With the volume of branded content online, it’s getting harder for brands to stand out. So, to cut through the noise, marketers are leaning into more authentic, relatable content: enter user-generated content (UGC).
UGC is modern-day word-of-mouth marketing. It builds trust, boosts conversions, and helps brands and businesses scale content creation without becoming full-on production houses.
In this guide, we’ll explain UGC, the different types, why it matters, and how to run a successful UGC campaign.
So let’s get into it.
What is UGC (user-generated content)?
User-generated content (UGC) is original content – photos, videos, reviews, testimonials, etc. – created by customers and published online. Basically, any content that features or promotes your brand without coming directly from your marketing team.
And get this: according to EnTribe, 77% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product they discovered through UGC. That’s huge.
Bands need content daily, and UGC offers a cheaper, more authentic way to meet that demand.
It’s the most scalable way for brands to showcase products authentically.
What is a UGC creator?
A UGC creator produces content documenting their real experience with your product or brand.
UGC creators vs. influencers:
UGC creators focus on sharing authentic, unscripted experiences. Often, they’ll submit their content to brands directly for use on social media, email marketing, or websites. Many UGC creators prefer to remain faceless!
Influencers, on the other hand, often participate in polished, paid campaigns that are crafted to drive conversions.
Both can drive sales, but UGC feels…more personal, and real.
Thanks to the rise of the creator economy, many UGC creators now get paid to produce branded content, even if they don’t have large followings.
6 different types of UGC
UGC falls into two categories: organic or paid.
While both can move the needle for your business goals, key differences exist in how they work.
Here’s what you need to know:
Organic UGC
Organic UGC is unpaid content made by real customers.
Unprompted, unedited, and shared publicly on social media, it’s powerful social proof that shows people genuinely love your brand, and boosts awareness and trust.
Reviews and testimonials
Reviews and testimonials are the key drivers of social proof, giving potential buyers confidence in their decisions.
And yes, they are essential in most customers’ purchase process: 98% of shoppers say reviews matter when buying, and 45% won’t buy without them.
If you’re selling digital products, reviews are especially convincing. Past customers can show how easy they were to use and back up their value.
Example: Creator HQ uses testimonials on its homepage to build trust with new customers.
Videos
We all know video is the king of content, especially in marketing: 82% of consumers say they've been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video.
The most popular place for video UGC is YouTube. Creators can share their genuine opinions in detail without rushing. These videos provide potential customers with all the necessary information, reducing hesitation before purchasing.
And it’s not just for physical products: video also plays a key role in promoting digital products. Customers looking to purchase a digital product often seek honest video reviews that offer insight into the product's features and benefits.
Photos
Photos are another popular type of organic user-generated content.
Brands can create specific hashtags and ask customers to tag them when posting content on their social media channels, allowing them to repurpose the content later.
Lovesac, for example, has created a customer gallery on its website where customers can add photos of their products, building a showcase of user-generated content.
Social media posts
One of the biggest challenges is getting customers to post organic UGC more frequently. After all, there’s no paid incentive.
Drunk Elephant created the hashtag #barewithus to encourage customers to share their photos on social media and get featured on the official Drunk Elephant account.
The brand later uses UGC photos and videos to show authentic experiences and honest reviews from its customer base.
While organic UGC is valuable for its authenticity, it’s not something you can reliably scale. It happens when someone’s excited enough to post about your product independently. While you can encourage it (e.g. branded hashtags, giveaways, or customer experience), you can’t force it.
When you need to amplify reach or control messaging? That’s where paid UGC comes in.
Paid UGC
Paid UGC is designed to boost sales, focusing on actions like conversions, sign-ups, and downloads. To track success, brands measure metrics like website clicks, conversions, and app downloads.
It can take several forms:
Content rewards
Content rewards has completely transformed paid UGC, offering a much cheaper and more effective alternative to traditional ad campaigns.
Instead of spending big upfront on ads, you pay creators on a per-view basis, which means you’re only paying for actual engagement.
On average, Content Rewards campaigns pay out $1 per 1,000 views. Compare that to the $25 per 1,000 views you’d pay on Facebook or Instagram ads, and I think you’ll see the picture.
It’s the smarter way to grow your brand and engage with real people, for a fraction of the cost.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is when brands pay creators to promote a product or service in front of their audience.
Once upon a time (sure, grandma), this was just a free exchange of products for promotion. But now, influencer marketing is a full-fledged industry, with influencers entering contracts and financial agreements with brands.
