A step-by-step guide to building an effective UGC strategy

Key points

• UGC has become one of the most trusted forms of social proof, helping brands close the gap between what they say and what customers actually believe.
• A strong UGC strategy starts with inspiring your community to create content, then curating it with clear standards for quality, safety, and rights.
• Activating UGC across the full customer journey – from ads to product pages – consistently boosts engagement, trust, and conversion.
• Scaling UGC requires the right technology to manage rights, centralize assets, and measure the revenue impact of every piece of content.

User-Generated Content (UGC) has turned marketing on its head in the last few years. These days, the most influential voices aren’t brands – they’re the people actually using the product.

With consumers tired of ads and craving authenticity, 65% of consumers now trust customer content more than influencer posts.

UGC has become an essential social proof that drives trust, engagement, and revenue. But how do you make sure you’re not missing out on this gold dust on your social channels?

The key is a solid strategy that inspires, curates, and then deploys UGC across the entire customer journey. When executed well, UGC can deliver measurable ROI and strengthen relationships within your community.

In this guide, we’ll look at a practical framework for building a winning UGC strategy and show you how a platform like Emplifi can help your brand scale without sacrificing authenticity.

The foundation: Why UGC delivers real ROI

With the average person seeing thousands of adverts a day, consumers have become desensitized with traditional advertising. They’re increasingly cautious of manufactured claims, and they’re less willing to take a brand’s word at face value. Enter UGC.

Consumers want to see what real people think of your product. In fact, 51% of social media users are driven to purchase if they see a post that features people like them.

Take Nike’s UGC galleries on product pages – they give shoppers real-world styling inspo and help them picture how the product will look on them.

For marketers, UGC is also the perfect way to plug content gaps, providing a constant stream of fresh, authentic visuals, and reviews without overloading creative teams.

What counts as UGC?

Any customer who is getting reimbursed for their honest opinion can be classed as a UGC creator.

Examples of UGC include:

• Photos and videos showcasing products in real-life situations
• Customer testimonials highlighting experiences and results
• Unboxing content capturing excitement and initial impressions

A note on legal rights: You must have explicit permission to use UGC. Proper rights management from the outset ensures brand safety, compliance, and the freedom to repurpose content across channels. UGC management platforms like Emplifi automate rights tracking, so you never have to worry about missing consent or violating copyright.

The strategy: Inspire, curate, and acquire UGC

A successful UGC strategy starts with intentional content generation. Collecting a handful of random posts won’t necessarily lead to an increased ROI. Instead, you need campaigns and processes that clearly align content with marketing objectives.

There are two different types of UGC-generated content:

Campaign-driven generation:

So you have a campaign idea, and you know the type of content you want to use. But now it’s a case of finding people to make it. You could use:

• Branded hashtags and challenges: Encourage customers to submit specific types of content. Make participation fun, shareable, and on-brand.
• Incentivization: Reward contributions with discounts or exclusive access. Motivated customers are more likely to produce high-quality, authentic content.

Take Apple’s #ShotoniPhone campaign. For years, creators who use the hashtag have had the chance to be featured across Apple’s Instagram, ads, and website, massively expanding their reach. Apple’s feed is now almost entirely built on iPhone user content, and with more than 31.7M Instagram posts tagged, the brand has an endless well of authentic visuals for future marketing campaigns.

Organic Generation:

This is UGC that’s produced by your customers with little input from you. They simply love your product and want to share it. You can make the most of organic UGC with these techniques:

• Product packaging prompts: Encourage content sharing immediately after purchase with QR codes or short links that make it easy to submit content on the spot.
• Community building: Foster engaged communities where UGC occurs naturally. Brands that nurture these spaces can see a consistent stream of high-value content.

Jones Soda puts its community front and center by turning customer content into part of the product itself. With Emplifi, the brand scaled this approach across more than 50 UGC galleries, driving a 69% engagement rate and a 55% increase in dwell time, while immersive video and AR ‘REEL LABELS’ helped boost interaction and average order value.

Curation and vetting

Customers could be making content about your brand on any social media channel so it’s important that you’re using a social listening platform to zero in on the people talking about your brand and to make sure you’re not missing out on quality posts. From there, a UGC management platform can keep everything organised and handle all your legal requirements.

Emplifi can help you track UGC across all your channels so that you can easily collect it and sort it into libraries.

