Unlocking The Benefits Of UGC Agencies: How To Leverage Them For Ultimate Content Success

Updated: September 9, 2024 8 min read

Agnė Pelešinaitė-Čeledinė

Editor

Every business worth its salt understands the benefits of conventional marketing agencies. Outsourcing tasks to specialists reduces in-house requirements substantially.

But now brands are waking up to the advantages of UGC agencies – specialist outlets that assist companies with leveraging user-generated content for their outreach. These firms focus on helping businesses access UGC while assisting with content strategy, moderation, social media management, and influencer sourcing.

Here, we discuss how UGC agencies work and the benefits of hiring them. We also look at choosing a suitable agency for your requirements and how brands can leverage their services.

How UGC Agencies Set Brands Up For Success

UGC agencies are relatively new kids on the block. However, these companies offer massive advantages for brands looking to succeed with online digital marketing.

Their primary role is to collect and curate high-quality UGC content from various online sources, including review sites and social media platforms. Specialists seek customer user-generated content and select snippets they feel complement their clients’ brands.

A significant chunk of the work involves filtering UGC to comply with brand guidelines. While some might be flattering to brands, content may have the wrong tone of voice.

Curation also ensures legal standards are being met. UGC may break laws in some highly regulated industries or contain disallowed speech.

Other roles of UGC agencies include:

Managing the community by responding to comments and taking action to streamline channels connecting brands and audiences
Working with influencers to generate additional UGC and improving the quality of user contributions
Managing brands’ social media presence, enabling users to generate more relatable and relevant posts
Developing strategies to encourage users to generate more content via activation techniques, like challenges, contests, and hashtag campaigns
Adopting paid media strategies to enhance the sharing of UGC across platforms

Quality UGC agencies always adopt multiple strategies to maximize brands’ online success. While they preserve the authentic voice of customers, they also adopt best practices to enhance visibility and ensure any UGC deployed is impactful.

Unlocking The Power UGC Agencies: 6 Benefits

UGC agencies are central to brands’ sales and marketing efforts because of their value to consumers. According to statistics, 40% of shoppers say UGC is “extremely” or “very” important when making purchase decisions.

Furthermore, higher conversion rates aren’t the only advantage of working with these agencies. Brands often experience additional benefits when choosing these partnerships.

This section explores some of these additional advantages further. It clarifies why UGC agencies are so valuable and how they can help firms achieve more with their online outreach.

Expertise and experience

Expertise and experience are significant benefits of working with a UGC creative agency. Professionals have vast knowledge of the user-generated content landscape and how brands can leverage it for success.

For example, agencies can help brands develop more creative campaigns involving user participation. Outlets may suggest driving engagement with contests or hashtag challenges.

Agencies will also use their experience to leverage UGC for improved brand image. Work can include highlighting satisfied customers and using carefully curated snippets to convey reviews and testimonials most authentically.

Access to diverse content creators

Another benefit of UGC agencies is access to diverse content creators. Many outlets have libraries of influencers and individuals who can generate authentic posts and videos to build trust.

Critically, these people aren’t just paid agency staff but real contributors who can generate trust-building UGC on-demand. As peers, audiences are likely to engage with them and take what they say seriously.

Time and resource savings

Time and resource savings are also a benefit. While 86% of brands believe that using UGC in paid and owned media boosts ad effectiveness, they also know that generating such content is costly.

Working with a UGC content agency eliminates many of these problems. Professionals take over the time-consuming tasks of finding and curating contributing users, allowing brands to focus on their core operations.

As such, the savings can be substantial. Many companies find they don’t need to dedicate any staff time to UGC sourcing at all – agencies do it for them.

Scalability

Scalability is another key element. Brands working with UGC agencies can add to their content library efficiently, thanks to vast repositories of user-generated content available through these channels. Agencies often have thousands of people on their books – enough for even the largest brands.

Improved Sentiment Understanding

Lastly, UGC agencies are highly effective in identifying trends and user sentiment. Outlets understand what audiences are thinking and can leverage this capability to determine the types of campaigns that will be most effective.

How to Choose a UGC Agency

The benefits of leveraging UGC in marketing campaigns are clear. But how do you find an agency that will help you?

Key Criteria For Working With A UGC Agency

When searching for a UGC agency, it pays to have high standards. Here’s what to look for as a minimum:

Evidence Of Industry Expertise

First and foremost, check if the agency has expertise in curating and moderating UGC for your niche or vertical. Look for evidence of previous work with brands like yours.

This criterion is crucial because the use of UGC can vary substantially by firm and industry. What’s appropriate for legal professionals can differ from ecommerce firms.

If an agency partnered with a brand like yours before, they are more likely to understand the trends and challenges you face. Furthermore, they could be better at targeting your chosen demographic because they already know what works.

A Track Record Of Success

You also want to look for a track record of success. UGC agencies should understand how to execute effective campaigns that work.

