In March 2023, Statista concluded that 34% of US adults read customer reviews to extract information about a brand, whereas 43% say they regularly read online reviews regarding a brand.
Given these statistics, User Generated Content (UGC) creators dominate the marketing strategy plans in many businesses. Their role is to create authentic and reliable content for а brand. That way, the customers engage with а brand more effectively.
In this article, we focus on UGC creators and their impact on a business. Additionally, we provide you with an extensive guide on:
- How to find UGC creators
- How to approach UGC creators
- How to maximize the impact of UGC creators on your business
Therefore, read on to learn more!
UGC creators vs. Influencers
UGC may appear similar to influencer content, but these are two separate marketing branches with different effects on а brand.
Yet, they have one thing in common: creating content for your brand based on their real experience.
They share their product reviews in a video, Instagram posts, podcasts, or other types of content. However, they are entirely different digital marketing strategies.
Influencers collaborate with brands to promote the brand through product reviews they share on social media with their followers. Also, the content they create is subjective and scripted to meet the marketing goal of their brand.
The end goal of an influencer’s product demos may be to:
- Influence people on their purchasing decisions
- Raise brand awareness
- Expand the audience by tapping into the influencer’s follower pool
Typically, Instagram influencers have a “Paid Partnership” tag on the video or picture to share the commercial relationship with the brand.
Unlike influencers, user-generated content creators produce content for a brand in a relatable-to-person manner, usually in a video. However, the purpose of user-generated content is to:
- Inform people about products through their experience of the product
- Serves as social proof
UGC creators collaborate directly with a brand, and the content is objective and authentic, but the purpose of the user-generated content is not to promote or influence people, but to serve as a proof of the product’s quality. Because of the purpose, these videos add the most value to a brand.
So, why do brands choose UGC creators instead of influencers nowadays?
Because 84% out of 819 people said they would rather purchase an item if a brand included user-generated content.
These product demos from real people function as word-of-mouth marketing. By investing in these campaigns, brands have a higher reach on social media, they begin to foster loyalty with their customers and maximise ROI.
Take Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty promotions for example:
Under the hashtag #FentyFam on Instagram you can find millions of UGC creators sharing their experience with the beauty products. This strategy is effective both ways.
Target audience-wise, potential customers can see and evaluate the products under this hashtag. Business-wise, there is no need to hire influencers to promote the products. Users do the promotions instead.
6 Best Ways to Find UGC Creators
The search for UGC creators online may feel overwhelming because the market is flooded with UGC creators. However, here are some ways to help you navigate online and simplify the creator pursuit:
1. Dedicated Creator Marketplaces
Social media platforms have dedicated creator marketplaces such as YouTube’s BrandConnect, Instagram’s Brand Collabs Manager, or TikTok’s Creator Marketplace where you can find creators in one place. Check out how they work here:
YouTube BrandConnect
YouTube BrandConnect is a self-service platform that allows brands to connect with UGC creators. But, to use YouTube Brand Connect, you have to create a campaign for your brand so the platform can start suggesting ideal matches for your brands.
Note that you might get suggestions outside your industry. Let’s say, if you have a vegan recipe book to promote, you may get suggestions from vege foodies, and yoga instructors who are vegan for example. However, if you don’t like the suggestions you can change the search parameters and get a new list. Keep in mind that you can send 30 offers to creators.
Instagram Brand Collabs Manager
Instagram Brand Collabs Manager is also a platform that connects brands with creators and it works both ways. For brands specifically, to find your ideal UGC creator, you will have to specify the parameters for your target audience. Then you can search for creators from Home or Search Bar.
If you search from Home, you need to click to See More Creators to start searching UGC creators. Specify the keywords, hashtags or their name and start searching. You can add more filters to narrow down the review.
Lastly, when you are satisfied with the search results, you can review the UGC creator’s portfolios to see their performance.
TikTok Creator Marketplace
TikTok Creator Marketplace is another social media platform that allows you to connect with over 800,000 content creators worldwide.
To use their services, you need to create an account at TokTok CreatorMarketplace.
Then, start searching for TikTok creators through many filters and parameters that lead to the best creators for your business. Lastly, you need to send an invitation for collaboration. Mind that you activate collaborations at scale if you need to.
2. Creator Discovery Platform
Creator discovery platforms are efficient searching tools that help you find creators based on audience data, engagement rate, audience interests, and many other factors. Some vetted platforms are Influencers.Club, HypeAuditor, Modash, or Grin.
In our dashboard, we have advanced filters and access to a large database of valid email addresses, number of followers, and other relevant information. This allows you to find UGC creators from all platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook
Using our dashboard is super easy. First, select that you’re looking for a creator, choose your location and other specifications:
Then choose a platform to find creators:
You can search through hashtags, keywords in bio, number of followers, and other filters.
