The Missing Link in Your Ad Strategy: Creator Content That Works

[00:00:00] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And I'm joined today by a new guest, Adrianne Austin, who is of course, Luke Austin's sister. But that's not only who you are. I just say that because Luke is a frequent guest.

[00:00:16] Adrianne: No, that's, that's only who I am.

[00:00:19] Richard Gaffin: Adrianne has been here a much longer time than Luke has. You've been here for, you said eight years. Is that true?

[00:00:25] Adrianne: Yeah. It'll be eight years. This is my eighth year, so the close of the eight eighth year will be in August eight years at CTC. Quite the journey.

[00:00:33] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, I was going to say, cause that's scary to me because that means I have also been here. I'm in my eighth year as well, which is.

[00:00:40] Adrianne: Yeah. I mean, you were like majorly responsible for me getting hired Richard. So around the same start date,

[00:00:50] Richard Gaffin: that's true. Yeah. It's like mere months before, but cool. So, I mean, we're excited to chat to you. And what we're talking about today is, although your, your title here is your senior growth strategist, your team lead, you're managing forecasting and kind of building out plans and managing spend and whatever for for clients.

On top of that, you're also heading up our content creator program, which is essentially a way that we source UGC for our clients. And so what we wanted to talk a little bit about today is maybe some of the specifics of that, partially like, why is it different from other you know, hiring maybe an influencer agency to source your UGC or whatever.

But let's start off like, what was the, what was the kind of impetus behind this? Like, why, why did you get into with all the other things on your plate? Why did you get into content creation as well?

[00:01:35] Adrianne: Yeah, absolutely. So in my role through growth strategy, it became so, so, so clear to me that brands of all sizes, whether you're the massive, you know, Travis, Matthew, all the way down to some startup doing 2Million a year brands of any size struggle with the same thing when it comes to. Asset sourcing for this asset type specifically UGC creator content CGC, whatever trend you want to call it, right?

They struggle to source it and it's because the paid media team whoever's chasing ads for paid channels And their organic team whoever's chasing videos or images for their organic Organic channels aren't connected. They're not on the same page about what performs and why what hooks or angles are leaning into how to create assets against their hero products.

How to how to look at the product priorities in terms of the inventory. They want to be pushing and then source assets. Accordingly, there's just a major disconnect and brands of all sizes really. Struggle to source native to feed video ads in volume. It became clear to me because that was always the biggest gap in terms of the asset libraries that I was receiving from the clients that I'm working with.

Right? But what many brands. They realize like, okay, this, this shot on iPhone style, real video could unlock performance in my meta account. But for whatever reason, they have a really hard time sourcing it, and when they do source it, it's usually super subpar, right? It's UGC, it's testimonials, they're hit or miss.

You don't really know what you're testing or why you're testing it. You're like, okay, we got this video from a customer, or we got this video from this UGC platform or this UGC partner. Throw it in the ad account, see if it works. You don't know what you're, what you're trying to learn. Like any kind of just there was little, little strategy behind it.

And so what I wanted to create is really this this product through CTC that allows us to source creator content for you, because we're the ones putting spend behind your, your assets. So it allows us to not only Source the right videos against the right products, because we know your product priorities.

We know your product margins. We know your contribution margin targets. We're able to source the the content against those products. Appropriately, and then we're able to report on performance immediately after because we're the 1 spending your dollars.

[00:03:56] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, so let's talk, go back to your point around most people having difficulty sourcing UGC, but then also once the UGC is sourced. It's of poor quality. So talk to me about why is most UGC bad? Why doesn't it work? Why is it poor quality?

[00:04:11] Adrianne: Yeah, often, I mean, The number one reason why it's poor quality is because it's not brief. Brief correctly is what I'm realizing. Right? And so it's just generally like, hey, we'll send you this product. Can you make us a video? Creators are good at making videos. They're not good at making ads. So, unless you're briefing them appropriately with really clear hooks and angles that you want them leaning into, you're gonna just get a video that, you know, it might be a great video because they're good creators or they're good at making content.

