UGC or influencers: which one your brand needs, and when to use both
We get this question almost every week: should I hire UGC creators or influencers? They are not rivals. They do different jobs, and picking the wrong one is expensive.
The difference in one line
A UGC creator makes the video and hands it over: you publish it, on your accounts and in your ads. An influencer makes the video and posts it on their own account, to their own community. In the first case you buy content. In the second, content plus an audience.
When UGC is the right call
When you run paid ads. In a Meta or TikTok ad nobody sees how many followers the person on screen has. What shows is whether the video feels real and whether the product is clear in the first few seconds. That is why we cast creators for how they tell a story, regardless of the size of their account.
Creative also wears out. If you advertise every month you need new videos every month, and with UGC you can have several faces and several hooks without paying for reach you will not use. Here we explain how many creatives you need per month.
When an influencer is the right call
When what you lack is awareness or trust. A launch, a brand entering a new country, a product that needs the recommendation of someone people already follow. The value there is the community: that person is talking to people who chose to listen.
Before you look at the follower count, check whether that community looks like your customer. A small account with the right audience does more for you than a huge one talking to someone else.
When to use both
A combination that works: the influencer posts on their account and the brand adds UGC videos to have more variants in its ads. Or it runs the influencer's content as an ad. For that, usage rights have to be agreed before anyone records. An influencer posting a video does not give you permission to run it as an ad.
How to decide with two questions
First: where will the video live? If it goes into your ads and your own channels, it is UGC. If it goes on someone else's account, it is influencer marketing. Second: what do you want to happen? If you want measurable sales from paid media, start with UGC. If you want a new audience to discover you, add influencers.
At AG Agency the same team does both, so the proposal is built around your goal. Here is how we run influencer campaigns.