Then in the Creator Dive, you can expand your search further as you can find creators that have Instagram and TikTok, brand collaborations, or links in bio for example.
Once you select all your filters, click search and wait for the list with the results.
To find out more about the creators, you need to export the list and you will get over 40 data points per creator.
3. Skim through your Customer List
Businesses often overlook the best UGC creator by not reviewing their follower list. Have you thought of this option? In fact, it’s very likely that your ideal UGC creator hides in your following list.
Namely, small businesses can run the search manually. They can review their customer emails or follower lists and see if there is a creator. However, filtering customer lists for mid to big businesses is a time-consuming process.
Bigger businesses need creator discovery tools that filter their customer list to find a UGC creator and provide data on their past collaborations, experiences, success rates, emails, and other relevant information.
Using our dashboard, you can find the perfect match for your brand, easily and efficiently. Here’s how to do it:
Go to Enrichment and select Add new batch
Then upload a CSV file with usernames, phone numbers, email addresses or other data and we will match you with our database of 80M+ creators.
The process takes 3-5 working days and you will get 40+ data points for each matched creator.
4. Freelancer Websites
Do not underestimate the power of the good old Upwork, or Fiverr for finding high-quality UGC creators. Many UGC creators are freelancers leading one UGC campaign or more at a time.
One of the benefits of looking for an UGC creator on freelancer websites is that you can see their rating, and filter your options from there. When you find your suitable creator, you can propose your UGC strategy and the objective you wish to reach, and wait for their response.
5. Social Media Platforms
Usually, UGC creators create content and use a hashtag in their posts, (the Fenty Fam example above) so that their posts can reach a wider audience.
You can easily find UGC creators by hashtags. Moreover, you can go to your competitors and search through their content.
On the other hand, you can search for UGC creators by keywords. Just type your keyword, for example, UGC creators in the search bar and click search. Instagram has a separate search filter where you can search only by hashtags and keywords.
1: Search UGC Creators and choose Accounts, Reels or Tags
6. Competitor Analysis
Another effective way to find UGC creators is through competitor analysis.
However, competitor analysis is extensive and laborious research that involves filtering data from many sources and requires specific searching parameters to deliver up-to-date information for which you need a tool or service to do for you.
Some of the best competitor analysis tools for 2024 are Sprout Social, Phalanx, and Social Blade.
How to Find the Right UGC Creator for Your Brand
There are many high-quality UGC creators that won’t resonate with your brand. Here are some of the factors to consider to find UGC creators that are suitable for your brand:
Align Your Brand with the Creator
The first approach to finding a matching creator is to look for someone with a similar target audience to your brand for two reasons:
The content has to be trustworthy. The word has to come out from someone who already has an established opinion in your field, hence the need to align your brand with the creator.
Analyze Creators
When it comes to content creation for brands, you should always analyze creators. The UGC market is currently full of UGC creators of all types.
To find out if a creator is a good fit for your brand always check their prior experience or collaboration reviews (freelancer platforms usually feature this option), and see if their views resonate with your brand’s tone. When you complete all this, you can hire them.
Determine Their Availability
This is highly important because you should consider their other projects. Therefore, you need to come prepared with a plan and specific deadline, so that the creator can confirm or amend the plan to suit their calendar and workload.
How to Reach Out to UGC Creators and Get a Reply
Now that you know how to find UGC creators, let’s discuss how to do creator outreach and spark conversation with both smaller and experienced UGC creators.
Many brands are puzzled when it comes to picking the right approach. Therefore, check how to reach out to creators and get a positive reply.
Email vs DM
Always opt for email when you need to reach out to a content creator. It’s professional and low-key classy. Also, if the UGC creator doesn’t follow you on social media your message may never get opened.
Plus, direct messages have rigid limitations for sending messages, such as the number of characters. Instagram allows 2,200 characters tops. This is a downfall of the DMs because you may never be able to express your proposal. Emails on the other hand don’t have such limitations.
Even so, not all emails get a positive reply and many of them often end up in spam.
So, when drafting your email, think of it as a test to prove you’re human. Add a personal touch, for example, mention some of the content you like and explain how it would be a good fit for your brand.
Make sure that you explain your strategies and business ideas clearly, and wrap up the proposal professionally. Sign off, and click send.
Or, if you have trouble writing an email copy that resonates with creators, you can use some of our best-performing influencer outreach email templates.
Reaching Out to a Few Creators
Reaching out to a few creators is easy and you can do it yourself. Make sure that you make a background check on their past collaborations and success stories if you can find them, then contact them.
Multi-channel approach tools are super efficient because they allow you to contact them through multiple channels at once.
