The Secret Behind Weirdly Viral Apps

0:00App founders are using this playbook to get hundreds of thousands of downloads on their apps by hiring college students, having them make videos every single day, and going viral with actually high converting short form videos on Tik Tok. So, in this video, I talked to Canyon, the co-founder of Sideshift, a platform that has 150,000 college students looking for jobs in UGC and making these daily videos. he dropped some really good case studies where we go straight into the accounts and the formats that are getting

0:35downloads for apps right now. So we uh Sideshift we started running kind of this high volume organic playbook in like late February probably like four months ago. Um, previous to that we'd been, you know, doing just marketing on our own social channels, physically going in person to these college campuses and I think we're probably around like 10,000 kind of job seekers on our platform. Um, so about 10,000 users and over the past 3 to four months have kind of grown that to be now over 150,000 uh active job seekers. And it's largely been in part due to this high volume organic. probably the most cost-effective way I think for consumer

1:17founders to you know market and distribute their product. We've spent probably around 10k across the board and so you just like run the numbers on that and like a customer acquisition cost that's you know pennies is just ridiculous. And so I think, you know, as we run this playbook more too, you just get more efficient in it because you start to figure out the formats that

1:41work and you can just replicate that. And obviously they don't work forever. You know, you need to continue to iterate and experiment. Um, but it's one of those things where, you know, I think we're going to continue to double down. We actually had to turn off our funnels in like miday. We only have one, we only had one engineer at the time. And so when we had like, you know, 50,000 new kind of creators join our marketplace in the span of like a week or two, like products started breaking. Our businesses were getting like 3,000 applicants, which is like great in theory. Um, but the product wasn't

2:13really built for that. But it is one of those things where it's like as our content, you know, continues to convert and drive more users and creators to our platform, we see a direct correlation to the businesses that we work with having success um because they're getting a bigger pool to pick from on the creator side. They can make hires much quicker and they can just launch much bigger programs for, you know, a very very affordable cost. So, it's been it's been really cool to see kind of how this flow has evolved. How many views on short form videos do you think you got from

2:47the the 10K budget? Yeah, let me I can actually pull up and get a pretty accurate um perception of this. So Oh yeah, that would be cool to like see it. Yeah, we've run two campaigns and so the last one that we ran um which I would say is probably equates to like half of our views um was 16 million through it was I think a 300 post campaign um maybe maybe it was a little bit more. It might have been closer to 20 I think for whatever reason. And the dates are off, but we just found million views in

3:22Yeah. 30 days from 60 posts from from 300 posts. 300 posts. So 300 AC across the board. We had we had five creators making content, posting, most of them were posting twice a day. And I would say for the first two weeks, I think UGC is one of these things where it like it takes a lot of patience because it like some people crack it right away. They find a winning format within like week one of posting. I would say that's not standard for us. It took like two to three weeks and then as soon as we found one format, we were just doubling down on that. We had all five

4:02of our creators pumping it out like every other day basically. And you know, it was a 2 million video view video here, a 5 million view video here, you know, 100,000 video views that start to stack up. And it's like when one account starts to pick up steam, like it just is really just a flywheel that affects all the videos. You know, people are then engaging with the rest of their videos, which just kind of fuels the funnel and their account just gets pushed out into, you know, that audience that you're, you know, inevitably trying to target. And so I think it's one of those things

4:34where founders that, you know, have patience and are willing to go weeks or even months at a time without seeing, you know, extremely extraordinary results, like they get rewarded in the long run because they just continue to experiment and iterate. And so it's it's one thing that we like a with the companies that we work with try to just like alert them that like look, it doesn't work on the first try every single time. Um, sometimes it takes 300 posts before you find that winning format, but when you do, you know, you're able to just double down on that and and really just change your business. Uh, dramat

5:09some of the videos from this campaign. One of the things that we have really tried to lean into is just with like the job market, everything that's going on. I think it's like leaning into trends of just like the broader like macro economy as well as like trends that are happening on Tik Tok. It's like you don't need to reinvent the wheel. I mean, we see he's like getting denied from whatever jobs, leaning into the fact that he has a master's degree. Um, we can click in these slideshow formats have, you know, actually really converted a ton as well. Um, and it's just like, you know, it's subtle. It's

