6 battle-tested insights to master the art of UGC operations for higher ROAS

Good marketers learn all the modern ad skills. Great marketers never stop learning.

That's why I thought about leveling up my UGC operations skills with some tips from Ali Qureshi, one of the best ad ops person to learn from.

In this newsletter, I’ve already talked about things I wish I had known earlier about UGC and I even wrote an ultimate UGC guide. (I also shared how to use these ads with whitelisting.) Be sure to read them too if you have not. I’m sure you’ll get a ton of insights from my experience.

Okay, let’s get back to leveling up our UGC Ops skills. Ali also shared some good resources, I’ve shared them at the end of this post.

Here 6 ways you can make your UGC process more effective (6th is my favorite):

1/ Creator relationships are not easy to maintain. But there’s a way.

You have reached out to 100% of UGC creators, and maybe 25% of them are worth having a conversation with.

But 15% of them have the potential to become long-term partners.

So, it is a numbers game.

And even if you do have a good relationship, just remember some creators have a great understanding of the space and creative strategy, and others don’t.

For them, it can become a bit of a cash grab. Which for us, means trying to find the experts who are also at an affordable price point and from the brand side, we're talking all things iteration.

Testing a creative strategy. Coming up with new concepts for creators. They just want to get paid as much as possible.

But when it works, it works like a charm, example below.

2/ Make sure you have a consistent onboarding.

There is a lot of talent out there but only some of them are good.

You want to make sure that you have a big database and that you are onboarding these folks properly.

Creators are funneled through an onboarding form. You can see an example like this, here. This is important because there are people you are cold-reaching and some who are coming inbound.

You need to put everyone in one place and get into one Notion board.

The steps post-submission are pretty clear:

Another important point: Make sure you’re transparent with these creators about pricing.

They are responsible for filming, and Adcrate, as an agency, is responsible for post-production.

Even though Adcrate gives them scripts, concepts, and ideas, creators are only focusing on one thing, what they are great at – acting and filming.

3/ Communication makes it or breaks it. Make sure it doesn’t happen on your end.

Problem: Building creator relationships at scale is not easy.

Solution: Set up the easiest possible method of communication.

Adcrate gets everything done over iMessage instead of emails. So creators feel personally addressed like they’re in a 1:1 relationship.

iMessage makes giving feedback much easier. They can respond quickly and also ask for iterations. Ali even gets voice notes on iMessage.
It not only breaks the ice, it is very easy to ask for further requests too. This is key to relationship building.

4/ Ask the right way, and you’ll get the right content delivered.

Most agencies ask UGC creators like this:

"Here’s our product, here’s the feature, can you create 3 videos for us?”

vs

How Adcrate’s asks:

"Hey, got a new brand to work on? We’ll provide the full brief, and the direction and then manage the edit, interested?

In short, do the work for the creators and you will get the best creatives delivered.

The best part? Because of this, they get these great videos for a fraction of the standard price (about ⅓ off). Creators are happy if they can do the filmmaking and you do the video editing.

5/ Your brief sucks, here’s how to make it better.

The more detailed the brief, the better the results.

Folks at Adcrate break the creator brief into:

✅ Modular – broken down in hooks + body + shots + CTA

✅ Clear visual direction and expectations

✅ Additional shots for variations

✅ Clear outline for video editors

Why modular you might ask:

• You get visually different videos that you make as a hook.

• You can use the same hook and try it with a robotic voice for example.

• It helps you change the narrative and structure and try more hooks.

In short, you get more juice.

Here’s an example to help you to understand:

But Ali and his team give two kinds of briefs:

• Mini-briefs for max 10-15 creators who they really trust.

• Detailed briefs for everyone else.

This way it makes it easier to “onboard” a creator and leave nothing to chance.

Protip # 1: Give your creator the visual direction, not just a hook that you found on the internet.

Protip #2: Make sure you tell the UGC creator: “Say it in your own words,” and “Make it your own.” (Even though we provide the script.)

6/ The community method to take it to the next level.

Adcrate runs a mastermind session with all their creators without charging them. The goal is to bounce ideas off one another, to see what they learned from different videos.

Be sure to answer any nuanced questions to help everyone level-up.

But most importantly, Adcrate makes sure creators succeed, because if UGC creators succeed, Adcrate does too.

In the end, this approach helps to:

✅ Create an authority presence in their minds

✅ Build a stronger relationship

✅ Gain and share learnings

✅ Help everyone improve

✅ Build a community

That’s all for today from my favorite lessons from Ali Qureshi’s UGC operations insights. You can work with his agency or just reach out if you want for a 1:1 consultancy about UGC or anything relating to growth or performance (email:[email protected]).

Also, Ali shared some amazing resources – a gift from him to my subscribers.

• The creator's filming guide

• An example of a video brief for a creator

This was just a glimpse of the content that he shared with my mastermind. Ali shared with us for a full 60 minutes and answered a lot of nuanced questions related to UGC.

If you’d like to access more content like this, join the waitlist of The Performers here.

But wait, this newsletter is also about ad inspiration. So I thought about leaving you with some.

Here are some of the high-performing UGC videos that you can steal from Adcrate’s production:

Ad # 1 — Grab them with the killer visual hook!

Ad # 2 — The relatable car hook

Check out some other good creatives here.

After listening to Ali, I immediately switched my outreach from email to WhatsApp as soon as a creator was warmed up and now I’m sharing my key lessons with them in a group Zoom call so we can all create some great ads.

And that’s a wrap.

Four ways I can help you, whenever you are ready:

• Work with me to get you growth from paid marketing. Book a call here. I’m open to more clients now.

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• Level up your paid marketing by joining my community where we share the latest tactics and get nuanced paid marketing questions answered here (we are now 60+ but there is a waitlist to join).

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P.S. If you’re a small Shopify brand and can’t afford expensive attribution tools, then check out Adbright.