But you as the one behind the brand and the product and the ad account need to be the one briefing them on the hooks And angles to lean into so that you have really clear learnings coming out of it

[00:04:56] Richard Gaffin: And that also creates a scenario where you don't have to like, I feel like most influencers, cause you have to source them at volume. Maybe don't aren't familiar with your product at all when you find them or just like, don't really have a sense. They don't use it. So they don't really have a sense of like why someone would.

And so they end up just sort of making something up for themselves. But of course you have to, as, as the person who understands the product, have to guide that a little bit more. So talk a little bit about, you mentioned the briefing process being kind of this unlock. Talk to me a little bit more about what that looks like for us.

[00:05:24] Adrianne: Yeah, absolutely. So this, the typical structure that we'll chase this the typical structure that we'll brief in is really similar to our concept structure for just for produced ads. So, if you're familiar with CTC Creative at all, we operate in an offer angle audience structure. And so this is how all of our ads are built out using our clients still images or produce videos, right?

So just non UGC style ads, we lean into either a offer an angle or an audience. And so with UGC with creator content, we're actually briefing in the same exact manner so that we can find out quickly what works, which offer, which angle, which audience. So let me like, let me put a really tangible example in front of you guys.

We work with pause here. How specific can I be with, like, brand names and stuff?

[00:06:09] Richard Gaffin: I would say like if, yeah,

[00:06:11] Adrianne: More general.

[00:06:12] Richard Gaffin: more general is, is probably better. Like the only one we can use for sure, like Bamboo Earth, you can do whatever you want with

[00:06:17] Adrianne: Okay. Okay. Got it.

[00:06:18] Richard Gaffin: keep it more vague. Yeah.

[00:06:20] Adrianne: Okay. Sounds good. Hold on. Let me just bring this the way I want to then. Okay, cool. Okay. So here's a really, really specific example of how we source content and write briefs against the same structure of offering audience. So, we work with a lot of brands in the fitness space. This is both for apparel and gear and stuff like that. Right? So with a recent client we these videos are always skew specific, right?

You pick a skew that you either want to drive a lot of volume behind you. It's a new launch. Maybe you have excess inventory on it. So you need to push it strategically to get more cash in hand. Whatever. The reason is, these are always you specific driving straight to PDPs because that's what we see work best.

So, for this specific skew. We're leaning into unlocking audiences and finding what really resonates on meta with a specific audience hook. So if, you know, anything about the hybrid athlete space right now, it is just a massive kind of trend term on the social platforms that we spend in. Right? So, so we lean into 3 specific hooks with this 1 product and 1 creator and the hooks are.

If you're a hybrid athlete, dot, dot, dot hook number two, if you enjoy hit workout classes, dot, dot, dot. And then number three, if you're training for a marathon, dot, dot, dot three very specific areas of the fitness industry right now that are just massive. And then allows us to take these three different videos.

They have the same sort of base real style footage at the creator used, but three very specific hooks talking to three specific types of people. So. Are you training for a marathon? Do you love hit workout classes? Are you a hybrid athlete? If any of those will resonate MEDA will be able to spend into those through CAPS at our efficiency target.

And, It allows us, then, if one of those lands, say the hybrid athlete angle lands, it allows us to then take that angle and develop a bunch more creator content style ads that lead with that hybrid athlete hook. Something that, man, I hate quoting Taylor on here, but something that Taylor's always said for years now, and it's always stuck with me, is this idea that if you are talking to everybody, then you are talking to nobody.

And whenever I think about these briefs, that's what I think about. So, instead of saying, Pet parents everywhere need this product. It's do you enjoy hiking with your dog off leash? Question mark. Versus are you worried about your dog not getting enough exercise? Question mark. Or do you love tracking your own health and wellness stats?

