How to Create Amazing Online Shopping Experiences

Hello everyone, how are you doing? Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Please let us know where you're calling in from in the chat. I see that everyone's sort of entering the webinar room as we speak. My name is Rachel Shepherd. I'm the Director of Global Marketing here at Founder Institute, and I'm the co-creator of the Female Founder Initiative. I'm joining you today from the Bay Area in California. And so if anyone's from California, let me know in the chat. You know, good morning to you. And so the Founder Institute, really quickly, I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna share with you a little bit about what the Founder Institute is, and then we're going to dive right into our topic today and introduce our speaker. And our topic today is how to create amazing online shopping experiences. We're going to focus specifically on making sure that we're optimizing for consumer-centric brand building. And we have Michelle Lynn Park with us today, which I'm super excited to introduce you to and tell you all about her and why she's so amazing and is going to be speaking on this topic today. So hello from Amsterdam. Oh, multiple Amsterdam folks in the house today. Awesome. Zurich, welcome. Very excited to see you and thank you for joining us. So really quickly, Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. We've launched over 4,500 companies across 180+ cities and 6 continents. If you're interested in learning more about Founder Institute, we're currently enrolling across all 6 continents, and you can learn more at fi.co/enrolling. And we also have someone here in the chat with us from our team today who will be here to answer your questions. So please do let us know if you have any further questions about Founder Institute. We are also co-hosting this webinar with Halo Incubator, which is a New York-based incubator for women entrepreneurs. And so we want to thank Halo for helping us with this webinar today as well. So today Michelle is going to talk to us about creating amazing online shopping experiences for your customers while focusing on consumer-centric brand building and how to optimize for digital experiences. Michelle Lynn Park is the founder, is a founder, Chief Marketing Officer and Innovation Leader. She has 10 years of experience building consumer-centric brands, tapping into human insights and delivering meaningful solutions. As a strategist and storyteller, she has built world-renowned brands from Procter Gamble to leading startups and PE-backed endeavors. She advises consumer-oriented startups focused on wellness, nonprofit, and the future of education, and was most recently an entrepreneur-in-residence at Human Ventures, building her own early-stage startup. Welcome, Michelle. Thanks so much for being here with us today.

Thanks for having me, Rachel. It's great to be here.

Awesome. So without further ado, I know the founders are very excited to learn from you today and learn about how to build a really great brand and product experience for their consumers. So I'll turn it over to you to share your screen and present.

Great. Here we go. All right. Can you guys see and hear everything? Rachel, just give me a quick confirmation, maybe.

I sure can, and it's full screen, so that's perfect.

