What Is UGC and How Do You Get It for Your Brand

User-generated content (UGC) is any brand-related content (photos, videos, reviews, unboxings, testimonials, or social posts) created by real customers, fans, or hired creators rather than by the brand itself. Brands get UGC three ways: by asking their existing audience to post and tag, by running an incentive campaign that rewards submissions, or by hiring freelance UGC creators to produce content on demand. It works because shoppers trust real people far more than they trust polished ads. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from peers over traditional advertising.

UGC is now the engine behind most high-performing social media marketing. The brands winning on Instagram, TikTok, and Meta Ads aren’t the ones with the biggest production budgets. They’re the ones with the deepest pool of authentic customer content to draw from.

What user-generated content actually is

User-generated content (UGC) is any photo, video, review, comment, or post about a brand that was created by someone outside the brand’s payroll. A customer posting a TikTok of their new sneakers is UGC. A five-star review on a Shopify product page is UGC. A YouTube unboxing of a beauty subscription box is UGC. A Reddit thread comparing two SaaS tools is UGC.

What sits outside the UGC umbrella is anything the brand made in-house, anything an in-house team shot with a hired model, and anything from a traditional ad agency. The dividing line is authorship, not production value. A creator filmed on a phone in their living room is UGC. A polished commercial shot with a creator is still a commercial.

It’s also worth drawing the line between UGC creators and influencers, because brands routinely confuse the two. A UGC creator produces content for the brand to post on the brand’s own channels. An influencer posts content to their own audience. One sells you assets. The other sells you their following.

Why UGC beats brand-produced content

The case for UGC is built on one consistent pattern in consumer behavior. People believe other people more than they believe brands. Every data point lines up behind that.

• 92% of consumers trust UGC over traditional advertising.
• UGC-based ads earn click-through rates roughly 4x higher than standard branded creative.
• Product pages featuring UGC convert at rates 29% higher than pages without it.
• 79% of consumers say UGC heavily influences their purchase decisions, while only 13% say the same about branded content.

The why behind those numbers is simple. UGC carries a different signal than a brand asset. A studio-shot photo says “we want you to buy this.” A real customer’s phone clip says “I bought this and here’s what it actually looks like.” For a shopper in research mode, the second signal is worth more.

There’s a second, less-discussed reason UGC outperforms. It scales in ways branded content can’t. A brand can produce maybe 20 to 40 strong creative assets a quarter. A healthy UGC pipeline can deliver that volume every week. More creative volume means more ad variants, more testing, lower creative fatigue, and lower cost per acquisition over time.

The main types of user-generated content

Most UGC falls into one of these formats. A strong content strategy uses several, not one.

• Reviews and ratings. Star ratings, written reviews on product pages, and reviews on third-party sites like Google, Yelp, G2, Trustpilot, and Amazon.
• Unboxings. Short videos of a customer opening the product for the first time. Strongest on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels.
• Lifestyle shots. Photos and videos of the product being used in daily life. The customer in their kitchen, at the gym, on a hike, at the office.
• Tutorials and how-to videos. A customer showing how they use the product, often with tips the brand never thought to share.
• Video testimonials. A customer on camera talking about what changed for them after buying.
• Hashtag and challenge submissions. Posts created in response to a branded hashtag or social challenge.
• Forum and community posts. Reddit threads, Discord conversations, Facebook group discussions where customers compare and recommend.
• Before-and-after content. Two-image or two-clip posts that show a transformation. Strongest for fitness, beauty, home, and skincare brands.
• Live streams. Twitch streams, TikTok Lives, and Instagram Lives where the creator uses the product on camera.

Each format carries a slightly different intent. Reviews build trust at the point of purchase. Unboxings build anticipation pre-purchase. Tutorials reduce buyer’s remorse post-purchase. A well-built UGC engine feeds content into all three stages.

How brands get UGC from real people

There are three reliable paths to a steady flow of UGC. Most growing brands use all three, weighted differently based on how big their existing audience is and how much budget sits behind the program.

