Welcome to this new article where we are going to cover, once again, the topic of creative for our Facebook Ads.
In particular, we are going to address a particular type of creativity: UGC User Generated Content.
As you well know, creativity is one of the fundamental elements of our advertising campaigns, and one weapon you absolutely must exploit within your campaigns is User Generated Content.
You don’t know what I’m talking about?
Don’t worry, let’s find out together 😉
What is User Generated Content?
According to Wikipedia, “user-generated content (from the English user-generated content; acronym UGC) means.
any type of content
– such as, for example: blog posts, forum discussions, social network posts and tweets, podcasts and other types of digital audio, image and video files – Created by users and published on the Internet, often made usable through social networking platforms.”
As you can imagine, this particular type of content, used for our campaigns as creative, can generate some very good results.
User-generated content, unlike brand-generated content, is much more authentic and reliable, generating countless benefits for the company. This is because UGC content puts consumers at the center of communication. In this case, the marketing message is not delivered by the brand from above, so it does not result in a classic marketing action.
On the contrary, it is our own consumers who speak positively about our brand or product, conveying a very important aspect: Social Proof.
As mentioned earlier, interacting with a brand through user-generated content succeeds in conveying more credibility and trustworthiness to a new potential customer.
Still not convinced? Let’s look together at some data on UGC.
According to a survey conducted by Stackla, 90 percent of consumers consider Authenticity as an important decision-making factor when choosing and supporting a brand.
Also according to the survey conducted by Stackla, 79% of people say that UGC content greatly impacts their purchasing decisions. In addition, consumers believe that UGC content impacts 9.8 times more than influencers, in their purchasing decisions.
As reported by some research, many brands that have used UGC creatives within their advertising campaigns have experienced about a 50 percent increase in CTR over brand-generated content.
In short, these are just some data collected on the effectiveness of UGC for a brand.
Types of User Generated Content
As we saw earlier in Wikipedia’s definition there are several types of UGC, let’s list some of them:
- Images (Ex: user using one of our products)
- Video (Ex: Product Review or Explanatory Video)
- Live Directs (Ex: user participating in a live broadcast)
- Blog Post (ex: users who actively participate in our community by generating content, articles realtive to our brand/product)
Okay, all very nice but still not convinced as to why to use UGC within your Advertising Campaigns.
Let’s go through some of its benefits in detail.
The benefits of User Generated Content
As you well know, creative turns out to be a key element in the performance and ROAS of our campaigns. In this day and age, capturing the attention of potential customers is the main challenge facing all marketers.
Considering that a person is exposed daily to hundreds and thousands of advertisements, capturing his or her attention is not so easy.
This is precisely why UGCs are essential, because being “natural” and “spontaneous” (they are not always really; sometimes they are the result of arrangements with Influencers) they blend in with the other videos that keep us glued in front of the screen for minutes.
One of the classic examples of UGC involves a video in which a user explains his or her experience with a brand, the feelings and emotions he or she experienced while buying or applying a particular product.
Product reviews generated by other users, for example, succeed in conveying a positive perception and increased trust towards that brand (Do you think it is a coincidence that within most product pages reviews are included?).
By using these types of creative within our campaigns, we are able to authentically personalize our advertising messages. Our target audience will be led to interact more with this type of content going to increase our CTRs and Engagement Rate.
Among other advantages we can definitely count is the cost of UGC.
To carry out these types of creative, you do not need a creative agency to produce video content or images for your Brand. Asking your community to leave you a video review or post is less expensive than the cost of a creative agency or working with one or more influencers.
Especially for small businesses and anyone struggling with content production and implementation, User Generated Content can be a less expensive alternative to content produced by the marketing team.
Similarly, UGC contributes in the growth of Brand Loyalty with its community, making users protagonists and true participating actors for the Brand rather than mere consumer customers.
Okay, is the theory explained, but you’re still not clear on what a UGC Video might look like? Don’t worry-let’s go through some examples together in the next section.
Examples of UGC
Conclusions on User Generated Content
Here we come to the end of our article on UGC.
As you may have guessed, this is a very useful type of creative that can bring numerous benefits to our campaigns and our brand.
What’s your take on User Generated Content? Do you already use them within your Marketing strategy and within your Campaigns?
Let us know in the Comments!
P.S. Want to understand what KPIs to analyze to evaluate the performance of your ads on Facebook and other advertising channels? Check out this article on the key KPIs of Ads creative. I also recommend you download our guide on winning creatives.
