TikTok Advertising 
TikTok users will scroll past traditional ads, but they stop for natural, relatable content. That’s why User-Generated Content (UGC) offers brands a great way to build trust, drive engagement, and stay competitive on the platform.
In this guide, we will talk about core essentials of TikTok UGC, best practices, and how you can learn from successful examples to upgrade your own marketing campaigns.
What is UGC on TikTok?
TikTok UGC (user-generated content) refers to the content created by users for users, featuring a brand’s product or service. It is a powerful tool for brands to establish a genuine connection with consumers by displaying such content on their social profiles or incorporating it into ad campaigns.
There is a wide variety of UGC formats, ranging from photos, and videos, to testimonials and reviews.
Think of it like you and your friends making a funny video about trying a product and posting it on TikTok. That’s an example of UGC! Or maybe you wrote a review and shared it on a website where people can read it, that’s UGC too.
People love UGC because it’s usually made by regular people, so it feels more real and relatable. Brands even love it more because it helps them get the word out about their products or services.
Why is UGC such a big deal on TikTok?
How can UGC gain such traction on TikTok? Well, let’s look at UGC from a brand perspective to see what it has to offer.
Greatly boost conversion on social media
As mentioned, when a brand cultivated a community where people love to share their experience, that brand already wins in the long run. Here is how the UGC loop works:
- New users see your product
- They buy the product if the product meets their demand
- After purchasing and trying the product, those users can make content on TikTok about your product
- Brands now can repost those UGCs and spark high-performing ones to reach a wider audience
Therefore, TikTok UGC can serve as a powerful tool to maintain a sustainable cycle of product discovery, purchase, content creation, and audience expansion.
Build solid brand trust and credibility
You know how brands and companies like to make ads and promote their products on TikTok, right? It turns out that only 10% of people actually find those ads to be authentic and believable.
On the contrary, almost 80% of people on TikTok think that user-generated content (UGC) is more authentic and real. In fact, a study found that UGC on TikTok is 22% more impactful and can hold viewers’ attention for longer.
It shows that people trust content created by other users more than they trust content created by brands or influencers.
Big impact on purchasing decisions
Due to its genuine nature, TikTok UGC holds significant emotional influence over a user’s purchasing decisions. In fact, to mitigate the risk of making the wrong purchase, 70% of individuals rely on UGC reviews when considering a product for the first time. This makes UGC such a powerful marketing tool on TikTok!
5 proven UGC strategies to boost your TikTok presence (& examples)
Simple as it may seem, many brands may face some difficulties in acquiring high-quality UGC on TikTok. So, we have provided you with 5 actionable tactics that brands can use in their next UGC campaign!
Branded Hashtag Challenge
A TikTok Branded Hashtag Challenge is a sponsored challenge where brands create their own TikTok hashtags to promote their products and get users involved.
The challenge often involves a simple task like dancing, singing, or performing a specific action and users just need to include the sponsored hashtag in their video to participate.
TikTok is a perfect platform for these challenges because it encourages users to participate in trends. Furthermore, hashtag challenge videos offer regular in-feed content, making it more convenient for users to engage without perceiving it as overt marketing.
So, if you want to connect with your audience on a deeper level, drive engagement, and increase reach, a Branded Hashtag Challenge on TikTok is definitely worth considering. However, small brands may face challenges with branded hashtag campaigns, as they often come with a substantial cost and require prior coordination with a TikTok-partnered agency. So, in case you are a small business, consider carefully before you go with this plan!
Duet
TikTok Duet is a creative tool that allows you to combine your video with someone else’s video in a split-screen format. This feature allows you to share your content as a reply to other creators on the platform, giving you the chance to reach a wider audience.
Brands can use TikTok Duet as a User-Generated Content (UGC) tactic by creating duets with viral videos or campaigns.
By embracing Duet, brands can strengthen their connection with their audience, drive engagement, increase their visibility on the platform, and diversify their content format.
TikTok’s active user base of 1 million monthly, combined with the popularity of challenges and authenticity on the platform, make TikTok Duet a great tool for businesses to market their brand and reach the younger population.
Giveaway
A giveaway is a marketing tool where a brand offers something for free to its customers.
It can be a contest where the top entry wins based on specific criteria or a sweepstake where the winner is chosen randomly. Giveaways can range from small items like t-shirts to big prizes like vacations.
Brands do giveaways to improve brand recognition and drive sales. Giveaways are also a way to spread the word, reach new customers, collaborate with other businesses, foster loyalty in existing customers, sell more products, promote seasonal items, and gather important data.