Ask for it organically

The cheapest way to get UGC is to ask the people who already love your brand. They’re already taking photos. They’re already telling friends. Most of them just need a reason and a clear instruction.

The mechanics are straightforward.

• Add a one-line ask to your post-purchase email (“Show us how you use it. Tag @yourbrand and we might feature you.”)
• Print the same ask on the inside of the packaging.
• Pin a story to your Instagram profile that walks customers through how to tag.
• Re-share every tagged post you get for the first three months, with a thank-you in the caption. Visible recognition is the engine that keeps the cycle going.

Organic asks scale slowly. Expect a trickle for the first month or two, then a steady flow once customers see other customers getting featured. The quality varies, but the cost is close to zero and the trust signal is the strongest of any UGC type.

Run an incentive campaign

When you need volume in a defined window (a product launch, a holiday, a seasonal push), an incentive campaign moves faster than organic. You give people a reason to post beyond just love for the brand.

The reward doesn’t have to be huge to work, but it has to feel generous relative to the ask. A loyalty point bump. A free shipping code. A monthly draw with a real prize. Entry into a feature on the brand’s main grid. A discount on the next order. The bigger the ask (a 60-second video vs. a tagged photo), the bigger the reward needs to be.

The campaign structure that performs well across categories looks like this.

• One clear instruction (post a 15-second video showing the product in use).
• One branded hashtag (memorable, not already in use, easy to spell).
• One specific deadline.
• One reward, named and visible.
• One landing page or pinned post that collects all submissions in one place.

Confused entries are the biggest drag on campaign performance. Test the brief by reading it to someone who’s never heard of the brand. If they can’t repeat the rules back to you, the brief is too complicated.

Hire freelance UGC creators

Organic and incentive UGC are about gathering content from customers you already have. Hiring freelance UGC creators is a different model. You pay a creator to make content for you, on demand, with full usage rights handed over so you can run it as paid ads.

This is the fastest way to fill a content pipeline from a cold start. The workflow:

• Write a brief with the product, the angle, the format, and the deliverables.
• Source creators through marketplaces like Backstage, Billo, Trend.io, JoinBrands, Influee, and Collabstr.
• Review portfolios and pricing. Most creators charge $150 to $500 per short-form video, with higher rates for creators with proven ad performance.
• Ship product, get content back in 7 to 14 days, run it as ads.

The trade-off is authenticity. A hired UGC creator’s content sits one notch below a real customer’s organic post on the trust scale. The advantage is control and speed. You can brief the exact angle, the exact hook, and the exact CTA you want tested, and you can get 20 variants in two weeks. For brands running paid social, that volume is non-negotiable.

User-generated content campaign examples worth stealing from

The user generated content examples below are worth studying because they got readers to do something most marketing can’t get them to do, which is create real, original content for the brand. Each one has an idea underneath it that scales down to any size brand willing to think creatively about the offer.

The pattern across all of these is the same. A clear ask. A reason to participate that’s bigger than the effort required. Visible reward (feature, money, or both). And a structure the brand can repeat year after year so the campaign compounds rather than burning out after one cycle.

Apple’s #ShotOniPhone

Apple didn’t pay anyone. They didn’t run a contest. They just told iPhone owners to tag their best photos with #ShotOniPhone. Then they put the best ones on billboards in Times Square, Tokyo, London, Berlin, and São Paulo, with the photographer’s name credited. A regular person could open their phone, post a photo, and end up on the side of a building in Manhattan. The brand got a decade of free, world-class photography out of a hashtag. Any product where a customer might want bragging rights can run a version of this.

GoPro Awards

GoPro pays for the best fan-shot footage every month. Short-form clips earn a few hundred dollars. A great photo gets $500. A heroic action sequence can earn five figures. The pitch to customers is irresistible: “Use the camera we sold you. Send us the best stuff. We’ll pay you for it and feature you to a global audience.” GoPro essentially crowdsourced its entire creative department.

