Practitioner pattern · Nick Lawton (co-founder of SideShift, the UGC creator platform and paid-ads integration he recommends)
Run organic TikTok winners as Spark ads to push reach cheaply
Cheaper CPMs, but no install button or conversion tracking
What they did
What happened
In their words
Nick Lawton - #1 UGC EXPERT Reveals How To Market Consumer Apps
Joseph ChoiSo, you do both. You do like TikTok Spark ads and then also Meta ads?
Nick LawtonTikTok Spark ads is more for like pushing organic, right? That's more for like if you have a video doing really well on organic that has a really high CTA, like let's say I mean, to draw back to that example of Frank Short, one of our creators, if that call to action was stronger and it was converting extremely well, we would maybe pour spark ad dollars behind it to continue to push it into the organic sphere. You'll have a little bit of the you It's going to give you an attributable CPM, it's not going to give you
Nick Lawtonobviously the conversion and attribution that you're going to get from Meta ads.
Joseph ChoiYeah, there's no button to actually CTA and like download the app. But Meta ads, obviously there's a button, there's proper attribution. I see. So, it's very different. So, I I would guess that CPMs are probably cheaper for spark ads then?
Nick LawtonYeah, CPMs are cheaper, and that's really the only thing you can measure from it at the end of the day. Like you said, there's no anchor. I mean, if you want to run not TikTok ads, there's an anchor, that's different, but yeah, there's no CTA.
Joseph ChoiThe real scalability comes with Meta, and that's where you got to I mean, like if you if you do it manually, you have to like download the video from TikTok, upload it into Meta, decide how much to spend, but if you're already running organic on SideShift, you just put budget in and it just allocates it to the winners?
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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
- Pay each creator $600-800 for 30-60 videos plus $1-2 per 1,000 viewsCalled the most fruitful structure for creators seen on the platform
- 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
Tags: tiktok, spark-ads, cpm