Authenticity is a game changer for online businesses. 90% of customers prioritize authenticity while choosing a brand to buy from.
In this vast, competition-driven marketplace, the more authentically you can present your business, the more it counts towards your growth. One practical approach to boosting your business’s authenticity is User-generated content (UGC). Hence, brands capitalize on it by running branded UGC ads.
People love to hear real-life experiences, so using them in advertisements is a great way to earn the trust of potential customers. It is a good investment that helps businesses multiply their ROI.
Want to see better growth of your business as well? Let’s delve into the world of UGC Ads.
What are UGC Ads?
UGC ads are paid ad campaigns run by brands using the original branded content of real product users. Such content includes customer reviews, photos, videos, and other publications by users mentioning brands.
Social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc, are full of user-generated content that quickly attracts the attention of potential customers. Through UGC Ads, brands can showcase their products more authentically and help to attract new customers.
Lulus represents an excellent example of UGC ads. This brand made suitable use of its UGC. Lulus sourced content from its fans and showcased it on product pages with product details. This kind of UGC is more potent than regular reviews. UGC on the Lulus product page helps potential customers connect with products on personal levels by showing them real-life experiences.
Benefits of UGC Ads for eCommerce:
If you have eCommerce stores, UGC Ads help to change customer perceptions and build trust. Visual UGC content like product posts and Product videos works well for the growth of online stores. UGC videos and photos develop a sense of authenticity and trust for your e-commerce store. As UGC is real-life customer insight about the product, potential customers can resonate with it the best.
Thus, eCommerce stores today use UGC Ads as their marketing weapon to gain better engagement and boost brand awareness. Let’s dig deeper into what benefits an eCommerce store can enjoy from featuring user-generated content for its advertisements.
1. Increased Conversion Rates
Trust is a significant factor in customers’ willingness to shop from online stores. Gaining customers’ trust is the utmost important task if you aim to improve conversion for your eCommerce store. UGC is an excellent trust factor for online customers as it comes directly from experienced product users.
56% of customers get influenced to buy a product after seeing it in a positive UGC photo. So, businesses must add UGC Ads to their marketing strategy. Also, embedding UGC in an eCommerce store brought 161% more conversions. Using Tagshop, you can easily create shoppable UGC galleries and showcase them in your e-commerce store.
2. Enhanced Product Credibility
Traditional advertisements have been part of marketing for ages but cannot authentically represent a brand in this online marketing era. Modern customers crave brand authenticity, and UGC, like visual reviews, is the best solution. Customers find UGC 50% more trustworthy and 20% more influential than other content types.
When potential customers visit an eCommerce store, they have many questions about the product’s quality. So, when they see UGC Ads, it boosts the credibility of your product. Thus, showcasing authentic user-generated content through paid ads is crucial for customers seeking authenticity.
3. Improved Customer Engagement
User-generated content provides better answers to potential customers’ queries than brand-generated content. Content from a real audience about a brand has 28% better engagement than branded content. Potential customers can understand products from the viewpoint of experienced users and establish better interactions.
Thus, UGC builds a bridge of trust between your brand and customers, encouraging more people to interact with you. This helps boost your brand’s engagement and further enhances social proof, encouraging more people to choose you.
4. Targeted Advertising
Targeted advertising shows product advertisements to potential customers, cutting through the crowd of other ads. It is a way of showing potential customers more personalized UGC content they might find interesting.
Brands run personalized UGC Ad campaigns based on data that reflect customers’ shopping interests, browsing history, and specific choices. So, when customers scroll through social media channels, they see tailored paid product ads in their feeds.
Types of UGC Ads:
Are you planning to run UGC ads? You must know that various UGC ads offer unique benefits for brands and customers. Two of the most used categories have been listed and explained below.
1. Meta Ads
Meta ads are part of online advertising and are ideal for businesses that run ads on Facebook and Instagram. This ad category can promote brands in different advertising industries, such as advertising services, ad space, industry events, etc. You can create a shoppable fashion gallery using the Meta ads and show them on the eCommerce stores. Thus, Meta ads are ideal if you want to build a lasting connection with your audiences. Moreover, you can boost their online sales, drive better in-store traffic, and reach new customers.
