Use Influencer Generated Content to connect with your target audience

In 2022, influencer marketing certainly is no news in the industry and every brand should have at least thought about starting a campaign in partnership with influencers on any social media platform. At the same time, influencer generated content (IGC) as a concept might be less familiar. Yet, it is a very effective way to grab the attention of your target audience.

Influencer Generated Content in a Nutshell

As you can already guess, IGC is every content that influencers create in partnership with your brand. In other words, IGC is the by-product of influencer marketing that can be a game-changer in the oversaturated market of (visual) advertising. As such, it is not enough anymore to simply stand out as a brand. On the contrary, brands not only compete with other brands for the consumers’ attention but also, and mainly, with influencers, as their opinions and recommendations are trusted much more than a brand’s advertisement.

Additionally, IGC is part of measuring the campaign’s ROI and the impact the marketing strategy has on your business. Essentially, IGC can be compared to the quality of studio content plus the influencers’ unique voices and styles for which they are loved and admired by their followers. While your brand saves money on production costs, you expand your reach to new audiences.

Obviously, IGC must be distinguished from user generated content. Thus, customers, employees, volunteers, or engaged followers can be users that create photos, videos, reviews, posts, or stories that connect with your brand. While this type of content is not paid, however, it can overlap with IGC. The fashion retailer Gina Tricot uses this strategy a lot by inviting people to share their outfits with their own hashtag (#GinaMyWay). So, while Lizzy Vdligt (@lizzyvdligt) herself is an influencer with 272k followers, it is likely that the featured post here was not part of a paid partnership but used by Gina Tricot as user generated content.

These are the benefits of Influencer Generated Content

Your brand is going to profit from partnering up with influencers and using IGC in many ways. Firstly, your brand gets more credibility and authenticity with the voices of people that genuinely like the products. Naturally, your brand’s visibility and reach will increase through IGC, which consequently informs potential customers and drives conversion.  

According to Influencer Marketing Hub’s benchmark report 2022, conversion remains the most common tool to measure the success of a marketing campaign. Back in 2019 they noticed that conversion/sales was the least-supported measurement, however, in 2020 conversion/sales took a clear and undisputed lead that prevails ever since. After all, your brand’s goal is a longtime and loyal customer, which is highly probable with IGC.

Graphic via Influencer Marketing Hub

As previously stated, IGC is less expensive and less time consuming in contrast to a professional studio shoot. Negotiating the rights of an influencer’s content costs you only a fraction of the price you would pay for producing the content yourself. Furthermore, the IGC can be re-used across multiple social media platforms and marketing channels, such as emails, paid ads, websites, or out-of-home activations.

How to reuse Influencer Generated Content

Although it is important to define goals and objectives beforehand, you can most certainly reuse the content provided by your influencers in many ways as long as you adjust it to the needs of the (new) platforms. This way IGC can circulate on social media, your website, print media, or newsletter marketing and therefore reach more people over time which increases the campaign longevity.

While we encourage you to reuse and recycle your IGC, we advise you to be smart with it. Don’t just copy the content, but, for instance, use text and visuals differently across the channels and eventually save even more money with IGC through amplifying the ROI of your original investment.

Firstly, as for every strategy, you start the repurposing of the IGC with a measurable goal to set the tone for future collaborations: Do you want more traffic to your website, get more sales through a discount code or subscribers for your newsletter? What platform could work best for your new goals?

Secondly, make the necessary changes in order to get the best out of the content and reach your target audience. This can only happen when you have agreed on expectations about content usage rights and gotten the permission to reuse your IGC by the creators themselves. By being transparent and open about it, you include your influencers in the decision making and repurposing proposal which can be vital for a long-term relationship. Moreover, make sure to state all the details in the agreement and therefore the contract, too.

Lastly, the possibilities of reusing your IGC are almost endless. For instance, the initial campaign was an unboxing video or a How-to tutorial on YouTube. You can recut the video into Instagram reels or TikTok videos; use snippets for Instagram stories, take a quote and still for your newsletter or include them in the product page on your website. The latter works really well as testimonials and reviews are one of the strongest forms of recommendation. In addition, you want to consider IGC for paid ads, which could lead to a higher click-through-rate as stated by Upfluence according to Salesforce.