Trend #001 - The UGC gold rush 💍

Hey,

I'm Hazel, your new Twitter friend here. 🙌 Thank you from the bottom of my heart for following along on my journey of building the BEST TRENDS NEWSLETTER money can't buy (because it's free!)

Every other Friday, I will send you a trend alert to make you the smartest person in the room about all things startup. This week is all about "Selling shovels 🔨in this UGC gold rush 💍"

What you will learn:

• What is UGC

• How does it work IRL

• Why everyone is talking about it

• Where is the obvious BIG opportunity (aka "The Gold Rush")

• Where are some non-obvious opportunities (aka "Selling The Shovels")

• Who to follow

• Competitor landscape

Let's dive straight in 👇

🔎 What is UGC?

Heard of UGC (User-generated content)? Of course you have! It is the most popular style of content brands use today to market their products.

Brands no longer put all their budget into high-production value marketing creatives. Instead, they are getting their users and customers to shoot content with their phones, and pay to use those content in their marketing. 

It's great for social proof and creating a sense of FOMO.

Want some examples? Just type "TikTok made me buy it" into Google / TikTok.

👀 How does it work? 

Let's say you own a water bottle brand💦. You could hire a photographer and shoot your own content (expensive) or collaborate with health influencers to market your bottles (complex & uncertain results). 

OR... you could send some free bottles to people who COULD be your potential customers (anyone who wants to drink more water) and have them create a video for you talking about how they managed to stay hydrated & lose weight etc since they started using your water bottles.

Ok, it's a little more complex than that, but stay with me here for now (marketing gurus, relax).

So... What's all the hype about UGC?

Here's why marketers are excited about it. Currently, 

❌Buying reviews IS frown upon.

✅Buying UGC (or IGC) is *currently* perfectly OK. 

If you try to buy reviews on Amazon to gain social proof, you get kicked off the platform if the big man finds out. 🤥

But, sending free stuff to people and asking the recipient to create and share videos on TikTok with a #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt? That's apparently ok. 🎉

Where are the opportunities here?

1️⃣ Become a content creator

Obviously, you can become a content creator. The demand for this new job title is skyrocketing (there are currently 576 jobs on Indeed with this title) and you can work full-time, freelance, work from home or run it as an agency. 

If this is you, here's how you could get started.

Step 1: Find 20 influencer-related Facebook groups to join. Here are 5: 

• Social Media Influencers

• Instagram Influencers, Brands & Professionals

• Social Media Influencers, TikTok & Brand Deals

• Micro Influencers Meet Brands

• Influencers and Brands Collaborate

Step 2: Look for posts from medium-sized brands looking for influencers, send them a free video of you using their product (😈or a competitor's), and offer them the right to use your video in exchange for a mention on their profile. 

P/s: The key here is medium-sized brands who are looking for influencers because

• they can pay,

• they are more likely to respond to you when you are offering what they are willing to pay for free; and

• they are good names for your portfolio

Step 3: Now that you have done some work, create a website showing your portfolio of work 

Step 4: Go to their competitors and start charging for your work!

2️⃣ Build tools for brands to find UGC creators

Remember the saying, when there is a gold rush, sell shovels? In this case, the most obvious "shovel" is to build a marketplace to match brands and content creators.

In face, if statistics are your thing, the UGC platform market is projected to become an $18.65bn industry by 2028, a 26.6% annual growth!

Let's break the opportunity down ↓

❌ But first, don't go genetic

Before UGC became sexy, generic reviews and influencer platforms are already everywhere. You've got the big guys that help people collect reviews (Bazaar Voice Olapic, Klaviyo, and Yotpo) and marketplaces that help brands find and work with influencers (Tribe, Peersway, Heartbeat, Aspire).

Unless you have deep pockets or are fund-raising, I wouldn't touch these. 

Here's what I'd do instead:

🔥Business idea #1: Find opportunities on newer platforms

Find less crowded platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, BeReal, Fishbowl... and offer to match brands to influencers.

For example, this guy is crushing it on Discord communities. 

Here's how → You create a database for BeReal influencers, Fishbowl top contributors, or Discord community owners etc. No code. Can be done in a weekend. 

🔥Business idea #2 : Find opportunities in a niche.

Find a niche, say, skiing, and build a database of skiing creators and start pitching access to your database / platform for a fee. 

Here's how → Again, you create a database. This time, focus on a niche but cover all platforms.

🔥Business idea #3: Offer tools to influencers. 

This one is a little more involved. But if you've ever tried to create content consistently (on any social media platform), you'd know what a pain it can be. And time-consuming too (I'm looking at you: video-editing!👀) 

So, I did a bit of digging using Keyword Everywhere (a great tool btw) to look for high search volume and low-competition keywords around that could give me some SAAS or info product ideas to help creators.  

Here are the top searched "How to" on TikTok you can steal ↓

• ✅ How to do transitions 

• ✅ How to sync audios

• ✅ How to edit 

🔥Business idea #4: Pricing, pricing, pricing. 

(Image credit: Laura Gomez)

One of the most common problems I found lurking in Facebook groups is that no one knows how much to charge for their content. Brands don't. Content creators don't. I did a test and received quotes from FREE to $500 to create a 15-sec video. 

Here are 2 ideas: 

→ A benchmarking report on UGC pricing based on content length & industry

→ A quote estimator tool (a bit like real estate valuation guides) 

Who to follow

To learn more about what's happening in this space, follow these guys & girls:

• Rachel Pederson - The OG queen of TikTok

• John Hu - Stan, bio link SAAS Founder

• Samuel Holsten - Growth hacking with TikTok for SAAS

• Taylor Lagace - Influencer marketing with product seeding

• Matt Bell - Founder of Tokboard, trending TikTok sounds

I talked about each one a bit more here:

The Competitor Landscape

Here's a useful chart to summarise the industry's key players. (I am staying true to my consultancy past and putting it on an X/Y axis chart 😁):

So, what's the takeaway?

UGC (or IGC) is a hot buzzword right now, especially within the e-commerce industry. 

But instead of doing what everyone is doing - basically fighting with other brands to produce UGC content for Facebook campaigns, hopefully I've shown you other ways you can cash in on this gold rush. 

• 1️⃣Become a content creator

• 2️⃣Build a matchmaking or service agency for unusual content platforms (e.g. Discord)

• 3️⃣Build a matchmaking or service agency for niche activities (e.g. skiing)

• 4️⃣Build SAAS or info product to help UGC creators

• 5️⃣Help with pricing UGC content

And that's about it for this week! 

Was this email useful?

Thanks for staying with me till the very end (🥰 you rock!). I am still learning what my tone of voice should be in these emails (I've written & re-written this 3 times! 😅)

My entire purpose in creating these emails is to highlight unusual opportunities for YOU to find your next big business idea. 

So 2 things: 

1) Feel free to forward the email or share the newsletter with friends;

Until the next one, 

Hazel