How Buff City Soap Found Half Of Their UGC Creators Using Refunnel
Using Refunnel's Social Listening, Buff City Soap now source half their UGC creators from existing customers, cutting out creator marketplaces, long briefs, and slow negotiations.
Buff City Soap is a Brick & Mortar Soap company with 200+ franchise locations across the U.S.
Founded in 2013 in a Memphis Garage by a local fireman looking for great soap, the brand has grown into a nationwide sensation with over 175,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.
The brand does about five soap scent launches a year. For each product launch, they hire around 10-15 UGC creators.
Like most DTC brands who do UGC, they faced two big challenges: hiring and working with creators was slow, expensive and the content that came out of it often didn't feel authentic
Each creator they found required someone to negotiate rates, write briefs, review drafts, and request multiple rounds of revisions.
The process took weeks. And after all that, the final output was still unauthentic, expensive and difficult to see if it moved the needle at all.
At some point they realized that their best performing content often didn't come from the UGC creators they had hired, it came from customers who were already posting unboxing videos and product reviews unprompted, but with a two-person team, manually searching and vetting these creators would take dozens of hours every week.
This all changed when they switched to Refunnel.
For the first time, they could see and track every creator and piece of content mentioning Buff City using Refunnel’s Social Listening Tool.
.png)
But the real value for Amber and her team was the ability to find the right creators.
Instead of vetting new UGC creators who had never heard of the brand, Amber could now search for them by watching their content for quality and brand fit, checking their engagement rate, and reviewing how their past posts performed.
Then, Buff City Soap would reach out and hire them for their next campaign.
.png)
These creators knew the products, needed less direction, and produced great content with way fewer revisions plus the rates were cheaper and the communication was faster.
This not only took workload off their plate, but also helped them build a more solid community and focus on other aspects of their marketing strategy.
"When I partner with people who are already obsessed with this brand, the content comes through so much more naturally, Refunnel unlocked that for us" Amber says.
Today, about half of Buff City's UGC creators come from existing customers found through Refunnel.
Let's chat!
Join thousands of businesses already using our platform to manage their user-generated content and grow their brand.