Perfect. Hi, everyone. I am dialed in today from Brooklyn, New York, so hello, I'm a few hours ahead. And I'm so excited to talk about this topic. I think really, as Rachel mentioned, we're really here to talk about amazing online experiences. But, you know, the way I see it, and I think the way that I want to focus the discussion today, is really to think about how can we build these amazing experiences by thinking about who we're building them for, which is the consumer. Really the heart and the beginning of where we start as we think about these businesses. And so much can be said about, you know, online and digital experiences these days, especially during COVID And there's so many tools and tactics in the marketplace today that can help us do those things better. And I'm very happy to take some questions and probably later one-on-one to go through some of the details on what might work best for your startup and for your business. But really what, I thought we could talk about as a group is really talk about the fundamentals of what it looks like to build a consumer-centric brand. What does it look like to build a brand that's consumer-centric? How do we translate that online? And then how do we think about that overall in our holistic marketing portfolio of all the different tools that we have to tap into? So Rachel already gave, like, quick background on myself, and I will go very quickly. So my experience, as she mentioned, spans from the Fortune 500 brands of the world through Procter Gamble, to private equity-backed portfolio beauty brands, and then most recently bootstrapping on my own. And so that means the budgets that I've been working with have gone from the tens and almost hundreds of millions to whatever I could personally spare. So I've definitely run the gamut in all sizes and scopes of marketing. And for over a decade now, I've always been building brands that are very, I would say intimate to women and, things that people feel really personal about. So these are some of the categories I've worked on and I'm like very passionate about through my experience from, you know, Always Pass, the Venus razors, launching a beauty brand called Bastide, working in luxury hair care with Frederic Fekkai. But across all these categories, the thing that was always in common was that the categories themselves are a bit more commoditized. There's not necessarily the most cutting-edge technology, sometimes, but not always, but that they always meant something to consumer and it really gave us a lot of opportunity to tell really interesting stories and to tell them in interesting ways. And that's where I think my passion for consumer-centric work really came from, and that's what I want to share with you today. Most recently, corporately, I was the Chief Marketing Officer over Portfolio P-backed beauty brands, and then spent the past year now really working with founders in different capacities—advising, consulting, and as Rachel mentioned, also as an entrepreneur resident myself. So I've definitely been in your shoes as a founder. I am still wearing that hat, I would say. And so you'll see that what I cover will probably be let's say 50% more theoretical and philosophical, and I want to just give as many examples of how to apply this and to start doing something today as quickly as we can. And so we'll definitely want to make lots— leave lots of time for discussion and Q&A at the end as well. So let's get right into it. I want to talk about a little bit on why I even wanted to focus, you know, the online digital experience conversation on the consumer. And I think the reason why that's so important is the fact that the brand era is over. You may have heard People say this, it's like one of these like big booming statements people love to make. And what the brand era being over means is that, you know, historically there's been huge amounts of investments and money and success being made in advertising, where it's really brands broadcasting what they wanna talk about in these mass channels. And the conversation flow is really 90% from the brand and maybe 10% back from the consumer, 10% being like a review here and there. But obviously now with social media, with, really the plethora of choice of different brands and startup brands, consumers are really now looking at brands in a different way and relating to brands in a different way. I think brands absolutely still have a role. It's a very different role. I think now brands are what consumers use to self-express, right? It's an extension of their self-expression versus looking for brands historically to tell them what to do. Now it's a, it's definitely much more of a dialogue. And you'll see that, you know, a lot of our digital native brands that have gotten the most attention from investors, from Wall Street, from consumers, from like the Warby Parkers of the world. These brands are actually able to beat their incumbent players because they're able to lifestyle a brand. And I use that in air quotes in the sense that they're able to really build a personality around their brand. They're able to build a community around their consumers. And that's where they built this rich dialogue. And because they've designed the brands to be really consumer-centric and said, how can we make this make sense for the consumer versus something that's made— that makes sense for our company first. And so this is something that I think is extremely important and has been really critical for the past few years. And you'll see that, you know, I started my career at Procter Gamble in a function where the mantra of our function was literally called the voice of the consumer. So obviously at these Fortune 500 companies, this is still critical. I was just speaking with someone who is the head of Mondelēz, the very big snack food company, and he said they start every board meeting, which is, you know, For a company of that size, like the board meetings, like every minute is precious. They start every board meeting with a 2-minute video of consumer feedback. So the most recent one, they watched 2 minutes of people talking about Oreos. So the amount of attention that larger companies are giving to the consumer is still really high. And obviously for startups, you know, we hear a lot more terms on the consumer in different ways. So we hear a lot about, you know, making sure your product clashes with the market, clashes with the market, or clashes with your customers as quickly as possible. How are you finding product market fit? Really seeing the value of social proof being really critical as you go to market. These are all ways that people are talking about the consumer and why they're important. And so I want to make sure that today we talk about 3 areas. One is the brand fundamentals on how do we bake it into the DNA of your business and your brand to make sure that the consumer is front and center. And this will— this might feel like a step back because some of you may be further along in your building process, but I think it is a fantastic refresher and just some exercises to go through to make sure that, you know, you guys are completely clear clear and crisp on this. And then we'll also talk about digital expression, which is really kind of the meat of the discussion on what does it look like when you translate that digitally. And I also want to touch on holistic marketing because there is more to marketing than digital ads. And I want to make sure that we keep that in mind as we think about the full marketing experience. Okay, so we'll dive right in. This is a visual I always like to talk about. I use this example a lot of times in conversations, and I always talk about what's What's better than sliced bread? Personally, I prefer bread that's like torn off, as you see in this picture. And the reason why is I love bread when you can like dip it in sauce, when you can dip it in oil. And when you rip apart the bread, you have so many more of these like nooks and crannies where it can soak up the sauce, where basically it makes contact and connection with the oil, and it's just tastier and it's a more interesting texture. And very similarly, that's really how I think about the fundamentals of building a brand. At the end of the day, people want to buy from people. We see this all the time with the growth of the artisanal trends of shop local. And the more that you can think about your brand as a person, and the more you can think about building personality and nuance, even like idiosyncrasies, quirks into the business, the more unique your brand is without having to say the word unique. A lot of brands will say, oh, we're like a very unique brand. But when you say you're unique, you're not necessarily showing how you're unique. And the way, the more you're able to actually express that, and build it into your business and build it into your brand, the more people can connect with you. Like a great example of this, you can always see Play Out Live is Warby Parker. Like they derive their name and have a lot of their communication and copywriting connected to a lot of great books, like their glasses, you know, and books. And you'll see that their stores are built very similarly to libraries. Their name or their name itself is inspired by books. You know, every new employee receives a book as a welcoming onboarding. And it's such like a quirk, right? So it's really hard to say what that really contributes to their business on its own, but it's such a quirk and it's something that's just interesting and something that people can make an emotional connection to. And I think that's really important for us to think about as we're building the foundation. And one other thing I would definitely call out as from a startup point of view is we're obviously living during COVID And I've seen this now in lots of investor meetings and heard conversations amongst fellow founders too, in terms of the impact of COVID and whether or not that should be addressed. This is sort of just like a sidebar, but I absolutely think that regardless of whether or not it makes it into your pitch deck, regardless of whether or not it actually directly impacts your business, I do think that the impact of COVID and thinking through what does that change in consumer behavior is a discussion that you should at least have as a team and have a point of view on. Whether or not that, you know, becomes front and center in your conversation, you know, really depends on the business. But I absolutely think that's another example of recognizing that There is something that's like very human about what's happening in the world, and a way, a great way to humanize your brand is acknowledging that and thinking about how your brand will address and adjust for that. So to really talk about this, I want to share a few frameworks and for you to think through. So the first framework I always like to use is a really fundamental one. It's really asking sort of like the key questions. I think a great brand is basically telling a great story. And when you tell a great story, you kind of have the basic structures of why, who, what, when, where, and how. And so when it think— when it comes to brand building, the way I think about this, and I've given you some examples here, starting with the why, the why should they care? The answer for this most typically for businesses come through the founder's epic, the mission, what they saw as their aha moment, what was wrong in the world. This tends to be very aspirational. And I always try to remind people that this is not the reason that people necessarily the first purchase, but it absolutely is the reason that builds loyalty and it garners advocacy down the road. So if you think about a lot of very mission-driven companies, they have really strong, clear whys. And when their consumers talk about why they love this company or this business or this product, the why is usually something that they will play back. So again, not necessarily the first reason that people will buy, because ultimately