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Building materials brands are increasingly turning to user-generated content (UGC) to strengthen their market presence. From contractors and architects to DIY homeowners, real customers are sharing real-world experiences through reviews, social media posts, and project showcases.
Beyond brand credibility, UGC offers a cost-effective way to generate compelling marketing materials while boosting search visibility and community engagement. With more consumers researching products online before making a purchase, leveraging UGC can enhance a brand’s SEO performance and create a steady stream of fresh, relevant content.
This organic content not only serves as powerful social proof for building materials brands. It also helps eCommerce stores establish authenticity, raise engagement, and drive conversions in an increasingly digital marketplace.
In this article, we will explore how building materials companies can harness the benefits of UGC to differentiate themselves, build customer trust, and stay ahead in a competitive industry.
The building materials industry operates in a unique space where purchase decisions are driven by quality, durability, and professional trust. Unlike other types of consumer goods, building materials require careful consideration, as they impact the safety, efficiency, and longevity of structures, and in-depth knowledge to compare options effectively, as many products are technical.
Given these complexities, brands must provide clear, credible, and engaging content to guide decision-making, whether for large-scale commercial projects or home renovations.
UGC presents a powerful solution to these industry-specific challenges by providing authentic, experience-based insights. Real-world testimonials, project photos, and in-depth reviews help demonstrate product applications, making them more accessible to both professionals and casual buyers.
UGC for building materials brands fosters trust by showcasing products in action, offering proof of performance that traditional advertising struggles to match. Let’s check some real Building Materials brands’ results with UGC.
Porcelanosa has integrated user-generated content across various sections of its website. This includes the homepage, an inspiration section, and UGC connected to product pages.
This strategic implementation has led to a 14.07% boost in engagement rates with UGC linked to the brand’s products. Learn how Porcelanosa benefits from UGC.
“Years ago, we decided to incorporate a UGC strategy. We have a lot of high-quality studio material that we use in our catalogue, but it doesn’t always convey the authenticity value that user-generated content has.”
Porcelanosa Communications Team
This increase indicates that users are not just viewing and interacting with the content created by Porcelanosa’s clients—they are also clicking the “Buy Now” button to explore the featured products.
Furthermore, Porcelanosa saw a 19.7% increase in Flowbox-assisted sales, highlighting the direct impact of UGC on conversions.
Sanidirect and Saniweb have incorporated UGC throughout different areas of their website, such as the homepage, a community page dedicated to their clients, and even within individual product pages.
As a result, they have seen that users who engage with this content convert 3.8 and 5.5 times more, respectively. Learn how Saniweb & Sanidirect benefit from UGC.
“Flowbox has allowed us to enhance our values, like transparency. We already have pictures of the products that are very clean and professional. And then (with UGC) you can see how the products look in real situations. The photos are taken in customers’ homes, so I think UGC really enhances our values in that sense.”
Ilse Burghouwt, Brand Manager at Sanidirect & Saniweb
User-generated content enabled Saniweb and Sanidirect to digitally connect with customers in an honest and collaborative manner that aligns with their corporate values. UGC has helped both companies breathe life into their product images, allowing consumers a realistic glimpse of how their products will look once installed in their homes.
Saniweb & Sanidirect aimed to enhance the customer shopping experience and simplify website navigation. By integrating user-generated content from their clients directly into the product catalogue, the brands allow users to go straight to the product page with a single click on the “Buy Now” CTA button.
DECORCERAMICA was looking for a solution to efficiently manage their brand’s UGC and automate the majority of related tasks. And Flowbox emerged as the ideal answer to this challenge. Learn how DECORCERAMICA benefits from UGC.
Since implementing the tool, the brand has experienced a boost in conversions, driven by a 15.75% increase in their click-through rate (the percentage of users clicking on “Buy” buttons) over the past three months.
“Our audience perceives UGC, created mostly by architects and other professionals, as very relatable content that shows the reality of things, and that builds trust. It’s very important for us because it gives us the visibility we seek with content we don’t generate ourselves.”
María Carolina Robles, Communications Leader at DECORCERAMICA
With the help of Flowbox’s tools, DECORCERAMICA has successfully implemented a multichannel strategy featuring user-generated content across their website.
Thus, the brand has seen a 16.25% increase in the engagement rate among users interacting with Flowbox content.
At St Maclou, they believe that every room has the potential to tell a story, and with Flowbox, the brand was able to connect with its audience through inspiring user-generated content.
The brand has seamlessly integrated UGC throughout its entire website, from an inspiring welcome section on the homepage to curated content on category and product pages. Learn how St Maclou benefits from UGC.
