How to Build a Creative Flywheel for Your DTC Brand for Free

Does that reduce gack on Facebook 100% yes, but is that truly incremental on a P&L level?

We're not seeing that.

“What we stand for, I think the whole influencer affiliate model with Botsura Lensati is find people who your customers listen to and trust.”

We'll figure out a model to work with them, see what the algorithm the audience likes of the content that they post, and then amplify the winners on P&L.

Welcome back to the DTC podcast, man, I'm excited to reconnect here.

We're doing something a little bit different for a podcast with you. We're talking about another advertiser to start, which is really interesting.

“This company tribe that sort of, it's a network for making UGC, and I was talking about it recently on a group of heavy hitters that I'm in a Slack channel with.”

And they were really talking about using it, using it to really scale up their UGC to really drill in on which creators are working best, which creators are driving GMV.

And so it's kind of having a moment in the space. So when I saw that you were coming back on the podcast to talk about Sathy, which is your affiliate network that does similar things, but is different. I wanted to maybe just for our audience who doesn't know what tribe is, maybe give us a little primer about tribe and how what you're doing is different, I guess. Yeah, sure. I know tribe is definitely having a moment right now, and I think it's overall good for the creator economy that everyone has their own different ways of approaching the problem or problem space of how do we leverage creators the best, right?

I think like as brands if we have that problem statement, there's obviously we've done another podcast with you've done another podcast with me, where we've spoken about our pyramid model and how we sort of champion that and how our software is built for that. I know tribes doing their own thing. I think it's really, I think that summary is if you want to get good, a high volume of creatives from creators who are UGC creators, not necessarily like your ICP creators, you can go on tribe, get those creators to make videos for you for free, and then boost them on meta partnership ads, for example.

“And give the creators to a percentage of your GMV on that you drive to that and I think that's what the proposition is.”

So that's basically what it is and happy to dive into how very different what like what my outlook is, what I'm hearing, some of our brands say also curious who you're, what you've been hearing in some of the group that you spoke of, but yeah, that's basically kind of like a summary to kick things off. It's it really harnesses the network effect essentially of having a marketplace where you're as a creator, you can really see what that your creative or are the ones that are driving the sales affiliate has been doing that since the beginning of time affiliate has sort of been you're sort of on the same skis as the advertiser as an affiliate all the time.

So it's like it's so I feel it's always been doing that talk about the difference there a little bit 100% I think I think what's happening with this whole partnership ads and tribes one of them there's others. I think what's really happening what I'm seeing actually on like a because I'm really close with some of our customers on if you look at it on a PNL level what's happening is brands are taking the gag that would have been spent on meta. And just simply moving that line item from meta gag over to creator payments. So real question is.

Is this like is this whole. Stick off get like getting these free UGC creators to make videos and then working with them coaching them to so that they make actually good videos and spending all the time there and then boosting some of that creative. The creator of percentage revshare is that actually truly does that reduce gag on Facebook pretty much like 100% yes, but is that truly instrumental on the PNL level. We're not seeing that as of now because I mean it's just I can we can do some basic math right so let's say let's take an example of a supplement.

Let's say our AOV on meta is 80 dollars in your break even your break even gag on foreshorter right so your 80 dollar cac 80 dollar AOV simple math. Now typically what we've seen is partnership ads would drive gag now and buy anywhere between 10 and 20%. So your cac would go from say 80 dollars down to 72 or even lower right so if it's 20% even lower let's just say it's 15%.

So it goes from an 80 dollar cac down to what's that 68 dollar cac right so now you're at the 68 dollar level.

“But sounds good but then here's the thing if the compensation model for the creator is you're paying them a percentage which is typically 10 to 15% of the GMV that comes from the ad.”

You're now taking the 80 dollar AOV that you had and paying 10% of that to the creator and then 1.5 or 2% or whatever tribes commission is as a platform that enables this to tribe. So if you do the math it's some like it nets to or like 10% of the creators at eight dollars and then 1.5 to tribe as a 9.2. So effectively like saving let's say 12 dollars on cac but now you've moved some of that over to creator payments and over to tribe.

