Practitioner pattern · Nick Lawton (co-founder of SideShift, the UGC creator platform and paid-ads integration he recommends)
Pay each creator $600-800 for 30-60 videos plus $1-2 per 1,000 views
Called the most fruitful structure for creators seen on the platform
What they did
What happened
In their words
Nick Lawton - #1 UGC EXPERT Reveals How To Market Consumer Apps
Nick Lawtonif you just launched an app, you're probably a small team, you might not have a lot of resources. One of the best things you can do to just actually accelerate your business is by showing up every day with UGC. You have an idea of, you know, the type of content you're going to want to create, I would go ahead and I would launch a campaign. When you launch said campaign, you're going to want to pay anywhere from $600 to $800
Nick Lawtonfor 30 to 60 videos. You're going to also want to layer in view bonus incentives. What we found works really well is a structure of that guaranteed base retainer, $600 to $800 with either an uncapped CPM, because the idea is that if it's uncapped, you should be going viral, and it should be bringing a lot more revenue to your app. However, if you want to cap them cap the upside, you can a little bit in order to just make sure that things are profitable.
Nick LawtonSo, we'll say 6 to $800 with $1 to $2 CPM, either uncapped or capped. That seems to be the most fruitful for creators, which- but also incentivizes them. So, obviously with a budget of between 2 to $4,000, you're going to be able to get substantial amount of volume. That's going to really allow you to a- to optimize solving for one problem in your first month, and that is finding content market fit.
Nick LawtonThat is the thing that I think a lot of people overlook, and it's also one of the things that leads to a lot of people to quit early on their UGC campaign.
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More from this episode
- Copy what already works for competitors on TikTok, but change it 10-20%Called the easiest route; exact copies on cold accounts often fail
- Call it a fit when 5-6 videos in the campaign pass 10,000 viewsMany quit UGC too early by skipping this step
- Manage all creators in one group chat and share what's workingKeeps creators bought in; one-on-one management called very hard
- Once a video format wins, put 90% of creators on it and keep 10% testingWorks well for them; keeps a backup format ready if the winner saturates
- Run organic videos with 5%+ engagement as Meta ads, starting at $100 a dayGreat results at $100/day, then scaled up; no numbers given
- Spend 20% on organic creator videos to test, 80% on ads for the winnersPattern seen at big brands; called the biggest organic-only vs organic+paid difference
- Build a warm-up video format from real posts about job-hunt painStill used a year later; warms accounts well but converts poorly
- Run organic TikTok winners as Spark ads to push reach cheaplyCheaper CPMs, but no install button or conversion tracking
Tags: tiktok, instagram, creator-comp, retainer, view-bonus, budget