How to Source, Qualify & Train Hundreds of Top UGC Creators

Happy Wednesday!

The idea for this newsletter came after Ash shared his terrible experience working with a UGC creator who didn’t deliver content on time and asked for additional pay to even film the content.

What we’re going to take a look at today:

• What are 3 most common problems with UGC creators

• Where and how you can source top creators who are affordable and easy to work with

• How you can source UGC from your customers with a simple email flow

• What questions you must ask in your creator application form

• How to determine if creators are experienced in filming quality content

• Why brands must require creators to sign an agreement

And much more…

Idea of the Week

Top Content of the Week

• What you should respond to people asking you: "Can you please share the creative that generated $840K in revenue?"

• Need quality UGC on a budget? Try this approach.
  

• The more successful, the smaller the ego. Well explained by Sean Frank.
  

• 20 brands share their payment terms with their 3PL. See the discussion here.

Sourcing, Qualifying & Training UGC Creators

There are 3 main problems almost every brand working with UGC creators experiences.

Without solving these problems, you will be stuck in a never-ending spiral of bad content, terrible creators, and collapsing mental health.

Trust me, we’ve been doing this for 3 years, reviewing thousands of applications and working hands-on with hundreds of creators.

You will need solid health insurance with mental health coverage 😂

3 Most Common Problems With UGC Creators

1. Finding talented UGC creators who can film authentic, high-quality content that will resonate with your audience feels impossible. Plus, you only want to work with creators who are affordable and easy to work with.
   

2. You found a creator who ticks all the boxes. You shipped them products and they disappeared from the face of the Earth without ever filming content. Even worse, they refuse to film content unless you pay them 5 times more money than you agreed.
   

3. The creator asks for extra compensation a year after you wrapped up your partnership and threatens with lawsuits because they see your ads perform well and you have been running them for months.

‍I wish these were hypothetical scenarios and not real examples from our and our clients’ experience.

Working With Top Creators

The best creators you’ll ever work with are:

• Regular people who can film top-notch content without asking for hundreds of dollars in return. Not influencers.
  

• Those who deliver high-quality content every time, stick to deadlines and are always ready to reshoot without adding extra charges.
  

• Super reliable and great at keeping you in the loop. Unlike those 'pain in the ass' creators who ghost you for days and then show up with excuses three days past the deadline.
  

• Easy to work with: they'll happily embrace any training or feedback you provide to enhance their quality (if needed), all to keep you smiling.
  

• Their life motto? 'Thank you for having me'—literally!

Where to Source UGC Creators

There are many ways to source UGC creators. It all comes down to your preferences and how much time you have.

We have been reviewing thousands of creator applications in the last 3 years to find the best and most reliable creators.

Here are the options worth your time:

• Backstage

• Twitter

• Manual Outreach

• Billo

• Insense

• Our Private Network of Top Qualified UGC Creators

We provide a detailed overview of the pros and cons of each option in our free guide that you can access here

Get UGC From Your Customers

If your customers can and are willing to film quality content for you, then you should work with them to source content.

The reality is that 99% of brands we work with can’t pull this off successfully.

The content from most customers is simply not good enough to perform in paid advertising and will most likely lose you money in ad spend.

Setup an Email Flow to Collect UGC From Your Customers

Even if your customers aren't the most skilled UGC creators, they can still provide valuable organic content without breaking the bank.

We recommend you set up an email flow asking your customers to:

1. Take a photo with your product for $5 credit for their next purchase; or

2. Film a customer testimonial video according to your guidelines for $20 credit for their next purchase

How to Find Top Creators

Now you may be asking yourself:

“How do I find these top creators who can film high-quality content and are easy to work with from hundreds of creators?”

You must ask potential creators to complete your application form.

Here is how we structure the Typeform application form we send to every creator we are considering working with:

At the beginning of our Typeform, we provide detailed information about who we are looking for, what is expected of creators, and what our process looks like.

In our application Typeform, we state that:

1. We provide detailed scripts and shot lists for each project

2. Creators only record raw content, no editing (we have in-house video editors)

3. They can see a sample script to get an idea of the usual length of scripts

4. We are looking for a long-time partnership with the best creators

5. A detailed overview of our 6-step process from confirming their availability for each project to getting paid after filming

What to Ask Potential Creators

There are essential questions you need to ask potential creators, such as:

• Full name

• Email

• Location

However, these will not tell you anything about their skills and if they are the creator you want to choose from hundreds of applications.

After running through many of the same issues with new creators, we've realized that implementing effective screening questions could help us avoid these recurring problems in the future.

Review Their Social Media Profiles

You can ask them for links to their social media profiles but most creators will not post their UGC videos on their social media accounts.

We know that our best creators, who are easy to work with and affordable will not call themselves UGC creators on social media platforms or have a personal website.

By only reviewing their social media profiles, you would miss out on your best creators and only work with creators who will charge you hundreds of dollars for a video and take 2 weeks to film content.

We don’t want that, which is why we need other qualifying questions.

Other Qualifying Questions

An example of what we are asking for in our application form is whether they have experience filming UGC product videos.

If they don’t have this experience, we provide a script for them to film and instructions on how to share this content with us for review.

This immediately tells us many things about the creator, such as:

• Are they comfortable on camera?

• Can they film good-quality content?

• Do they have a foreign accent?

• Are there any red flags about their content?

On top of these, we ask potential creators a dozen other questions to determine their reliability and the likelihood of the problems we mentioned above happening.

Use Our Creator Application Form Template

Get the exact creator application form with 38 unique questions we ask thousands of potential creators to qualify them and find the best and most reliable creators from all applicants.

This template comes with:

• A video explaining how to use the template

• Why we ask all these questions

• How we evaluate their answers to our questions

• How we decide who to work with and who not to work with based on our 3-year experience

You can download our exact creator application form here.

Require Creators to Sign Agreement

One of the most underrated aspects of working with creators is requiring them to sign an agreement before they start filming.

This simple step can prevent numerous problems and potential headaches, including false lawsuits from creators demanding extra compensation when they see your ad take off after a few months of running it.

Get Our Creator Agreement Template

We had a lawyer draft our agreement to safeguard both us and our clients from these issues. You can now access our Creator Agreement Template for a fraction of what it cost us.

You will receive instant access to our Creator Agreement Template after we receive the payment.

You can download our Creator Agreement Template here.

Get Our Free Guide: How to Source, Qualify & Train Hundreds of Top UGC Creators

One email is not enough for all the lessons we collected over 3 years of reviewing thousands of creator applications and working hands-on with hundreds of creators.

We put everything we know about sourcing and managing creators into a full guide you can access completely free here.

Poll

How I Can Help You

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you…

1. I will write 3 creative concepts tailored for your brand completely free. I want to show you our creative process and why our clients love it. Simply fill out this form so I know what brand I’m writing concepts for.

2. If you’re looking for a creative partner who will handle your entire creative production, deliver winning ads every month, and help you scale, apply to work with us here. We have worked with brands like HexClad, RYZE, BestSelf, Product Hunt, Morning Brew, and others.

3. Want me to train your internal team and implement all of our creative production systems and strategies in your business? Apply here and I will help you build an in-house team that can create hundreds of winning ads every month.

4. If you’re looking to take your ad performance to the next level and have a consistent stream of winning creative, but don’t want to hire anyone, I have created a program that teaches you our entire creative production process and everything I have learned over 3 years of creating tens of thousands of ads.