So you're also in another line item, showing out 9.2 dollars right and then on top of this if you add all of the work that goes in.

You're not like factoring in the cost of seeding hundreds of UGC creators like sending free products out of those hundred maybe 10 make usable videos maybe one is actually like really like something that you can boost and put any real significant ad spend behind.

“If you add all of that up we're not seeing any incremental gains it seems like it's almost become like a method for people to reduce on platform cac but then that cac just simply moves into another.”

And because it's tied to GMV the cost that was one of the comments in in this group as well because it's tied to GMV the cost if you're very successful with it can scale astronomically like they can scale as as commensurate with how much ad spend you kind of put behind it, which can kind of look wonky on a on a piano.

Yeah, exactly, it's like because sass is or software platforms are typically fixed cost right they're part of your fixed costs of running a business.

Now with this, why did has given brands a great way to sort of test the channel because it's free, but then once it starts working as your ad scale you're almost adding to your variable cost so it's almost on a purely financial terms you're scaling your variable costs which is as you scale your ads which is not good for your. contribution margin, so that's what we're seeing happen with with a lot of drive in similar platforms it's kind of like and I was just talking to somebody yesterday and he's he's a great analogy that I'm going to steal it's like taking a cheap flight with.

“like a heavy luggage tag you know like heavy luck but it's like 200 bucks for luggage you know it's kind of like oh the ticket is so cheap, but then you're actually paying somewhere else.”

You can actually maybe higher even though the up front sort of ticket price maybe cheaper than usual and so yeah and that checks out and like the verdict was for these these guys are all all pretty big advertisers that if you are if you have the rest of your system really dialed it can be valuable it can be valuable to get you you see to get you better UGC because it's tied to performance in that way you're going to get better UGC but it's not going to create many fly wheels within your business.

You create more value maybe then you put into it which is what everyone's looking for which leads me to sathe so explain to me your new platform and how it's the similar how it takes some of the good aspects of what tribe does but also is different. Yeah we so I actually I mean I talked with the platform but I'm just like I'm high paying others like I've ten different thoughts like the UGC model in my head because I've been in the influencer marketing world now for like. I used to run an agency then I started the platform and then another platform so like we've been in the space if you were to like we've interface with thousands of brands actively work with like 500 or so.

I agree with it because it's almost like hey higher these people to manufacture ads brief them with like company talking points and then run those ads on meta. It's kind of doing the same thing but it's also not because it's not UGC like almost I actually like to call it AGC I like to call it actor generated content. That's what it is it's the same thing as hiring an actor giving them a script and making them read it right and that's great like that works but it's like long term what you want to do is if you want to.

I think the model that we have and I happy to go over the some of the pyramid model and it's do a similar like economic analysis of it and how it's maybe better.

We like that model is get people who your audience cares about and trusts work with them see them product work with them for free. Get them to make content and then boost that on meta tiktok etc. That's kind of the world that I come from that I still like a still see work across like hundreds of brands that we work with so yeah.

“I think there's probably a couple benefits in that one of the comments about tribe was that everyone sort of thought because you're getting all these fresh faces all this fresh UGC into your system.”

That you were going to be able to break new audiences with them essentially and that you'd get incremental new customers to the site. What one of the big players was talking about in this group was that actually what what they saw was that it was more for closing sales it was more for bottom of funnel pushing people into. If you're converting when they see maybe someone else in their feed being whitelisted or whatever whereas with affiliate like you are inherently getting more incremental because you're getting access to their audience at the start.

Correct yeah so it's almost like the best of both words it's because the people who on these UGC platforms they are never.

They don't have a post they're simply giving you the content to run as ads well how about this how what they actually also post that content to an audience that they've earned over time. Who's trust they've earned over time they post that content and if it performs organically you can then boost that's another thing that just like that I love is we live in a world now where it's the first time in history where the ad platform actually cares how good the ad is because.

