What is UGC?
UGC, or user generated content, is photo and video content made by customers or independent creators rather than produced in a brand photoshoot.
Worked example, not a result
Producing enough variety to test with
Say a store commissions 45 short clips from creators at 60 each, which is 2,700 spent on raw material. That sounds like a lot of content until it is used properly.
The point of that volume is variety of idea, not volume of footage. One clip opens by showing the problem the product solves. One is a first impression on opening the box. One answers the question the support inbox gets most often. One shows the product in use somewhere the studio photos never go. Each is a different argument for buying, and only running them reveals which argument the market responds to.
Used badly, the same 2,700 produces 45 versions of one idea, which tests nothing. The store learns that the campaign is tired and does not learn why.
One rule sits above all of it: what is said in the content has to be true. A creator claim you could not make yourself is still your claim once it runs as an ad.
The figures are an example.
Why it matters
Creative is the main variable left in paid social, because targeting and placement are increasingly automated. That makes content the part of the visitors lever a store still fully controls, and content that looks like a recommendation rather than an advertisement tends to earn attention more cheaply.
It also helps the conversion lever. The same clips work on product pages, in email and on collection pages, where seeing a real person handle the product answers questions about size, texture and use that studio photography never quite covers. Content produced for ads should be planned to be reused there.
For a store owner the decision is how to spend a content budget. A steady stream of different ideas beats one expensive production, because the value is in finding which message works, and that can only be discovered by running several.
Common mistakes
- Commissioning many versions of one idea. Variety of message is what makes testing useful, and different edits of the same script do not provide it.
- Letting creators make claims the brand cannot support. Advertising rules apply to the finished ad regardless of who filmed it, and the store carries the responsibility.
- Using content without written permission to run it as advertising. A social post you were tagged in is not a licence to put that footage behind a budget.
- Producing it for ads alone. The same material usually lifts product pages and email, and planning for that at the shoot costs nothing extra.
Related terms and answers
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