How To Run A User Generated Content (UGC) Campaign

Your company is in the midst of a new product launch. Congratulations! Your product was just finalized, is in production and you’ve finalized the budget for your launch plan. Time to enter the pre-launch stage, which is meant to create the hype around your product by getting it into consumer hands to create highly engaging content aka User Generated Content (UGC) campaigns. By adding this specific strategy into your launch plan, you will have content ready to plug-into the rest of your launch plan’s marketing efforts when it’s ready to take off. 

There are two types of UGC campaigns that center around the type of audience you’ll be engaging with; niche audiences and your brand’s audience. For a product pre-launch, your brand may have the budget to engage with both kinds of audiences or just one. Let’s break down the similarities and differences between both to find the best fit for your next launch plan.

Here’s the scenario:

Your brand is launching a new vegan mascara that promises to make lashes long and fluffy without running while sweating, crying, or swimming- all the best qualities of the leading industry mascara but it’s completely vegan making it 100% cruelty-free. You have a couple of options when it comes to your UGC campaigns with a goal to get the mascara into top beauty industry hands for a positive review. 

The Secret Consumer UGC Campaign:

This is where you blanket your entire audience (following and community on/off social) by doing a secret giveaway where 50 random customers will be given the mascara to try for free before it hits the shelves. 

All they have to do is be within the first 50 to sign-up, or like the post, follow the brand, and tag their friends for a generator to determine the 50 lucky fans. All you ask is to tag the brand in whatever content they create around the new mascara. Of course, you’ll have an outline of what types of content you’re looking for to guide them into getting their content featured in your upcoming marketing campaign. 

This is a good option to engage with your very own community. Keep in mind that although this a budget-friendly option for a UGC campaign, you have no control over who those 50 lucky winners are. They could be a beauty industry professional with an engaging community, but they could also be someone who doesn’t have industry credibility nor an engaging audience. 

The Niche Audience UGC Campaign: 

The make-up of this particular UGC campaign is more specific where you’re choosing to reach out to specific individuals that are involved with their highly engaged audience. These individuals are beauty bloggers, influencers, and industry experts. 

The goal with these niche UGC campaigns is to discuss how to incentivize not only your customer base but their community base to tag you in posts that the niche individual has created. This will create the hype around your new mascara to create a waiting list or a line out your store. 

Be willing to have the budget to pay accordingly so our niche experts have the ability to create content that’s on-brand for them. They are professionals at content creation so they may request a contract. That is why it is important to find the best people to work with on this type of campaign. These niche experts will produce the exact creative content you can use in your mascara’s launch efforts.

Which one would you choose?

As you can see, the best type of UGC campaign for your mascara launch’s goals would be a niche audience one. Yes, it may take a larger chunk of your budget, but the content you’ll be tagged and be able to re-use for your campaigns will be of guaranteed quality. Plus, their audience base will be highly engaging with your brand as a result. 

No matter the type of UGC though, these loyal customers will always be on board with your early access to products and feedback when asked! A true win-win with either UGC campaign choice. 

If you’ve been creating content for an extended period of time with no results take this as your sign to create a launch plan for your next product. Content Creative provides a place for clients to receive a quality experience with one full-service team to help execute a marketing strategy in alignment with your brand and message. We understand as a business or marketing team sometimes you don’t have all of the resources that you need to create a successful content program. Want a helping hand creating your content strategy? Reach out to us here.