Tom Fishburne, the founder of Marketoonist and a famous marketer, once said, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” User-generated content videos, made by customers and brand advocates, are one such marketing strategy. They provide authentic and humanized brand perspectives that traditional advertising lacks. According to a study, 43% of people prefer content generated by individuals, which shows the popularity of UGC video ideas.
Alongside providing recognition, UGC videos also help brands build credibility. With such an impact, one cannot ignore using it as a marketing tool. However, brands and marketers often feel a saturation of ideas when generating such content. If you’re facing the same challenge, worry no more; this blog is here to spark inspiration. This blog explores various categories of UGC video ideas to inspire brands, marketers, and content creators.
UGC Video Ideas That Drive Conversions
Just like movies have different genres, UGC has different categories. For your convenience, we have distributed ideas under the categories “lights, camera, engagement.” Let’s dive into them.
Product-Focused UGC Video Ideas
1. Unboxing Video
In an unboxing video, users open the product, literally ‘unboxing’ it, and show it to the audience. Popular content creators and influencers like Marques Brownlee and Unbox Therapy are known for their videos under this category. In these videos, audiences learn about the product in detail as the user explains its features and shares their experience.
The audience learns about the items they will receive with the product they buy. In these videos, users often explain the product’s look and feel and share thoughts about its features. These videos are usually made to share information and details about the product in discussion.
2. Product Reviews & Testimonials
Potential customers often make their purchase decisions after learning about the experience of current users of the product. A product review video provides potential customers with information such as how the product has changed their lives, the benefits, the demerits, and more.
These videos are made to help potential customers decide whether to purchase a product. Brands often use testimonials and UGC review videos to advertise by showcasing them on different platforms. For example, they either showcase them on their social media channels by resharing them or often embed UGC review videos on their websites using tools like Tagshop. Sharing these UGC videos helps customers make their purchase decisions and assists brands in building trust.
3. How-To/Tutorial Videos
Sometimes, consumers find it challenging to understand how a product works. This is where how-to UGC videos can help. These videos share the step-by-step process of using the product, helping customers learn about it and its use cases.
These videos provide valuable information about the product, which audiences can watch before or after purchasing. Encouraging customers to share their creative ways of using a product can generate fresh, informative content that appeals to a broader audience.
4. Product Comparisons
Indeed, a particular product can have many alternatives, and a consumer should know the differences to make a rational decision. For example, many brands and products are available if a customer purchases a mobile phone. A product comparison video can help the customer understand why a product has an edge over the others.
As marketers, you can ask influencers or users to create content showcasing side-by-side evaluations, highlighting unique features, performance, or price points. These videos help customers make informed decisions and showcase the brand’s strengths against competitors.
5. “Day in the Life” with Your Product
In this format, UGC videos showcase how a product can be integrated into the daily routine. For example, a smartwatch user can showcase the use of that product in daily life by tracking daily activities, or a skincare brand where customers showcase how it has now become integral to their lives.
These videos illustrate real-world applications, and users document their experiences, making the product seem indispensable and helping potential customers learn about it.
6. Creative Product Hacks
Types of UGC videos that demonstrate innovative ways to use a product can go viral. These videos can cover unexpected uses of garden appliances or creative styling tips for fashion items. They inspire new possibilities, as customers have innovative ways to use a product. They can also show different use cases of a particular product.
As a brand or marketer, you can initiate UGC campaigns by asking customers to share their favorite hacks. This can spark engagement and expand product utility. You can even run content with a hashtag, and users with the most unique or valuable hack can win prizes.
7. Before & After Transformations
Before-and-after transformations often prove and authenticate a product or service. These videos are visual proof of a product’s effectiveness. Whether a skincare product’s effectiveness on acne or a hair loss serum showcases reduced hair loss, these videos help brands build authenticity and might go viral.
Brand-Focused UGC Video Ideas
1. Brand Story Videos
Consumers often bond with brands, which creates engaging narratives. When customers share stories of how the brand became part of their lives, it creates an emotional connection. These videos highlight memorable experiences, journeys, or reasons behind customer loyalty to a brand.
