User-generated content (UGC) has redefined how brands connect with audiences, bringing unmatched trust and credibility to every interaction.
By sharing real everyday experiences, individuals can help brands cut through advertising scepticism and inspire genuine connections – transforming customers into advocates within their communities. More than just increasing visibility, UGC builds emotional connections, stronger engagement and brand loyalty – all while fostering lasting relationships.
In this article, we’ll highlight four brands excelling with UGC creators, from luxury hotels to eco-friendly cocktails, revealing how UGC can elevate storytelling, expand influence and drive remarkable growth. Read on for four UGC examples - discover these success stories and learn how to harness UGC for your brand’s success.
UGC is reshaping brand loyalty
User-generated content (UGC) is any content – photos, videos, reviews and social posts – created by customers, fans or followers that showcases a brand from a real, relatable perspective.
Unlike traditional ads or influencer content, UGC comes directly from the people who love and use the product, lending it a level of authenticity that’s hard to replicate.
Did you know that UGC can lift purchase intent by 30%? It’s no surprise that UGC is reshaping the marketing landscape. In fact, social media campaigns with UGC perform 25% better. UGC is shown to be 8.7 times more powerful than influencer content and 6.6 times more influential than branded content. With 74% of consumers relying on social media before buying, it’s clear that UGC is an effective tool for brands to build trust, credibility and lasting customer relationships.
Organic vs paid partnerships
User-generated content can be organic, where someone uses a product and shares the results on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. If the content goes viral, the brand benefits from the exposure they get and they will often set up a partnership with the creator, so that they share affiliate shopping links. Viewers of the content can then easily make a purchase after seeing authentic content that compels them to make a purchase.
While organic UGC is powerful, it lacks brand control over the content’s tone. You can launch campaigns to encourage people to create content, but the results won’t always be exactly what you want. For example, it might not feature details that your brand wants to highlight in their marketing campaigns.
With paid partnerships using UGC creators, brands can provide creative briefs, control the creation and posting dates, and use influencers that have relevant, pre-built communities to advertise to.
Notably, 56% of consumers feel more connected to brands that share UGC. At Find Your Influencer, we connect brands with influencers who have developed communities of engaged followers, covering niche interests. By working with these content creators, brands are able to expand their reach and drive more sales.
With 79% of consumers saying that UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, brands who do not have a UGC strategy are missing out on gaining an edge over their competitors.
Brands who have already started to leverage the power of UGC creators are achieving impressive results. Here are some examples of brands who are winning with UGC creators:
4 UGC examples with impressive numbers
Exclusive Collection
The luxury hotel chain Exclusive Collection boasts high-end hotels and spas across England. Their hotels feature extravagant grounds, lavish décor and fine dining restaurants. Guests can enjoy rejuvenating spa treatments and tranquil retreats in stunning locations.
Using UGC creators, they target travellers interested in luxury accommodations and an exclusive hospitality experience. This type of financially savvy consumer tends to prioritise quality and the emotional appeal of products. This means they will be more difficult to influence, so marketing to this audience needs to be highly strategic.
For example, London based travel influencer @shweta.wanders was brought on board to help raise awareness of the brand.
Partnership with @shweta.wanders
Shweta has a large volume of followers located in London and surrounding areas, which is where several of the Exclusive Collection hotels are based. She has also carved out a follower base who is interested in high-end travel experiences. Some of her most engaging content includes videos promoting London landmarks and events, including Winter Wonderland and high-end tourist experiences in the city.
Through this content, she has built up a community of followers with a strong interest in visiting London. Many of these followers will be looking at planning an international trip to London or regularly visit London and are searching for new, exclusive experiences that meets their higher-than-average expectations.
With a well-established community that closely matched the interests and demographics of the target audience of Exclusive Collection, she was an ideal creator with genuine authority in her niche. Shweta was selected to work on a campaign for the Pennyhill Park Hotel in Surrey, along with a group of other luxury lifestyle and travel influencers.
The campaign
Shweta was tasked with creating an engaging social media ad campaign for the Pennyhill Park Hotel. She created a high-quality video showcasing highlights of the hotel, such as relaxing in the outdoor jacuzzi with a picturesque background, a short tour of the immaculate grounds, and a clip of her enjoying beautifully presented dishes from the tasting meal at the Michelin starred restaurant.
Her post included descriptive details about the hotel and facilities, relevant keywords and keyphrases such as “ultimate spa experiences” and hashtags including #spahotel and #ukspa to drive more engagement.
As influencer posts about hotels or travel have shown an average engagement rate 12% higher than traditional ads, this UGC content was posted as ads across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
The results
The results from 27 influencers achieved:
407 PIECES OF CONTENT
15.6X RETURN ON AD SPEND
9.2 Million REACH
245,000 ENGAGEMENTS
£1.4M MEDIA VALUE
ITV/Love Island
While ITV is a well-established broadcasting channel, they have a very diverse audience base, and this can make creating effective brand messaging a challenge. With so many different shows and creative partnerships, reaching their desired audience for product promotion requires sophisticated marketing strategies.
A large revenue stream for ITV is commercial partnerships, such as product placement in their shows. One of their most successful examples is the Love Island Water Bottles, which feature personalised names.