It’s worth noting that FTC guidelines mandate that influencers disclose material partnerships.
Big names like RedBull regularly collaborate with influencers to target their audience effectively.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing has exploded recently because it’s a win-win for brands and creators.
Creators promote products they genuinely like and believe in, earning a commission for every sale made through their unique affiliate links. Brands get their products in front of engaged audiences without worrying about upfront costs or managing ad campaigns.
Why does it work? Simple: trust. Creators have built strong relationships with their followers, and when they recommend a product, it feels more authentic than a traditional ad.
Affiliate marketing has even become popular among dropshipping store owners, who share their knowledge on YouTube and give viewers discount codes for opening their own stores.
AC Hampton is a famous YouTuber who educates others on starting their dropshipping business. He partnered with Shopify to offer subscribers a 3-day free trial.
Read our full guide to types of UGC jobs.
How valuable is UGC for brands and businesses?
People crave authenticity. They want content that feels real and relatable. We’re all sick of being sold to by fake and corny campaigns – as Seth Godin puts it, “People like us do things like this.”
UGC is undoubtedly valuable for brands trying to navigate their marketing. Here’s why:
- It builds authenticity: Forget polished ads – According to Adweek, 85% of people say UGC is more influential than content made by brands directly. When real people show love for your brand, it comes off far more trustworthy.
- Engagement is higher: People vibe with real content. UGC feels like a conversation, not a broadcast.
“Brand-only content can feel like a broadcasted message instead of a conversation. User-generated content, whether through seeding or being a customer/user, feels more engaging than a faceless product.” - Cody Wittick
- It saves time (and cash): Creating polished branded content takes time and money. But UGC is way easier and cheaper. Consumers like seeing it, too: data from Accenture shows that 59% of consumers say UGC is just as entertaining as traditional media. Win-win.
- Serves as social proof: Organic UGC is basically free advertising. It’s the modern-day version of “word of mouth” but on a much larger scale.
“People buy from people. Being able to have influencers that people respect or just hearing someone’s true feelings towards your product can help efforts across organic social, e-mail, paid media via whitelisting, and more.” - Kendall Dickieson
- Builds trust: eople trust UGC way more than traditional ads. According to TheDrum, 86% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust a brand that publishes user-generated content, compared to just 12% who trust influencer-pushed products.
How to successfully run a UGC campaign in 10 steps
User-generated content works best when it doesn’t feel like a brand ad. People want real, not rehearsed.
Here are 10 steps to help you plan, manage, and execute a successful UGC campaign.
1. Know your why
Start with a goal. Is this about brand awareness? Driving sales? Community hype? Your ‘why’ shapes everything, from who you work with to what content you want.
Ask yourself:
- Who’s the right creator fit?
- What does our audience care about?
- What content actually gets them to stop scrolling?
This step is crucial for setting the right foundation and ensuring you’ll have a successful UGC campaign.
2. Choose platforms
Where’s your audience hanging out?
For most brands, it’s TikTok, Instagram, or both.
TikTok’s algorithm rewards creative UGC like crazy, while Instagram’s built-in shopping and tagging tools are made for social proof.
Whether you choose Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or a combination of platforms, ensure they align with your audience demographics and campaign goals.
3. Prepare content
Once you define your goals and select platforms, it’s time for the fun part!
Dig through what your community has already posted; there’s probably organic UGC gold there.
For paid UGC, give creators loose guidelines and inspo, but don’t micromanage. You want it to be flexible, not forced.
Whether you’re using organic or paid UGC in the form of photos, videos, reviews, or testimonials, make sure you get permission from the creators to post the content on your social media channels and platforms.
Hot tip: This is where Whop's Content Rewards comes in.
All you have to do is create your whop and add a content reward. Set the requirements (do you want UGC, clipping, faceless content, unboxing? You decide!), CPM (cost-per-mille, aka cost per 1000 views), and budget.
Then, watch as creators begin sharing your campaign across social platforms!
- Read our full guide to setting up Content Rewards in your whop
- Get more views on TikTok with this game-changing strategy: Whop Content Rewards
- Content Rewards: Grow your brand without wasting money or time
4. Use hashtags
Next time you wonder if anyone but boomers uses hashtags anymore, think of the power of #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt. This a hashtag that led to 8 million posts, millions of purchases, and billions of dollars in revenue. Yeah.
Even beauty brand Benefit Cosmetics jumped in on the hype, encouraging promotion of UGC under the hashtag.
