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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🦹‍♀️ Find the right actor

📋 Prep your brief

📝 Communicating with actors – outreach

📢 Communicating with actors – clarifications

☎️ Cold outreach

🧸 Establishing first contact

📓 Sample script briefs

📯 Follow ups and negotiations

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

INTRODUCTION

In the last two episodes on creating winning UGC ads, we shared our best practices checklist to nail the shoot and also talked about how we go about building the content and structure. 

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about one of the first tactical steps of our entire process: directing a shoot remotely – this includes preparing the brief for our actors, and the various communication steps we have with them so you can shoot a killer video ad without having to rent out a production crew or shoot location. 

This will give you an idea of what the outreach looks like, and how we narrow down the right actors for the job. We’ve also included ready-to-go templates in the show notes for every step of the outreach process to get you started. 

So let’s dive right in. We’ll start with how we identify the right actors. 

1. FIND THE RIGHT ACTOR

When shopping for who will appear in your UGC ad, you have a choice – influencers or actors.

You can either directly approach influencers on socials or their agents. Or you can use aggregator marketplaces like GRIN or Modash. Since influencers are already very experienced in creating content, you wouldn’t have to worry about the quality and production value of your UGC. The challenge is that you have very little control over the final output – as influencers typically want creative freedom and license to shoot as they want to. Oftentimes you might find that influencer videos don’t meet performance marketing best practices – they may not show the app, or talk about your value propositions at all.  

This is why we typically work with micro-influencers, actors or creators – because you have much more creative and editorial control, and your videos check all your performance marketing best practices. For this, you can use platforms like Billo. But note that on such platforms, your creative brief is an all-important guideline for the actors, and you still don’t have 100% control over your output – because you only interact with actors through the platform’s team.

If you want complete creative control over your UGC, you have to own the actor/creator relationship. If you can put in the effort and time, it can be totally worth your while. The best way to do that is to go to a site like Backstage and put out a casting call. You can tailor your brief just the way you like it, find exactly the kind of actor you want, and communicate with them directly over the platforms’ DMs or email. We’ve added our templates for the initial outreach communication in the show notes for you – just add in your details in them and you’ll be good to go. 

2. PREPARE YOUR BRIEF

Now let’s talk about everything you should definitely include in the script brief you share with your actors. 

First, some housekeeping items – like budget, which orientation to shoot in, how to send you the footage, if they need to shoot with a green screen – things like that. If you have a previous video that the actor can refer to and take inspiration from, leave a link to it there. 

We’ve added a link to a template of our brief in the show notes – if you use it, you won’t have to worry about these points. Start off directly with the most important bit – the script!

So what about the script? Break it down into shots, include details like B-roll shots, camera angles and where the actor should shoot, and tell them what you want them to do or say in each shot. For instance, for the line where they mention the name of your app, add an instruction that says, “Please show your phone’s screen with the XYZ app open to the camera. Please ensure the contents on the screen are clearly visible in the shot.” 

You should also add cues to emote or emphasize wherever required, as well some best practices to follow while shooting. Check out the first episode in this series for more on this. We’ve left the link to the episode in the show notes below. 

The last thing you can include in the brief is additional notes on stuff that’s great-to-have, but not critical. Things like clothes, appearance, tone/vibe of the video, etc.

In the template linked below, we’ve included a couple of scripts of UGCs we produced. Feel free to modify it when you’re building your own script. 

Now let’s talk about actually communicating with the actors. We break it down into 3 stages – outreach, clarifications and conclusion.

3. COMMUNICATING WITH ACTORS – OUTREACH

The outreach is almost always via email, whether it’s a new actor or someone you work with regularly. The only exception is when you use self-contained platforms like Billo, where you don’t get to interact with the actor directly but via the platform’s internal team.

We’ve included a template of our emails to actors who reach out to us either directly or through a platform like Backstage. But just to give you an idea – this email contains a few key details like number of videos, how much time or effort the actor will have to put in, the deadline and, of course, the link to your script brief. Please note that if you plan to use a green screen, you should mention it in the body of your email, as a lot of actors often don’t have green screens.

It’s also best to ask the actor to explicitly confirm whether they will work on the video. In most cases, they will let you know if they can’t, and you can then approach someone else.

4. COMMUNICATING WITH ACTORS – CLARIFICATIONS

Once the actor has confirmed, you’re on! But often, they’ll ask you for clarifications – and it’s best to anticipate these. Here are a few of the most frequently asked questions.

