Hiring & Working with Content Creators for Media Buying and Affiliate Marketing
Content creators can help boost creative production and also increase revenue and profitability. To increase creative output and capacity, hire agencies or freelancers to scale the volume of creators and scale the total output of creatives. The average cost per creative runs approximately $50-$200 depending on size, scale and effort.
Important Qualifications of Amazing Creators:
- Expressive and exuberant personality (you want the excitement in the creative to be real and genuine)
- Loves creating content (you can see the difference!)
- Excited about the mission and product (you cannot sell something you are not 100% convinced about)
Important: Do not provide creators with EXACT scripts. It will kill the genuineness and the feel of the creative. It also prevents creators from having a creative impact and eliminates the possibility of them using amazing trends and edits that work really well.
Guidance to Creators: Instead, give them a lot of inspiration (competitor ads and homegrown successful ads). Give them a long list of hooks for inspiration (simple document of 50-100 hooks they can choose from). Train them on the hook, pain points, desires, benefits, social proof, authority and CTA. Let the creator implement with their knowledge about the platform and what ultimately “feels” right
Rules for Creative Editing:
These are rules that every creative must follow. It’s mostly implicit things that editors would do anyway because of their experience but it’s best to have them solidified in writing to have a baseline and know what to do.
Rule #1: The video should be in vertical format filling (almost) all of the mobile screen
Rule #2: The video needs to have sound. Preferably voice over or trendy music
Rule #3: For any sound that is used or every text that is added, make sure there is no swearing in the video. Words like f*ck or b**ch are very common in some trendy songs. Please listen to the music beforehand prior to selecting and make sure it doesn’t feature foul language.
Rule #4: The video should be at least 5 seconds long and not longer than 30 seconds. Exceptions are long UGC testimonials or instructions for the product.
Rule #5: The first 0-5 seconds should spark interest. Remember the phrase “the best comes last”. In this case the opposite applies. The best angle or pitch should be shown at the start.
Creative Editing Instructions for the Editor:
- Link to the raw content folder
- Examples from the ads that have worked so far with links
- Examples from competitors
- TikTok videos for specific angle inspirations
- Landing Page
- Idea Description
- Script to follow
- Framing sequence description
Alternative Platform to Hire Creators – Creator Marketplace:
- Analyze core metrics of each creator
- Compare their past performance with similar brands
- Check out audience demographics
- Discover video performance trends
- Track campaign performance in real time
Organic Reach Outs to Creators:
- Send a DM to around 500 influencers
- Typically receive 1 in 5 influencers to respond to the DM to receive product
- 30% of influencers will post the product on social for free around 2-3 times
- Extract around 60-90 unique pieces of content that can be put to better use than just an IG story or TikTok post (make sure to get consent or usage rights)
Tip: Increase response rate by 20-25% when sending direct message to creators
Freelancer Platforms:
- 1000s of content creators for very affordable prices
- Controlled by a platform
- Make sure to send very detailed and constructive instructions on WHAT exactly you are going to receive
- This is the easiest outreach method but difficult to find long-term prospects
Creators and creatives are the heartbeat of any successful media buying, affiliate marketing, and search arbitrage campaigns. Master the art of hiring and scaling content creators to increase the volume of diverse creatives to increase the probability and likelihood of achieving high revenue, ROAS, CTR, and profitability.