How to scale your eCommerce brand to $100k/month using UGC

How to scale your eCommerce brand to $100k/month using UGC

By Fady Ilias

July 25, 2022

As you may have already know, we’ve just recently launched our podcast and each episode is published on our Youtube channel. In our first episode, our hosts Danny and Fady shared their one KEY advice on how to scale your brand to its first $100K: Don’t sleep on UGC!

If this is something new to you, well you’ve slept on user-generated content long enough. As the latest buzz points out, user-generated content has become an important part of the company’s content marketing strategy. If you thought it was your secret weapon while doing conventional marketing, the results from different surveys paint a brighter picture for UGC.

What is UGC anyway? And how does it actually work?

UGC stands for user-generated content. It’s basically any type of third-party content that you add value to by annotating, curating and sharing with your audience.

The first question anyone asks is what is a UGC ad it’s interesting because it’s not that high-quality produced production style type videos. All you need is the phone and your product and that’s it!

For example, we have Jenny in her bedroom just recording a video while trying on the product or showing how she unboxes – which is so important these days. An unboxing experience is letting your prospects experience it before even trying out your product and so many people look forward to trying it out!

Why does your brand need UGC Marketing?

It’s simple and cost-effective when done right
It builds brand awareness
Establishes brand credibility
Promotes your social media organic growth
Refines market target through your social media insights
Supports lead nurturing
Speeds up lead generation

Why do users now prefer UGC over high-production content?

User-generated content is just so much more relatable than having a high-production studio video ad (although there is a space and place for that). UGCs just looks much more genuine from a consumer perspective.

Content created in such relatable spaces is so important it gives a real story and a real user for the brand firstly and for the product itself. It just brings the potential users or potential customers of the product so much closer to the brand.

What’s the process of producing UGC?

First of all, if you’re a product-based e-com business, you should find your target audience matched with influencers that fit your specific brand niche. You send out the product to them, you pay that influencer or for free in exchange for your products with more benefits (depending on your mutual agreement), and then they produce the content for you.

That’s how we do it too at Digital Oasis because we produce those types of ads, and it’s amazing to outsource raw content from creators/influencers so we can edit to a more engaging finish asset that can perform best both for organic and paid socials.

Does UGC need to be an influencer? And what is the difference between UGC and influencer marketing?

It doesn’t actually have to be influencers, although that also brings a lot of difference in terms of results, especially on your social media organic growth – there’s a space for them, but it’s not necessarily always an influencer that works because an influencer generally recognizes their value and you have to pay for that but just regular creators are anyone who doesn’t have to have a high following base which then separates in terms of the digital marketing realm or service offering user-generated content is some is actually very different to influencer marketing.

User-generated content creators can be literally anyone who is willing and can do the content for your brand

How do we make sure that creators deliver accordingly?

What we’ve found is that when we do our user-generated content for our clients we brief them, saying we need you to film yourself doing XYZ and we encourage them to try different things send us different angles and we just piece all that content together and come up with different hooks different bodies and different call to actions.

How and when do we use UGC in advertising funnels?

UGC is great for all aspects of the funnel but your top of the funnel is more focused on the message the what that product solves – it doesn’t always have to be product-focused but more on why that product answers that question at the top of the phone or why the brand, what is it that it solves, what impact does the brand have, then your middle of the funnel and your bottom-funnel these are people that are quite familiar with your brand already, they’ve heard of the brand right but they just need some convincing and user-generated content is the one that convinces them.

How does UGC show the brand experience from a customer’s perspective?

Literally having someone opening the box for you because you’re probably asking yourselves the questions like:

What am I going to get into?
What’s the experience like?
What should I expect from it?

UGC brings the expectations or anticipations to life. And t’s not just a piece of content – you’ve got social proof that helps you build your credibility among your audience.

For example, let’s say you’re a skincare product or a skincare brand. We know a lot of girls are always asking things like:

How does it feel on the skin?
Is it so oily?
Is it sort of what might dry out my skin?
How will my skin react to it?

How does UGC impact the overall success of the brand?

It’s interesting you would think that most e-com business owners would spend a lot more money on production-type videos only to realize that it’s not those videos that actually perform quite well.

What does this mean for high-production content?

There is still a place for high-production video because as a brand that grows content you can’t always live on user-generated content as your brand grows. We wouldn’t fully ignore the fact that still, high production video is necessary – maybe it depends on the media or the platform that the user or the audience is watching on.

If you’re on tv, we don’t think you would want to see a user-generated content piece like KFC for example or hungry jacks.

How do we know which type of UGC performs for a client?

Ad metrics and organic posts will tell you! And even sales – as most brands give influencers their own unique coupon code for their followers to use in their purchase.

The response is really good – that’s how you get a really good ad.

How do we know which type of UGC performs for a client?

UGC works for everyone but there are differences in content types a client can choose from – a picture might work great for some in a snap without even trying more videos, others may find it best to use video content instead of a photo and vice versa.

Most of our clients have done a holistic approach – from testing and identifying what type of channel we’re putting that creative out on and sort of honing down on that so have you started.

Which big retailers have tapped into UGC?

We’ve seen a couple of them running TikTok ads. We can see Woolies and other well-established brands doing TikTok UGC ads. We can even see Flashcards on top and a lot of other big retailers.

Consumers’ behavioural shifts

Shifted away from just only photos to Instagram carousels and then now we have reels being the next big thing. Facebook’s done it recently as well and everyone’s going for the vertical short form you know engaging type videos.

The same goes with Youtube – almost all creators are now Youtube shorts too.

Why do short-form videos seem to be popular?

We know a Youtube creator who used to do normal videos, and he was getting about two 300k two-three hundred thousand views wow on his videos but as soon as he started doing shorts he was getting three or four million views because it’s just his videos are so much shorter his audience doesn’t get bored listening or watching only the highlights and most important points he’s got to share in that one piece of content.

How do you feel about UGC for your brand? If it hasn’t made it to your content strategy, what’s stopping you from tasting this diamond?

We’ve learned from experience that the word “reaching” the end of your content marketing funnel isn’t the ultimate goal. User-generated content is not a distraction from your main marketing channels, but rather it is a new way to reach customers and prospects. This is where UGC marketing comes in. UGC marketing aims at driving up your branding efforts by encouraging consumers to talk about your brand in their social circle. The more they talk about your products (or services), the more chances are that you’ll be exposed to new customers and prospects.

Think about it. Have you ever had a feeling that traditional marketing is not working the way it should? Don’t be frustrated. It’s just how things go and how customers are. Any ad that doesn’t feel like a natural part of your experience doesn’t resonate in the modern digital world.⁠

It’s no secret that consumers are less influenced by traditional advertising and marketing than ever before. Taking a more customer-centric approach to advertising, UGC campaigns can help companies reach customers in a way no other medium can — one that feels authentic, credible, and relatable.⁠

Our one last piece of advice? Don’t sleep on UGC! You could already be losing a lot of profits and prospects without even knowing.

Not sure where to start? Email us at hello@digitaloasis.com.au to book your e-comm audit with one of our strategists for free!

Follow us on Instagram for more marketing tips and tricks! Don’t forget that we have a monthly tea in the desert podcast available on our Youtube channel. We plan to bring on some big players in the business and marketing space, so do leave us some feedback on the topics and digital trends you would like us to discuss as we take your hand to support you on your journey through the digital desert.