- Morning Commerce
- Posts
- Brand building
Welcome to Morning Commerce!
Things are really heating up on the agency side of things with what feels like all my clients kicking off new projects this week 😅
Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s issue:
7 things to consider before working with an influencer
Handpicked curated brand guidelines
Brand building is world building
58 rules for beautiful UI design
Customer service is a choice
A freaky inspo store
— Kyle Tully
ACQUISITION
Brand building is world building
Eric Bandholz sat down with freelance growth marketing consultant Joe Anhalt to talk DTC growth strategies. The conversation covered everything from marketing channels and design essentials, to multichannel selling and brand building.
On the topic of producing quality media on a budget:
The iPhone is a good investment if you’re shooting content and want it to be high quality. Location matters. Location, much like real estate, helps improve production value. For example, someone in Austin, Texas, can drive two or three hours west to a remote landscape. It’s similar to Palm Springs or Joshua Tree, where many luxury brands shoot campaigns. With the iPhone, if you have great lighting, a good wardrobe, and an excellent location, you’ll get 90% of the way there without spending $20,000.
Marketing channels for growth in 2024:
.Facebook and Google ads remain the top channels for growth. There’s a lot of optimism for TikTok, but success there depends on the product category. I’m pushing my team to think about visual channels, such as YouTube and television. Those are some of the best places to tell a story. Facebook can drive a ton of data, traffic, and conversions, but I question long-term brand building with Facebook alone.
Check out the full interview here.
7 things to consider before working with an influencer
Delve into the world of influencer marketing and you’ll quickly realise that finding the right influencers to partner with is often much more difficult than it might first seem.
A surprisingly good article from Entrepreneur lays out 7 things that will take you far beyond looking at follower count:
Authority and trust in the category
Influence that sells
An authentic brand story and aesthetic
A product that serves a market need
Product excellence beyond expectations
Smart and effective operations
Continual community building
Astute readers will notice more than half of these focus more on the brand than the influencer. Like all marketing strategies, the stronger the product and business machine behind it, the more powerful the results.
Worth a gander if you’re looking at new partnerships for 2024.
CONVERSION
Customer service is a choice
In a world of 5-day email response times where the response is a template email that doesn’t even answer your question… and AI chat bots that have you madly hunting for the “talk to a person” button… it’s not hard to stand out on the customer service front.
In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest advantages smaller stores have over their larger competitors. The ability to quickly reach a real live human who talks like a real person and knows enough to confidently answer your questions and allay your fears.
Delighting a customer who has an issue is the single cheapest way to not only keep that customer, but also have them spread the word.
Happy referrals and delighted reviews are the natural byproduct of making customer service part of your strategy.
DESIGN
Handpicked curated brand guidelines
If you feel like your brand isn’t quite hitting the mark, or has perhaps got lost along the way, check out BrandGuide’s impressive list of brand guidelines from around the world.
With complete brand guides from the likes of Instagram, Afterpay, Wise, Firefox, Herman Miller, and many more, you’ll see exactly what it takes to carve out a compelling brand in some of the toughest categories on the planet.
Reading through these is an absolute masterclass in creating a strong brand.
58 rules for beautiful UI design
New year new web design? Brush up on your design fundamentals with these 58 rules for beautiful UI design.
Three new Shopify updates
Shopify Flow - Get discount data - You can now use a Get discount data action in Flow. In the action, you can get a list of discounts and then use that data to automate processes in your store, or send scheduled reports.
Shopify Collective orders simplified for Suppliers - A Shopify Collective order marked as ‘Paid’ now indicates that payment has been collected from your Collective retailer, and the order is good to fulfill.
Shop channel now pre-installed for new merchants - The Shop channel will now be pre-installed and pinned in the sales channels section of admin navigation for all new merchants in Shopify Payments supported countries.
INSPO OF THE WEEK
Strong branding oozes out of every pore of the Rotten store. The attention to detail hits you on every scroll. From delightfully freaky copy to custom section breaks and backgrounds through to hilarious “testimonials” and the first logo I’ve seen that looks better the larger you see it. So cool.
How we can help…
🔥 Looking for an experienced Shopify Partner to work with?
Smart ecommerce brands rely on us for innovative design, development, optimisation, and growth strategies to create highly profitable Shopify websites. Work with our consultancy.
🎯 Want to reach our audience? Hit reply to discuss advertising.