5:43it's not just screaming your product out. It's just, you know, subtly dropping subtly dropping it in there. Sometimes saying the product. You don't always need to lay the product, but like, you know, UGC creator side shift app. this gets a few hundred,000 views, like that just converts insanely well. This is a that's a perfect slideshow that got 84,000 views and you listed the name of the app on the last slide and it was like highly engaging because it's like what are you going to rate the next thing like the out of 10 format I feel like is really strong. Also, this guy has less than

6:182,000 followers. He has 1,900 followers. like right when he started the account he had zero followers and so like these are all you know these are fresh accounts um obviously you get it warmed up into whatever niche you know you're trying to go after but it's like as you start to like it definitely you know as we can see like if we go all the way back here you know he's been posting for a while like some of the videos it takes a while like these videos only get a 100red views like you start getting into the a thousand view range but you know you post a ton

6:51and you see no results for a while, it can start to be like very, you know, discouraging. Um, but I think, you know, just continuing to put shots on goal, it's it's one of the things that's really hard for people. I think people just tend to give up on a marketing channel and just try and go find the next best thing. Like the reality is like all these marketing channels, they're, you know, they're hard. They're

7:14hard to master and it just takes reps. It just takes practice. And I think the beauty of UGC is you can get so many more reps and so much more practice for just such a cheap cost and it just allows for so much experimentation. Can you go to some of the viral ones and then some of the not viral ones and like kind of describe the differences? Like what do you think do well? So for this one, like we had found this format um with one of our other creators like getting denied from a job, having a master's degree, like it's ironic in the sense that like oh my god, like even in

7:50this job market, even if you're, you know, college educated, um have gone to school, it's something that just like resonates with a lot of people. Um, and so I think something that's either extremely controversial drives a lot of engagement or something that is just extremely resonating with a large demographic of people like everyone in the comments is just talking about like how just difficult you know the job market is and you know so it's one of those things and so I think he did a good job of also too like you can see how engaging he is with these comments like that's something that just continues to spur you know additional

8:26engagement people are then responding to him and like that engagement level continues to push, you know, your videos out into into the feed. Um, and so I think that's something we try to work with our creators a lot on is like look, it doesn't just stop at the video you post. Like you need to go environment or engineer this environment in the comments that's, you know, extremely collaborative, has people asking, you know, where are people finding jobs? And that's where you can start to subtly plug in your product as well. Um because at the end of the day, you know, views are great, but it's like how do we get

8:59our product? It's like boom, like this is why I only use Sideshift. You know, people are liking that that's converting to real users. And so, I mean, we can even go down here to like an older one. And um I mean, I I think too, a lot of it it's just like experimentation. And so, you don't really know at the start what formats are going to work. Um, I mean, we can even see here we got like one of our other creators that, you

9:25know, is trying to subtly plug there. Um, but I also think sometimes these accounts just take time to warm up and some just get a little bit luckier and get pushed out into the feed right away and, you know, have insane engagement. Others just take more time. Um, and so it's one of those things where you kind of just got to weather the storm and, you know, wait to just find a format

9:46that, you know, resonates with people. That's interesting. So, what I'm curious like what instructions did you give this creator when you first hired him? Was it um did you get have some some kind of brief um showing? That would also be interesting. Yeah. So, I can pull up kind of an example brief. I will use one of our customers as an example. I won't go fully into the details to get rid of their secret sauce. Um, but I'll

10:19kind of give the high level. So, I think one thing that is important to touch on is like who is your company? Like what is what does your company do in your own words? Um, because I think a lot of the time people will just be like, "Hey, go download my app and like make content about it." And a lot of the time like a creator like using an app for the first time like seeing it from an outside lens like they don't necessarily know like what the core value prop of that product is like what's that viral moment that I can lean into like what problem are you solving

