we simply don’t have a chance of creating the sort of brand loyalty that we’re looking for and the chances of driving sales from UGC are virtually at zero. This is why it is so important to be selective about who you’re working with on your UGC content. 

UGC as a Sales Tool

Repeat customers are the lifeblood of any brand and UGC can facilitate repeat custom as well as, and in some cases better than, other tactics. 

The community building aspect of UGC is something that cannot be missed by any brand engaging in UGC content. Not only are potential customers looking for UGC themselves to help them make better informed purchasing decisions, but post purchase, new customers  have the potential to turn into brand advocates themselves and share their experiences of purchasing - this is the kind of community building that can be invaluable to a brand, and most importantly is a huge driver of repeat custom. 

The brand loyalty piece is naturally given a huge boost with any sort of community building which makes it hugely important for all aspects of marketing to be involved. 

Final Considerations Before Launching a UGC Campaign

Ensure you have permission to use any UGC content. Though seemingly basic, this step can prevent potential legal hurdles.

Make sure that you’re tracking the effectiveness of any UGC campaigns, whether you want to track the performance of the links you may build with any content this is going to journalists or if you’re looking at internal sales data, understanding how a UGC has performed is critical to the success of any future campaigns as you’re able to tweak how you approach things and make positive changes. 

Conclusion

UGC has surged in popularity—and for good reason. As customers become more discerning and less trusting of traditional brand messaging, UGC fills the gap, offering relatable and impactful stories. Investing time in authentic UGC content is key to influencing today’s purchase decisions.

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