Written By – Jaya Pathak
In the evolving digital market, brands are seeking innovative strategies to build trust, awareness and convert customers into leads. The two most prominent strategies which is dominating the digital marketing in present time are influencer marketing and user generated content. Both of these strategies share common goals such as wide reach, authenticity, engagement and conversion of customers. It has become a debating issue which of these two truly delivers a better return on investment.
What is influencer Marketing?
It is a key strategy of marketing which uses the power of influential individual in order to promote their brand. You must have heard about collaboration of influencers with a certain brand. It depicts a strong online presence and the ability of the influencer to shape the opinions of their audience. Influencers have a loyal and engaged follower. Marketers can take the help of influencers to expand their reach to a wider range of audience. It focuses on the distribution of content rather than creation of it.
How consumers engage with influencer marketing?
Suppose, while posting a reel, any influencer recommends a particular product. Upon his recommendation, his audience see the product on social media platform. They perform their own research by exploring YouTube blogs and social media platforms to learn more and more about that particular product and hence engage with related content. While performing research, they check the details of product including pricing and availability on the website of brand or their nearby store. Once they are convinced, they purchase that particular product which has been recommended by the influencer via online or offline medium.
There are various types of influencers on the basis of industries, count of followers and their expertise such as Nano, Micro, Macro, Mega and Virtual Influencers. Brands pay these influencers in order to promote their products and service. In 2025, influencer marketing industry is projected to hit $24 billion. Around 60% of marketers say that influencer content outperforms brand created content.
What is User Generated Content (UGC)?
It refers to the content which is created and shared by consumers. It could be anything such as review, unboxing video, tweet, and Instagram story or a YouTube video about the usage of product. It does not require any formal brand sponsorship. As per Wikipedia, it emerged from the rise of web services which allow a systems user to create content such as images, videos, audio, text and interact with other users. As per Wikipedia, it is used for a wider range of service including problem processing, entertainment, news, customer engagement, advertising, research and many more.
As per the data given by TINT 2025 UGC benchmark report, UGC drives 29% higher web conversions than branded content. Around 92% of consumers trust user generated content more than traditional ads. Brands who share user generated content on their own channels see 28% more engagement.
What is the difference between UGC and influencer marketing?
- In influencer marketing, influencers target their audience which make it easier for any brand to team up if you want to reach the right people. On the contrary, UGC hardly offers such precise audience targeting because it is created naturally by the content creator by not keeping any specific audience in mind. But in some manner, it still reaches the potential customer when reviews are shared on the social media platform. Therefore, you can made paid promotions to target a certain audience.
- If you want to measure the success then it is quite easy with influencer marketing. You can get a clear number if you want to quantify the impact of your campaign and your content. But in UGC, it is not that much easier. It is quite harder to keep a track record of the impact and consistency of your content as it is appeared in various formats and places. Therefore, in terms of measurability, UGC is not as much straightforward as influencer marketing metrics.
- In the influencer marketing, marketer has the control as you can influence the content. Marketer have the power to decide in what manner influencer have to share the content. It can help you to set a clear objective, give a guideline to the influencer and the most important of all – Picking up influencer which aligns with the motto of your brand to collaborate with. But in user generated content, brand does not have any control as the user himself is shooting the content on his own without any guidance or supervision.
- In influencer marketing, the goal of influencer is to achieve a certain business result such as driving the traffic to a particular website, improving the manner in how people perceive a brand and increasing the awareness and engagement of customers toward a particular brand. But on the other hand, user generated content is authentic as its focus is on formation of real bond with its audience. Its goal is not to promote any product or drive the growth of sale of any particular product or service. It focuses on building a community and getting more users involved.
- Influencer marketing requires a huge amount of money which you have to pay to influencers so that they will create and promote your product or service to their audience. As a marketer, you have to invest in influencer campaigns so that you can derive benefit from the impact it has caused. On the contrary, user generated content is generated by user himself for their existing fans and followers.
- The impact of influencer marketing can be increased by working with more influencers. On the contrary, the scalability of user generated content can be increased if you have a greater number of customers. Larger number of customers will provide you more opportunity to post relevant and authentic content.
Conclusion
There is no any best option as the choice depends entirely on your goals. If you want to build trust, authenticity and create a diverse range of content in low budget then you should choose user generated content. But if you want to launch a new product having a profound impact, want to create brand awareness and target a certain audience in order to drive more growth and sales, then you should choose influencer marketing. Most of the brands in 2025 are blending both these strategies. With the consistent stream of user generated content, they use influencer campaign in order to create a higher impact.