2. Customer Testimonials
Product reviews and testimonials talk about just the product, but customers often look to share their experiences and feedback on brands. These videos focus on brand trust, excellent customer service, and long-term loyalty. Customer testimonial videos include customer stories or even mashups of different customers giving their positive reviews that help brands build reliability and allow customers to know about the business.
3. Behind-the-Scenes at Your Company
To build a strong brand and customer relationship, humanizing a brand is important so customers feel a connection. Giving users a glimpse into your company culture can help build a connection. As a marketer, you can invite your customers to witness what goes on while making a product, and you can document it through videos. In behind-the-scenes videos, you can include production, a glimpse into your work culture, and an interview with your staff member.
4. User-Generated Ads
UGC Ads can be expensive, and using proper production types of equipment for the best quality instrument for better output can take a lot of finances. You can encourage users to create creative commercials featuring products. In return, you can offer incentives to users by providing them with discounts or giving a shout-out on the brand’s official pages. One of the primary reasons that these ads might go viral is that they feel more organic and relatable, leading to higher engagement rates.
5. Brand Ambassador Spotlights
You can make videos featuring your loyal customers to present them as brand ambassadors. Such initiatives show that the brand values its loyal customers and provides such incentives. You can also consider using influencers as your brand face. This will help your brand get more interaction, as the followers of that particular influencer can see your brand. As their favorite influencer is the face of a brand, it is more likely that loyal followers of that influencer will make purchases.
6. Event Highlights
Imagine you are hosting an event like Coachella. You can pick a lucky follower to document the event from their point of view. WWE often allows fans from live audiences to record their reactions to the event, which the brand posts on its respective social media accounts.
7. Contest & Challenge Videos
Run a contest or challenge and ask customers to participate. Then, you can share the entries on your social media. This is similar to what the popular web series Squid Games did. They introduced the Squid Game Honeycomb Candy Challenge, in which audiences made a dalgona cookie and cut a part of it, similar to a scene in the web series. The challenge created quite a hype, helped increase awareness about the web series, and worked well for Netflix as a brand.
Social Media Trend-Inspired UGC Video Ideas
1. Trending Audio/Music Videos
Use popular sounds or music to create videos. Brands need to observe social media trends and quickly embrace them in their campaigns. Providing templates for users or suggesting how they should incorporate a specific product into trending videos helps increase participation. Such trends can also see broader reach and engagement with collabs from the influencers.
2. Challenge Videos
Who doesn’t like to compete, right? You can ask your followers and users to participate in social media challenges that involve the brand’s product. For example, a smartwatch brand can have the challenge to complete 10,000 steps in a day and upload an image of a watch showcasing that. Similarly, you can make fun, creative, and engaging contests, but make sure you set clear rules for more participation.
3. “Day in My Life” Videos
Customers describe how a product fits into their everyday lives, providing real-world context for potential buyers. This builds relatability and trust among those who watch. These videos show genuine manifestations of how these products improve everyday life. Putting the very best videos on official platforms creates a sense of community and further boosts brand loyalty.
4. “Get Ready With Me” Videos
While researching social media trends, you might have heard about a trend called “Get Ready With Me.” These videos focus on a user’s preparation routine, often featuring beauty, fashion, or fitness products. They are particularly effective for brands in the skincare, makeup, clothing, and wellness industries. Brands can collaborate with influencers to showcase their products in a GRWM video or encourage everyday users to participate by offering incentives or challenges.
5. “Favorite Things” Videos
Users can create videos with their favorite things, products, places, or moments. This type of user-generated content establishes a sense of belonging and connection with the audience. It’s a great technique to showcase your products subtly by encouraging users to use them in their “Favorite Things” video. These videos often appear organic and personal, with users showing what they like most about your brand, which builds trust and authenticity. The marketing feels authentic, just like the quote mentioned at the beginning of this blog.
6. Educational Videos
These videos focus solely on providing value to the viewers. Educational videos consist of tips, tricks, how-to facts, and valuable insights from the perspective of your brand. Whether it is a tutorial showing your product in use, info about trends in the industry, or expert guidance, educational videos make your brand like a trusted authority.
7. Humorous/Funny Videos
Humor never goes out of style. After all, who doesn’t like to chuckle or laugh a little? Humorous skits, parodies, or just some playful interaction that features your products will not only keep things fun but will also keep your audience engaged. Inviting the community to create their own humorous content will allow highly relatable and engaging UGC to enter the mix, thus bringing some hilarity to your brand.
