Don’t Disregard the Marketing Power of User-Generated Content (UGC)

Radhika Iyengar Yuvraj

Don’t Disregard the Marketing Power of User-Generated Content (UGC)

A few eye-opening statistics recently reminded me about a digital “transformer” not to be forgotten: user-generated content (UGC).

Perhaps like you, it's been a while since I paid attention to the UGC space. About a year ago, I was brainstorming with a colleague, a digital marketing expert, about approaches to help our clients leverage customer and employee content to maximize their brand outreach. We had just written a whitepaper on UGC and how it occupies a powerful place in content marketing.

Fast-forward, and I’m now part of Credera’s Analytics & Personalization practice, where customer needs and behaviour are always the key aspects of our research.

One such project around social media, lead generation, and relationships among consumers and businesses brought me back to UGC, but this time through the lens of analytics and the new opportunities it presents.

Here are some staggering numbers:

Millennials depend on UGC for their buying decisions while also creating the content — they contribute more than 70% of all UGC. (SparkReel)
More than 25% of the world’s biggest brands redirect their search links to user-generated content. (NeONBRAND)
79% of people say they’re influenced by UGC in their purchasing decisions. (Stackla)
Consumers feel UGC is close to 10X more effective than influencer content in impacting a buying decision. (Stackla)
Employees of a company have a network 10X bigger than their company’s follower base. (LinkedIn)
When content is shared by employees, it has 2X higher engagement. (LinkedIn)
When UGC is included in an online purchase path, conversions increase by 10%. (Salesforce)
When applied in social campaigns, UGC lifts engagement by 50%. (Salesforce)
UGC-based ads get 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost-per-click than average. (Shopify)

Harnessing such powerful content in social media posts, campaigns, e-commerce experiences, emails, and live events can all impact ROI.

But is it really that easy? The trick comes in finding quality content among the plethora of posts. When marketers get inundated, it becomes too daunting a task to sift through it all manually.

The solution is to leverage automation in discovering and managing your media. Digital marketing platform implementation agencies, like Credera, have expertise in intelligent automation and artificial intelligence, as well as a deep understanding of UGC platforms.