The best agencies usually list their triumphs on their websites. Some will also provide you with information on request.

Look through their case studies to see who they helped and what they did to drive success. Again, the more examples you can find from your niche, the better.

An Effort To Understand Your Goals

Another criterion for choosing an agency is to ensure they understand your business goals. UGC professionals should talk to you about your objectives and what you want user-generated content to achieve.

High-quality UGC agencies take time to understand your needs and what they want to do. For example, they will talk to you about the channels you want to use and if you want to raise awareness or convert. They also drill into specific goals, like developing customer loyalty or shifting brand tone/voice.

The Use Of Technology

High-quality UGC professionals also use technology extensively to deliver results. The best leverage advanced analytics and monitoring software to curate and deploy the most relevant and useful content. Paid media monitoring tools check the cost-effectiveness of strategies while moderation systems integrate across platforms for multi-channel support.

Good Reviews

Good reviews are another sign working with a UGC agency makes sense. Outlets that consistently get four and five-star reviews usually offer reasonable quality.

Effective Communication Style

Lastly, consider the agency’s communication style. Are they responsive? Do they answer your questions directly?

Always ensure you can work with specific agencies before signing contracts or deals. Check they make sense on a cultural and personal level for your brand.

Even if the agency meets the above criteria, partnerships may not work if communication is lacking. Being unable to see eye-to-eye with your account manager can undermine the partnership.

Probing questions to ask potential agencies

Here are some questions to ask UGC agencies based on the above criteria:

Do you specialize in specific types of content?
What methods and techniques do you use to source and curate UGC?
How do you ensure UGC complies with legal standards, regulations, and copyright laws?
What moderation strategies do you rely on the most and how effective are they?
How long do consultations last and what methods do you use to uncover client objectives?
What approach do you use when developing UGC campaigns?
Do you use any metrics to track the effectiveness of UGC deployed across channels?
What techniques and systems do you use to ensure UGC campaigns align with clients’ brand voice?
How often can I expect campaign progress reports and what metrics will you include?
What approaches do you use to encourage community participation in content creation?
Do you outsource UGC editing or polishing to other creative services?
Can I get some examples of your use of UGC from previous campaigns?
Can you share references from previous clients?
How easy is it to change brand direction while using your UGC services?
How much can I scale my campaigns using you?

Successful UGC Campaign Partnerships

Most business leaders know the enormous benefits UGC offers. But what successes highlight the incredible effectiveness of using agencies to apply this marketing strategy? Let’s take a look.

Purple Mattress

Purple Mattress partnered with an innovative UGC agency for creators to develop a campaign to showcase the quality of its bedding products. Over six months, it received over 500 user-generated images it could use in social media posts to drive sales.

Nike

Nike also used UGC during its “Better For It” campaign targeting women in fitness and sports. The sportswear company encouraged them to share personal fitness stories that resonate with audiences.

The campaign was extraordinarily successful and helped the company earn millions of downloads of its Nike Training Club App. It also spearheaded a 20% increase in women’s shoes and apparel sales, significantly more than the enterprise expected.

Airbnb

Airbnb is another massive brand that leverages UGC to fulfill its objectives. The company has had numerous UGC campaigns, but its “That’s Why We Airbnb” is arguably the best. It documents users’ authentic travel experiences by getting guests to share stories and photos of their stay.

What’s so clever about this approach is how it reveals how personalized reservations can be. Every customer wants something different, and that’s what Airbnb provides.

GoPro

Lastly, GoPro is responsible for some of history’s most successful agency-managed UGC campaigns. For example, the company asked users to submit highlight reel videos to promote its HERO7 Black product with winners eligible for a massive cash reward. The campaign resulted in over 25,000 submissions globally, driving sales and the company’s stock price up.

Future of UGC Agencies: What Happens Next?

UGC agencies have already come a long way from their early days. However, their techniques are still advancing, shaping how these companies interact with their customers.

One area where things are changing is social commerce. Agencies are helping brands insert UGC content into ecommerce platforms that allow users to shop in posts.

Another area of activity is community building. Agencies want to use UGC to foster brand loyalty and belonging among customers to share their experiences and connect.

Diversity and inclusion are also playing a role. UGC agencies want to help a broader range of voices to make themselves heard, allowing brands to target their audiences more effectively.

Lastly, the impact of technology will likely shape UGC agency work for many years into the future. For example, we can expect:

Improved analytics could help agencies learn more about how UGC is performing and what aspects of the content users find most engaging
VR and AR could provide more immersive UGC experiences by overlaying content on the environment
Machine learning could assist in the curation and moderation of content, bringing down prices and reducing the quantity of manual work required
5G connectivity could improve users’ ability to share high-quality video content, streamlining the UGC collection process
AI could automate some UGC distribution workflows, making it less challenging for agencies to handle larger volumes of content for their clients
Voice content could become more important for UGCs looking to share posts across platforms