10:59with your audience and so I think that's one thing to touch on like one thing they did a really good job of is like adding in like Loom videos chatting through their product making it extremely you know personalized like you want to start to, you know, treat your creators like they're a part of this community. You want them to be excited to make content about your product. So, that's one thing. Um, I think as well like who's your target audience, you know, like do you have personas that they can tap into? Because at the end of the day, one of the things is like as they warm this account up, they need to

11:30make sure that it's getting pushed out into the right audience so that people are actually engaging with their content. Um, and so I think that's like one of the biggest things and one of the most important things of the brief is like who do we actually want to target? And I think some people run into the trap where they have a product that could really just be targeted at anyone and they don't focus on any specific niche and because of that the content that gets pushed out feels pretty just like bland. You know, there's nothing special to it. It doesn't feel like it's meant for anyone. And I think because of

12:06that, like it just doesn't perform that strongly. Um, another thing that's, you know, I think extremely strong, and this is something that gets built up over time. Um, if you have viral videos on your own socials, if you have people that have made content for you, like link those videos, you know, give your creators a starting point so that when they start making content, like they already have a few formats that they can run with. Obviously, you want to give your creators, you know, the creative freedom to do what they do best and experiment and find new formats for you, but if you don't give them anything,

12:41like they're kind of just starting from a disadvantage when you can kind of just prop them up a bit. Other if you have competitors um or adjacent players in your kind of, you know, community um maybe for us like we're a job platform at the end of the day for these creators. if there's like other jobesque

13:03content um that has gone viral before. Uh trying to kind of take those themes and transfer them into kind of your niche and about your company and product. Um and yeah, I think that kind of ties into this like formats from other videos. Um you know, like Sideshift, Migrate Mate were both kind of job boards in that regard. So there's a lot of similarities that you can transfer over. I think putting together hook ideas is like, you know, good but not necessary all the time. Um, I think sometimes having a few can be a good starting point, but I don't I think sometimes the challenge people run into is they just

13:41overwhelm their creators and they just throw like this 50page brief at them and it's like a like nobody wants to read that. like they're just going to open it up and see how overwhelming it is and just instead of hitting, you know, the the few key points that are actually important to learn, they'll just skip it all together because they're like, I don't want to sift through this. And so it's like how can we condense the most important information and just like give that to, you know, our creators. Um pay as well. This is usually something you'll talk about with the creators as well. We kind of recommend like a hybrid

14:13model. So $15 to $20 per video with a base retainer is is pretty common. And then we like to throw pretty generous performance bonuses as well. I think it really aligns incentives and, you know, can drive a ton of just engagement. It'll it'll, you know, incentivize them to engage with comments after they just post the video. Um, and so I think there's, you know, a lot of good that comes from this kind of hybrid model in terms of attracting quality people with that retainer and then just aligning incentives with those bonuses. Um, rules, guidelines, whatever this be a lot is like, hey, mention our company, don't mention other companies, don't do

14:53XYZ. Um, some people like to have ownership and usage rights and so they'll have people upload, you know, videos to a Google Drive. But I would say from a high level, like keep the creator brief short and sweet, but like try and, you know, add some valuable information that, you know, people can just act on right away. Yeah, this is gold. Um, could you screen share again? And, um, I

15:17want to show you something actually. Could you go to spytalk.com and then type in like because to your point about how do you give your creators formats that you know are already working in the niche? I just wanted quick quickly demo this. So just like type this in. I think it'll be a good example. So these are like Yeah, we could even

15:44Yeah. Try the keywords that I sent you. Yeah. Like these are like this is interesting too cuz I is this like oh interesting I like this like this one for example 61.8 um obviously this looks like it was you know a little higher higher quality um but I think yeah this is like great you know just finding potential inspiration and tools out there. This is yeah, this is this is a great tool and I'm sure it's like one of those things where you know you just play around with a ton of keywords like even if there's content that you have out there like kind of trying to dump maybe some of those

16:21captions or you know what you're having your creators look for when they're warming up their accounts and things like that. Yeah, this is a this is a really cool tool. I'll definitely have to do a little more research on this. Good plug. Could you also um quickly explain like the warm-up process? Yeah. So, yeah, to kind of chat through the the warm-up process, I know everyone kind of has their different views and I think there's a lot of just unknown. Um, and so I don't think anyone's necessarily right or wrong. There's, you know, different ways to do it that still work. Um, I think how we try and