“Like rewind like 50 years ago and you're advertising in health magazine or whichever like magazine newspaper work radio whatever.”

They don't care how good the ad is they don't care how what it says that that's the audience like it you might hit that they don't care as long as you pay them the placement fee.

You're getting that Instagram or tiktok or whichever social media platform they care about user engagement they will not make a real perform if it's bad.

So for the first time ever you have like this free creative testing almost like back in the day used to put like a you know 50 dollar ad set or something like that like put 50 bucks behind the ads see for do works if again traction wheels scale it now you kind of don't have to do that because if you work with creators and make great content you're going to make readers for you. And some of those reals are going to get a lot of views are shorganically and you can track like growth rates of how quickly a organic piece of content is gaining traction inside of several and salty.

So you can now track that and set up an automation such as hey if this real gets 50,000 views in 48 hours automatically put a thousand dollars behind it on meta right so you can create these automation so for the like I said like the first time ever the ad platform will tell you which ad. to run right so you have let's say hundred creators making hundred reals this month. Twenty of them are going to do really great take those 20 with all who are already proven who you don't have to brave. We don't because you're working with creators who understand your market take those top 20 bush them on meta.

You're likely would have success of finding a winner that way increases. So I think we're in the in a unique point in history where the ad platforms actually care and tell you what works through these signals. And we should take advantage of that so if you consider like organic almost do you do the point of the person in your group chat. Organic can be like mid funnel top to mid funnel and then you see what works in the mid funnel and then boost that in the bottom of the funnel to capitalize and get gets it.

“So that's how that's how I would think about it.”

It's starting to sound like a pyramid which is good for my civil brain. So walk me through the pyramid method as it because we've talked a lot about Surral and how the pyramid relate method relates to that. What does the pyramid look like on sati pretty much the same thing sati going to come in and the so the strategy remains to start it used like platform agnostic like somebody listening to this can just take the pyramid run it on their own run it on another platform. Right I don't care but I prefer if you do it on several or something.

But like the pyramid is just to recap for anyone who has not listened to the older podcast the pyramid is you have a base foundation of seeding. So you're seeding products to hundreds of influencers every month. Some of them are going to post about you if you use our platforms generally 50 to 70% of those people who you see and the posting we have world class posting rates after seeding because the platform takes care of that.

They posted for free I now want to incentivize them to keep posting again and again and again.

If they keep posting again and again again they get a affiliate revenue so they make commissions you get a affiliate revenue and here's the gears like obviously like you're going to see a 90 10 with your affiliate program like your top 10% affiliates are going to drive 90% of the sales and then there's going to be another top 10% who's going to drive 90% of the views so you take those individual 10% and then you take the high performing like bottom of funnel affiliates boost them turn them into paid like.

retainers give them a higher affiliate commission something like that take the top 10% by views and turn them into boosted partnership ads on meta on TikTok so you're almost using the affiliate layer as a layer to validate who's driving all the sales let's turn them to long term partnerships who's driving all the views let's use their content as ads so you're almost like validating every step of the way with the pyramid as people ascend to the top and then here's like. Here's the kicker that we're seeing that we haven't spoken about before the pyramid the middle affiliate layer pays for the bottom layer and here's where like our fundamental differences versus something like a tribe is you're not wasting time and you're not just moving your.

“If you're moving your gack dollars around from. Metacack do like creator payments or you're doing is you're.”

Making your affiliate revenue that you get with brands on several in.

3 to 6 months have a field programs making like 50k 100k a month at that scale your affiliate program is paying for the cost of goods of the seeding. It's paying for any software that you use like ours. It's paying for the salary of the person who's managing this whole process or the agency retainer whatever your structure looks like.

“Now effectively what you have is a free creative engine is your affiliate is break even if not positive contribution positive on all of the seeding.”

