How to value influencers' UGC in non-social media communication?

The booming e-commerce and marketplaces sector has not finished making news: this year, we observe an increase of 12% of merchant sites compared to 2020. Brands, in response to the real issue of user trust, are adopting new communication channels and formats in a logic of constant improvement of the customer experience. 

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Content from influencers and social network users, known as UGC (User Generated Content), is particularly valuable in campaigns run on the Hivency influencer platform. Integrating them into a non-social media strategy allows you to go further in amplifying this content. What are UGCs in concrete terms? How can they be used effectively in a non-social media strategy? What are the possible innovations? Answer in the article.

How to effectively value UGCs?

Social networks are used a lot to promote different UGC: visual publications on Instagram, dynamic videos on TikTok, product crash-tests on YouTube, stories on the web... Many channels allow to share easily these contents in order to increase the visibility, and thus, increase the traffic towards the merchant site of a brand, for example.

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These UGC are contents created by Internet users including influencers on social networks, websites or forums. They can take various forms: photos, videos, reviews, comments, tweets or stories... The objective? Show or describe a product or service as it really is to other Internet users, and share their point of view on the purchase in question.

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As a reference tool and source of trust for users, UGC lends a high degree of credibility to a brand. According to a study conducted by Tintup, 75% of marketers consider this content to be an unstoppable way to gain authenticity. 

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For example, Garnier, a leading cosmetics brand, reused YouTube crash-test videos of the Fructis Hair Food line of hair products. By combining user reviews in an advert broadcast on TV channels, the brand succeeded in amplifying UGC to create a striking advert.

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Among UGC, there are CGC (Customer Generated Content): these are contents created by a company's customers that refer to one of their products or to the company itself. This content does not necessarily illustrate a purchase experience or a testimonial. Although little valued, it represents a powerful marketing tool, just like UGC: consumers have 2.4 times more confidence in content published by consumers or influencers than in content created by the brands themselves.

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The fashion sector lends itself perfectly to the amplification of UGC. The women's ready-to-wear brand Pimkie has understood this very well: a section dedicated to sharing Instagram UGC has been developed on its website. 

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To appear on the site's section, users of the social network must identify the brand's Instagram account and display the tag #pimkiexme in their publication. Thus, consumers, in search of sincerity, identify with these authentic and true to life contents that appear on the site. As part of a desire to improve the customer journey, this attractive strategy helps to encourage users to buy.

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Non-Social Media Strategy: the solution to amplify UGC 

Conducting a multi-channel marketing strategy allows a brand to multiply its presence, which reinforces its visibility and maximizes its chances to get attention. To do so, UGC can be used as part of a communication strategy outside social networks. This strategy allows brands to amplify the content created by influencers and consumers in an original and efficient way. 

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This type of non-social media communication includes non-traditional channels that are complementary to influence, such as events, e-mailing, press relations and sponsorship. It allows, at a lower cost, to reach a multiple audience and to reach a return on investment very easily by integrating influencer marketing to your 360° strategy. To achieve this, all you have to do is select the content you want to promote and enhance it on the channel of your choice. 

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For example, the food brand Materne, which specializes in fruit processing, uses content from Instagram users to feed its website. In the "Materne Breaks" section, Instagram posts are displayed: these UGCs feature products, immersing the consumer in the heart of the brand's identity. In this way, the brand strengthens its relationship of trust and proximity with its customers by sharing the publications on both its Instagram account and its merchant site. Moreover, these UGCs make the buying experience more concrete. 

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Focus on stories, UGC allies

Stories, a fast-growing feature on the web, are particularly attractive and effective for illustrating the UGC obtained. It is estimated that 48% of French people make e-commerce purchases from their cell phones: thus, these innovative formats fit perfectly with these new consumption modes.

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Adored by Internet users, stories are based on a dynamic and instantaneous effect that brings authenticity and humanization to brands' content. Used daily by Internet users, they are now developed on almost all social networks: after Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, LinkedIn has adopted them, followed recently by Twitter. Solutions such as JOIN allow professionals to quickly create, easily multi-distribute (websites, mobile applications and social networks) and monetize high-performance stories to effectively meet their strategic objectives. 

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Among the objectives they can meet, we find the generation of sales to promote a product or customer testimonials, or the development of the employer brand by communicating internally in a company on an event or an announcement for example. Influencers also often use this feature for marketing campaigns: product demonstrations, unboxing, contests, stories offer multiple alternatives to communicate and enhance UGC and CGC. Brands can also use influencers' content to feed their websites or applications.

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This tempting format is a concentrate of advantages: in addition to being visual and impactful, it offers users the possibility to include a direct link to the page of their choice, and can even be sponsored to maximize the chances of gaining performance.

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Consumer reviews, the UGC of reference

Consumer reviews, valuable content for brands, are a real must-have to value: it is estimated that 87% of consumers consult a review before making a purchase. Collected on merchant sites or social networks, a range of solutions are available to highlight them. 

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You can, for example, select reviews from influencers that you think are relevant and sincere about a newly launched product and include them in the promotional email of the concerned product sent to your customers. In the same idea, you can post reviews next to products displayed in your shelves, or directly in stories on the web to make consumers want to discover them and, why not, buy them.

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To help you, there are solutions such as the influencer platform Hivency, which offers a consumer review collection service: "Ratings and Reviews", allowing brands to collect authentic reviews by launching simple and effective campaigns. These reviews, which can be distributed to up to 3 e-commerce sites per campaign, are an unstoppable solution for feeding a brand's content.

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As you can see, a UGC created can be the source of multiple varied contents and be the object of differentiating campaigns for your brand. As a powerful growth lever, brands have every interest in relaying this powerful content created by influencers or consumers, as part of their marketing strategies.

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