“In addition to authenticity, UGC brings real added value in terms of product demonstration and contextual placement. For example, on our site, we integrate them directly into category pages, such as those dedicated to parquet or carpet. At the bottom of these pages, we display numerous photos from UGC that correspond to the products being searched. This really helps our visitors visualise and these visuals help them decide.”
Juliette Labarre, Brand Content Manager at St Maclou
Flowbox also enabled St Maclou to gather and showcase more authentic and inspiring content. Unlike traditional brand-directed advertising, community-generated content felt more spontaneous. This offered a fresh and relatable perspective that shifted how consumers perceived their products.
As a result, the brand experienced a 10.5% increase in their click-through rate, which means that more users clicked on community content compared to total impressions. This led to higher engagement and stronger interaction with user-generated content.
Flowbox UGC Platform has many great tools and capabilities that can help Building Materials brands, no matter how big or small. Here is an overview of the key platform features:
Flowbox stands out with its sophisticated content collection system that automatically monitors and gathers user-generated content across social media platforms. The system springs into action whenever users mention your brand, tag you in their posts, or use your designated hashtags, ensuring no valuable content slips through the cracks.
The platform’s social media integration capabilities allow your brand to collect content from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and other platforms, all from a single dashboard. Check out this collection of articles to see all the platforms you can connect to Flowbox as a source.
Flowbox’s content moderation tools represent a significant advancement in UGC management, combining artificial intelligence with sophisticated quality assessment capabilities. The tool offers comprehensive solutions for brands seeking to streamline their content curation process while maintaining high standards.
The great thing about using Flowbox is that you can send rights requests directly to the users and easily track their responses. Additionally, you can create templates to message the user for a request, and personalise this message however you like.
Once the request is granted, Flowbox’s auto-approve functionality automatically approves the content for use, making the whole process even easier for your team. Check out this article if you want to know more about rights requests and permissions: User Generated Content Permission, Rights, Laws & Legal Issues.
Flowbox’s Smart Tags feature leverages artificial intelligence to streamline content categorisation and moderation. The system automatically identifies key elements within posts and assigns relevant tags, significantly reducing manual moderation time while maintaining accuracy.
This AI-powered system can detect objects, scenes, colours, and even sentiment within content, making it easier to organise and filter large volumes of UGC. The technology also helps identify brand-relevant content and automatically flags potentially inappropriate material, ensuring both efficiency and brand safety.
The Quality Rate tool employs sophisticated AI algorithms to evaluate both technical and aesthetic aspects of user-generated photos. Drawing from a vast database of over 340,000 Instagram images, it assigns scores from 1-100, enabling efficient bulk moderation based on image quality standards.
This scoring system considers factors like lighting, composition, focus clarity, and overall visual appeal to ensure only the highest quality content is selected for brand campaigns.
An effective way to ensure that you’re only collecting content that you want to use is with tools like Blocked Users and Whitelisted Users. These are 2 Flowbox tools that allow your brand to block spam content while giving a green light to content that you know you’ll be interested in seeing.
From there, managing your content is easy, as you just need to approve the images and videos that you would like to appear on your eCommerce.
The advanced Publish feature enables seamless organisation and distribution of user-generated and brand content across multiple platforms. This integration helps maintain a cohesive brand presence while preserving the authentic voice that resonates with audiences.
The tool’s interface allows users to create, customise, schedule, and publish content directly to their social media accounts. Which greatly reduces the time spent by social media managers on planning and shooting content to post manually on a variety of platforms. It can all be done within the Flowbox platform.
Track UGC performance across all channels with comprehensive analytics features, helping you make data-driven decisions about your content strategy. With Flowbox’s Google Analytics 4 integration, you can send analytics events directly from your Flows.
This enables you to monitor user interactions, track conversion paths, and measure the impact of your UGC campaigns alongside your other marketing metrics in a single, unified dashboard. Find out more on Flowbox’s advanced website analytics and how you can harness data-driven marketing.
Embracing a user-generated content strategy can be a game-changer for building materials brands looking to build trust and foster deeper connections with their customers. In an industry where product quality and reliability are paramount, UGC provides real-world proof of the brand’s value through authentic customer experiences.
Incorporating UGC into marketing efforts allows building materials brands to tap into the power of social proof, which is particularly valuable in a sector where decisions are often influenced by recommendations and shared experiences. Social media, product pages, and email campaigns can all become powerful platforms for displaying this content, increasing visibility and driving conversions.
As more customers interact with and contribute their own content, the brand can continuously build a community of advocates, enhancing its overall reputation and ultimately driving growth in both engagement and sales.
Now it’s your turn to try it out. Book a demo with Flowbox, and we will show you how a UGC platform can boost your brand sales.
