This week I have a real treat for those who love creative strategy. I have my friend Matt Johnson on the podcast. 

Matt is a fellow agency owner, who previously worked for 15 years as a viral video pioneer, building programs at New York Magazine, Business Insider, NowThis, and Men’s Health. Matt left New York City to join the ranks of entrepreneurs. Matt recently spoke at Social Media Marketing World on the main stage. 

He’s the founder and creative director of Guide Social, a video ad creative agency that’s served hundreds of clients across the world including 17 businesses that were on Shark Tank (AKA Dragon's Den in the US). He’s also the founder of Ignite - a coaching program to help entrepreneurs grow their business with content.

Matt and I have run in the same circles for a number of years and so this was a really relaxed chat about what Matt is seeing in the performance creative space - as well as some really interesting musings about a completely different way to approach eCommerce Marketing. 

Stay tuned as we cover: 

• Why Matt is excited about TikTok as an ad platform and the specific format that is working for accounts he manages right now
• Exactly how Matt uses storytelling  in performance creative to get better results 
• The power of scripting your ads so they hit the right emotional triggers in your target audience
• Why Matt thinks video as a medium will be the driving force behind most marketing in the near future, and how brands can get behind this trend to win during challenging times. 
• How brands can tap into the 'TikTok as a search engine' trend without much time investment
• Why eCommerce brands are guilty of focussing too much on features
• What the eCommerce industry can learn from high-ticket info-product marketing, Kickstarters, and infomercials

Follow Matt on his socials:

Matt's Website: https://www.mattjohnstononline.com/home

Matt's ads: https://www.guidesocialglobal.com/our-work

Matt's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bymattj

Hear how Kyle Stanger created his fashion awareness brand Boys Get Sad Too and grew it to £100k months without a plan, any financial backing and having dropped out of school, all before he turned 25. His huge success can be put down to his pure passion for his cause, a laser-like focus on his community of customers and a natural ability with social media coupled with limitless energy and focus. (edited) 

In this heart-warming episode we cover:

- How following Gary Vaynerchuck's $1.80 instagram strategy helped Kyle grow his instagram to 60k followers

- Why having a mission you truly believe in is the most powerful motivator

- What's working now in paid and organic social advertising and creative

- Why leaning into your founder story is a winning strategy in 2022

- Kyle's advice for staying on top of your mental health when starting and running a business

Follow Kyle's journey on
- Instagram @boysgetsadtoostudio
- Website www.boysgetsadtoo.com
- TikTok @boysgetsadtoo

This week’s eCommerce Impact Podcast episode should motivate you to give PR the attention it deserves. 

I chatted with Nora Wolf, owner of boutique New York Based public relations shop Wolf PR. 

Nora has worked with global brands like Herman Miller, Kikkerland, Resident and ZigZagZurich on their strategies to be featured in publications like Esquire, Apartment Therapy, Cool Hunting Buzzfeed, Dwell, Wired and more.

Listen for:

•  Why PR is an essential part of your eCommerce marketing mix - but how it should never be your only tool
•  Why you need to put yourself in the journalist's shoes to ensure your pitch gets attention and coverage
• How your sustainability or diversity efforts can increase your chance of coverage
•  Why you MUST read the publications in your industry and set up alerts for the coverage your competitors are getting
• How to plan ahead to get coverage for the peak gifting season
•  How influencer marketing has become part of the PR process, and why you should pay for the content this brings.

This week I sat down with Stephen Duke from Wayflyer - a financing platform for eCommerce. I for one have to admit to not knowing a lot about the financing of eComm brands - so it was fascinating to hear all the different options that an eComm brand has - and how using revenue-based finance can be one potentially low-risk option once your brand has hit a good level of growth.

In this episode we discuss:

1.  The 7 types of financing options and the pros and cons of each
2.  How exactly revenue-based finance works
3.  What attributes a finance platform will be looking for in your eComm business and what KPIs you should be aiming for 
4.  What rates of borrowing you can expect

We can't promise it will be easy - but brands that act now will have a bigger chance of winning at their Black Friday/ Q4 / Peak Season Strategy.