consumers and as people, I think we're still all fairly selfish and self-motivated. So we're still always buying what does the product do for me, and we'll talk about that later. But if we keep coming back to a brand or to a company, or we keep promoting it and sharing it, we're proud of it, that's usually because of a really strong why statement. So I do really encourage companies, especially in the beginning days when as founders you feel the strong passion, you have this really clear aha moment, to really tap into that and really articulate what that why is. For the who, So this is, this is a, I would say I have a different marketing point of view on this than what you might typically see in a startup language. So for the who, I really think about this as the muse. So this is something I think about where I come from a world of luxury beauty and in luxury, you know, you think about fashion houses and Karl Lagerfeld's muses, or you think about Coco Chanel's or Chanel's muses, really sort of like the ideal consumer. And I say that this is different from the startup world and the startup language in that often you hear people talk about like your beachhead consumer, like who are your early adopters? The muse isn't necessarily the early adopter. The muse is a fictitious person. The muse is somebody who's very aspirational and that your early adopters are going to want to become the muse, right? So if I take the Chanel example, honestly, like we think about Chanel fashion, their early adopters, like the first 100 beachheads for any new launch that they have, It's probably these like very internationally wealthy women. But the muse, it's probably Coco Chanel herself, and they're aspiring to be Coco Chanel. So, so really you're designing for Coco Chanel. You're not designing for these like international wealthy women. And so it's really thinking about, um, you know, who is this design target that is a bit aspirational? Um, so you always keep, keep them elevated, keep them on a pedestal, and they're somebody that your consumers will want to be like. For the what, this is, I think, the most critical part and where we get it wrong the most often, which is what is the job to be done? Ultimately, people as consumers are looking to us as businesses, as brands, to make their lives better in some way. And that could be easier, faster, smoother, less painfully. It could be, you know, lots of these other adverbs. But really, it's to think about what is the job to be done and what are we going to do for them to accomplish that goal. The part I really emphasize here is the fact that consumers are in the market to buy a benefit. They're not here to buy a technology. They're not here to buy an ingredient. You know, so for example, I've had conversations with founders who are somebody who's, for example, like really excited about technology they had built, where they can make a water bottle that was double-walled, but it was still very lightweight. And because it was double-walled, it was able to give better insulation. And she was really excited to talk about this, this, this new thing that they've built. But that in itself is a feature, right? The benefit that the consumer cares about is the fact that my coffee or my iced tea will stay hotter or colder for longer. They don't really care. I mean, they do care about double wall, but really what they need to hear first is the fact that we're going to keep your beverage temperature at the desired temperature longer. Like, that is the job to be done. How you do it is really the feature. And the feature is usually, I think, very exciting for us on the building side. But for the consumer, we need to keep that in mind and keep iterating the fact that we're keeping their coffee hotter or keeping their iced tea cooler. Another good example, I see this a lot in beauty, is we'll discover a new ingredient, like a deep marine ingredient harvested from this isolated part of the ocean, and it has all of these antioxidants. But that is an ingredient story. The benefit that the consumer wants to hear about is, is it going to give me fewer visible wrinkles? Is it going to make my skin look more moisturized? Like, what is it doing for me? And just being really, really clear on what is the job to be done from the consumer. This sounds overly simplistic a lot of times when I talk about it, but I think it's really important to go through the business, go through your business and think about what is the job to be done. And it always feels, I think as a founder, it always feels too light because you're like, oh, but we're doing like all these 9 different things to accomplish this one job. But the consumer is really laser-focused on that one job. And eventually they'll want to hear about the 9 things that you've done to help accomplish that job. But in the beginning, first and foremost, they need to hear about what is the job that you're going to do for them. The when. So when do they think about you? This is really important as we think about, you know, digital marketing and just marketing tactics down the road, which is when are you relevant? So for example, we'll talk about a CASPer example for betting later. And the when of when you're relevant, when you're thinking about betting, it might be when they've had like a bad night's sleep, you know, when they have back pain, when when they're— it could be when they're thinking about the category that you compete in, or it could be not. So it's really important to think through, like, when am I going to be top of mind, either as a brand or as the category that I'm in, because that will help you target your marketing tactics and choose which tools you want to activate. The where do they associate you? This is really focused on distribution and what brands do they associate you with. For example, I've worked in French beauty quite a bit, and French beauty, a lot of times in the US market, they associate French beauty alongside other French things. They do associate French beauty with, you know, regular beauty products, but they also associate French beauty with like French fashion and French magazines and French films, et cetera. And so you might be associated in lots of different categories. Again, it helps you to think about your media and your marketing plans to think about where do you need to show up. And the last one is how, like how can you deliver value to her or to him that's different and that's better than what's happening today? And this will really be the differentiation in terms of like, how will you actually win this consumer, win in market? So just a few examples. Casper, like I mentioned, Casper is obviously a runaway success and has set the market for a lot of these startup mattresses. I think what they did and was very interesting from the get-go was that they had a very clear why and a very clear who. So their why, you'll see this carried throughout their marketing, is that they always talk about good sleep or better sleep. They call themselves the sleep company, which if you think about the why, sleep is obviously related to mattresses, but it's much broader, very high order. Lots of things could technically, you know, deliver sleep, but they really decide to own that and make it higher order. And you'll see that that really pays dividends for them down the road. The who that they've chosen, I think it's really interesting. The who that they chose is somebody who's like a city dweller, someone who cares about quality. They care about innovation. but mostly they care about convenience and being able to get it into an apartment, right? And so this is where the beauty of Casper has really come in. And for those who, I guess, are not aware of Casper, you see this box on the side. Casper is a mattress that you buy and it literally ships to you in a box that fits through most, if not all, doors. And you literally take it out and then the mattress basically inflates itself. And that's very different from the traditional box spring mattresses and the beds that you see. And so for city dwellers, like people who are living in New York or other small spaces, like getting a bed into your bedroom, it's actually quite a challenge and can be kind of a circus act. And Casper has said, this is a problem that we want to solve. And so they really think about the city dweller as their who and their inspiration. And they've built so much of their, their brand and their marketing around that. And for them, you think about the what, what their job is to be done. Their job is honestly the number one job I would think that they're doing is that they're giving people access, like easy access to a good bed. Like, they're giving people a good bed, but first and foremost, they're giving you easy access to one. It's easy to buy it online. It's low risk to buy it online. It's easy to get it in person. And that easy access is really that job to be done. And that really sets them apart. In terms of when you think about them, like, you think about them probably when your large-size mat or large-size bed, traditional box spring bed doesn't fit through your door, or when their current bed is malfunctioning, or when you're furnishing a new apartment. Like, that's the problem mindset that they try to tap into, and that's That's when they tend to show up. And then where they associate you, where do they think about you, where do they associate you with? Casper is a direct-to-consumer business. So like from a distribution standpoint, you know, you'll probably think about them when you're in your traditional mattress store. You'll see that for a while they were doing a lot of like really smart targeting to people who are shopping traditional mattress stores, or you're buying new apartment furniture, they'll target that as well. Or even like really interesting pop-ups around cities, like in big urban cities where there's pop-ups, Casper often has a presence because they want to be associated associate it as something that's really cool and innovative. And then lastly, like, how do they do this? Obviously, though, I was kind of describing it earlier. Instead of the clunky box spring mattresses, the how that they've really cracked is creating a mattress that can be shrunken down into such a small box. So that is the access that they're able to give consumers. And you'll see this getting translated into digital, right? So right away you see like The big callout is, see why people sleep better with Casper. Like, this is really speaking to their why and why people should care about their brand. And they own it at a very high order level. And as a result, you'll see that, you know, over the years, Casper has been able to expand their business into mattresses and pillows and all of these other things which are affiliated with sleep, but definitely outside the mattress core business that they have. The other I would emphasize— this is a screenshot, I'm sorry, so I'm not able to show— but if you go on their website. It's always very interesting, I think, to see where the social proof shows up. So like social proof is sort of the consumer reviews that you see down here. And this is a business where obviously you're buying something that is very pricey. You only really need to buy once every few years. And typically it's a business that we historically would go into a store, sit on, lay around on, really test in person. And since you're not able to do it, they need to help you overcome that barrier with social proof very early on. So they show you these great reviews. And then up here, they also help you de-risk it as much as possible. They tell you there's, you know, free delivery, 100 nights free, 10-year warranty. So they're giving you all these reasons to not worry. And so you can have faster access. And then, you know, one of the other examples I love to give is how they've incorporated this idea into all different parts of their marketing. So this is holistic marketing. This is an out-of-home campaign in a New York City subway. Again, we go back to their who. Their