17:01describe it to our creators is by just saying like put yourself in the shoes of kind of the end user. Like if I'm promoting for Sideshift, like act as if you're a broke college student that like needs a side hustle and like maybe makes content already or has, you know, done side hustles in the past and just like act as if you're one of those people and just engage with that content consistently. You need you need to act human. like these algorithms get better every single month. And so if you just like spam and interact with every single post and just like scroll very quickly, like people can tell that's not just

17:41like human behavior. You know, act as if you're actually scrolling. It's it's definitely very tedious and probably the worst part of this entire process. And so how we try and frame it to our creators is like, look, we want to have you making content with us for, you know, the next year potentially. And like the account warm-up process kind of lays the foundation for that. And so do it right the first time so that you ideally don't need to make another account and start over from scratch. And like as you build up this account like you'll have thousands and thousands of followers if if done correctly that

18:15you'll gain over the next few months. And so just take the extra you know few hours that it takes to warm it up properly. We typically do like a three to five day warm-up. I like to start my creators posting on Mondays. And so if I onboard a crew on like Wednesday, like maybe the warm-up process is a little bit longer. If I onboard them on Friday, maybe it's a little bit shorter. Um I think that stuff's a little arbitrary. I think if you just maybe take a little bit more time um on a shorter like day window, maybe you spend, you know, an extra hour warming it up, like that's

18:48one way to do it. Um and so I think there's different methodologies for it. A lot of people have like the bottom up approach. you know, you're sharing, you're commenting, you're liking, you're engaging. Um, but I think just like the bottom line is like you just need to act like a human. Um, and act like a human that's in that niche that you're actually promoting. And I think it goes a long way. And there's all these like little I think like kind of nuances that you can do to your account that I think just help in the long run. And there's tons of guides out there. Um, but yeah,

19:17like kind of like long stories, just like keep it short and sweet for the creators. like give them their your maybe list of like nuances that they need to do when setting up their account. Um but otherwise, yeah, that's kind of what I think works best. Yeah, cuz at the end of the day, no one really knows like how to get around anti-bot. Like we don't have visibility into Tik Tok algorithm. So, right, you kind of just have to like But if you think about it, like they're they have the antibbot to to filter out people that are not human. So just act human and right

19:50it should work. Yeah. Right. Seems simple and I the these algorithms you know they get better every single day because obviously their end goal is to reduce bot activity and so the more just organic and authentic you can be. Um I think yeah I definitely think there's a very strong correlation to how these accounts perform. Nice. Um can we talk about that uh photo

20:13app? Yeah. So we just started working with a uh a solo founder. Um he's building an app called Photogenic. Um pretty much like AI photo albums. So think you're instead of taking your grad photos, you can just leverage his platform. Instead of taking head shot, you can just use the app. You know, there's different use cases that he's starting to see pop up like even ID photos um for like, you know, student IDs or work IDs, stuff like that. Um and so he had never run organic before. um but has built you know a ton of mobile products and you know heard about us through obviously

20:52the Twitter boy and so reached out had a conversation with him um he's like yeah I'm just going to you know start small with one creator try and you know figure out some formats that you know work um and so he you know he actually took a lot of time sifting through applicants I think on our platform he got few hundred applicants and he like took a really long time to like look through their account, see if they'd made content before. Um, like look at their Tik Tok, see if they had gone viral before. And so, let me maybe share my screen and see

21:27if I can pull up his account real quick. Um, so yeah, he had like 600 applicants. Obviously, it takes a while to sift through and he was only hiring one, so he obviously had to be a little bit more selective, but it was a few things. Uh, first thing, this is the the girl he ended up hiring. If we if we check out her Tik Tok, like a she had just even on her own Tik Tok had a history of going viral, like has had a ton of posts perform well. Hasn't even posted a ton, but just has seen, you know, some really strong results. So, that was obviously a