So you basically have like a unlimited way to just keep seeding product economically speaking it's free and then you just get all this ad creator that you can then boost on meta and get incrementality there. And if you really nail this you can take the affiliate revenue and deploy it as ad spend on meta as well so you almost like move it up the pyramid and that's another like that's like maybe something you could do 12 months down the line of building the program. That's the beauty right as you have these affiliates there posting you're getting an organic handle and you're getting which the organic is sort of validating the creative for you and you're getting the revenue which you can then use to fund the bottom of that pyramid which is something that's just not talked about enough in in the whole UGC space because you're resting a lot of money and time getting.

“G4 sort of younger creators who maybe don't know what they're doing to make a lot of content and then briefing them coaching them putting ad spend behind them that seems like a long.”

Long short to me versus billion affiliate program make some revenue let it pay for all the seeding and build like a free creative engine.

So that's the that's the pyramid that's sort of our whole economics of it and talk to people how it scales to do you run to the same challenge where. As you scale up your affiliates you and the line items going to them ends up scaling really high as well. No design so there's two things right so one there's like affiliate commission and you can always keep you can you can gamify your program where you're highest performing affiliates get more and more and maybe your bottom performers get less and less.

From a platform perspective we don't take a percentage at all so we take a percentage in the early days but as you scale as long as you're I mean as soon as you're affiliate programs week like 30 k 40 k a month we don't take a percentage so it's captain that we only take like one or two percent off of the affiliate share. Secondly we don't take a percentage off your of the boosting you're doing so while you are getting all the organic content also coming in unlike other platforms we don't try we don't charge a percentage off your ad spend or percentage of your GMV so our platforms are just a fixed fee to use right so you get the platform you boost the creative and you just pay meta and any incrementality that you get there.

That is already taken care of and you keep that as opposed to paying platforms another interesting feature we have is what we call ad gap so basically like a cost gap right so instead of let's say like hypothetically you have an add go real like it's a real hit right and you're you make a hundred k on that one ad and that happens more often than not and now if you have a 10%

So what you can do inside a far platform is said and said what we call an ad gap is hey it's 10% rev share up to thousand dollars so it's like hey if it scales beyond a certain point we're not liable to pay tens of thousands of dollars to creator to make one like sixty second video.

“So yeah I think like overall from a economic level I like our model better.”

So walk me through someone coming on to the platform what what does it like what's the shape of an initial campaign for a brand doing you know five to ten million dollars kind of thing.

Perfect yeah so if you let's say you're starting from scratch and you don't have any like affiliate or creators or whatever you come on the sati platform and you can do this all in the free trial so what I'm saying. We have an AI agent that'll match you with high converting creators specific to your brand these are not. I want to make that differentiation really clear these are not UGC creators these are creators are already making content in your niche so as soon as you install the app.

“I will understand and learn everything about your brand and go find hundreds of creators that are a fit or a match which is why we call that feature match for your brand.”

You can then in one click in white all of them into your program see them product if they post that form will automatically detect that and turn them into an affiliate.

Now you've let's see the 100 creators 60 of them have posted all 60 of them automatically turn into affiliates now there are affiliates and they're keeping on posting. And we have this thing called gamification which will add rewards and milestones for the affiliate so hey if you arrive. 100 dollars in sales you get a free product or something like that you can set all of these rules up that drives activity some of these creators start posting a lot you take the high performers take the content boost it send it to meta send it to Tiktok.

And run a partnership ad or GMV max ad on their creative so that's basically that you install auto matches to creators some of those creators you can see whoever you like they start posting making your affiliate revenue like the average brands making like 10 20 gain affiliate revenue from scratch in three months.

So it's been unreal because it's just finding the right it's the iman it's just finding the right creators for every band that installs it and it's just like okay.

Worst case you make like even if you make a five game month with your affiliate program it's going to pay for all of the seeding it's going to pay for some of the software costs right it's going to pay for your time doing all of this and then you have a free creative engine that you can just use all the creatives to then boost on meta and Tiktok so. Very cool. How is sathi an evolution of the affiliates because I come from the affiliate space a long long time ago when it before it was really related to ecommerce we're doing lead generation and things like that. So talk to me about how sathi has evolved the affiliate network model.