1. The most common one? Fee negotiations and timeline of payment. Of course, this is for new actors, as your regulars already know what to expect. Check out our show notes for a template on what this negotiation email can look like. 
2. Another common question is whether they can use a iPad or another tablet to shoot app walkthroughs, since some actors don’t have a second phone to shoot app walkthroughs. You should definitely have a solution planned for this, especially if the actor’s UGCs perform well. One of the ways in which we handle this is to switch to a full-screen display of the app while continuing the dialogues as a voiceover. Another option can be to keep the actor onsreen and show the app inside a phone popup. This is especially useful if the actor’s expressions are worth keeping onscreen.
3. Every other question we face is regarding specific shots in the script, which differ from project to project. Things like if they need to change clothes for different shots, or whether a shot requires them to deliver their dialogues to camera or off camera.

Once the actor shares the footage, review it as soon as possible, because you may just have to request a reshoot, which increases TATs. And if you’re requesting a reshoot, it’s best to let the actor know why, so that the mistake isn’t repeated. 

5. COMMUNICATING WITH ACTORS – CONCLUSION

Once your video editors have given you the first cut, and you know for certain you don’t need any more footage from the actor, it’s time to send them a talent release agreement (TRA) to sign. This is basically an agreement with which the actor give you permission to use their footage on socials and other platforms.

You can get your legal team to draw up a boilerplate TRA. As for signing it, there are lots of online resources that allow online signing of documents – docusign, esignatures, signwell and so on. 

In the same email containing the TRA, it’s also advisable to let the actor know when they can expect the payment – to minimize reminder check-ins. Check out our show notes for a template of this email to close the loop. 

So, to summarize: 

1. Find the right actor

2. Prepare your brief

3. How to reach out to actors

4. FAQs from actors, and 

5. Closing the loop with actors

So there you have it – our tried and tested formula for working with actors to produce UGC and live action videos. What do you think about our process? Do you employ a different approach? We’d love to know and share our learnings – so drop in a note to us on rocketshiphq.com.

COLD OUTREACH EMAIL TO INFLUENCERS

Hi <FIRST NAME>,

I am XYZ from ABC company. We are a boutique growth marketing agency, and we design creatives and provide content support to some of the fastest-growing mobile games and apps out there today.

You have some great content on <NAME OF THE SOCIAL PLATFORM(S)>, and we would love to explore an opportunity to collaborate with you.

We have frequent requirements for multiple short videos featuring live actors/influencers for our clients. These are typically short shoot-at-home videos that can be made in a few minutes via a smartphone, and we do not expect you to promote these on your socials (we will use these on our socials).

Please let us know if you are interested, and we can acquaint you with the next steps.

<YOUR SIGN-OFF>

FIRST CONTACT VIA DM WITH ACTORS WHO APPLY TO YOUR CASTING CALL

Hi <FIRST NAME>,

Thank you for expressing interest in our production. <IF THE ACTOR CUSTOMIZES THEIR APPLICATION TO YOUR CASTING CALL, ADD A LINE HERE REFERRING TO IT. IGNORE OTHERWISE.>

The video will be a UGC-style video for <NAME + ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION OF YOUR APP>. You can find them on the App Store and Google Play Store.

The footage for this video needs to be taken with a camera phone by a friend or using a tripod. 

We are looking for a natural video that has a candid, unscripted look like you see on Instagram or TikTok. The entire shoot should take no more than a few minutes of your time. You do not have to edit the video or promote on your socials.

If you’re interested in producing this video, please send your confirmation to <YOUR EMAIL> by <DATE – PREFERABLY 2-3 DAYS LATER>. The earlier the better!

Once we receive your confirmation, we will send you additional details on producing the video.

Please note: We produce UGC ads on a regular basis. Please consider this as a (compensated) audition for future projects.

Thank you!

<YOUR SIGN-OFF>

LINKS TO SCRIPT BRIEFS

Script template 1 

Script template 2

ROUND 2 EMAIL 

Hi <FIRST NAME>,

Thank you for reaching out to us, and for your interest in our production. 

We’re looking to produce a UGC-style video for  <NAME + URL + ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION OF YOUR APP>. You can find them on the App Store <ADD URL> and Google Play Store <ADD URL>.

Here is the brief for the video <ADD THE LINK TO YOUR SCRIPT BRIEF DOCUMENT>. All the necessary details – including budget, script, guidelines, etc – are included in the linked document.

The video requires very little preparation and only your smartphone, and the shoot should take no more than a few minutes. Also, please note that you won’t have to edit the videos or promote them in any way. 

Timeline – We would like to get the raw footage for the videos by <DATE – PREFERABLY ALLOWING AT LEAST 4-5 DAYS TO SHOOT>. The earlier the better, of course!

Can you please confirm if the above details, i.e., budget, timeline, etc, work for you? 

Please let me know if you have any questions – I’ll be happy to clarify.

<YOUR SIGN-OFF>

NEGOTIATION EMAIL 

Hi <FIRST NAME>,

Thank you for sharing what you’re looking for. 