You'll enjoy this product. Now that, that, that, that's another example of of a large project we're leaning into right now, testing into a bunch of different types of. different audiences and hooks for one single product to find out what Meta is able to unlock some scale at.

[00:09:11] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like the core, like if you were to boil down sort of the briefing process, it's about using that initial second of the video to identify an audience, basically to like, or call out an audience and say, if you are X, then Y. So for the rest of, so for maybe the fir, the first batch of creatives or whatever, is it just you get the hook? And the hook is identifies the audience and then the rest of the video is just kind of whatever they want. Or is there more that goes into kind of developing the whole piece.

[00:09:41] Adrianne: Typically we'll let the creator run with their unique story from that point on. I love what I get back with, with a little bit of a looser brief post those first three to five seconds. You know, sometimes there's, there's necessary feedback afterwards, but I don't like briefing it down to like each granular word for the entire 30 seconds, because these creators actually have really unique stories and they, they love the product for specific reasons, and I love just letting them kind of run with that after that, that hook that we're that we're beginning with.

Right? I give them really specific guidelines. Most of them know these guidelines, but giving them guidelines, like, keep every frame to 2 seconds or less so that you keep the user's attention. If you have frames that are like, longer than 2 seconds, those reels just You know, they, they just what's the word?

I'm trying to find if you have, if you have frames that are longer than 2 to 3 seconds within a real, you'll lose people quickly. Right? So keeping frames to 2 seconds or less, making sure that key content is in your kind of to your middle 2 thirds of the video because these ads are all delivered in 9 by 16.

and then we crop them to 4 by 5 and ads manager. So they serve to all placements. So giving them, like, you know, guidelines like that, plus the hooks I want them to lean into and then the rest they kind of run with and each creator that we source will deliver 3 ads. So that it's 1 full concept delivered to the media buyer here at CDC, and then they report on learnings after we get some spent for those.

[00:11:10] Richard Gaffin: So at the top of this, we talked about there being two core issues. One is, is obviously the, the quality of the creative once it's made, but then the first thing we talked about was the sourcing. So talk to us about what's the sort of secret sauce. What's your, like, what is, what's your connection? Like, how do you, how do you source the, the influencers for these brands?

[00:11:29] Adrianne: Yeah, absolutely. So I cannot take credit for for this process because actually brand that I work with, this is how they reached out to me a while ago. It is it is literally. This is, this is the nitty gritty of sliding into people's DMS with a brief with an attractive enough offer, whether it's, you know, cash per video or a valuable enough product that they'll be getting for free or some combination of both sliding into DMS and developing a relationship with these people.

It takes time. It's kind of obviously very granular, but that's how you get these people that are actually really willing to, Hype up your product and deliver a genuine story against it. And not just someone that's just like, you know, making quick change on a platform that's going to deliver a super dry testimonial video back.

So, that's the process the brain that reached out to me that sort of spurred the process in my mind a couple of years ago delivered, some really clear specifics from the get go about what they were looking for for me. I think that always helps with this type of outreach because then they know what they're committing to and whether they're up for it or not.

And the cool thing about the CDC content creator program is. We outside of the product that you're shipping. You're not paying any extra creator fees on top of the package fee that you're paying us. So you're paying the package fee and that's it. There's no added costs that we're asking you to pay. Directly to the creators were that, you know, that's coming from the package costs that you pay us.

And so we're able to kind of work within those constraints, but you're either shipping the product directly to the creator, or we're giving them a code that we source through you for them to place their order.

[00:13:11] Richard Gaffin: Gotcha. And so I was going to say some people may have inferred just now you yourself have also been a content creator, maybe still are. So talk to you, talk to us about how your experience as a content creator yourself kind of informed some of the ways that you maybe approach our content creator packages.

[00:13:29] Adrianne: Yeah, I mean, I think my experience there's what I've realized is, is if I'm not interested in the product, I can't make a videos for it. Like, I cannot, I cannot fake it. And so I scope myself into some of these packages, but if the product doesn't work for me, or it doesn't make sense for me, it's not worth stretching the truth.