who are these like urban city dwellers who are looking for innovation, quality, but mainly like easy access to a great mattress. And if you think about it, New Yorkers are stuck on subways for many hours at times for every day of their lives. And out-of-home advertising is one where we've seen a lot of innovation in a lot of more urban cities. And the one— and this is really a great example that's done it well. So they know that you have these people who are probably doing their like sleepy morning commutes. What do people do on the subway? They're either reading, they're playing games, or they're looking for entertainment, something mindless. And they gamified that experience a little bit. So they put these little puzzles that you see up here. So this is like cat plus snap without the S, so catnap. So they put all these little puzzles all around sleep throughout the New York City subways that people can just sort of zone off. You see a Casper branding, it's very subtle, but you can kind of tune out like do these little mind puzzles and you'll see around, they surround this unit with another ad unit that says sleep is the answer, which is really great copywriting. And if you can't solve the puzzle, they drive you to their website, which is a great integration of, you know, offline and digital. And it really taps again into the human insight that their consumers are busy city dwellers commuting on subways, looking for entertainment. They're probably tired or sleepy because it's the beginning or end of their day. And they've integrated it into their website. And so this is just something that they thought, again, a great execution of something where they're giving value to the consumer. And we talk about like, how are you going to give value? They're giving value because in this case they're giving entertainment. In their email list, they give a lot of tips on how to get better sleep. So they're trying to give information, they're trying to educate, and they're entertaining. So they're giving value to the consumer that they have in mind and being really laser-focused on that, both online and offline. Another framework that I think is really important and helpful to think through, like consumer-centric brand building, it's kind of going through the idea of like, what is the insight that you have? What is a consumer-driven insight that you have? And what's the benefit that you can deliver with? So Wild One has been a— it is a dog accessories company. So they sell things like a doggy bag holder, leashes, collars, etc. And they've really taken off, actually during COVID because so many people have gotten dogs. But their insight, which I think is really smart, is that if you looked around the marketplace for pet accessories, they're very functional and they're almost more utilitarian versus they've said, okay, the consumer insight we have is that pet owners also want to see their pets as an extension of themselves and they want their pets to also be an extension of their style. Right? So even though this is a dog accessories company, they know that the one, the consumer of who's buying the dog accessory is actually the pet owner, and that they want the pet owner to feel like there is an aesthetic expression of their own style even as they become pet owners. So for example, like, they're part of their mission that they talked about is we're into connecting pets and people through thoughtful design and community. So connecting pets and people, and their emphasis on people is actually really unique in the category. Category, because if you look across, this is the Wild One Instagram on the left, and this is the Petco Instagram. And if you look across most pet accessories, the Petco one's what you see, right? They show you pictures of dogs and the pets, and that's it, right? Like most industry, most like the brands within the category and within industry are so focused on just the animal. But Wild One has tapped into the insights, which is that the humans want to be involved too, and the humans want to feel important, and the dog and the dog owners and the pet owners want to feel feel like they're included. And this is where you'll see that on their Instagram, in their content, there's always a person. And that's because a lot of what they're selling, it's really about an aesthetic that's an extension of the human's aesthetic for the pet. And so this is a very insight-driven business. And the benefit is the fact that they're able to have pet accessories that basically reflect their own style. And it's an exen— it's an extension of their style. So again, very different category, but in a different framework of thinking, but kind of going with that human insight of an aha. So to wrap up the section, there's a few things I would really suggest you try. And like I mentioned in the beginning, I want to make sure I can give as many kind of like tangible exercises for you to do, whether you're a founder and business of 1 or 50 or 500. I think no matter where you are in your journey, these are really helpful exercises. The first is sort of going through the questions of the why, who, what, when, where, and how that we went through with Casper. The other one is a little bit like what we— what I spoke about with Wild One, which is what is a consumer insight? What is the— at times this could be the unfair advantage in like startup terms, like what is the consumer and the human insight that you have? And how can you uniquely give a benefit to that insight? And why should they believe you that you're that you're able to deliver and why are you the one to solve that problem for them? Another great example exercise I always encourage founders and brands to do is the "is" and "is not." So this is, you can do this exercise for your brand voice. So for example, I could say, you know, worked a popcorn brand, a startup popcorn brand that has like a really cheeky personality. One of their "is" is that we're cheeky and fun, but we're not gossipy. So it really helps to distinguish the brand voice as it goes, as it carries it carries across copy, as it carries across social media, as it carries across all the other consumer touchpoints. And it's also really helpful if you want to build it from a product standpoint and you're thinking about the products down the road. So for example, this is also a great exercise I just recently did with the founder of a plant-based jerky. And, you know, he, one of his is was, you know, it's always using soybeans. And we said, actually, that might be limiting in the future. You might use other beans. So he changed it to like, you know, it's using always plant protein. So it's a, it's an exercise where it really creates some clear guardrails for you as you're thinking ahead. And, and I always think it's really good to do it early on because this is when the vision is the most crisp and it's most clear and it helps you guard your future innovation, your future development, and all the other touch points in which your brand will show up. And the last one is always a fun one. It's kind of like a celebrity personality game on who your brand sounds like. Examples of this I always try to do with people, for example, is if you think about like the 3, about the 6 characters on Friends, like which one sounds the most like your brand? Or it could be a real celebrity, it could be a historical person, it could be a fictional character, but really who represents your brand? And going back to sort of that bread example we started with, it's to say when you're able to put that personality against against your brand, that's where you're really able to create nuance and create those interesting connections. Right. So going on to something more digital. So that was really the fundamental piece. I know I spent a lot more time on that, but we'll go a little bit faster through the digital experiences. And I think digital experiences, at the end of the day, we're really talking about how do we service the customer better. You'll see here, I took two real-life examples. One is from the Ritz-Carlton, which is all about high EQ. They train their customer service staff to anticipate needs. It's really a place where the consumer goes and they want to feel known even before they anticipate a problem. Like they want their problems anticipated versus you think about Apple Genius Bars. They've been really successful because even though the relationships are very transactional, like they don't feel— they're not anticipating needs for you, but it's so seamless in the experience and so fast. So they both deliver excellent customer service and consumer experiences, but in their own unique ways. And so that's And I think that's really the key message I want everyone to take away from thinking about this in the digital landscape, which is that you have to know what is the job. Again, I come back to this. What is the job that the consumer is hiring you to do? And what are you really— who are you? Like, who are you uniquely— sorry, how are you uniquely set up to do that job? And what role do you play? And so let me just give you some examples, right? Like knowing the consumer, this is knowing what job are they hiring to do, which is kind of what we started with. And then what do they need to know? What do they need to know before they hire you to do it? And so these are kind of like the barriers. This is why you see for Casper, you see sort of like the social proofs kind of high up because it is a high-cost, infrequent purchase. And so they want to move that social proof higher up so people can feel reassured. Like, what do they need to know before they hire you to do their job? And then to really know yourself. And this is where to know what kind of product you are, right? And I'll give you some examples of this. So Hurom is a very expensive juicer. It's called a slow juicer. This is their homepage. So you'll see that up here in the banners. This is a, I think a $500 juicer, right? And so in the shop section, they have just like one shop and then they go into all these different ways in which they're trying to give you value. They're giving you juice recipes. They're telling you why Hurom, they're really trying trying to build the sale of this one specific item. And then you'll see right here, right above, right below the fold, you're seeing a lot of social proof. You're seeing a lot of accolades and affirmation that this is a great purchase. And they're very focused on just this one product. Let's contrast that with Mack Weldon, really successful online menswear fashion company. The prices are fairly accessible, and you'll see that they take you into bestsellers, all these different categories of clothing, because their focus is on building the basket across lots of different categories. And they know that their product is pretty straightforward. On their website, you don't see any sort of social proof or ratings and reviews until the very end. It's like right above the fine print at the bottom. So you can see that clearly they know that their product is more straightforward. The price points are easily accessible and they just want you to just like try to buy as many categories as possible and to get into shopping as quickly as possible. They don't really try to tell you the Mack Weldon story. They don't try to tell you You know, style tips. It's very, very transactional because they know that this is the type of product they are and how they compete. If you were to buy this juicer and you add it to your basket, you'll see that they take over your shopping cart. It's a full-screen experience, right? They have this warranty call-out. They tell you about returns. Like, they make it so that you are not distracted from checking out on this $500 juicer and very laser-focused. Versus if you have Mack Weldon, you put something in your basket, you'll see it only is a side pop-out. It's a gamified experience. They try, they try to get you to buy more items. They cross-sell you. And again, this is all about building the basket because of