22:01huge indicator. Um, second indicator is like when he actually had a conversation with her, she was extremely responsive. She was like wanting to run strategy on the account. She's like, "I have a ton of ideas that I would love to experiment with." And it's funny cuz he was like, "Anytime I would throw an idea at her to try it out, like it would perform terribly." So, I ended up just letting her run things fully. And I think that's like one of the fine lines between like giving people just enough information on kind of what your product is and who you're targeting and then letting them run free. Obviously, you know, not every

22:35creator is built the same and some people need to be you need to be a little bit more hands-on with. Um, but yeah, just like in her case alone, I think it's good to like figure out how hands-on or hands off they want to be with everything. But yeah, we can pull up how this account performed and it's just absolutely insane. Um, 40 46 posts on this campaign and doing 35 million total views. Like that's almost a million views per post, which is insane, especially for for his first crack at it. um hiring one creator and just like hitting the jackpot right away. Um I think there's a few interesting things

23:12that he noticed from this process as well. Like a insane growth in users. Um so he saw like a 10x growth in just like the amount of downloads that he was getting on a on a weekly basis which is obviously huge. Um, but what's really interesting too is before when people would go to his app, it would convert at around 5 to 10%, like let's say someone views him on the app store, um, the chance that they actually downloaded the app was like 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20, which is extremely low. And obviously for new apps that, you know, don't have a ton of ratings, don't have a ton of

23:45social proof, like people are just, you know, less likely to give them a shot. Um, and since running this organic playbook, you know, it was converting at over 50%. So, one out of every two people that actually searched him up on the app store or saw him on the app store was downloading it. And I think it just goes to show that like hearing about a product through just like an organic piece of content gives it so much more credibility that these views and these engagements, they convert at such a higher rate. And so I think it goes to show that like organic I I think

24:19is starting to become, you know, leaps and bounds more effective than even paid ads for a lot of these consumer products out there. But yeah, I mean this account was going absolutely, you know, crazy. Um, we can pull it up here and and just see. And what's funny is like one of the things that was working really well um is like he had a bunch of conceptions of like let me just show the best pieces of content of the product but like one thing let's see if I can find uh I don't know which video it was but like he was just showing she was like posting like

24:55when the AI would mess up and like the crazy like formats that it would pump out and I think that was that was pretty comical. Um, I think I don't know if we can maybe pull this one up, but like yeah, like for example, like has like a third leg sticking out and it just drove so much engagement. She was like great in the comments as well, like responding to comments like as soon as someone asks like what the app is, plugging photogenic in. Um, and so yeah, super, you know, strong results from someone that has just started it. And so he's like he's also just learned a lot about

25:28his product in itself. Like I think when you get so many more users on your product, he's been able to just create such an environment in there that has increased retention and you know just drove tons of super users that I think he wouldn't have otherwise had if he got if he didn't get that influx of users right off the bat. Um and so yeah, he's been he's been crushing. So that's been, you know, really cool to see for someone that's just kind of giving it a go at

25:53their first their first time at it. That's wild of 35 million views with 50 videos. It's so true. But also like when you have an ad on Tik Tok or Instagram or YouTube or anything, you automatically like it's labeled as an ad and you know it's an ad. So of course the landing page conversion is going to be lower than if the person's like actively searching for the app in the app store because there's no link to the to the app store, right? like on these any of these videos, they're like closing the Tik Tok app, going to the app store, searching it in, and then

26:28once they find the app, of course, they're not going to like like drop off at that point. Like maybe 50% do, but that's just like so much better than um maybe accidentally clicking the ad and then be like, "Oh, I don't want this." Exactly. Exactly. That's really cool. Um nice. That's a great case study. Can we look at the the

26:52studio as well? Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. So, we've been working with an app studio um Vert Ventures. They're they're promoting a couple of their apps right now. Astro is like astrology app. Haven is like a a Bible study app. And one thing that they've done a really good job of, I think both of their apps have been like top five in their category for past few weeks or they've been in and out of it, but I know they've been crushing. And one thing that they've done a great job of is finding winning formats in organic and sparking them into paid. And so I think there's like