And so I've learned that really quickly and a source a source in the same manner where if the customer or, you know, the creator isn't, isn't genuinely obsessed with, you know, the product. The product or the, the sort of category of product and already uses something like it or uses that product in their day to day life.

You're not going to get a very genuine or authentic story and people scrolling on their phones can read through a lot of these days. So, definitely, my experience with that has played into this. I'm thinking for you, Richard, if there's something else I can touch on. I think my experience as a, as a, you know, creator has less to do with the effectiveness of this. This product, then my experience as a growth strategist, honestly, like, yes, I can make good videos and sell product in your ad account, but my experience as a growth strategist allows me to work with your team at CTC to identify the products that we're going to choose to lean into and why and the hook that we're going to lean into and why and then deliver a 2nd round of videos based on those learnings in a really effective way.

Because I, I understand paid media. So my experience actually, as a growth strategist has way more to do with why this works than my experience as a creator. But, but I, but I can make some good videos.

[00:15:14] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, no, I was just curious if it gives you some insight maybe into how to like, how to actually brief it out to the creator or actually get good creative out of them. Because so my next question was going to be, and this is a place where your experience as a growth strategy clearly makes the most impact, which is to say like getting that second round of videos. What's, so what's that process look like? Once you've maybe got a winner, you're trying to optimize it. You're trying to get something along those lines, but what's, what's the next step then?

[00:15:40] Adrianne: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So okay, cool. So package one delivered tested. We got results back. We found what works some creators hit some didn't some angles hit some didn't we're going to take the ones that Hit the creators and the angles and we're going to run deeper into those audiences, right? So typically, with package number two or a lot of our clients now are on reoccurring packages So quarterly rounds of these where i'm delivering, you know, say 18 ads per month And that really allows me to, like, keep running with the learnings here.

So, specifically, you know, if we find a creator that works and an angle that works, I'm going to use them again, number 1, and then number 2, I'm going to source more folks like them to just get deeper into that, those early learnings. So, yes, this hybrid athlete angle just absolutely crushing for the specific brand.

Let's find more more folks that would identify as hybrid athletes. Those that are maybe training for high marks races. Or anything in that category, and then really lean in there and source more more content through through people like that with similar angles.

[00:16:48] Richard Gaffin: They find data that works and they can use it again. For the number of users and everything in that package. Yeah, so this is basically a top, middle, and lowest price. Mhm.

[00:17:05] Adrianne: Yeah, absolutely. So, clients at CTC are so like, easily able to opt into this package. All it takes is you working with your growth strategist and identifying like, this is an asset type that we need to test into into 2025 to really understand what our asset mix should be this year. Right? So if you're running.

A high amount of still images, or a high amount of, you know, highly produced video ads and low amount of you. G. C. you probably haven't you probably don't have a clear understanding of what of what this asset type could do for you. So we sort of, once once the need is identified with your growth strategist, we're able to add this to your scope at CTC, whether it's on a monthly basis, just for a 1 time package, whether you want a reoccurring set of videos for, say, you know, a quarter 3 months in a row, we'll start with obviously the volume amount.

And we, we lean in 2 different ways. So unique reels are different than real variations. Okay. So a unique reel is 850 a pop. This is all like, all a cart basically. So. 850 a pop for 1 unique reel, and that's 1 creator and once, you know. Once it's 1 unique video, 30 seconds or less. 9 by 16 aspect ratio voiceover and captions.

The whole 9 yards. A variation of that video is what I just described. Okay, so those variations run at 4. 25 each. So, most packages we sell lean into one unique reel, two variations. So it's 4. 25 times two, because you're getting two variations of that one video for 8. 50. So that's one concept one creator one reel two variations for a set of three ads it is Really challenging to get learnings from I will say less than three concepts now I i'm totally open to selling, you know Three ads a time at a time and we'll do it if you want if you want a really low risk way of testing this asset Type say you have really low spend or low resources You We can we can start with a batch of three ads like I just described.

