VID.co

User-generated video is one of the most trusted — and most underused — assets in marketing. This episode breaks down five practical strategies to get your customers creating video content that actually works for your brand.

Show Notes

Your audience may already be making videos about your brand — you just haven't found them yet. This episode of VID.co digs into the untapped potential of user-generated video content (UGC), explaining why customer-created videos outperform polished brand ads and, more importantly, what marketers can do to generate more of them on purpose. The discussion is drawn from the team's in-depth guide on encouraging user-generated video content, translated here into an actionable listen.

The episode walks through five concrete approaches any brand can put to work, covering everything from discovery to incentivisation:

  • Listen before you ask. Social listening tools like Hootsuite, Mention, and Keyhole can surface existing brand mentions — and reveal whether the customer experience is ready to be showcased before you launch any campaign.
  • Design moments worth recording. Remarkable packaging, memorable events, and genuinely satisfying onboarding give customers a natural reason to hit record — no campaign prompt required.
  • Reach out to your most loyal customers directly. High-engagement customers are already recommending your brand in private; a personal, specific invitation is often all it takes to turn that into shareable video.
  • Create real incentives. Contests, discount codes, early product access, and other tangible rewards dramatically increase submission volume — and setting clear guidelines means the content you receive is actually usable.
  • Show people what "good" looks like. A simple example video removes creative friction, giving contributors a format, tone, and length to match so submissions come back closer to what you need.

A thread running through all five strategies is the reminder that great UGC is a symptom of a great customer experience — brands can't shortcut the underlying work with a clever campaign. The episode also flags an easily missed legal point: discovering that someone has made a video about your brand is not the same as having permission to repurpose it; explicit approval is always required before resharing.

If video content for a specific sector is on your radar, check out the episode 4 Video Types That Sell Best for Fashion and Beauty for a complementary deep dive into format strategy.

VID.co

What is VID.co?

Video that earns its production cost. How to scope a shoot against the outcome it's meant to produce, script for the platform the asset will actually live on, get a quarter of content out of one production day, and tell the difference between video that moves pipeline and video that collects views.

Each episode takes one practical decision — in-house versus agency, how much to spend on a brand film, whether to cut vertical from horizontal or shoot it twice — and works through the tradeoffs. Written for marketers who have to justify the line item. Five or six minutes, one topic, no showreels.

Topics include scoping a shoot to an outcome, scripting for platform and placement, repurposing one production into a quarter of assets, in-house versus agency economics, vertical and horizontal formats, thumbnails and retention, and measuring video against pipeline.

Produced by VID.co, video production and video marketing. Full details, services and further reading at https://vid.co