User-generated Content: What It is and Why Your Modern Brand Marketing Needs It in 2025

The difficult but also exciting thing about brand marketing today is that brands have to constantly find novel and interesting ways to promote their products.

One aspect of a great marketing strategy that many tend to overlook even in 2025 is producing user-generated content, or UGC, which offers amazing opportunities for a brand to really carve out its own space in a saturated social media space.

If UGC still isn’t a consideration for your marketing campaigns today, read on and let us tell you why you need it. But before that, let’s get into the difference between UGC and influencer content.

What's the difference between UGC and influencer content?

Both are great ways to promote your brand, but the two are very different.

An influencer or key opinion leader creates content for a brand and promotes it on their various social media platforms. They have an established online following and community, often casting a wide net as they market products through their posts, which are typically in the form of photos and videos.

UGC creators, on the other hand, are everyday people who also make content to promote brands and their products. Brands can also gain full rights to the photos and videos they create, which they can then distribute across their own social platforms instead of the creator’s.

3 reasons why you shouldn’t skip UGC in your 2025 marketing strategy

1. To boost brand presence

UGC can expand the visibility of your brand on social media platforms because the format – usually bite-sized videos posted on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook – lends itself to more unique and creative content that can match content styles popular on each platform.

According to HootSuite, “Video content is becoming increasingly effective with Facebook users, leading to higher engagement than posts using photos or graphics.”

UGC gives your brand room to play around and find ways to promote your brand story that goes beyond a typical explainer post. Nobody wants to interact with an “about us” page slapped onto a social media static, right?

Tip-Top Chicken is a brand that encourages UGC creators to make wacky content, which results in great outputs like the video in this section.

When done well, UGC can be more engaging and thus more shareable because content featuring real people is just more interesting than perfectly polished ads in this era of social media.

2. To build social proof

In Near Creative’s recent webinar entitled “Winning Strategies: Social Media Engagements to Conversions,” our senior brand manager Viktor Kapunan discussed why social proof is an essential for social commerce.

Viktor shares, “The more validation potential buyers see, the more likely they are to purchase from your brand. You have to leverage social proof to build credibility and stand out from competitors and to turn engagement into actual sales.”

Great testimonials can even be simple demo videos like in this section from Dyson Philippines.

When you have a variety of real people showcasing their positive personal experiences with your product, it makes you more trustworthy in consumers’ eyes because it strengthens your claims and gives your brand more credibility.

3. To address customer concerns

Every discerning consumer has valid questions about a product before they buy it. Posting a FAQ carousel on your social channels are a quick and straightforward way to address these, but they may not be the most engaging.

UGC offers your brand a more creative and visual means of answering these questions. Take this example from Wellspring, a local brand of yummy gummy supplements. The brand used a man-on-street interview to show people why their Ashwagandha gummies are great for stress relief without explicitly saying it.

Influencer content and UGC for a balanced marketing strategy

The role of influencers and UGC creators are two distinct but important parts of an airtight marketing strategy. A good mix of these can lead consumers to get to know your product well enough to eventually make a purchase. But just remember that UGC is meant to boost brand presence, build social proof, and address customer concerns.

Want to learn about making campaigns that work in 2025? Download our social media trends guide here.