the fact that this is a lower price point, more accessible item. And that's the category that they're playing in. So again, this is like two examples of brands that are very aware of, you know, who they are and what kind of purchases they are for the customer and who their customer is and what they need to do to help get them them to a meaningful purchase. Another very different example is for Care/of Vitamins. They are really solving the problem and solving the job to be done that consumers are looking for more personalized supplements, right? And they've really decided based on lots of research that consumers actually want to give a lot of information to have it feel more like a personalized experience. So they built this quiz. This is a 60-question quiz. You'll see that right away on their landing page. They have 2 callouts to take the quiz. If you scroll through the rest of the page, I think there's like 3 more callouts. Behind the quiz button is where they've gated most of their premium content. They've done a ton of testing to make sure that this quiz experience, once you start in it, that's where they capture the consumer. And by taking the quiz is actually when they're already adding value. So the consumer feels like you're asking all these personal questions, so you must be You must be personalizing something more specific for me. They've done a ton of testing. For example, even they saw that people were leaving their page when they make recommendations on ingredients and supplements because people are Googling like, what is this supplement or what does this do? And so because they didn't want people to leave the page, they built it in so that, you know, as you see your list, you're able to click through on their website to see what each ingredient does or what each supplement does. So again, they've done a ton of testing. They know that their benefit to the consumer is to give this personalized experience. Which they've delivered through the quiz. So the quiz is really their sole focus. You come onto their website, very few other distractions, and it's all about the quiz. And they put you into the quiz funnel as quickly as possible. One other thing I'll call out here is that in the quiz, they ask for your email probably about a third of the way through, which I think is also really important because there is this element of like giving and taking. When do you take information and when are you giving value? And they do it about a third way through, which I think is one, it's not like they make you go through the whole thing and they kind of gate you at the end. To say, if you want to see your results, take the quiz. I know that's caused consumer frustration for a lot of people, but they also have it about a third way through. So you're already pretty invested. So you're happy to give some information, but it's not like you put in all this time and you're like, oh, I have to give my email, otherwise I don't get to see anything. So it kind of minimizes that frustration. And they've really tested that too. Another great example is Segment. This is a tool, if you guys don't use today, I highly recommend. Basically, it's a great, a great data tool to link all of your— if you're looking for something more sophisticated than Google Analytics, it's a great way to have all of your customer data together. And Segment, their consumer that they've honed in on is fast-growing startups. And so they— and growing with these fast-growing startups. And so they actually have a program that they designed for startups. You see in this bottom corner, where you can apply now, which makes it sound more coveted, even though it's a free program. And you tell them like what stage of the startup you are, and they give you all these different benefits for free for 2 years. Again, it's perks that they could actually just offer much more broadly, but because they know that they're going after these fast-growing startups who are probably used to applying to grants and applying to incubators and applying to funding, they make it feel a bit more coveted, and they create this great community where they can grow with their community, grow with their customers, customers and monetize more and more down the road. So again, this is like a great example of like understanding who your customer is as a, as a software business and being able to create like a new offering according to that. This is also, this is an example for companies that are not able to be direct-to-consumer. So alcohol is one of these examples, and you'll see here that This is a bourbon, and they're using all of their experience, all of their digital experience, actually to do brand storytelling. The copywriting is fantastic. There's a lot of games that you can actually play on this side, and they're definitely invested still in their digital experience, and you definitely feel like you're like stepping into this bootlegger world. And so they've done a fantastic job with that, even though you can't buy directly online. They've made their digital experience something that brings you into the brand in a powerful way. Last example I'll give to this, if you guys haven't seen Poolside.fm, it's probably one of like the most exciting user interface sites on the internet right now. And they just wanted to build a community. They wanted to build something fun that looked like nothing else on the internet. You literally go to the website, it looks like you're on like a '90s computer, and then they're just playing free music, like feel-good beach music. They just launched an app. They haven't monetized, but it's like knowing themselves, like their goal was to just build a community. and that's what they've done really, really successfully by building something that's different. They put, they put in chats, they put in guestbooks and people talk to each other, people submit music. And it's a very, it's again, not monetized currently, but their goal is to build a fun community and they've put in all of the tools to do that. And I'm sure once they do decide to monetize, this is a huge, huge, huge opportunity. Let's see. This, I just wanna give this example also very quickly in terms of social. I know I was talking much more on, on site before. One quick example I wanna talk about is like for Chanel. Chanel on Instagram, for example, has really played by the rules of traditional luxury where it's a lot of like beautiful imagery, highly tightly curated, a lot of campaign imagery. But they know, and they heard from their consumers, that the way that people, consumers want to interact with beauty brands, for example, online, it's through makeup artists. They wanna see swatches, they wanna see colors, they wanna see application and use, but they didn't also And also they didn't want to disrupt their own brand, right? And so instead of Chanel changing their content, they actually launched another platform called We Love Coco. And this is where they have all of their user-generated content. And it's still, you know, it's still very well curated, but you'll see that this is where the makeup artists come in, the swatches come in, the colors come in. And this is a great reflection of how they're listening to their consumers and playing back that social content and social experience. So really quickly on the digital side, I just want to— a few things for you to practice. One is really think about how you're adding value to the consumer and how can you prioritize that on your digital experience. And then one, I think one, this tip always sticks with me. I work with a great UX designer who every time we talk about a website, she always says like, and she's done very complicated apps and websites, and she always starts with the question of like, What is the product? What does it do for me? How does it work? And you'll see that these are again, like very fundamental questions. And you'll see that actually on some of these like more digital native websites, like if you look at like a Sakara Life, they actually have these as actual headings. Like how does it work? What does it do? Why Sakara? Like they really answer these consumer questions in as clearly laid out ways as possible that are very simple and very straightforward. Straightforward. And I think that's really the key to a great digital experience. We may want to use our website or may want to use our app or our digital experiences to really storytell about all the great things that we baked into this business, right? Like the 9 reasons in which we can— then all the different difficult things that we as founders have done and what's special about it, what we think is special about it. But really consumers have these very top-line questions and it's how can you answer those top-line questions in as straightforward a way as possible. On the website for them to see as quickly as possible. And so the best way I always talk about to do this is like, honestly articulate your website experience's goal or your digital experience's goal in a verbal way, as straightforward as possible. Like literally explain to someone, I want someone to come onto my website and buy this product as quickly as possible. Or I want someone to come onto my website and buy as many categories as possible. Or, you know, like it sounds so simple, but it's really to say, articulate as, as concisely as possible what the goal is when you want someone to come to your digital experience and build it from there to avoid overwhelmingly sharing brand content that may not be helping the consumer get their job done. Some general best practices I do want to call out is to really dig into your site search behavior. If you don't have a site like a toolbar, for example, a search bar, I highly recommend it. This is a great way to get insights on what people are looking for from you and what they're not finding. Also, other things like, there are a lot of best practices. These are the ones that I see as like most common mistakes. Always prioritize legibility over style as you're thinking about designing your site. Again, simplicity is key. Design your scroll according to your priorities. Like I said earlier, if you're a $500 juicer or if you're a very expensive mattress and you need a lot of persuasion to say, hey, this is great, your social proof should be really high on your site. If you're a fashion website, everything's pretty straightforward. Your social proof probably could be lower and you just want to showcase all the range of your offering sooner, right? Like design that flow really according to what your unique points of differences are. The take info after you give value. This is the example I mentioned with the care of vitamin quiz. Get the consumer's information. Like people are becoming more skeptical about giving away their email. Make sure you're asking for something from the consumer after you've given them something, or when you're about to give them something very clear. Segment does this really well. Like if you're giving them your email, you're always getting a white paper. You're always getting something for free. That's not just a discount code, but like something that has immediate value. And then the one last thing I wish I saw more brands do this is actually capture post-purchase engagement. So right after someone purchases this and they land on like the thank you page, this is actually one of the best opportunities to get a survey out on how do they find you, what are they looking for, would they recommend you. Like that moment of engagement, like if you can give them like a 1 to 3 question survey, you will get so much insight. And I really encourage people to think about that post-purchase moment really creatively. So Rachel, sorry, I know we're a little bit tight on time. I have like, I do want to go through the last section on just sort of like the overall marketing funnel, but do you want me to like kind of go through that quickly or do you wanna leave some time for Q&A and maybe the Q&As will actually speak to what I'm showing in the last section?