You can also create branded hashtags for your UGC campaign to increase visibility, encourage participation, and organize the content you’ll generate. But if you do, consider these tips:
- Make sure it's easy to remember and spell
- Create guidelines for campaign participants
- Ensure the hashtag is relevant to your brand
- Feature the hashtag in your campaign content (visuals, graphics, texts)
- Use the hashtag consistently
- Track the performance of your hashtag
5. Start a trend
UGC doesn’t always happen on its own. Sometimes you need to give it a nudge. Think: a challenge, product demo, reaction format, or dupe test.
Too Faced started a TikTok trend to promote its foundation for flawless complexion and created the hashtag #TFBornThisWay.
By offering 35 shades that suit a wide range of skin tones and undertones, Too Faced has generated over 400K posts with the branded hashtag.
6. Organize a contest (incentives and rewards)
If you want people to create content, give them a reason. Discounts, shoutouts, giveaways, exclusive access – whatever feels right for your brand.
This is what NYX Professional Makeup did with its #ButterGlossPop challenge, offering participants a chance to win $1200 in makeup. The hashtag has over 1.7M posts on TikTok!
Use Whop Content Rewards to run creator-friendly campaigns without blowing your ad budget. It lets you pay everyday fans for posting, and only once the content performs.
7. Use UGC across touchpoints
Don’t stop at social. Use UGC in emails, on product pages, even in paid ads.
UGC on product pages: The renowned furniture brand Article uses UGC on its product pages to show how other customers style their products in a real-life setting. Seeing high-quality lifestyle imagery is one thing, but seeing the product in other people’s homes brings a different level of inspiration, which might be just what consumers need to make a decision.
UGC in email marketing: If you want to stand out in a crowded inbox, you have to spice things up. And here’s where user-generated content can help.
By including customer photos and reviews of your products in your emails, you can create familiarity and a sense of connection. Outer uses this approach to share customers’ feedback and persuade email subscribers to check out top-rated products.
UGC on social media: Using UGC on social media is much more than reposting content on your brand accounts. It requires careful planning and having a UGC strategy in place that aligns with your overall social media strategy. One brand that does this particularly well is Glossier.
Glossier built its whole brand by turning its community into its content team. The beauty brand constantly reposts UGC from its lively community: product reviews, makeup looks, and skincare routines.
8. Build a strong community
The best UGC comes from people who feel like they’re a part of your world. So build that world for them. It could be a whop, Discord, an Instagram community chat, or a Facebook group.
Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community is a space where members can ask questions, join challenges, and get recommendations from a community of like-minded individuals.
You can encourage members to share stories, tips, and insights, and contribute their experiences. This can be a great way to generate UGC from your community that you can later repurpose on other platforms.
Building a community can also be a great strategy for content creators who want to generate more reviews and testimonials.
9. Use CTAs strategically
One of the most important elements of a successful UGC campaign is having a clear call to action (CTA). Whether your goal is to encourage content creation, increase participation, drive website traffic, or boost sales, your CTAs should guide users to take the desired action.
If you want people to share, ask them. Clearly.
Examples:
- “Tag us in your unboxing!”
- “Join the challenge by Friday”
- “Post and submit for a chance to earn through Content Rewards”
Set expectations, create urgency, and show what’s in it for them.
10. Monitor performance
Monitor your brand’s UGC and amplify the best content by sharing it across your social media channels, website, and other platforms.
You can measure the success of your UGC campaign by tracking metrics such as engagement, reach, the number of user-generated content submissions, website traffic, and sales.
Look at what works, and double down on it.
The key to successfully using UGC: A thriving community
UGC isn’t just about content. It’s about connection. That’s why the most impactful campaigns don’t start with a brief; they begin with a community.
Authentic content from real users builds trust, drives engagement, and creates that all-important word of mouth. But none of that happens without a loyal, active group of fans behind your brand.
That’s where Whop comes in. As an all-in-one social commerce platform, Whop makes it easy to build your own branded whop – complete with apps to host forums, giveaways, live chat, and digital product sales.
Once you’ve built your community, the UGC starts flowing. Then, create Content Rewards — a pay-per-performance model where UGC creators earn when their content pops off, and you only pay for content that performs well. That means zero wasted spend, and a whole lot of authentic UGC.
Ecommerce newbies, social media creators, personal brands, and seasoned store owners, we’re talking to you. Joining Whop can help you create a thriving community and generate UGC as a result.