27:31some products I think are naturally better for organic and some products are naturally better for paid. And I think they've found this good blend of the ability to drive downloads through organic and find a way to just repurpose that content for paid. And so I think it's it's definitely something that's a lot harder, you know, to learn and master. like they're wicked smart on the grow side over there and you know have a history of just doing insane stuff in terms of distribution. Um but they've just experimented with so many different formats creators from every side of the spectrum. You know they've got a few girls, a few guys working on it, bunch

28:14of different ages, tons of different formats. like we can, you know, click on this video for example and it's like talking about, you know, your your sign and how, you know, Astra helped them find their sign and stuff like that as opposed to like, you know, we've got this kid over here who's talking and just displaying a ton of astrology knowledge and, you know, plugging, you know, Astra is obviously a resource to, you know, kind of try and find this uh this information, especially if you're, you it's something that you're interested in. Um, and so it's been it's interesting to see how, you know, a lot

28:52of different apps can take a very different approach and still, you know, see great results. And I think it just comes down to, you know, that that piece of you just need to experiment and throw a ton of shots on goal and just start to figure out, you know, where your app kind of fits into the kind of distribution network and what levers you can pull on um to really just drive the biggest impact. And so I think it's it's something they've done, you know, a great job of over the past like few months and honestly over the since since

29:23they've launched. That's awesome. So, you're getting all these downloads from your viral Tik Toks. How do you actually turn these people into customers? You do that with payw walls with Superwall. So, Superwall helps you build payw walls for your mobile apps. And Superwall is sponsoring this pod, but they've also just been super active members of Consumer Club for forever. And yeah, Consumer Club is where I talk to other app founders about these strategies every day. We talk about what's working, what's not working for viral distribution and just other ways of doing marketing uh for your apps. So check out Superwell, check out Consumer Club, back to the pod. I feel

29:59like for app studios like this where they're building multiple apps, it's a really great way to test like you see the huge numbers and it's like, oh yeah, you can scale, you can get, you know, hundreds, thousands of downloads on your app, but it seems like an actually pretty cheap way to test a market, too. like if if someone has an app and they're trying to test this marketing channel with short form Tik Tok or short form organic, what what strategy have you seen work well for just doing kind of like lowbudget tests and validating

30:33uh app ideas? Yeah. No, it's it's it's totally true and I think it's going to become even more true as coding just becomes easier and easier as these tools get better and better. You know, we see teams that are shipping products every single week, you know, running distribution on them for a month and a either just pivoting their product, maybe they, you know, had a great thesis, but the way, you know, users are actually leveraging and using their product is just different than, you know, they initially set out to. Um, and so, you know, just refining products so much quicker. I think that's just a way people have been testing, too. And

31:11then another way is just like, hey, like, do people actually care about this? Like, if I, you know, can run organic and get a few hundred users on this, like, will they stay? Will they continue to use the product? Will they turn out right away? Will any of them actually pay for this? And so, I think it's a really quick way to just like validate your idea, validate if like people care about it. Um, because like sure, you can get, you know, a couple hundred people to just download your product. Like that's one thing, but can you continue to get these people to, you know, stay on the product and, you know,

31:43even pay for your product? And so I think it's just been such a quick way to just really close that feedback loop. 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 and either make the necessary adjustments that you're seeing on the product. maybe switch the format, switch the messaging that you're using, maybe see if it's maybe better for a different target audience. And so I I just think there's a ton of experimentation. And I think the the beauty with UGC is like you can run so much experimentation for

32:18so cheap. You know, you're paying what is it 20 or so dollars for each video. Like you can run so many different formats. You can target a handful of different audiences if you're still trying to figure that aspect out. And like you can just iterate so much quicker and you know so much more cost-effectively. And that's why I think so many of these companies are now just like fundraising as app studios with the the like maybe some core thesis that they have and just testing that thesis out with, you know, 10 or 20 different products before they maybe find the two or three that they want to double down

32:48on. What deal structure would you do to get like minimum viable test? like would you book a creator for a whole month and get try to get 30 videos or would you do like one week of videos or would you do like one single video? How would you like approach that if you're just trying