Reaching Out to Creators at Scale
If you want to reach out to UGC creators at scale on your own, you have to prepare for the following challenges:
- Sent Email Limits: Email services have a limited number of emails you can send to keep the systems functioning properly. With a regular account, you can send 500 emails per day and if you cross that limit, you might get an error message.
- Increase Open Rate: When sending your mail, you must ensure that it has a positive open rate so that your effort pays off.
- Getting Banned: Mind that when sending too many DMs to creators, you will get banned.
If you don’t feel confident or you don’t have time to spend reaching out to creators, let professionals do the job for you.
We have a team of 40 creator sales experts that are specialized in sending emails to creators from all niches.
We can find UGC creators that align with your brand, craft personalized emails, and communicate with creators until they agree to collaborate with you.
We can send up to 800K emails with a 36% positive reply rate and that’s because we have the data to know which UGC creators are a good match, and we know how to spark a conversation with creators around the world.
5 Strategies to Maximize the Impact of User-Generated Content
User-generated content is a highly versatile asset that you can leverage and turn into a new effective strategy. For example, you can:
Make UGC Videos Shoppable
Did you know that video content can be shoppable? You can activate the shoppable feature on your client’s video on social media so that your customers can be immediately directed to your store and make the purchase.
It is efficient because your customers basically validate the quality of your product during the demo, and they can immediately make a purchase while being heavily impressed.
To enable the Instagram catalogue, you will need to:
- Ensure your account is turned on business
- Sync your account to Facebook
- Upload your catalogue onto Facebook
- Submit your account for review
- Activate the shoppable feature
Use UGC in Paid Ads
Utilizing UGC in Paid Ads affects your marketing strategy as customers would much rather buy a product recommended by real people, instead of the brand. In fact, social media platforms introduced several options as listed below:
- TikTok Spark Ads: This is one of the most effective UGC paid ad options where brands can benefit greatly. TikTok shares its success stories of the spark ads and mentions James Allen, a user of the Spart Ads that managed to increase +25% CTR, and +24% CVR compared to traditional ads. The operating method is simple, and all it takes is to get a video and convert it into an ad.
Branded Content Ads on Instagram: The branded ads on Instagram are labelled with ‘sponsored’ or ‘paid partnerships’. They can be regular video content of a user sharing the experience with your brand, and not necessarily as ad-like. However, the effect of these Instagram ads proved beneficial for potential customers, UGC creators, and brands. Therefore, a triple win.
Repost on Social Media Channels
Another valuable reason to maximize the UGC content is to repost it on social media platforms. Remember that TikTok reels can be shared to Instagram which means that you can expand the audience reach further and motivate potential customers to buy your product with a single yet trustworthy ad.
You can do the same with other content. Pictures on Instagram can be shared on Pinterest. Mind that you can also leverage tweets, you can use post them on a story or your feed it’s up to you, then repost them on other platforms. You get to be creative and enjoy the process altogether.
Repurpose UGC
Remember that you can repurpose your UGC videos and generate more leads overall. For example, you can use the UGC content for your weekly newsletter where you can provide social proof to your customer and make the entire proposal more compelling.
Similarly, you can add them to text messages, only instead of providing social proof, you can motivate your clients to take action and get the product. Therefore, the overall usage is highly versatile and you can take advantage of it from any given angle.
Ultimately, you can add the UGC content on your official website so it can serve as social proof.
Track Your Progress
Last but not least, to maximize the use of UGC, you must constantly monitor the effect of this strategy. To track your progress on Instagram for instance, you need to focus on the engagement rate, number of shares, likes, comments rate, and other parameters.
For deeper insights, you can use tools to track your progress. This research is not only to see how your business improves from this strategy but to learn more about your clients, what they like, and dislike, who they resonate with the most etc. With this data in mind, you can engage with the audience effectively, and improve your selling strategies.
Additionally, if there is any problem with the strategy you have to fix it before it goes in the wrong direction.
Conclusion
To wrap up this article, let’s go over some of the key points. Businesses benefit from UGC content because their potential customers want to be engaged in the brand, and see a product experience from a real person instead of an ad.
You can maximize the effect by repurposing your content, reposting on social media channels, and using UGC in paid ads. Therefore, search through a reputable user-generated content platform, find your matching creator, and create a UGC content plan.
If you struggle to find UGC creators on platforms, let’s talk and discuss what is the best way to find matching UGC creators for your brand.
There are UGC trends such as the trust factor that cannot be replaced or duplicated with any other content strategy because people trust people. Moreover, with the tools and platforms at our disposal, we can only predict that UGC creation is the future of marketing. Cost-effective for businesses, and relatable to potential customers.
FAQs
Usually, UGC creators charge $150 per video, but depending on the task, they may change up to $250.
Brands have to get UGC rights permission from the creator to avoid legal conflicts in the future.
No. UGC creators don’t need to have a large target audience to become UGC creators.