Aerie’s #AerieREAL

The lingerie brand committed to never retouching photos of models or customers, then asked customers to post unedited shots of themselves in Aerie products. The campaign hit a nerve in a category that had spent decades airbrushing reality out of every image. Aerie’s parent company reported repeated double-digit annual growth in the segment after launching it.

Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl”

Doritos ran a contest where any fan could submit a 30-second Super Bowl commercial. The winner got $1 million and saw their ad aired during the actual Super Bowl. Across eight editions, fans submitted more than 36,000 entries. The hook for the creator was unbeatable: imagine telling your friends your homemade ad ran during the biggest TV event of the year. Even brands with zero Super Bowl budget can borrow the structure. Pick the most aspirational placement you have access to (your homepage hero, your most-watched podcast spot, a billboard you can afford) and offer it to the winner.

LEGO Ideas

LEGO lets fans submit designs for new sets. If a design gets 10,000 supporter votes, LEGO reviews it. If LEGO produces it, the original creator gets 1% of net sales for life and full credit on the box. Real fans have earned tens of thousands of dollars on a single set. The genius here is the incentive structure. LEGO isn’t just paying for content. They’re offering a piece of the upside. A version of this works for any product line where customer ideas could plausibly become real SKUs.

Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor”

Lay’s asked customers to invent a new chip flavor. Finalists got their flavors on store shelves nationwide. The winning creator took home $1 million plus 1% of net sales of the flavor. The campaign generated millions of submissions, billions of media impressions, and a long-running content engine. The lesson: the strongest incentive isn’t always cash. It’s a real role in the product the customer helped create.

Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke”

Coke printed individual first names on bottles, then asked people to find their name (or a friend’s name) and post a photo. A simple twist turned every grocery store into a treasure hunt. The branded hashtag has racked up over 550K Instagram posts.

Starbucks Red Cup Contest

Every holiday season, Starbucks asks customers to decorate their iconic red cups and post the result. Winners get featured and earn gift cards or merch. The campaign costs Starbucks almost nothing and refreshes their holiday content library every year.

How to put UGC to work after you have it

Collecting UGC is only half the job. The other half is putting it where it earns its keep. The strongest UGC programs treat the content as a creative library and feed it into every channel a customer might touch.

The places UGC delivers the most lift:

• Product pages. UGC galleries on product detail pages routinely improve conversion rates by 20% to 40%.
• Paid ads. Ads that open with a real person talking to the camera typically beat polished b-roll on cost per click and cost per acquisition.
• Email and SMS. Customer photos drop click-through rates in product emails noticeably when used as the hero image.
• Social grids. A regular feature slot (Customer Friday, Reader Reels) trains your audience to expect UGC and creates a recurring posting rhythm.
• Landing pages. Testimonial videos placed above the fold pull conversion rates up on cold-traffic landers.
• Sales decks and decks for retail buyers. UGC clips slipped into a pitch deck do more for credibility than any number of polished case studies.

One process detail trips up brands more than any other: rights. Tagging a brand isn’t legal permission to use a customer’s content in a paid ad. Always ask in writing, either through a comment, a DM, or a rights-management tool like TINT, Bazaarvoice, or Yotpo. Get the customer’s explicit yes before the content moves anywhere paid.

Frequently asked questions about user-generated content

What are the best platforms for creating user-generated content campaigns?

Instagram and TikTok are the strongest social platforms because both reward video and tagged-photo content with organic reach. YouTube works well for long-form reviews, tutorials, and unboxings. For sourcing paid UGC creators, marketplaces like Backstage, Billo, Trend.io, JoinBrands, and Influee let brands post a brief, review applicants, pay flat fees, and receive licensed content within a week. For collecting and republishing UGC from existing customers at scale, dedicated tools like TINT, Bazaarvoice, Yotpo, and Pixlee TurnTo handle the discovery, rights-clearance, and gallery embed in one workflow.

How to measure the ROI of user-generated content marketing

Track three layers and you’ll have a clean read.

