Hey all,
Happy Sunday.
My style of marketing is applying winning B2C growth strategies to B2B. It’s a cheat-code with outsized impact. (Example: Previous newsletter on how B2B can steal the best product-led growth moves from B2C)
Reorientating these growth strategies to win isn’t always easy because the buying cycles between B2B and B2C are incredibly different.
That being said, when you apply and crack a winning technique, it’s incredibly fire. Like, beyond words.
That’s how I feel about the UGC creative engine we’ve built for B2B brands. UGC (user generated content) for B2B absolutely crushes it. Here’s a peek into what a top notch system looks like to build these and get them converting for you:
THE PROBLEM:
B2B marketing creative has looked the same forever (similar to the SaaS landing page). Boring stock footage, a voiceover that sounds like a landing page read out loud. Your buyer is BORED. And no, your "launch" video isn't any different.
Everything is literally the same.
Consumer brands are forced to iterate quickly due to high volume and immediate signal. Because B2B marketing teams are often paired with sales orgs, there's painful acceptance of growth marketing engines that slack.
If you're a consumer brand not doing UGC right now, are you even relevant? You're probably dead.
I first started shipping UGC as Head of Marketing at Citizen in 2024, then started cracking how to adapt it to B2B last year.
UGC fixes two problems at once:
Scroll-stop problem: A person talking to a camera reads as native.
Volume problem: It costs a fraction of brand to film, so you can ship hundreds to thousands of videos a month instead of one video of your founder chit-chatting per quarter
Paid ads live and die on creative volume. Fatigue is realllll so the main combat is more shots on goal. UGC videos and the funnel for B2B is a challenge, but when cracked has the craziest outsized impact on a company's growth.
Example: Take Lightfield. We've been running their ads all of 2026, built their entire B2B UGC creative engine from scratch, and, Head of Growth Matt Serna literally has pushed us to "find the ceiling" for how much volume we can ship. Lightfield is an epic product that my entire team runs on, too.
The B2B funnel from UGC is stunning:
Video run on social (like Meta ads) → landing page → conversion event funnel starts (multiple steps depending on the company's setup. Example: self-serve PLG optimizes for "registration" vs. sales-led "demo booked")
We optimize videos around different funnel stages
Across multiple brands there's a stunning halo effect: when B2B UGC works, it hits organic growth too and helps achieve a goal LTV:CAC by blending it all. The CAC on paid alone when UGC works well is also insane. Blended with organic is just a bonus.
Here's what a look inside building this is like:
1. Start with this format
Off the bat, I start with head-on style where a creator talks through the product. The creator narrates while the product moves on screen, explaining what's happening as it happens.
Then I test variants against it over time:
Pure talking head with different 1-2 second intros (e.g. as subtle as picking up the phone)
Screen-record-heavy demos that are skills/tactically heavy
Hot takes / contrarian POV / calling out competitors
Social platforms like Meta picks 1-2 favorites, so it’s best to ship high volume with the goal of getting a new favorite in each batch. A “favorite” just means the algorithm is allocating the most spend to it because the B2B site is sending signal via a pixel that conversion events are happening (e.g. a purchase).
2. Match the script to the conversion event
The conversion events you optimize for change the script.
Top of funnel (awareness): hook-heavy, problem-first, broader, talk about competitors
The lower you go, the more educational it gets. By the time you're optimizing for a real event (demo booked, trial, SQO), you're teaching: name the ICP, name the pain, show the feature that kills it.
You can even match the CTA to the tier, example: Self-serve gets "start free." Enterprise gets "book a demo."
When you optimize for a high-intent event, the creative should pre-qualify. Inexpensive leads mean little if they are hitting the wrong audience. Your creative (the UGC) is the targeting. It’s also soooo memorable.
3. Write qualifiers into the hook
A killer B2B qualifier is said up front and says exactly who this is for. It does two jobs: pattern interrupt (right people self-select in) and filter (wrong people scroll on).
Hooks I use:
"If you're a RevOps lead at a Series B still running pipeline in spreadsheets..."
"This is for founders doing their own outbound and hating it."
"If your sales team lives in [incumbent tool] and complains about it daily..."
Play with the qualifiers and test stacking things like: stage, role, team size, current tool, or a specific pain symptom.
Example: For Lightfield I lean on the current-tool qualifier hard. The strongest wedge is people already feeling the pain of the incumbent CRM, so the hook names the symptom before it ever names the product.
Bonus: Persona landing pages
Quick one: the ad and the landing page should be one continuous thought. If the hook says "for RevOps leads at Series B," the page should say it back.
Build a page per major ICP
Point the matched ad at the matched page
Test it against your homepage
4. Source trained creators
This is rly hard and a critical input into your success. Our creators have preliminary training and then additional training and coaching with us. We put effort into matching creators who have previous backgrounds with portcos in the same vertical (e.g. creator has sales background = good candidate for sales company).
You’d be shocked at how many people do UGC who have incredible backgrounds (the reason being it is so lucrative when done well because the brands will double down on the creator over and over).
Trained UGC creators (Trained on canvas-style UGC or scripted-style UGC creators both work for B2B)
Customer content programs: A creator program gives you a renewable supply of it
Founders and employees: Harder bc time is so limited - this realistically isn’t as reliable with all the competing company priorities
Two non-negotiables on each script batch brief:
Give them the exact script with hooks and qualifiers. Don't let them freestyle jargon they don't fully understand.
If you’re using an influencer with followers (this is not UGC, fyi): get paid usage and whitelisting rights in writing
5. How I actually run it
Start from the conversion event and the ICP
Retest winning hooks. Pull the ones that worked, rework them, and isolate the variable: was it the hook, the concept, or the video style?
Write the script: problem, qualifier, feature in action, CTA
Brief the creator and get them platform access. Don't shoot it all yourself, that doesn’t scale well. Walk them through it on a Loom so they get independent with the product.
Ship in batches across the month
Learn and iterate from the data (more on this below)
Double-down on winners while testing new hooks, angles, skills etc.
6. How to read a winner
There's no single trait every winning video shares. Read performance as a stack like this:
Hook rate (did the first few seconds stop the thumb)
Hold / watch time (did they actually stay)
Click-through (did they tap)
Conversion (did the click become the event you wanted and ICP
Like we discussed earlier, there's the part attribution misses: the organic halo.
Good UGC drives recall and inbound that lands in your CRM as “organic” or "found you on Meta if you have a quiz" or just more demo requests you can't cleanly trace. This halo is a byproduct of the program as a whole and new content being served consistently.
Well, How’d I Do?
UGC drives consumer brands. I’ve spent so much time cracking it for B2B.
This is how we build and ship B2B creative and it's a huge opening B2B brands are sleeping on. Too many pour everything into Google and stop there.
Let me tell you, that’s a missile pointed right at your company.
Paid search (Google) captures demand that already exists. It doesn't build the brand, show the product, show real people using it, or tell a story.
This does.
B2B UGC puts the product in motion with a person and paints the story vividly across a full channel architecture that’s required to reach venture scale or exist in a highly competitive market (hint: that market is here, right now). FYI - follow any FTC rules and any vertical-specific regulations like you would for all marketing.
Go build and have an amazing week!!
Julia