Yeah, it's a good question and I yeah I think I we discussed a while ago that you had that whole affiliate background I love to talk to you about that another time at another time, but how is it different it is purely creative oriented so it is super deep on influencer affiliates so we don't actually want any like publishers.

“Newsletters like any of that sort of affiliate we just want creators and that's what it's bias word that's how the UI is made that's how the workflows are made we have native integrations with meta and Tiktok for example.”

So integrates with both the platforms or can pull all of the creator data and match you with affiliates the way we've evolved the marketplace model and the way I region why also like. Marketplaces is because marketplaces are just going to have the most generic and the biggest affiliate who has the most widest audience that converts and the problem with that is it's not. We've got the world has kind of moved on it's a trust based economy nobody's trusting like another oh yeah well this sort of health news like I mentioned the supplement so I should buy it.

It's kind of like hey this creator he I really follow his gym routine and then he's talking about this supplement great like I'll consider buying that. So it's it's just a different buying psychology now versus like 15 20 years ago. So our model is we don't have any affiliates or influencers registered on the platform anybody whom we find we find specifically for your brand so imagine you have a marketplace that's tailor made exactly and precisely for your brand. No overlaps with like anybody else that's the beauty of our AI so we've almost imagine the marketplace where it's think about it as if like we're creating a new custom tailor made market place for every brand that we onboard through the AI and this was never possible before but now it is.

these huge publishers it's probably easier for that to happen how do you prevent that kind of thing.

“Good question. We again have an AI agent that just auto finds any leaks on Reddit on any coupon capital one honey any coupon websites you can name we have an agent that scripts and scours the internet every single minute.”

And the moment a code leaks we will flag that and here like another interesting thing is code leaks are like the most basic level of affiliate problem that you can have you can have links are leaking like links also week because these like coupon website if you go to honey or capital one you'll probably find some brand where it says click here to buy. And then you click here and second affiliate link in the discount like auto applies that's how it works so we'll find if a link is leaking we will auto block any code injection so if you install and have our app active we'll block any code injections on the Shopify checkout.

And things will flag if someone's running paid ads against your keywords and driving traffic to their affiliate landing page flags like 15 plus types of fraud we've and we had a brand this last month they there are big affiliate programs numbers are kind of high but they literally saved 100k in potentially fraudulent commission that they would have paid otherwise.

“So that's what I was insane and like it's just more than paid for the software literally in month one so especially for the brands that you spoke off there are maybe at that 5 10 mil GMV mark they are doing some affiliate revenue.”

The fraud engine is like will reveal that you're probably spending a lot more on fraud than you then you might like so yeah.

I think both tribe and sat there are possible because of like the evolution of this creator space like creators are more and more savvy you know back in the day maybe they just wanted to be paid for the post kind of thing but. I think more and more creators are getting more savvy how important you mentioned it briefly but how important are things like gamification and challenges like within your within your affiliate pool like do they really do they care about that are they looking at the leaderboards and things like that are they just care about the cash.

“Yeah, I mean there's people who care about like both of those things it's certainly a mix however from a brand perspective and just like simply from incentive perspective you think about it on like a more deeper level beyond affiliate you don't want.”

And affiliate rewards revenue right boosting and add on meta would ever like rewards revenue if I make money you make money that sounds good but what you truly want to do if you want to scale is you want to reward the behaviors that get you revenue it's kind of like before. It's kind of like we're talking about operating conditioning recognized like reward like the action before they do the main action it's like a quicker reward and that just like conceptually makes a lot of sense. So what we recommend is as soon as an affiliate joins send them a free product it's like hey you joined our network perfect here's another free product that's like whoa okay I joined the program and I get a free bonus product that's like maybe not available or it's a PR package whatever that looks like.

That's nice maybe all post about it they post about it you can set up a game that says as soon as they post which the platform automatically detects send them a hundred dollar reward.