Location/Event-Based UGC Video Ideas
1. Travel Vlogs
UGC Travel vlogs represent a unique method of showcasing experiences of a particular destination. Users may find how your brand integrates with the lifestyles tourists enjoy on vacations or business travel. Users would be encouraged to produce their travel vlogs during their travels while showcasing your products or services, something like Go-Pro. The trick is to make it look accurate and effortless when invoking your brand into the user travel experience.
2. Event Recaps
Presenting highlights from live events such as conferences, festivals, or parties allows audiences to relive memorable moments. Individuals attending the events can share recaps by expressing their perspectives. You can have product launches, influencer meet-and-greets, and more, increasing your brand’s visibility.
3. Local Spotlights
The exposure of local businesses or attractions can create significant connections. You can invite users to share their experiences at such locations and allow users to create content for local businesses that they love and how your brand fits into those experiences. This may be especially relevant for location-based businesses or brands wishing to highlight local partnerships and initiatives.
4. User-Generated Content at Your Store/Venue
You have your customers visit your store or venue, where you can encourage them to share their experiences during their visits. Users can create content that displays their interactions with your products and services, as well as the environment you’ve built. It is a great way to get that customer to feel valued and involved in your brand while providing some social proof that may even inspire new customers to visit or interact with your business.
VI. Interactive UGC Video Ideas
1. Q&A Sessions
Audiences and consumers might like to know more about the brand and business so that you can organize Q&A sessions. These sessions open the gate for conversation and provide an opportunity for you to engage with an audience and provide honest answers to questions they may have about your products or services. These interactive videos are an opportunity to clarify doubts, provide valuable insights, and establish a human connection with the audience.
2. Polls & Quizzes
Polls and quizzes provide an excellent opportunity to connect with audiences. When you get your followers to participate in polls or quizzes via video, it creates engaging and fun content for the audience to take part in. You can ask your users to select a favorite feature of your product or have them answer brand-related questions to introduce excitement and involvement.
3. Collaborative Videos
Influencers have a significant follower base, which you can use by collaborating with influencers. Collaborating with other users or influencers can significantly enhance awareness of your brand. Whether you’re producing a video with an influencer or inviting users to co-create, collaboration brings fresh perspectives and ideas that resonate more widely with more people. Promoting each other’s videos will also introduce your brand to an audience that might not be aware of your brand presence.
4. Live Streams
Going live is an efficient medium to engage with your audience in real-time. The feature aims to connect different events, product demos, or even casual conversations with a sense of urgency and excitement. During your live streams, you can ask consumers to comment and ask questions during the presentation, which opens the gates of communication.
Tips for Generating Great UGC Video Ideas
To have a viral and sensational video under your name, here are tips for you
1. Understand Your Target Audience: Consider this the most essential tip for generating content. Before you develop any idea to generate videos, you must understand your audience because you are making content for them. Know your audience, learn about their interests and preferences, and make videos accordingly.
2. Keep it Authentic and Relatable: Originality never gets outdated, so authenticity is key. Encourage genuine content creation. Encourage audiences to share their real experiences with the product or service, as this strikes a chord with viewers and pushes engagement.
3. Offer Clear Instructions and Guidelines: Many users might like to make videos related to your product or participate in your contest, but they might find it challenging due to hard-to-understand rules. So, please keep it simple and make it easy for users to participate.
4. Provide Examples and Inspiration: Showcasing successful UGC campaigns with examples can inspire and help audiences understand what they need to do.
5. Run Contests and Giveaways: The best way to get people to create content and participate in UGC is by running contests and giveaways. People love getting prizes and exposure, so you get great content and participation by providing them with these.
6. Use Branded Hashtags: Creating a unique hashtag for your brand makes it easy for followers and consumers to discover you and create content for you. Also, with a branded hashtag, users can easily share their content and watch other participant’s videos, which can build a community.
Conclusion
User-generated content can help your brand reach a wider audience. With UGC, you can engage your audience, instill trust, and foster community. To be presentable in such stiff competition, you must develop great ideas and content, which you discovered in this blog. So, don’t keep your audiences waiting. Utilize the ideas mentioned above and build a brand to remember.