Product placement of the water bottles in daily shows with a peak audience of 2.2 million ensured that brand awareness was optimised. But they also needed an effective way to signpost viewers to where they could purchase the product.
With around 43% of viewers being aged under 30, social media marketing on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok aligned perfectly with the desired audience age range. The first step in the water bottle partnership campaign involved strategic and consistent product placement in the shows. The second step was to leverage the power of social media to generate sales.
The campaign
ITV decided to drive more product sales by working with UGC creators, using relatable and authentic people. Rather than choosing past Love Island contestants who command huge fees, ITV chose the Find Your Influencer agency to select UGC creators to build trust in the brand.
The agency researched and selected influencers whose creative style resonated with the brand’s target audience. They were given creative briefs and unique affiliate links to track engagement. According to data, brands who use UGC see a 50% lift in engagement compared to traditional marketing channels.
The creators used their influence to educate their target audience into making a purchase, with credible social media posts recommending the Love Island Water Bottles.
Find Your Influencer used the tracking data to reward influencers based on the effectiveness of their campaigns, which helped to deliver a high ROI for ITV.
The results
The campaign drove large volumes of relevant traffic to the website selling the product range, through the storytelling techniques used by the influencers.
Their 13 UGC creators achieved:
60 pieces of content
reach of over 1.1 million people
733,600 engagements
$80,000 MEDIA VALUE
Sipful Drinks
Our third UGC examples features Sipful Drinks - a premium canned cocktail brand, offering classic cocktails and unique gift boxes for cocktail drinkers. But what really differentiates Sipful Drinks from many of the other cocktail brands is their passion for sustainable organic products. From their fully recyclable cans to their organic ingredients, their drinks have been crafted for the more socially responsible consumers.
The company was founded by a couple who wanted a product that was easy to carry and had minimal impact on the environment. From their market research, they identified that many other cocktail products in the market had a synthetic taste or were overly sweet.
They decided that the best solution was to use 100% natural fruits and flavours, while using fully recyclable cans avoided the necessity for glass or plastic. As a small startup, they had a limited marketing budget as they worked to break into a competitive market. Using UGC creators, they created a campaign to highlight the key unique selling points of their products.
The campaign
Linking up with Find Your Influencer, Sipful Drinks were able to work with 250 influencers who had authority in the brand’s niche. The influencers were provided with unique affiliate links so that the results could be monitored and tracked.
Influencers posted social media ads across the most popular social media platforms to drive followers to the Sipful Drinks website to buy products. Content included pictures of themselves enjoying the canned cocktails in settings such as festivals, picnics and garden parties.
The results
Sipful Drinks experienced instant marketing results with a huge increase in product sales.
250 INFLUENCERS
1162 pieces of content
reach of over 5 million people
110,000 engagements
$224,866 MEDIA VALUE
Frenchic Paint
Frenchic Paint is an award-winning range of eco-friendly paint that has grown from a one-woman team to having over 500 high street stockists. The paint range was created to provide a safer alternative to the existing paints available on the market. Made with minimal VOCs and virtually no odour, the paint is safe enough to use on children’s toys and can be applied on all kinds of interior surfaces.
The Frenchic Chalk Wall paint is described as velvety, luxurious and practical, with high scruff-resistance. The brand was looking for a way to engage with new customers and needed a way to drive sales from their target audience, which include nurseries and DIY parents.
They reached out to Find Your Influencer to look at options for promoting their products and were able to find the perfect UGC creators to work with.
The campaign
Influencers were selected to take part in a campaign to show how the paint could be used on a variety of DIY projects. The influencers chosen were people who had strong social media followings related to their impressive DIY projects.
One of the influencers selected was @do.it.yourself.mum, a DIY furniture upcycler who shares videos of her DIY projects using old furniture and turning it into stylish and practical new furniture items.
Following her creative brief, she transformed some old Ikea children’s kitchens into a large, stunning new kitchen area for her children to enjoy. This project was aimed at inspiring nursery owners and parents to recreate her work, using the promoted Frenchic paint range.
All the paint products were tagged into her post and she outlined the steps required to complete the project. She also used high volume search hashtags to increase the audience reach.
The results
@do.it.yourself.mum was one of 35 influencers who achieved the following results (per month):
200 pieces of content
reach of over 2.8 million people
193,000 engagements
7.34 x RETURN ON AD SPEND
All of these brands experienced significant marketing results by working with UGC creators. The short-term results of these campaigns are highly impressive, but the long-term results continue to deliver excellent ROI. These social media ads continue to attract viewers and engagements for months and even years – so working with UGC creators is a powerful long-term marketing strategy.
Unlock the power of UGC for your brand
Have these UGC examples impressed you? If you are looking to amplify brand awareness and drive sales, getting started working with UGC creators is a quick and simple process with Find Your Influencer. We have a huge network of influencers covering every type of niche and we can match you with the most relevant ones to resonate with your target audience.
Once we have identified the right influencers, we provide creative briefs to ensure the content and quality meets your marketing objectives. We set up tracking processes and monitor the effectiveness of campaigns, reporting the results back to you on a regular basis.