• Engagement. Compare saves, shares, and reach on UGC posts vs. brand-produced posts. UGC typically wins on saves and shares because the content is more useful to the viewer.
• Conversion. A/B test product pages with and without UGC galleries. Run the same test on landing pages with and without a UGC hero video.
• Paid performance. Run identical ad campaigns where the only variable is the creative type (branded vs. UGC). Measure cost per click, cost per acquisition, and return on ad spend. UGC creative almost always wins on the first two and usually on the third.

ROI calculation is simple after that. Revenue attributed to UGC, divided by the cost of producing it plus any paid promotion behind it. Most brands running UGC ads see a 20% to 50% lift in return on ad spend over polished creative.

Strategies for encouraging customer submissions of reviews and photos

The single biggest lever is timing the ask to the moment of peak satisfaction. The post-arrival email is stronger than the post-purchase email. The thank-you message after a positive support interaction is stronger than a cold review request. The shipping confirmation is too early. The fourteen-day post-delivery email is about right.

Beyond timing, four moves consistently raise submission rates.

• Make the ask in one sentence with one link, not a paragraph with three options.
• Offer a small reward that feels generous (loyalty points, a discount code, free shipping, entry to a monthly prize draw).
• Re-share every customer post for the first 90 days with a tag and a thank-you so others see the upside of submitting.
• Print a UGC ask directly on the packaging, with the hashtag and a QR code if it fits.

What are the different types of user-generated content?

The main types are reviews and ratings, unboxings, lifestyle photos and videos, tutorials and how-to content, video testimonials, hashtag and challenge submissions, before-and-after content, live streams, and forum or community discussions. Each type maps to a different stage of the buyer journey. Unboxings and tutorials drive consideration. Reviews and testimonials close the sale. Lifestyle and challenge content keep existing customers engaged and pull in new ones through tagged friends. A strong UGC program uses three to five of these formats in parallel rather than relying on a single one.

How can I use user-generated content to improve my brand’s social media engagement?

Repost customer content with credit and a real thank-you in the caption. Pin top reviews and customer videos to the top of your Instagram and TikTok profiles. Build a recurring weekly slot (Customer Friday, Real Results Monday) so followers know there’s a real chance their post gets featured. Use UGC clips as the lead three seconds of every paid ad, since ads that open with a real face beat polished intros on completion rate. And build a tagged-content library so you always have fresh creative to swap in when one variant starts to fatigue.

Engagement compounds when your audience sees that posting about your brand might mean getting featured. The faster you can credit and reshare customer content, the more content comes in.

Are there agencies specializing in managing UGC marketing campaigns?

Yes. A specialist UGC and creator management agency handles the slow parts most in-house teams underestimate: sourcing the right creators, writing the brief, contracting, managing revisions, clearing usage rights, and delivering finished assets ready to post or run as ads.

Markedli runs UGC and creator management as a core service for growing brands. We source creators, write and manage the brief, run the content review process, secure full usage rights, and hand back ready-to-post video and photo assets every month. If you want a UGC pipeline that actually feeds your social and ad accounts on a predictable schedule, reach out and we’ll see if we’re a fit.

Key takeaways

User-generated content is the strongest social proof a brand can put in front of a buyer, and the fastest creative engine a brand can build behind its paid social. It’s not optional anymore for any consumer brand trying to grow on Instagram, TikTok, or Meta Ads.

The shortest path forward looks like this.

• Start asking for UGC today. One line in the post-purchase email, one ask on the packaging, one pinned story explaining how to tag.
• Plan one incentive campaign per quarter with a clear ask, a clear reward, and a single hashtag.
• Brief two to four freelance UGC creators a month to keep the ad creative library fresh.
• Get permission in writing every time before content moves into a paid placement.
• Track engagement, conversion, and ad performance separately so you know which UGC actually moves revenue.

Study the user-generated content examples that worked at the brand sizes ahead of you, then borrow the structure. The mechanics are repeatable. Only the budget and the prize change.

Brands that get a real UGC engine running stop fighting the platforms for organic reach. They start working with them. That’s the difference between a social account that grinds and one that compounds.