It's like whoa I posted and I got a hundred bucks perfect every post again. And they post again this time with their affiliate link and then they actually start making a field revenue and then you start making I mean you start making a field revenue and they start making affiliate commissions. So it's like by simply rewarding the two almost micro behaviors of joining the program and posting and you rewarded both those with a free product and with the small cash. Like even if like some of our runs with like 10 bucks for a post like literally that and people would do it because they're like I just wanted to get that little bit you know like.

Poor fact and 10 bucks doesn't hurt you at all if it doubles your affiliate activity that's another thing is like most platforms don't show you your affiliate activity is like here you have thousands of affiliates but like 60 of them are really doing anything. All right so you have like a 6% affiliate like activity rate that's nothing if you double it from 6% to 12% you would double the failure revenue that's also it's not I mean it's something crazy it's going from 6 to 12% activity but it's doubling affiliate revenue so it's really like a pain point or like a choke point like a bottleneck in your in most programs and most platforms don't highlight what the percentages because it looks bad so we'd actually highlight that and we work with our brands like hey let's.

That's like really a bottleneck let's highlight that let's highlight that is a platform and work on it on a strategic level to make sure that. You're moving that number through some of these games or the emification that we create visibility and transparency it's been a while since I've been in the affiliate space is you know what you really need because anytime that there's like shadows or hidden corners in my the kind of affiliates we were back in the day people would always be looking for exploits.

Yeah, yeah another like really interesting tactic that if someone wants to just steal they can is.

“Do run a challenge for organic views you're already paying Facebook. I don't know let's say like like a $20 CPM or whatever that looks like have a $20 CPM for your affiliate community.”

And then hey whoever gets a 10,000 views gets $200 that's a $20 CPM is just that instead of paying bark at meta you're paying mark the creator. It's like it's simple but most brands don't do it in some of the best brands on our platform are setting up some of these games and automations to like I said reward the behaviors that lead to revenue.

But is there still enough time to start this program to be impactful for black Friday and maybe walk me through your the prescription for what you would do for a brand in that case.

Yeah, perfect. I think if you asked me this is like this is so I've just been so as somebody who built software I've just been so amazed at how faster things have gotten not just from how fast we can build but also the how fast we can enable outcomes for brands. If you ask me this exact question maybe last year or 18 months ago I would say it's like you can kind of make it work but October like maybe like me October is too late. Right now because of AI there's so many automation even within our platform is you can install get matched with affiliates literally.

While it's free because we have a 70 free trial you can invite all your affiliates they can join you can make them like you can create the game you can send them the free product and they can start posting all within that period.

Like that used to be like never before that that happened so you can now find tailored affiliates reach out send product have creative ready by like day 10 day 14.

That was like that used to be like a 30 40 day cycle before pre AI now with advanced matching with the personalized messaging with reaching out at scale to people. And that basis got an unreal so if you're listening to this any time even like in early November and this is a priority and you don't want to hurt your contribution margin by using UGC platforms.

“You should consider using Cyril and salty I think it'll be it'll be beneficial they're happy to like personally work walk you through it.”

Love that give me an idea of the vault of the volume you'd be looking for in this situation trying to get live for you know the weeks around black Friday. What number of people would you reach out to what amount of response rate would you in like how like maybe just walk me through the numbers of what it would look like. Yeah, let's go through the funnel so if I'm reaching out let's say in mid October on listening to this I will reach out to at least 500 people which again is like sounds like a big number but the platform will just give you like a thousand people to reach out to.

So that's taken care of so I don't have to find them perfect one click I reach out to everyone and you can obviously tailor the messages and what it says and add your brand story and don't just do one click don't be lazy about it but send outreach to 500 people roughly I would say. You know 200 or so would opt in from that because I also like creators are busy blah blah and busy time of the year also 200 opt in you send product worst case 50% of them post. So 100 posts it's a way to 20 on that 20% of them are going to be really good content so you now have great ad creative that you can 20 great pieces of ad creative in 20 25 days that you can now boost on meta right in time for your holidays season.

