Practitioner pattern · Canyon Pergande (Co-founder of SideShift, the UGC creator marketplace the case-study apps hire through)
Test an app idea with a few creators for 2 weeks before doubling down
Seen across studios; two weak 2-week rounds mean rethink the product
Unknownvalidationugc-creatorsorganic-short-videoportfolio
What they did
Organic: hire a couple of creators, get 30-50 videos out, and give it about 2 weeks. If accounts aren't moving, or get views but no conversions, work out why, change formats, messaging or target audience, and run another 2 weeks. If results are still poor, question the product thesis. Look beyond downloads: do users stay, churn, pay? Paid: book creators week to week for 5-10 formats, run them as ads, keep the 1-2 that convert and compare with organic. Canyon sees teams shipping products weekly and running distribution for a month, and studios testing a thesis across 10-20 products to find 2-3 to double down on.
“I think like a 2-week timeline is pretty pretty sufficient.”
“I think you could do creators on like a week-to-week basis. Maybe you have them pump out like 5 to 10 different formats that you just run paid ads across.”
“You know, you can hire a couple creators, pump out, you know, 30, 50 videos, you know, get a ton of eyeballs on it in a really short period of time”
“even if you pivot and, you know, run things over the next 2 weeks and are still seeing very similar, you know, results that just don't seem to be very promising, then it's like one of those things like, okay, maybe we need to question what what we're building”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- SideShift: Have 5 creators post twice a day on new TikTok accounts; copy the first hit10K to 150K+ users in 3-4 months on ~$10K; 16-20M views in one campaign
- SideShift: Post about the tough job market and slip the app in at the endWinning format; videos at 84K to a few hundred thousand views
- SideShift: Have creators reply to comments and name the app when people askGuest says comment plugs convert to real users; no numbers
- SideShift: Visit 25 college campuses in person to sign up the first usersFirst 10-20K users; strong word of mouth among college students
- SideShift: Tell student creators the gig can grow into a strategist or growth roleGuest says it drives stronger results for brands; no numbers
- Give creators a short brief with a Loom, target persona and proven videosSeen across SideShift customers; long briefs get skipped
- Pay creators a base retainer, $15-20 per video, and big view bonusesCommon rate across SideShift; bonuses get creators working the comments
- Warm up each new TikTok account for 3-5 days, acting like your target user
- Photogenic: Hire one creator who already went viral on her own TikTok35M views on 46 posts; weekly downloads up 10x
- Photogenic: Let the creator decide what to post instead of sending her ideasFounder's ideas performed terribly; hers drove 35M views
- Photogenic: Post the AI's funniest mistakes, like a photo with a third legDrove heavy engagement; part of a 35M-view run
- Vert Ventures: Turn the organic TikToks that already worked into paid adsBoth apps in and out of their category's top five for weeks