Yeah, I think let's, let's get through some of the questions. We've got quite a few from the chat that have been accumulating as you've been presenting, which is wonderful. And I think some founders could use some feedback from you today if that's okay. And then if we have time, we'll maybe go through some of the other things. Okay. Yeah, that'd be great. Awesome. Okay. So we'll dive right into questions and we're gonna maybe go rapid fire to make sure to get through as many of them as we possibly can. And so really quickly, Miss Tamika said, I am currently selling custom-made eclectic planters. How can I promote and scale my business when my products are not mass-produced?

That's a great question. I love the idea of those. I think the fact that they're not mass-produced is, again, I think about like what is a unique point of difference like that to me is a great one. Unique point of difference and you can really play that up. And so is the concern, for example, like I would assume is your part of your concern that you're promoting something, but then once that one item is sold out, then I guess nobody can come back and like purchase that item. Maybe that's the concern. So I would, I've seen this done really well in a few different ways. One is even for the planters that, you know, let's say you just have one and once you sell through it, it's gone. That is still great ample content for storytelling, and that storytelling that can live on your social, that storytelling that can live impress and live on different parts of your website. And you can actually use that to create this sense of urgency, right? A lot of companies will use like selling out as actually like a great PR hook or as a great way to drive consumer urgency for demand. So the fact that it is one of a kind and isn't mass-produced, I think you should emphasize that more. If they're sold out, you should like really emphasize the fact that it's sold out and have people know that the next release or the next drop, it's coming it's impending and create that sense of immediate purchase. And then the last thing I would say is that there's also, I think I've seen a lot of brands do this really creatively during COVID where they've taken to like Instagram and Insta Stories to do sort of this like immediate selling without building a full-on Shopify platform experience, for example. So I think there's creative ways to use social to, to storytell and then to just sell these one-offs and to promote that in a very quick turnaround way.