33:05to test as quickly as possible? Yeah. So, I think if you're running paid um as opposed to organic, I think you could do creators on like a week-toeek basis. Maybe you have them pump out like five to 10 different formats that you just run paid ads across. Um, and I think you can get really good feedback there. Like, do any of these formats convert? Like, do people actually download when they see this? And like maybe we find one or two winning

33:34formats, maybe we double down on that. And, you know, then we can compare that to organic as well. And so I think for organic the challenge with a really short time period is, you know, you just don't get a ton of data. And I think it the game's a little bit different than paid. I mean, personally, I think like a two week timeline is pretty pretty sufficient. um you'll start to get a good sense of hey like especially if we have a few creators like if none of these creators accounts are moving and like even if their accounts are moving and getting views but we're not seeing

34:09conversions like why is that you know like try and figure out the why behind it and then like when you understand like maybe why things aren't working even if you pivot and you know run things over the next two weeks and are still seeing very similar you know results that just don't seem to be very promising then it's like one those things like, okay, maybe we need to question what we're building and what this thesis is. And, you know, maybe we just need to figure out, you know, a different product idea or a different, I guess, kind of take on whatever we're

34:39building right now. That's great. That's great advice. Super actionable. Is there anything else you wanted to I think that that was like the most of the stuff I wanted to cover. Is there anything else you wanted to cover? Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that I've been thinking a lot about in this kind of just consumer distribution space is how quickly it's evolved and changed. And I think, you know, we look back to, you know, 3 to four years ago was kind of just like when influencer marketing really started to take off. And I think like within the past, you know, couple of years, like

35:21it's kind of pivoted more into like this micro influencer marketing and like now it's kind of come down to UGC marketing. And so I think what's interesting is I think there will be a convergence in the sense that like, you know, the price that influencers are getting paid is coming down, you know, and the price that UGC creators it's kind of starting to converge. And I think the reality is is like these algorithms reward quality content and so you no longer need to have hundreds of thousands of followers to you know drive an impact and I think the reality is too like with cheaper creators there's so much more

36:03experimentation that can be done. I think the beauty of it too is like when you bring these creators on board, you know, it's going directly into your audience as opposed to, you know, an influencer. Like sure, they may be in your niche, but there's never a onetoone overlap. And so, I think it'll be interesting to see how this space continues to evolve. Um, yeah, I I think my my take on it is like the cost of, you know, influencer and micro influencer marketing will continue to drop down. I do think that massive enterprise brands will continue to dump money into it because the way I view it

36:37is more of just like brand awareness and tying your brand to a personality. Um, I don't necessarily think there's a strong ROI there. And that's why I think so many startups and even like middle to late stage growth companies are starting to lean into this kind of UGC playbook because they realize that like the ROI, the impressions that they're able to generate is just vastly, you know, cheaper than what you might have to pay to an influencer. And so I think the one thing that'll be interesting to see too is like as AI and the content that you can produce with AI evolves, it's like where does that pillar fit into kind of

37:17this scene? You know, I I think there's very much so a chance that it kind of can be just another distribution channel. I I see I think we're starting to see different use cases pop up there with especially with kind of V3 and you know the type of content that is starting to get produced out of there. I I I still think there's a definitely a level of skill that is, you know, being taken to have to produce that highquality content. Um, and so I think as those tools become more intuitive and, you know, they have more reach and kind of anyone can start to create this

37:52content, um, that will be really interesting to see and seeing even how creators can begin to leverage these tools and kind of use that as even a complement to, you know, the content that they're already making. It it reminds me of just like people people say marketing channels are dead. Like I I see these tweets all the time where people are like paid ads is dead, cold email is dead, you know, all like SEO is dead, but I feel like nobody's paying attention to organic UGC. It's just like such a sleeper channel. Like maybe it is it because it's Gen Z like why you think Sideshift

38:33is doing so well right now? like clear clearly like the results are good, but why why was no one else really doing this before you guys showed up? Yeah, I I think it I think there's a there's a few a few reasons. I think like number one is like this organic UGC stuff is still relatively new. Like I think you know like the hardcore consumer founders have been running this playbook for a while and I think you know these marketing channels they take time to start to reach you know bigger companies and other companies that just are not as familiar with the distribution space in general. And so I

