User Generated Content is when your customers show through photos or video what your products look like in real life. It’s one of the most successful ways to maintain a good relationship with your current customers and build trust with new ones.

No matter how hard you work at being transparent through brand messaging, it just doesn’t compare to the effectiveness of advocacy marketing. Advocates are your passionate customers who will use their influence to relay positive messaging about your company and products to the public.

This is a huge benefit to your company as only 15% of people trust brands, whereas 84% of people trust a recommendation of a brand from people they know. This is why so many leading brands are using UGC.

Forrester ran a study and found that the Marketers they spoke to, through research, recognized that consumers are more likely to trust recommendations from other consumers than ones that come from brands.

“Nobody believes advertisers anymore. If other people have tested it and they write about it and they tell their friends about it, consumers gain trust in the brand.” states a brand manager from CPG company

Luckily, UGC is easy to implement and there’s many ways to do so:

Create a unique hashtag like Aritzia: #myartizia or Lululemon: #thesweatlife and feature customers wearing your products Pull your hashtag from Instagram and create a gallery on your website Showcase creativity and friendly competition like Lego and Belkin #LEGOxBelkin Use reviews from real customers in your ads like Lifebeam

Trust is not only essential in getting your business up and running but also necessary if you want it to withstand the test of time.