I understand that there is a gap with your expected compensation, and I did want to underscore that:

1. the video is expected to be brief and will only take you a few minutes to prepare and shoot.
2. you don’t have to edit it yourself – simply send us the footage and we will do the rest.
3. we do not expect for you to promote the video on your socials.
4. we expect to have multiple ongoing projects after this one.

Given the above, our experience has been that our compensation is in line with the time and effort involved in a project like this. Please let me know if you have any flexibility on your expected fees, especially since we are keen on longer term ongoing partnerships. 

However, if the current compensation is really challenging, I can discuss with our team to see if there is any wiggle room. 

<YOUR SIGN-OFF>

CONCLUSION EMAIL

Hi <FIRST NAME>,

Thank you very much for sharing the footage! It looks great, and we’ve added it to our production pipeline.

Here are the next steps per our process – we need a couple of things:

1. Talent Release Agreement (TRA)

As an overview, this is essentially a document with which you give us permission to use your footage on socials and other platforms. Please visit this link <ADD ONLINE TRA LINK> to sign the TRA – the process is entirely online. 

2. PayPal details

Please share your PayPal details so we can transfer the payment. Please note that we process payment for all our actors at the end of each month.

========

ORIGINAL ARTICLE (retained for future reference, if needed)

1. IDENTIFY THE CORE VALUE PROPOSITIONS

This is a no-brainer, really, and you’re probably thinking why we’re even mentioning this. But let’s face it – if you’re making hundreds of ads every week, AND their variants on multiple platforms, it’s normal human nature to gloss over a thing or two. 

That’s why, as the first step in making a UGC video, we advise consciously reviewing your brand’s value propositions (or if you’re a growth marketing agency like us, your client’s value propositions). Make a note of those value props and decide which of them you want to focus on for the UGC video you’re planning to make.

Something that’s also equally obvious, but we should definitely state here – try not to have multiple value props in one UGC. Not only will this dilute your message, but from a practical standpoint – there’s only so much you can cram into a single 30-second video!

2. IDENTIFY THE USER PERSONA

This is closely related to the first step, but we like to separate it out as it is often missed. 

So ask yourself – who is the ideal user? What are their interests, likes and dislikes, and other general demographic markers? What would appeal to them enough for them to actually interact with your UGC video and lead to an install and purchase? 

In other words, revisiting the user persona will help you identify their motivation to purchase your product. Which in turn will help you craft an effective message. We’ve explored this in a little more detail in our episode on content and structure, so check out that episode for this and other related considerations.

Identifying your user persona will also enable you to find the right actor for your video, which we’ll get into in just a bit.

3. ANALYZE THE COMPETITION

Let’s start with a practical reason to do this. 

You might have a great idea for a video, and it might actually be an amazing video from an artistic standpoint. But the question is – does it lead to effective user acquisition? And the opposite also holds true. You may find your creative juices drying up and you’re unable to come up with ideas. 

This is one of the many reasons why analyzing competitor ads is so important. Some other reasons – you can find out what’s currently going on in the market, where the current trend lies, what users are engaging with, and so on and so forth.

So. Head over to the ads libraries on Facebook and TikTok to see what your competitors are creating. You can also check how users are engaging with those ads. An alternative to the native libraries is using a tool like BigSpy, which allows you to perform deeply granular searches for ads across platforms.

So yes, analyzing the competition is very helpful to find a direction for your own UGC video. But I have to point out – get inspired, but don’t copy. You want to build recognition for your own brand, right? You certainly don’t want to copy an ad to such an extent that a viewer watches your ad and assumes it’s for your competitor’s product!

4. REVIEW YOUR PAST RESULTS AND UGCs

Again, seems obvious, but it needs to be said. An effective performance marketing team will always keep reviewing and analyzing their own ads. 

You need to know what worked, and more importantly, why it worked! Which elements of your previous UGC ads and live action ads did users react to? Can you build more ads around those elements? Which value props, user motivations and ad structures have consistently been winning? 

Use this data to create the next winner.

5. BRAINSTORM WITH YOUR TEAM

These days, thanks to Covid, a lot of folks work remotely and often as individual contributors. While this is great, it’s always good to have multiple perspectives, especially when it comes to creative matters. 

Let’s be realistic. We can think in only one way – our own. That’s normal human psychology. So, when you’re giving shape to your UGC video, try to involve other members of your team and brainstorm with them. This exercise will keep you aware of different perspectives and approaches that might not occur to you on your own.

Here’s another practical consideration. You never know when something someone says adds a twist to your script, and that might just become a winning hook in your video!