Collaborate with content creators & influencers
Finding the right creators is so important because only the right influencers can make sure that your audience will get the right message. In fact, when influencers, verified users or creators publish content about a product or company, 65% of users claim that they really enjoy that content.
Having smart TikTok brand collaboration as a small business can be quite tough. That’s why when looking for a UGC creator, consider working with micro-influencers who have a smaller following but higher engagement rates, with a consistent posting schedule. This way, you can make sure that they can make dedicated content for your product, while gaining your desired results. You can also use TikTok Creator Marketplace to find the right creators for your brand.
Run big or small contests
Contests and challenges give your audience a direct incentive to create content for your brand. Running a strategic mix of high-stakes “big” contests and low-barrier “small” micro-contests keeps community engagement consistent without exhausting your marketing budget.
- Big Contests (high effort, high reward): Host quarterly or milestone competitions offering major prizes, such as cash rewards, exclusive trips, or a year’s supply of products. These campaign-level contests generate massive waves of entries, reach new audiences, and build brand awareness.
- Small Contests (low effort, frequent rewards): Run weekly or monthly micro-contests that reward quick, simple participation. Ask followers to post a short video using your branded audio or tag your account for a chance to win a gift card, a product bundle, or a feature on your official TikTok page.
A prime example for this is GoPro with their GoProAwards: Users would submit raw action footage shot on the newest camera for a share of at least $1,000 prize, generating thousands of high-quality video assets every year.
Spark your TikTok UGC
Now that you have got a rich UGC resource at hand, transforming your UGC into ads through sparking can be a fantastic strategy to expand your audience reach. It allows you to take advantage of your organic content and maximize its impact on a broader scale, leading to increased reach and conversions.
We recommend following these three steps to guarantee your ad campaign: Publish & Tracking, Spark, then Analyze the performance
Publish & Track the performance
When the UGC is uploaded, either on your brand account or the creator’s account, it’s time to wait until the magic happens! Take a look to see which video is having a better performance by tracking the TikTok metrics.
View & Engagement
These are fundamental indicators of how well your TikTok videos are performing. The number of views represents the reach of your content but views alone can’t guarantee success. Engagement, on the other hand, measures how active users are interacting with your content through likes, comments, shares, and saves. Understanding these metrics allows you to gain insights into which videos resonate the most with your audience and refine your content strategy accordingly.
Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate measures the percentage of users who take a desired action after watching your video, such as visiting your website, making a purchase, or subscribing to your channel.
And the best part? You can access these metrics even if the user-generated content isn’t your own, thanks to TikTok Creator Marketplace’s live performance tracking.
Spark the top-performing ones
Unlike In-feed ads where you’ll have to upload your creative on a TikTok Ad manager. To run Spark Ads, you can either spark your brand-owned content or content from other creators. In this way, you can make ads that don’t look like an ad through engaging and native content.
Analyze the performance
Now that both paid and organic UGC are being used, it’s time to evaluate which is more effective. What you need to do is to compare the performance of the paid UGC before and after being sparked to see if there’s any significant growth. Your performance analysis will help identify if the Spark was worth it and help inform future content decisions.
Also, keep an eye on the difference between the performance of creators’ UGC and in-house ones. Though it may differ from campaign to campaign, as long as you have analyzed an adequate number of ads, you should get a clearer understanding as to which assets your audience engages with more.
From there, you can gain some insights on which type of creators suits your brand more, which type of content formats attracts your audience more, etc.
TikTok UGC for the win!
We hope our guide will help you understand the basis of UGC TikTok so that you can try boosting TikTok UGC on your next marketing campaign.
However, there’s one secret for you: many brands have also leveraged TikTok UGC Ads to promote their products. So, if you are looking to master TikTok Ads to gain an advantage over your competitors, try NestAds for free now! Our app aims to simplify the ad creation and management process, so small and medium brands can still take their ads to the next level without a big budget or a complicated plan.
FAQs about TikTok UGC Marketing
Brands can gather TikTok UGC organically by encouraging customers to share their experiences using branded hashtags and product incentives. Alternatively, brands hire dedicated UGC creators through creator marketplaces, specialized agencies, or direct outreach on TikTok.
Yes, using TikTok UGC in Spark Ads or standard in-feed ads is one of the highest-converting ad strategies on the platform. Brands secure commercial usage rights from creators to run these relatable videos as targeted paid campaigns.
Pricing varies depending on creator experience and licensing agreements, but standard TikTok UGC videos typically cost between $100 and $500 per video. However, you can get UGCs and gain more social traffic organically.
