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- UGC Is Dead - Do This Instead
When we founded our first E-Commerce brand Little & Lively back in 2014 things were different. (oh nostalgia)
Vertical video had not yet taken over.
Video in general was fairly novel!
Just one post a day (generally a flat lay at that) on Instagram was all we needed to grow our small (at the time) baby clothing brand.
And then 2016 rolled around which is when I realized the insane power of Facebook ads. We dabbled and eventually went from spending $10/day to $100 a day to $1000 and so on…
And you know what worked?
Generally really professional and well-produced studio images and flat lays.
But the key to our success up until 2020 was
High-end photography
Professional models
Perfection
And we worked with influencers who did the same… Beautiful photos… We were sure it would last FOREVER!
Then came TikTok…
Suddenly we started seeing people creating VIDEOS
But not just any videos…
Well at first it was just dancing videos…
But then a new kind of creator was born!
This creator didn’t care about the perfect script, or lighting, and certainly wasn’t professional.
And they liked to make very simple videos talking about their expericne with products.
And BOOM!
The birth of the modern UGC video that we know and love(read hate) was here!
And suddenly every single brand had to have UGC!
So much so that an entire industry was born to create UGC. We’re talking software, agencies, TikTok houses, Instagram houses, Snapchat houses (you get the idea!)
And these ads worked! (let alone all of the organic reach that a lot of these early posts got as well)
Until 2024…
When we started to see something very strange.
UGC was starting to become less and less effective…
Some was still crushing but the majority wasn’t and so I went to work to find out why!
And I realized that there was one common factor with the UGC that did well…
The Creator actually felt like a customer… and not a hired actor.
Even better was when the customer ACTUALLY WAS A CUSTOMER!
And thus was born the new era of Customer-generated content.
But how in the world do you get it?
At first, we just asked our customers to send us videos via email that they created but that really didn’t work, the videos never looked that great and out of 100K+ customers we would get back 1-2 videos and none of them were ever usable.
And then I went on the hunt for software that could help and I stumbled upon one that had all of the elements I was looking for…
It gamified the content creation process for customers
Gave them strict parameters of what we’re looking for
It automatically obtained usage rights.
But… we realized that it was insanely time-consuming to…
Set up and run the contests
Create the perfect contest that got us the kind of content that we wanted and could be used for ads
Sift through the endless amount of content to find the gold
Was it worth it? Yes!
Our first contest alone yielded 1.6 Million impressions (that’s 16K of media value btw) and only cost us $260 (plus we had 8 new ad concepts to test).
The only problem was we had to take one team member away to run it!
And so I thought…
BRANDS IN 2024 need CGC
This is the next big way to leverage and build super-fans.
My wife Carmen practically wrote the book on how to leverage and scale CGC contests…
And so I asked Carmen if she would be interested in helping out a couple of brands set-up and/or run their Customer-generated contests and she said…
YES!
But a maximum of 6 brands (for now)…
And so far she had A LOT of brands reaching out about how to scale CGC and beyond!
She’s opened up a few spots to chat this week about…
Easy wins on CGC
She will give you her entire playbook that you can execute
First steps on creating an ambassador program that funds itself.
So… if you want to get off the UGC treadmill and enter the world of CGC…Here’s a link to her calendar!
Also… if you’re interested in knowing what software I recommend… reply back to this email and I’ll make an intro to the founder!