2. Spark Ads
Spark ads are paid TikTok ads that use the original shoppable TikTok content to run ads. Brands use the organic content created by TikTok users to run Spark Ads. Their format lets you collect the content and create TikTok in feed ads or TikTok top view ads. Moreover, you can create a shoppable UGC gallery from Spark ads with tools like Tagshop to streamline your customers’ buying journey. Thus, with Spark ads, you can use UGC best to promote your eCommerce store.
| Feature | Meta Ads | Spark Ads |
| Platform | Facebook, Instagram, etc. | TikTok |
| Purpose | Diverse objectives | Engagement and reach |
| Targeting | Granular targeting | Algorithm-based |
| Formats | Various formats | Primarily video-based |
| Content | Brand-created or user-generated | Creator-generated |
| Monthly Active Users (MAU) | Over 2.9 billion | Over 1 billion |
| Average Cost-per-Click (CPC) | $1 – $2 | $0.50 – $1 |
| Average Conversion Rate | 2.35% | 1.00% |
| Video Completion Rate | 80% | Higher (due to shorter format) Export to Sheets |
How To Showcasing Products with UGC Ads
It’s time to take action and add UGC Ads to your shopify marketing strategy. Are you new to UGC Ads and don’t know how to showcase your product authentically? Don’t worry! The first thing you need to remember is to be creative with such Ads.
We have listed some strategies that help showcase your product through attractive UGC Ads and impress your targeted audiences. Let’s examine them.
1. Lifestyle Content
People flaunt their lifestyles on shoppable media, and sharing videos and photos is part of it. After buying any product or clothes, users post pictures or videos highlighting the brand if they find it useful.
Nowadays, brands have great content from their satisfied customers, and by collecting them, businesses can run UGC Ads. Potential customers find UGC Ads more engaging as they can see the reactions of real people regarding the products.
2. Before-and-After Content:
Everyone is taking advantage of social media’s power to raise awareness of products that positively impact people’s lives. Users share pictures and videos that show before and after scenarios of the products.
Thus, brands can choose user-generated content rather than creating original content and run successful UGC campaigns. It is an excellent way for businesses to show the positive impact of their products on users. By watching such UGC Ads, brands can quickly influence their potential customers to explore their products and convert.
3. Customer Reviews and Ratings
Everyone is aware of the importance of customer reviews and ratings. In this competitive online market, the power of customer reviews can distinguish a business from others. Video testimonials and product reviews are also part of it and are social solid proof for brands.
Brands can easily integrate these reviews on their product page to convince visitors. Moreover, brands can create UGC ad copies to run online by collecting those customer reviews and ratings. These ads can also be showcased online to help potential customers make well-informed buying decisions.
4. Unboxing Videos
Today, UGC creators and influencers are making unboxing videos of newly launched products that audiences love to watch. In these unboxing videos, creators introduce the new product to the viewers and give a brief overview of its features, functionalities, and packaging. They also share their personal experiences with the product.
These user-generated unboxing videos excite potential customers to learn about the features. So, it’s a great idea for brands to use unboxing videos as UGC ads. They help the audience assess the product’s quality and usability before buying it. Such unboxing UGC ads quickly influence potential customers’ purchase decisions.
Steps to Include UGC Ads in Your eCommerce Marketing Strategy
A clear idea of how to include UGC Ads in your eCommerce store will strengthen your marketing strategy. We have shared a roadmap that will help you plan your UGC Ad and run it strategically so that you can enjoy its beneficial results. Let’s learn about them one by one.
1. Identify Your Target Platform and Audience
Start by knowing your brand’s target audience. This will help you identify the platform on which they spend most of their time. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are popular UGC platforms on which eCommerce runs its UGC Ads.