Once you’ve curated a UGC gallery that you love, it’s important to review each piece of content for quality, rights, and brand alignment. Skipping this step can put your brand at risk – for example, featuring customer content that includes inappropriate language, misleading claims, or off-brand visuals can undermine trust and negatively impact the customer experience.

Establishing clear criteria ensures that only content that reflects your brand is published. Emplifi’s UGC management tools, for example, centralize these workflows so it’s easy to curate the UGC that works best for your brand, and publish it across different channels.

The activation: Deploying UGC across the marketing funnel

UGC can influence awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention, making it ideal at every stage of the customer journey.

Here’s how it can feed into each stage of your marketing funnel:

Awareness:

Stop potential customers mid-scroll with high-quality UGC repurposed from paid social campaigns. Content from real customers can resonate more than polished ads, increasing reach and engagement.

Consideration:

When a customer is weighing up their options, UGC can put the odds in your favor. It builds trust and addresses any potential objections while making your brand more authentic. Highlight customer testimonials and reviews on landing pages and email campaigns to meet your prospect where they are.

Decision:

Embedding UGC galleries on product pages or featuring social proof during checkout can both secure the deal. Shoppers are more likely to convert when they see peers enjoying your product.

Carhartt, for instance, used Emplifi to manage their UGC and saw a 27% conversion rate using UGC galleries with real people wearing their gear. It drove $150K in revenue, directly impacting the bottom line.

Retention

UGC can even help you retain customers by showing how loyalty programs or private communities can benefit your users. Feature customer stories in email campaigns to current users to strengthen their connection to your community and encourage repeat purchases.

Expert tip: Always connect UGC to measurable outcomes like conversions and repeat engagement. That way, you can justify investment in your UGC strategy and continuously optimize for the best results.

Scaling UGC with technology and metrics

As UGC volume grows, managing it manually becomes almost impossible. A dedicated UGC platform like Emplifi can help you scale efficiently while maintaining content quality.

Radio Flyer used UGC galleries within the Emplifi platform to lift their average order value by 12%. Customers who were viewing this content were also 7x more likely to make a purchase. When they realised how effective UGC could be for their business, Radio Flyer needed to scale the program. The Emplifi platform helped them create 117 live galleries site-wide to take their strategy to the next level.

With a centralized UGC management system like Emplifi, you can collect, approve, and publish content across channels easily. Rights management and content libraries are automated, reducing the risk of errors and legal issues too, giving you true peace of mind.

How to measure the impact of UGC

While vanity metrics like comments and reposts are nice, real impact comes from the UGC metrics that are linked to ROI.

Look out for these numbers in your analytics:

• A lift in conversion rate: See how pages featuring UGC perform versus those without.
• Ad performance: Compare CTRs (Click Through Rates) and CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) for UGC-driven campaigns versus traditional ads.
• Time savings: Track reductions in internal content creation effort and associated costs by using UGC.
• Average Order Value (AOV): Compare AOV for customers exposed to UGC versus those who are not.
• No. of content pieces collected: Track the volume of UGC assets collected over time and their contribution to campaigns and site content.

Expert tip: To avoid legal and brand safety risks, choose a UGC platform with automated approval workflows that ensure all content is vetted before publishing. With Emplifi, for example, every piece of content goes through a consistent quality and compliance check before it goes live.

Final thoughts: Turning UGC into a strategic asset

UGC can be one of your most powerful marketing assets; it’s a strategic tool for driving trust and conversions. But scaling it requires a structured approach:

1. Foundation: Understand why UGC matters and secure rights properly.
2. Strategy: Inspire, curate, and acquire high-quality content.
3. Activation: Deploy UGC across the funnel to maximize impact.
4. Technology: Leverage tools like Emplifi to scale efficiently and measure ROI.

Platforms like Emplifi give brands the ability to turn authentic content into measurable results and streamline workflows at scale by:

• Automatically collecting rights-approved content
• Curating top-performing UGC for campaigns
• Publishing seamlessly across social, email, and e-commerce channels
• Tracking engagement, conversions, and ROI in real time

With Emplifi, you can confidently use UGC at scale, knowing every post is safe, on-brand, and optimized for performance.

Ready to get your UGC strategy off the ground? Get a demo of the Emplifi platform and start harnessing the power of customer-created content.