Absolutely. And capture those leads in the interim while they're— you're sold out, right? Absolutely. Awesome. So the next question is from Delvin. He said, when you spoke about the job to be done, is that something you test on your personas and change it to optimize, or is it something that is more stable to your brand and won't change much based on the audience?

I think the job to be done— it's a great question. The job to be done, I always think of it as very specific to the— it is something that you test their personas. I think there are multiple levels of jobs to be done. So for example, if we go back to the Casper example, like their job to be done is like give access to better sleep. And so that's something that you test against your persona. But then as you launch new products, new versions, new rollouts, new features, like there are, I would assume, additional jobs to be done, but there's for your brand consistent and for you to really derive value from building a brand with multiple products, like they should always continue to ladder back up to sort of like an overarching job to be done. But you definitely should be testing that against your personas. But that doesn't mean you should be shifting your job to be done. It's really about like the articulation. Like your product doesn't necessarily have to change. It's just your articulation of how you're delivering that job will change.

Awesome, Delvin. Hopefully that helped answer your question. And then Cecile has a question, which is something that you and I were talking about in advance, which Our early-stage founders have limited resources, budget, tech resources, marketing, etc. So what's the best advice or tools to use to really create the best brand experience at such an early stage with limited resources? Absolutely.

I think, again, when you're early, you have like this passion, this clear vision. Use that to your advantage. You know, like what some of the frameworks I talked about and like the basics of brand building, those are questions that you as a founder and as a founding team, like you should feel confident that you are most equipped to answer, right? Like, don't feel like you have to outsource that. In fact, you shouldn't outsource that. You should know that information like intimately. And then there are so many tools available now that I think like right off the shelf, whether it's Shopify, whether it's Canva, where they've already incorporated a lot of these like best practices in market and consumers are, you know, they're not like highly customized or tailored, but that's okay from the beginning because it'll help you keep things simple and it'll help you like create, it'll help you go to market in a streamlined, simple way for you to tell your story. Your story is what makes it that's something that you as a founder, as a founding team, can uniquely own. And then you can, you know, adjust and tweak and heighten the aesthetic later on. So I would really lean on a lot of these out-of-the-box solutions because they've already baked in there intuitively a lot of the best-in-class examples.

Fantastic. That's great advice. And then also, Miss Tamika said, I have a few customer reviews on my website through Wix, which we talked a lot about social proof and customer reviews. What's a healthy number of customer reviews reviews for a small business to share on their website?

I mean, I think when you have reviews, you should always share them. I've talked to founders who are like, oh, I have like single digits, I don't know if I should share. I think no matter what, you should be sharing them. I always think like if you can have double digits, that's healthy. People are really just looking, and it really depends on like, you know, if it's on your own website, you're actually kind of protected because as long as, you know, everybody has, every SKU has like similar number of reviews, it's fine. If you're on Amazon, Amazon, you have 2 reviews competing against thousands, that's a bit different. But if it's your own website, share them, even if they're single digits, share them, because the power of just like seeing those stars across the top, it's so powerful. So absolutely use that. And then one thing I do want to call out for reviews is to really think about ways you can use that in other ways, right? Like a great review, you can— here, I want to show it. A great review, you can use that in a, like in a great digital ad that that can be really scrappily made and you can repurpose it for social. You can use a great review on your website as a claim. You can use a great review in PR pitches. So it's really, the reviews are really powerful and like don't underestimate them just because there's only one or two.

Awesome. And kind of related to reviews as well, as Ana Maria asked, what's your experience and feedback on ambassador programs to engage customers? So really using ambassadors or influencers, you know, who often create this review content for you. Any advice on working with them?

Yes, I would say that especially in the early stages, like there are platforms out there that really help you kind of like match with influencers who are willing to do bartering versus paying for influencers. And I think, I think that's actually really great in the beginning. Those influencers might be more micro and they may not have huge followings, but that's okay because what they'll create for you is content. So like, I apologize, took like such a horrible screenshot of this one in the middle, but this is an influencer review. And they've used it with just like the captions added on. They've used it as an ad, a video ad unit that's been wildly successful. Similar here, like really simple, straightforward, like reviews from a micro influencer. Again, not like highly produced, but again, like something that people will react to. And so I would definitely focus on not paying from the beginning, find people who love the business or love the brand organically, or use these platforms where you can meet influencers, basically like matching brand and influencers without paying, and then use that content in advertising as much as you can so that you are really putting money behind the reach. You're not necessarily relying on the influencer's reach, if that makes sense.