6. PREPARE YOUR BRIEF

This is where you actually sit down and start mashing your keyboard. It’s super important to get the creative brief absolutely right, because it’s what tells the actor exactly what and how to shoot their videos. We’ve covered a lot of best practices to include in the brief in an earlier episode on nailing the shoot. So please feel free to head down to the show notes for the link, or you can simply search the MUA Show website and check out the episode.

While you’re preparing the brief, include the script, obviously. But also remember to include instructions on shooting, how the actor should name and save the files, detailed directions on cues, camera angles, and so on and so forth. 

7. FIND THE RIGHT ACTOR

Another crucial step. You’ll get a pretty good idea of the kind of actor you should look for when working on Step 2 – Identifying the user persona. For example, if your app is related to quick micro-investing with crypto, an older actor in their mid-fifties might not be ideal. Or for a laundry delivery service, your user may engage more with an ad featuring an actor in her thirties, compared to someone younger in her early twenties.

Now here, you have a choice. You can either approach influencers on socials like Instagram and Tik-Tok and work with them or their agents. The advantage here is that influencers are already pretty experienced in creating UGCs. So the quality and production value of your UGC will certainly not be a problem, compared to actors or users who don’t have the experience that influencers do.

You can also decide whether you would want the influencers to promote your UGC on their socials. Remember though, that this will entail an additional cost. We often find that micro-influencers (those without a large following, say less than 10k) are quite open to simply producing the video for us if we clarify in our brief that we don’t expect them to promote it on their socials.

Another route to finding actors is using platforms like Billo, although it requires more effort than you would need for influencers. On such platforms, that creative brief becomes an all important guideline for the actors. And since the actors here sometimes do a minor bit of tweaking themselves, you’ll have to put in less effort in editing.

Or, finally, if you want complete control over the process, you can always head over to websites like Backstage and post a casting call there. You can tailor your brief exactly how you like it, find exactly the kind of actor you want and communicate with them directly over the platforms’ DMs or email. Remember though – you will get actors here who are just starting out and have very little experience, so you’ll have to put in some effort to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Over time, you should build a pool of actors you can keep going back to, and the hunting process will become smoother and less time consuming. 

A small note here. Once you have your pool of actors, you will know how a certain actor comes across on screen. And sometimes, while identifying your user persona and motivations, a particular actor might strike you as perfect for the job. This then informs the previous step, and in such cases, try to tailor your script to that particular actor – and you will have eliminated this Step 7 completely.

8. EDIT THE FOOTAGE – POST PRODUCTION

Once the actor has sent their footage in, review it immediately. You may find reasons to request for a reshoot then and there – a video might be grainy, or a line of dialogue wasn’t spoken properly, their device’s screen wasn’t clearly visible, audio was muffled, and so on and so forth.

But if the quality of the footage is good, start your post production process. Depending on the kind of video editors you work with, you can either simply send them your original creative brief and the footage and they’ll create the UGC ad on their own. 

However, on the whole, we advise that you create a separate brief for your video editors. Prepare a storyboard for your video, explain which shot should go after which, what treatment you’d like to be given to each shot, whether you’d like abrupt cuts or zoom and pans, what kind of background music you want (in case you hadn’t already decided at the creative brief stage), and the like. 

While it isn’t too common, you may see during the editing process that you need a couple of more shots you hadn’t originally planned. In such cases, ask for reshoots. 

Finally, a housekeeping item. Once the actor has sent all the footage, send them an agreement to sign that allows you to use them or their likeness on socials and online platforms. You can get your legal team to draft an agreement for you, and then use an online signature platform like esignatures.io to send it to your actors for signing. 

9. PREPARE VARIANTS FOR MULTIPLE PLATFORMS

A minor point, but since you’ll publish your UGC ad on several platforms, make sure to create separate resized videos for each platform. For instance, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram Stories, YouTube Shorts all need an aspect ratio of 9:16, but if you publish on your IG feed, or on the Facebook feed, the aspect ratio should ideally be 1:1. 

Other variations to test include with and without subtitles, with and without end cards, different background music tracks, text overlays and so on.

10. TEST, TEST, TEST

This isn’t really specific to creating UGC videos, but is applicable to creatives of all formats. Publish your UGC commercial on your preferred channels and test it. And it’s a cycle, right? Use the results and your learnings to create your next winning UGC video. 

So, to summarize: 

1. Identify the core value propositions

2. Identify the user persona

3. Analyze the competition

4. Review your past results and UGCs

5. Brainstorm with your team

6. Prepare your brief

7. Find the right actor

8. Edit the footage – or post production

9. Prepare variants 

10. Test, test, test

So there you have it – our tried and tested formula to produce UGC and live action videos. What do you think about our process? Do you employ a different approach? We’d love to know and share our learnings – so drop in a note to us on rocketshiphq.com.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!