Yoke UGCs’ insights with Jide Maduako | Appvertiser Chats #9
Hello there! Welcome to another Appvertiser Chat 🎙
As usual, your go-to series for the hottest app-marketing discussions brings together industry experts to deep dive into their products, and share their insights on the industry, and predictions for the future of it.
In times where the content is still the king, we cannot avoid talking about creativity. And what’s the best example to address it in mobile industry? Of course, UGCs!
So this time our friends from Yoke Network will be joining us, represented by one of their co-founders (and a social media rockstar! 🎸), Jide Maduako. Let’s jump in!
Before we start, do you prefer to watch or listen?
▶ Youtube: https://youtu.be/fyjkinVvLmQ
Q: Hi Jide! Thank you for joining us today in Appvertiser Chats. I know you’re an expert in this field, but I want you to introduce yourself a little bit before we start with this episode.
A: Hi, my name is Jide Maduako. I’m one of the Co-founders at Yoke Network, and we help advertisers to reduce their customer acquisition costs through creator-led content. So we’ve been doing it for six years now.
We’ve helped to drive over 15 million installs, developed over 25,000 unique creator-led videos, and yeah, we’ve been in the game for quite a while. So it’s good to be here today.
Q: I will start with one question, a little bit personal. What’s your go-to app these days?
A: My favorite app now is TikTok, actually. I’m always learning about it just because it’s the hub of culture. It’s where we – it was like the birth of short-form video content. So I’m always looking at it in terms of the trends and the different kinds of things that pop up on my For You page or on my various accounts.
Q: Okay, so to go to the UGC’s creatives. Have you noticed more requests from clients for UGC’s lately? How’s that shaping your take on what the market’s after?
A: I found out recently there have been quite a few more requests from clients, and it’s mainly just because I think across 2023 a lot of clients were trying to understand it, so they were doing a lot of testing. But a lot of clients are now integrating UGC into their core marketing functions, and it’s probably the best-performing content across Google Ads and Facebook.
TikTok obviously is native there. So we’re seeing the birth of UGC, and we’re even seeing some of our advertisers get the content and utilize it in places such as App Loving and other video ad networks. It’s a very, very powerful tool for storytelling, so that’s why we’re seeing a lot of demand from it and a lot of requests.
Q: In your experience, do you have a specific industry that is using more UGCs… Gaming, travel, finance, or maybe others?
A: I think traditionally UGC obviously started with more e-commerce, and then now it’s moved into every sector. For gaming, it has been one that advertisers are trying to crack UGC, and depending on the title or depending on the category of game or subcategory of game, obviously UGC performs a lot better. For stuff like more adventure games and more games where you have to build out your own world, UGC is a very powerful tool for that. Then, for some of the casual and idle games, it’s also obvious they’re trying to find the best-performing content, and it’s competitive. But I definitely say, in those more hardcore games, that’s where UGC has been a lot more prominent for gaming.
And then with finance, obviously for social validation, having UGC showing people budgets and tips and actual tips and learnings, UGC has been really important because finance does have a huge barrier to entry.
And then obviously travel – just visually, it’s native to that category. We’re seeing a lot of travel adverts showing picturesque views of bucket list places that are always best told by a person. So it’s been powerful there too.
Q: When a client comes to you and asks you for UGCs, what’s your plan from the beginning to the end? How is the process for them to understand how it works to generate these creatives?
A: We manage the full funnel. And depending on the partner, we may take the full funnel or less of that in terms of they may come to us with scripts as well, or they may come to us with already fully-fledged concepts, and then we just do the execution side. However, majority of clients come with us because they want that external creative expertise. And the main reason is they want us to help them to execute and build on some of the foundations of learnings and ideas. Therefore, we do everything in terms of the full funnel.
Let’s imagine a customer comes to us initially. We will essentially get a brief from them, or we will kind of pitch our UGC strategy, which is a more kind of – it’s a hand-in-glove type of delivery process. And then once we do that, we agree to concepts. Once we agree to concepts, we begin the content creation process. And then, we do everything along that funnel as well.
Q: Do you feel like working with you is different from working maybe with other companies? What’s your special touch on the creatives?
A: Well, there’s a few things in terms of our network. We’ve been actually making TikTok videos since before TikTok had an ads platform. So we’ve been in the game for the longest period of time.
We’re always focused on mobile and performance with that. But then, we’ve done a lot of organic content building, and the organic informs the page.
We build pages out to more than 4 million followers. Also internally we have a few content creators, including myself. So I create content on TikTok as well and have an audience there and so do some of the members of the team. And then finally, we have our own platform. So we are very, very data-driven.