And importantly there's going to be another 20% of those 100 that drive affiliate revenue so all the work you did all the samples you sent all the maybe the thousand bucks and samples that you sent to those like 200 people that's now paid for the moment you make a thousand bucks in affiliate revenue so you're like making money anyway.

“So that's kind of our model and that's what we recommend it's like the airlines paying you to bring a bag.”

She had that I mean I wish there were an airline that does that by sounds to it to be true, but it kind of is like some of our brands like I said they are there. And this is again I'm not making this promise I want to be genuine right like this is this is an outlandish example this is like a one one in 50 or 200 2% chance this happens to you. For affiliate program becomes so huge that it then becomes your meta ads budget that is brands that are making millions of dollars with their affiliate program.

And they obviously pay let's it 20% commission on that and some dogs or whatever like they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars in contribution off of their affiliate program, which you can then take and deploy on meta.

So yeah it is kind of like the flat that it's like buying your ticket to it's like yeah just just come just go have to go take the vacation.

So what's what we all need. What percentage of like of a brand that just does this extremely well what percentage of a brands like meta spend ends up going through.

“This creator or affiliate content like I think when when I was talking about with the with the guys on this night per channel they were talking I think a couple more talking about upwards of 50% of their ad budget ended up going through.”

The this type of creative through tribe is it is is it a similar thing with a with 700% we're seeing anywhere between like 30 to 40% right now. Is going is just meta being redirected is just like I mean it's all meta spend anyway it's just like playing like style like non partnership ads if they were doing let's say 100 gay a month in ad spend there now rooting 30 gay of that towards partnership ads and seeing better. So the thing is that number keeps shifting so if someone's listening to this in November that number is like probably 50% 60% because partnership ads are like the one hack that's kind of working on meta right now.

But the thing is as we all know with meta there's these phases right it's very cyclical it is a for six to 12 months this new hack this works right like exploited get the lower back but also remember that this like the musical stop one like in six months in 12 months.

“So you also want to build an asset while you're at it right imagine you do all of this through UGC platforms and you get the incremental sort of like whatever on meta is you mean like even the economics and leave all of that aside.”

You do that but at the end of 12 months when partnership ads are extremely common and everyone's doing it then criminality is no longer and partnership ads then what are you left with in the case of a UGC platform you're left with a folder with some high performing ads at once worked. In the case of Sara Lansati and actually building an influencer program or the pyramid you have a community of people that constantly talks about you on social media gets you an organic halo around your brand still gets you free ad creative and makes you a failure revenue and you're more independent of meta by the end of it while also feeding it.

So that's going to what what my pitch would be is like long term the partnership ads are as much as I would like to say like yeah there forever we like to think there forever going to last but as we know we've been in the game for long enough.

The music stop one day and there's going to be a new tactic that works right there's going to be something new but while you exploit and make the most out of this tactic.

“If you can also just build a nice asset on the side that makes you some affiliate revenue and gets your community of creators why not do that.”

These creatives can be more or less platform agnostic as well in that you can use this to crack tiktok shop. Yep absolutely we're seeing a lot of actually the worse happened the sense that we haven't seen a lot of and it's maybe just like our bias is we haven't seen it but we've seen a lot of the opposite is we the brands are taking their top tiktok shop creators bringing them over to a direct to consumer affiliate community and having boosting their content on meta for instance.

So that's also something by the way you can do on the platform as you can cross boost you can take content that's tracked on tiktok and boost it on meta.

So you can do and remove the thumbnail and all of that so yeah beautiful. Well thank you for coming back on the TTC podcast if you're listening in the audience you got to go to get surround.com and my sathi.io. And just reach out to yash it's great kind of chat with you happy to chat and lots of time lots of time to turn to you know to turn your ads into flywheel affiliates. Earning and helping you fly for free let's let's all fly for free this all free. Yeah hashtag fly for free that's do it.

Awesome thanks a lot yeah thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter you can do that right now at direct to consumer all one word dot co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DDSP podcast we'll see you next time.