However, more often than not I'll recommend no less than nine ads So that's three unique reels three creators two variations of each for a set of nine ads. It's three concepts, right? And and that'll give you a good foundational set of assets to actually learn something from this You don't want to invest in the asset type and learn nothing just because you only bought three ads so and then Packages as large as I just delivered 1 last month.

That was, I think, 28. Right, so 28 across it was like, over 9 creators or something like that. Right. So it's totally all a cart. It's a month to month, or you can add it to your scope as an ongoing. Kind of addition to your base package or CTC strategy. So. And then I work the process is so simple.

So it's a simple kickoff with you and your brand team. We'll identify with your growth strategist the products we want to focus on. I'll send you the addresses for the creators that I pick. We'll ship the product out and from there, it's it's a hands off from your team. So, I'm able to source all those videos.

We send them back to your team for approval. And when they're approved, we add them to the concept log and your media buyer builds them out. And then, as soon as they get some spend, we're able to report on learnings via myself or your creative strategist. If you work with a creative strategist at CTC. So it's all built into the growth map process which is, which is the way that our media buyers here are building out new ads already.

So it's not this, like, additional piece of, like, you know, I work with so many brands that are like, oh, well, we get creative from here and we get creative from here. And it's like, 5 different vendors. They're getting 5 different types of creators creative from. And it's just such a hodgepodge of deliveries and this allows it to just be ingrained into the process that you're already working with within CDC.

[00:20:59] Richard Gaffin: we can maybe cut this out. Do, we sell this to non clients too, right? Like, it's just, you can send them to purchase. Okay, cool. All right. Well, I think, so, if you want to check this out, You want to work with Adrianne on building a content creator package on turning on the UGC creator machine.

You can go ahead, head over to com thread co. com go to our work with us tab and collect a select creative production, and we can get the conversation going about potentially joining us. But one thing that I like to leave everybody with on these podcasts is if obviously the, the solution for this is to work with us, of course, in the event that you can't.

Or it's not in the cards for you for the next little while or whatever. What's the number one thing that you can do right now to maybe streamline your content creation process or make this whole sort of process just a little more painless?

[00:21:56] Adrianne: that's such a good question. Start building a connection between your brand or organic team and your paid team. There are so many ways to source this content. Internally that and and and build a little bit more efficient communication between your paid media team and your organic team. So, even if that's just digging up some old reels that had high engagement on your Instagram channel and running those as ads, even if it's just.

Looking at your posting calendar for Instagram with your brand team for the next month and asking them, hey, is there any way you could create some iPhone videos here in the studio or here at our office with our product? And so we can test out those asset types on our in our ad account. I find that so many organic social folks that work in house are able to make great iPhone videos.

It's just they've never been asked. Or no, no one's like, no one's thinking of that as a resource, right? So so that connection could solve a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of gaps in your asset library, as just a really quick, easy step without having to pay us for anything.

[00:23:07] Richard Gaffin: Awesome. Cool. All right. Well, thank you for joining us, Adrian. Appreciate you getting on. We'll have to get your numbers up so that you can beat Luke in terms of total podcast appearances.

[00:23:16] Adrianne: yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, my, my life, my life story, finding ways to beat my little brother at things in life.

[00:23:24] Richard Gaffin: no, there you go. Hey, well, for what it's worth. I think of Luke as your brother rather than of you as Luke's sister.

Does that make sense?

[00:23:31] Adrianne: That means a lot, Richard. Yeah, that means a lot. Thank you.

[00:23:36] Richard Gaffin: Awesome. Cool. All right. Thanks for joining us folks. Appreciate hanging out with us for a bit and we will talk next week. Goodbye.

[00:23:43] Adrianne: Talk soon. Bye.