What we actually have is that we’re able to get access to the data to execute on campaigns and execute on strategy based on actual historical learnings and also insights because we’re always A-B testing. We’re even looking at which fonts perform the best. So for us, I think everything coupled together makes us a very powerful force and differentiates us because I don’t really know any other partners that kind of have the experience and level of understanding of the product as we do.
Q: What are your thoughts on the UGCs and how it fits into your overall strategy?
A: For us, in terms of my vision of UGC content, I have a kind of further forward thinking than I think most do.
I do think that content is just going to continue to evolve in a way that it’s going to lead towards more storytelling and deeper resonance for the user. Because if you look at a lot of the tools that we have available now, it’s making it a lot more easier to craft deeper stories and reach deeper and further audiences, and it’s obviously from a content level, because years ago it used to be just a very data-driven, and content wasn’t as important because it was so deep down the funnel.
But now coupled with the data and understanding the audience behavior based on different things that you put into the content, it’s going to lead to there being a lot more deeper storytelling and more creative concepts in the sense that every product is going to have to be a media product. It’s going to have to have its own media arm.
Q: How is it different from being a UGC creator or an influencer? What do you recommend for the companies?
A: That actually is a very good question… With UGC content, creativity, and influence, you’re buying the audience. I think that it’s two different things.
And the reason why is because when you’re actually an influencer, you already have your barrier to entry – it’s like your face and your IP. What this means is that your audience is very familiar with you. They’re familiar with your face, and with your emotions or your content in some sort of way. And you’ve already been positioned as a thought leader in that category. For that reason, what you’re able to do is, if an advertiser reaches out to you and you have an audience that actually resonates with you or you can drive traffic as an influencer, then your markup is the access to that and your credibility. With UGC, it’s all about creativity.
And there’s a lot of people who are making good money being UGC creators because what they’re doing is that they’re making good content to tell the story of the brand or the product. And that’s what the advertisers are buying with UGC: they’re buying the testimonials, the short storytelling, the editing.
And that’s completely different from someone who’s actually an influencer who actually has audience resonance. I think that there are two differences because, just to go back, if you’re an influencer the brand can partner with you. You could be horrendous at actually creating content, but then what actually happens is that they’re still able to get conversions because there’s recognition. But if you’re a UGC creator, you have to be really good at making content or else. Instead, your content’s not going to convert because nobody knows you.
Q: And if you have to give a piece of advice to a company that is doing this type of ads for the first time. What would you recommend: to invest first, influencers or UGC creators?
A: It depends on their budget. I think if you’re a company and you are a massive gaming studio, I would definitely leverage influencers and UGC creators. So, if you’re a massive gaming studio, you’d probably already have an influencer to lead the campaign and the UGC to amplify the message.
But then if you’re a small creator, I think, a small brand or small app, then there’s a lot of risk for you to partner with a big creator because you need to make it work. And also, you’re not actually going to be able to tap into the world class or the ones that are actually going to have a superpower effect for your product. I’d say then the best option for someone with a smaller budget is UGC because then you can actually tap into the creativity.
You can learn quickly. You can beta test. You can get the story told. You can use them for ideation. And then, as you start to build up that audience, build up that traction, that’s then when you can look at maybe working with influencers who best fit your product.
But not just any influencer because some people will partner with creators or influencers who don’t fit their product. You want to partner with people who actually stand for your brand and are thought leaders in that space. And I’d say it’s a mix of both.
Q: Do you have any extra thing that you would like to share if a company in this field is watching? Something that you recommend them or an extra tip for the audience…
A: If you’re just a company in general, a key tip that I would say is that you should always be very open to new ideas and creativity. And also think that UGC and creative content doesn’t just have to be used for social. You can scale it across so many different channels in terms of ad networks.
You can use it also for in-app explainers. You can use it for landing pages on your website. And there’s so many use cases for it, whereas a lot of advertisers bracket it in as they want it to be the best performing ad format. But really and truly, it’s a very transferable content format. So it’s not just the ad that you can use it for.
Q: Thank you so much for everything that you shared today. I feel like this is going to be so useful for so many people.
Yoke is a data-focused network that has been disrupting the influencer marketing scenario for more than six years now.
Empowering creators and helping advertisers to build their app’s user base, drive installs and hit CPA targets, the network’s core is driving long term results using historical data, tangible insights and consistent testing.
With a creative experts team and the driving force of originality, it achieved a reach of +4K influencers and results like +10M downloads and +2B TikTok views.
Are you up to the challenge with UGCs?🤳
Let’s team up to boost your app ads’ conversions and engagement with the most original creator-lead content. If you had in mind an out of the box-thinking creative partner, we’re definitely what you’re looking for.
Find us right here and go book a call!