Select the right social selling platforms that best allows your business to reach the targeted audience. For example, you can run UGC Ads for your clothing brand on Instagram. It allows you to tag your product to offer your audience a seamless shopping experience. TikTok is another engaging social platform on which you can run UGC Ads successfully and encourage the audience to connect with your brand.
2. Develop Clear UGC Guidelines
Before starting the journey of UGC Ads, you need to be clear about your guidelines, and they must be communicated to your audience as well. Your audience must know the type of user-generated content you need. Moreover, you must have the best and plenty of content to run your UGC Ads.
Be specific with your content needs, whether photos, shoppable videos, or reviews, or accept all types of content. Focus on the style and tone of the content that aligns with your brand voice. Communicate if you want informative, entertaining, or inspirational content to run UGC Ads. If you want any specific feature to be highlighted in the content, then guide creators with that also.
3. Encourage User-Generated Content
You have an excellent opportunity to encourage user-generated content from your audiences and efficiently use it to run Ads. To engage your audiences, you can run contests for your brand. Offer exciting prizes or a gift for sharing good-quality content featuring your brand. This encourages their participation and makes it easy for you to collect UGC.
Further, create some unique brand-specific hashtags and run hashtag campaigns. This will encourage the audience to use hashtags while posting about your brand, making it easy for you to discover your brand’s UGC. Another way is to showcase UGC-like reviews on the website, e-commerce stores, etc., to encourage other audiences to participate.
4. Curate and Secure User Rights
Curating UGC and embedding it in e-commerce stores and websites is a great idea. However, review each UGC before you collect it and check it does not breach any guidelines or brand reputation. After reviewing them, the brand must ensure they get permission from the users to use advertisements.
You can create a user-generated content release form with all the related terms and conditions. The form will help the users post content that aligns with the guidelines, benefiting both users and businesses.
5. Integrate UGC Ads into Your Campaigns
Make UGC Ads an integral part of your marketing campaign. They come in various formats. You can choose the format of your UGC Ads per your platform preferences. For example, if you are running your ads on Instagram, then a carousel format for users’ pictures can work great. Also, video testimonials can be used for UGC ads and run across all platforms.
Further, run your UGC ads focusing on specific demographics and interests of your audiences. This technique ensures that your UGC Ads reach audiences who can relate. The benefit of targeted ads is that they reach only specific audiences interested in your products.
6. Track and Analyze Results
After running your UGC Ads successfully, you must monitor their performance. Track the engagement, click-through, and conversion rates of the UGC ads. This will help you understand how effectively your ads perform on different platforms and if your audiences can relate to them.
Correctly monitoring the performance of UGC ads helps you understand what type of content resonates best with your strategy. Performance data also helps you optimize your strategy according to your marketing requirements. For example, if you find that UGC video ads are performing better than photos, you can give importance to video ads.
Measuring UGC Ad Success
Just running UGC Ads is not the end of your work. It is crucial to keep your eyes on its performance to measure its su effectiveness. So, while measuring your UGC ads performance, consider keeping your eyes on the metrics below.
1. Engagement Metrics
Track the engagement metrics of UGC ads, including likes, comments, shares, and brand mentions. This will give you insight into how your audiences interact with your ads.
2. Click-Through Rates (CTR)
Check the click-through rate of your UGC ads. It tells how many people click on your UGC ads and engage themselves.
3. Conversion Rates
One metric that can decide the success of your UGC ads is the conversion rate. So, track and collect data to measure the number of people taking action through your UGC ads. It is very essential data that decides the success of your marketing plan.
4. Brand Sentiment Analysis
Brand sentimental analysis is a valuable method that gauges your audience’s perception of your brand. It helps businesses determine the overall feeling of their UGC ads, whether negative or positive.
Conclusion
Marketers must understand and leverage the potential of UGC ads, which come with undeniable perks, including genuine connections with their targeted audiences.
As this is a new marketing strategy, it may need to be clarified for businesses to use it properly. By now, you have gathered complete knowledge of UGC ads, from their types to benefits, from this article.
It is high time you embraced your customers’ creativity and picked the best content to run successful UGC campaigns.