In this special episode of the podcast, Jessie sit's down with her senior Strategy Team - Pedro Cordero Head of Google Strategy and Charlotte Sargeant, Head of Paid Social - to discuss:
- What worked for eComm brands last year and what we think will work this year 
- Why brands that plan their offers and start nurturing audiences early will get the best results 

Practical tactics that get results like:
- An increase in purchases by 396.39% with a tracked ROAS of 4.54x for a jewellery brand.
- Increasing revenue from $63k in the previous quarter to $3.3 Million for a kitchenware brand 
- a 4700% increase in transactions
-  without a sale or offer!


Plus, find out the clever tactic that our sustainable fashion brand client used to increase CTR by 50% while still increasing ROAS by 22% - without discounting.

This week Jessie sits down with Sarah Levinger who is a highly celebrated Creative Strategist,  Consumer Behavior Analyst who helps DTC brands increase their ROI with psychology-based creative. 

In this episode you will find out: 

*Why traditional UGC advertising is not performing as well as it did last quarater
*How tapping into your customer's emotion, psychology and demographics can improve how well your ad performs.
*How the loss of targeting makes psychology and emotion much more important than it was before.
*Sarah's process for mining comments and reviews to find advertising angles
*How a person's childhood and underlying human needs can impact their response to advertising angles.
*What can be learned from interviewing customers and how this can play into your creative strategy.
*How Sarah works with and briefs creators to get this new type of advertising creative to work.

Creators mentioned in the podcast: @LaurenLabeled @BrensCreatives

You can find Sarah at https://www.hgperformancecreative.com/

Find more info and a transcript on www.ecommerceimpactpodcast.com

This week I am featuring an episode of another AMAZING podcast I was recently a guest on. The eCommerce Influence Podcast with Lily Ackerly from Brand Growth Experts.
In the episode I share the nuances of the "new" Facebook platform and some paid social wins.
If you are struggling with your ad performance right now or if you are trying to learn more about how the platform works you will learn a lot.

What You'll Learn From This Episode
*Big ideas for acquisition and retention marketing right now
*If Facebook is still a viable growth channel for brands with smaller marketing budges
*What a successful marketing mix might look like for early stage 6 figure eComm brands
*Analytics and how to track your KPIs when data is skewed
*Sustainability and the future of ethical eCommerce

Resources @brandgrowthX on Twitter
www.brandgrowthexperts.com

Our website www.ecommerceinfluencepodcast.com

This week i am beyond excited to have Ed Williams on the show to talk about how the brand he co-founded - Candy Kittens has disruped an entire product category to become the fastest-growing confectionary brand in the UK 

Ed has been named in the Forbes 30 under 30 list for retail and e-commerce and has so much to share today. A few highlights

How 20,000 t-shirts sold in a day via twitter funded their growth
How they used pop-up shops and offline activations to grow online traffic
How they created buzz and hype around the brand for two years before they had any real product.
Why brand should be core to everything you do
How they launched in high-end retail to elevate the position the brand
How online chatbots can work even for low aov food brands!
How spending too much on lawyers at the start nearly killed them.
How having an advisor kept them accountable

How becoming a b.Corp forced them to become a better business.
Full show-notes at www.ecommerceinfluencepodcast.com. Try Ed's vegan sweets from www.candykittens.com

This week I sit down with Krisi Smith - who brought innovative tea blending from the US back to the UK at age just 23, making it the product category fun and accessible. She tells the amazing story of going from Ski Instructor with a mad idea to multi-million dollar founder who puts people first. 
Tune in to hear how Krisi shunned grad scheme and corporate life to set up the business at age 23 - how she completely bootstrapped it from the start with just $5000 in savings. Find out how, even though they started as an online business, having a brick and mortar store in the early years helped the brand and gave them the immediate feedback they needed to develop the product. Hear about Krisi's approach to developing winning products. Find out how they picked the store locations and how the growth of the stores and the online business went hand in hand. How growing their email list in-store was key to creating huge buzz around product launches. Learn how Krisi's strategy to not go into wholesale and supermarkets payed off. Find out why Krisi and her co-founders original values and mission have stayed core to what they do right to this day. How surrounding herself with passionate advisors key. 
See full show notes on www.ecommerceimpact.com. 
Visit the Bird & Blend website and try their teas at www.birdandblendtea.com