Navigating the world of influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC) is crucial for modern digital marketers. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, these marketing tactics serve distinct purposes and can significantly enhance a brand’s visibility and engagement when used correctly.
Influencer Marketing: This involves collaborations with influencers who have substantial social media followings and are viewed as niche experts. Influencers build strong relationships with their audience, making their endorsements valuable as a form of social proof. This strategy typically functions as either a brand or organic channel and involves negotiated compensation for influencers.
UGC Marketing: This encompasses content such as videos, photos, blog posts, reviews, and social media posts created by everyday users. Brands often utilize UGC on paid social channels for marketing, advertising, and community-building. It offers authenticity and significantly boosts community engagement, providing a genuine perspective on a brand’s offerings.
Similarities and Differences Between Influencer Marketing and UGC
Both influencer marketing and UGC leverage content creators to present a brand’s narrative from a unique, independent perspective, building trust with audiences. Both provide:
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Social Proof: Both strategies leverage social proof to strengthen trust and influence purchase decisions through content that resonates with audiences.
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Content Creation: At the core of both strategies is the creation of engaging content, whether it’s influencers crafting sponsored posts or customers sharing product reviews.
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Engagement and Reach: Both methods enhance a brand’s reach significantly; Influencer marketing taps into extensive follower networks, while UGC benefits from algorithms that favor user-generated content.
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Authenticity: Both are viewed as more authentic than traditional ads, increasing their effectiveness due to their relatability.
While both strategies capitalize on authenticity and engagement through content to connect with audiences and leverage social proof to build brand trust, they differ significantly in:
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Control Over Content: Influencer marketing offers a degree of control over the content's message and presentation, aligning it closely with brand guidelines. UGC, however, is often-times more spontaneous and varies widely, giving brands less control but a broader and more genuine reach.
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Scale and Compensation: Influencer campaigns usually involve fewer but broader-reaching individuals, whereas UGC involves many creators each influencing a smaller audience. Compensation differs too; influencers often receive monetary compensation, whereas UGC creators may receive minimal or no compensation.
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Intention and Targeting: Influencer content is typically driven by defined business objectives like promoting a product, while UGC is driven by users' genuine experiences, reaching a broader and less predictable audience but can still be targeted effectively in paid social campaigns.
Understanding these similarities and differences enables brands to strategically integrate both influencer marketing and UGC into their overall marketing strategies, optimizing for engagement and conversion.
Executing Influencer Campaigns: Expert Insights from WITHIN
At WITHIN, our influencer marketing strategy begins by understanding the client’s goals, including budget, timing, objectives, and target audience, which guides the development of a campaign tailored to the brand's values and messaging.
We then craft a brief and engage potential influencers to create a curated roster. After selecting the appropriate influencers and finalizing contracts that specify deliverables and requirements, we conduct briefing calls to ensure clarity and set expectations.
Collaborating closely with the client, we refine content ideas and drafts to align with the campaign's objectives. Once the content is approved, we launch the campaign, actively monitor its performance, and consider paid amplification to enhance its impact.
Key Prerequisites for Influencer Marketing:
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Clearly defined marketing objectives that influencer marketing can effectively support.
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Sufficient advertising budget, including budget allocated to campaign testing and learning.
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Willingness to adjust margins for improved reporting accuracy, such as through custom offers.
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An understanding of the gaps in your current media strategy that influencer marketing could fill.
Executing UGC Campaigns: Expert Insights from brkfst.io
At brkfst.io, the process starts with an Account Director who drafts a creative brief tailored to the brand's objectives, audience, and specific needs, including tone, visual identity, and compliance requirements. Once approved, our team recommends pre-vetted content creators from our extensive network to align with the brand's style for review and selection.
After the brand chooses their creators and provides the products, the selected creators handle all aspects of content creation at no additional cost. The final content is then launched as UGC campaigns on paid social platforms (Meta, TikTok, and YouTube, etc.) optimized for conversions and KPIs. Throughout the campaign, brkfst.io strategically oversees the execution to maximize effectiveness.
Key Prerequisites for UGC Marketing:
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Clearly defined marketing goals that UGC can support.
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Designated advertising budget for Paid Social UGC campaigns
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A clearly defined ideal customer profile and value propositions for the product or service, accompanied by a set of compliance rules to follow.