39:17think as I think it'll continue to get more popular over time, like as people continue to have, you know, these insane results, it it's very similar with how influencer marketing and micro influencer marketing, you know, started to blow up for a few years um because people were having insane results. You know, app goes to number one running this playbook. It's the same idea. as more and more kind of proof of concepts start to evolve, more people will start, you know, being like, "Okay, I guess this actually is a viable marketing channel, I still think there's a lot of people that, you know, don't necessarily have a ton of faith in it." And I think

39:52sometimes, you know, those are just, you know, the late adopters and the people that kind of get to the punch first are going to continue to be rewarded. And I think, you know, as it gets a little bit more crowded, it'll be interesting to see like what strategies need to be taken to, you know, ensure that you're still getting, you know, good ROI from kind of that distribution lens. Um, I think another thing in terms of like why we've had a lot of success, I think there's something to be said about like our core demographic being college students. I think, you know, there's tons of creator marketplaces out there,

40:30but there's still really like influencer marketing in the sense that like it's content creators that already have massive followings on Tik Tok or Instagram that are going to these marketplaces to try and sign brand deals. And so when people come there to try and hire for UGC, there's just a little bit of a disconnect. And so I think like us going the college route from the start like I mean we physically went to 25 different college campuses in person to onboard kind of that first 10 to 20,000 users. And I think because of that like we've gotten really strong

41:02word of mouth and growth within college. Like I think a lot of people that see our content like it kind of just feels like this like college gen Z marketplace. And I think because we built up our core audience kind of in that space, we've actually been able to, you know, have a lot stronger results with the brands that we work with because the big thing is like these kids, you know, they're hungry. They're

41:26they're not able to find these jobs. Like they're not these massive influencers on TikTok that just have extremely high expectations. And a lot of them are just really eager to get experience. You know, working with a really fast growing startup that's building a really cool product is extremely exciting and being able to have a direct impact on their growth. Like that's more meaningful a lot of the time than you know the potential, you know, few hundred or few thousand dollars that you're going to get paid out. And so I think like we've just tried to instill with a lot of the businesses that we work with. It's like

42:01look like make this relationship more than just a transaction. Like try and you know build this as a relationship. Like we always frame it to our creators. It's like look you might start as a content creator but like next thing you know you could be a strategist for our campaigns or for some of the campaigns for the companies we work with. And like a lot of the times that leads to you know these growth marketing distribution roles which are starting to become more and more important. And so I think it's just more so a framing thing and just the reality that like hey these are college educated kids. They're smart,

42:31but they're hungry. And like when you pair those things together, I think you can really see some, you know, really impactful results. That's so true. I feel like um yeah, there's no like UGC school. There's no like University of UGC. So, the only way to really get these people into senior roles is to get them the experience first and then, you know, have them uh take on these head of growth roles. I've seen that so many times like start out as a Tik Tok intern and then they get good at it and then they can now manage and hire um and you know help grow you

43:09know more employees like uh more Tik Tok people um and you can like that's when you really scale. That's about it from me. Thanks for sharing. I think yeah there wasn't more that I wanted to cover. Is I mean I I like the I like the stuff that you keep adding though. Is there was there anything else? No, I honestly like No, that was great. I also like Thanks for plugging that spy talk tool. I had actually never heard of it,

43:33but this is a sick product. Yeah, that's that's me actually. Oh, that's your product? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I co-founded that with um one of the members of Consumer Club. No way. And he he does consulting. He's done like millions of views for his clients just doing like or mass organic Tik Tok. But then the first half of that consulting process is always doing research and finding winning formats in

44:00a niche. So usually he builds this white label as just like a custom like research tool for his clients. But then I saw it and I was like wait this should be like a product for every like anyone who's running UGC should just be using this. Check out these other videos on the channel. We have other pod interviews. I always try to keep it as tactical as possible, diving into case studies, tactics, what's working right now for viral distribution, growth hacking for

44:28apps. Check out these other videos.