Fantastic. And then Ali asked, do you know a trick or concept that increases the impact on the user experience when browsing within the site? There was a similar question here which I think is towards towards driving more sales while you already have someone on your site. Do you have any tricks or concepts or key things that founders should walk away with today to achieve that?

Yes, absolutely. I think depending on the product, right? So like if I go back to the Mack Weldon example, cross-selling, I think is a— there are so many great tools and add-ins for cross-selling, you know, depending on what category you're in, like the Mack Weldon one where they tell you, like they show you, they gamify it for you and they show your bar, how far are you away from free shipping? How far are you from unlocking a discount. Like if you're a brand that's not afraid to promote, showing that if you spend $10 more, you're able to unlock a 10% discount, or you spend $20 more, you're able to unlock a higher discount. Like these gamification tools are really great. And if you're building on something like a Shopify, there's a lot of great apps that are available out of the box that you can install right away that help you do these things. A lot of people also see a, you know, depending again, depending on the category, like you'll see some websites show that like, you know, Ashley in Florida just purchased this. And again, the feeling of like you shopping with other people in a live environment, it creates like a sense of competition. It creates a sense of, a sense of like people like to be where other people are. So things like that, like small tools, small tricks. I would also say on your product description pages, you should always be recommending like what people also liked or like similar products. Like as many, if you're a product that where you can sell cross-category pretty easily, always show other recommendations all the way up to the checkout, like you saw in the Mack Weldon example.

I definitely look for those as a consumer myself. So yeah, that's definitely helpful, right? I find them helpful. They are very helpful, especially when you're shopping and you're just trying to make decisions really quickly, right? And they, and they do influence me as a consumer as well. So we have 5 minutes left, Michelle, and this time has flown by. Is there anything you wanted to kind of run through quickly? I know you had some last-minute tools and resources on your slides. I don't know if there was anything specific you wanted to make sure that founders knew about before we sort of wrap up for the day.

Yes. So let me just hammer home on this little piece right here about digital marketing. So one thing I want to emphasize is that Facebook targeting, like if a lot of people are going to be playing with paid social and Facebook has really said like they don't, they want to explicitly or implicitly, they've said they basically want to put like media buying out of business, right? They want to make their algorithm and targeting media so sophisticated that you don't really need like a really dedicated resource to buy the perfect target. Facebook, through, if you just give it a few different pieces, they're able to do your placement for you with such high efficiency and reach that really what you need to focus on is the content. And so Facebook advertising, I would say it's 80% about the content, which is like the creative, like what I'm showing here, and like 20% about the placement because Facebook can optimize itself so well. The algorithm is that powerful. The Facebook ad library, if you, I've linked it here, you can just look for it. This is a great resource. I always tell everyone to go here. You can type in any brand anywhere, you can type in your competition, you literally see all the ads that they've run and that they're running, and you're able to see best practices, you're able to see where competition is doing, and you can really derive a lot of insights from how they're positioning their business that way. I also say don't overspend on a creative agency from the get-go, especially as a founder. It's really sexy to get back like a deck with specialized fonts and all these great imagery. But that doesn't necessarily tell you about your brand. Like the things that tell you about your brand are sort of those questions that we talked about. Like those are sort of the pillars of your business. An ad agency can definitely give you a lot of ways to dress it up, but don't overspend on an ad agency from the get-go. Like the best performing content right now digitally are low quality, like very consumer made. So you don't need to do that from the get-go. Also, do not run to give money to Facebook and Google from the get-go. To compete on Google, like if you're competing at a category level, it's very expensive. To do tests on Facebook, you have to, like, again, be really clear on the quality of your content and what is the message that you're trying to send. The reason I spent so much of my time talking today about like the fundamentals is that you want to get that content and that idea and that insight right, because then you can take that ad to Facebook and Facebook will help you place it. And then that will be worth it versus putting in ads that don't really speak to exactly what's unique about you, you can burn money so quickly on Google and Facebook. So make sure your content is really, really good first. But when I say good, it doesn't have to be super polished. Again, I show these examples, which are very simple examples that like an intern can make for you in school. These are like very easy Photoshop examples. But it's really about the fact that there's, there's an insight behind this content. So create as much of this content as possible that's insight-driven and not super polished, and test it and test them at low levels. Like don't you don't need to spend a lot of time and a lot of money testing on Facebook to really see results. So yeah, test spending levels, test your creative, test the amount of spend before you really spend big and really protect those dollars from the get-go.

That is excellent advice and I completely agree. And I think founders have, have received a ton of amazing advice today and hopefully you've gotten a really great spot to get started on, on your marketing or to continue to, to build your brand and continue your marketing efforts. As I know, it's hard to focus on— as being a marketer, it's hard to focus on marketing as a marketer and keep everything streamlined. And I can't imagine doing it as a founder, right? And also trying to run your business in addition to that. So hopefully this was very helpful. Michelle, is there any last-minute things you want to share with founders? Any books, newsletters, or anything else like that that you think they should know about before we close out for today?

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So two things that I really like to reference. One is, this is actually a newsletter written by a guy that used to run a digital agency that I worked really closely with. His name is Peter Kang, K-A-N-G. He writes a newsletter, which I find to be the most useful set of— he just writes a newsletter of things he's interested in. I'll send this out to you guys later. But it's great tools and very specific tactics that founders and brand builders and e-commerce leaders can use right away. I also like to look at Exploding Trends— Exploding Topics, sorry. It really shows you the trends that are coming in the marketplace, and you can kind of see how, you know, they may impact what you're building. So those are kind of two newsletters I really enjoy. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, Michelle. You've been a wonderful resource for founders today. The chat was so engaged, and I think people took a lot away from, from this conversation and from your presentation. Everyone on here, you'll get a recording and a copy of the, of the presentation within 48 hours. And thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you for being with, with us today. Thank you everyone for joining, and everyone have an amazing day.

Thank you so much for having me. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.