Understanding Attribution and Measuring Impact for Influencer and UGC Marketing
As influencer marketing hinges on the creator's network, identifying the impact of both the overall marketing efforts and each individual influencer is crucial for gathering insights and refining future campaigns. Given the limited visibility on organic social platforms, we employ a variety of attribution methodologies to ensure accurate measurement.
For UGC attribution on platforms like Meta and YouTube Shorts, we implement a combination of methods that provide comprehensive measurement, ensuring each aspect of the campaign is effectively analyzed and attributed. These methodologies include:
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Google Analytics: We use site analytics to track traffic and conversions from users that come to site through creative specific UTMs.
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Ad Platform Attribution (Pixel and CAPI): This method available through paid amplification of influencer posts or UGC uses platform-specific pixels and Conversions API to track user interactions and conversions, providing real-time data specific to each advertising platform.
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Multi-Touch Attribution: We employ tools like Northbeam to analyze marketing touchpoints across different devices and platforms, offering a comprehensive view of campaign effectiveness.
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Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM): We leverage MMMs to correlate influencer/UGC efforts with overall business KPIs.
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Pre/Post Lift Analysis: This approach assesses traffic and revenue changes before and after influencer posts to understand campaign lift.
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How Did You Hear About Us Surveys: Implemented at checkout, these randomized surveys through partners like Fairing help attribute sales directly to influencers.
Below are the steps to calculate ROAS or CPA from the Survey for each channel listed as an option in the How-Did-You-Hear-About-Us Survey:
| # | Process | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Determine the total number of survey responses | 1,875 |
| 2 | Evaluate the percentage of responses for each channel (Response Rate) | 54 out of 1,875 = 2.88% for TikTok |
| 3 | Extrapolate survey respondents to overall business | Total biz orders = 5,450; Extrapolated TikTok orders = 2.88%*5450 = 157 |
| 4 | Determine the delta between TikTok platform reported orders and revenue to Survey Response Extrapolated orders and revenue and calculate multiplier | TikTok platform reported orders = 51; Multiplier = 51 / 157 = 0.32 |
| 5 | Apply multiplier to TikTok reporting and use to determine bids, goals, and overall budget allocation | Actual CPA = TikTok platform CPA * Multiplier |
For influencer activations, we can also leverage the following in combination with the above methodologies:
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Vanity URLs, Custom Offers, and Coupons: Custom codes (e.g., INFLUENCER20) link sales directly to specific campaign activations.
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Affiliate Links: Using platforms like Impact to generate affiliate links, we can track and commission sales directly attributable to influencers.
Which of these methodologies is used as the "Source of Truth" really depends on the brand and their business goals. Typically each brand would have a primary attribution methodology and use others directionally as a secondary source to get more context about the data.
We try to steer clients away from last-click attribution methodologies (see our earlier contribution to the FAA titled “The Last Click Flu”) by showing them how much revenue they stand to lose if they don't invest in upper-to-mid funnel channels that generate demand, and we do that by showing them data from secondary attribution methodologies like post-purchase surveys and incrementality lift experiments.
Attribution Myths & Strategy
Clients often think that attribution follows a one-size-fits-all approach, but this is far from true. At WITHIN, we educate clients on different attribution methods, outlining both benefits and limitations. By setting clear expectations about how attribution data varies across platforms, we work together to identify the most effective reporting methods. This usually involves combining various techniques to capture the most comprehensive data available, starting with the methodology we have the highest degree of confidence in.
For instance, a unique coupon code offered by influencers might serve as our primary data source for organic activations over vanity URLs or UTM parameters as coupon codes would likely be more comprehensive compared to click based tracking parameters that can disappear across devices or over time. Similarly, we would be likely to use HDYHAU surveys as a secondary source to validate our findings from the coupon code data and improve the overall confidence in our measurement.
Your brand’s needs and lifecycle will also impact your approach to attribution. If your goal is to maximize “overall” revenue, a more holistic approach like a media mix model (MMM) or post-purchase survey (PPS) might be right for you.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to maximize “‘paid” revenue, a more click-based attribution tool like Google Analytics, or utilizing the ad platform’s reporting might be the right solution.
Since each brand and campaign demands a customized approach, choosing the right agency to support you in your journey is essential for developing an effective attribution strategy.
