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what I want to do is just get an idea of who we have in the audience tonight so maybe that can help uh tailor some of the things that we talk about and just have a little bit of context so if you're a founder of a business can you raise your hand wow that's awesome Shopify Shopify brings the founders that's cool everybody everybody get these people a drink y well thanks for coming out uh after work okay so a lot of Founders um if you are not a Founder but you're in marketing and have been for over 10

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years on a marketing team raise your hand we see you uh okay cool and then if anybody is not a founder or you know tenured in marketing but is interested in getting into marketing or interested in founding your own business but are not a Founder yet if you could raise your hand okay cool cool uh and then none of the above that I just mentioned anybody else anybody else okay so a lot of Founders very cool all right well um we have a lot of marketing wisdom on the panel tonight so hopefully uh you

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know and a lot of comedic relief from lores um so hopefully you know the stuff that we share tonight can help those on on the journey uh as a Founder obviously you know you may have a small team and you may be doing a lot of the marketing yourself and a lot of the road mapping yourself so hopefully this will help uh let me test this out cool um okay so welcome to office hours by the way I'm going to be looking at this screen we have some questions prepared and curated so if you see me looking and squinting

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and trying to read up there that's what I'm doing um so what is office hours office hours is a recurring open dialogue event series uh where we bring Founders and Marketing Executives and other people who are in the digital Commerce space and who are famili familiar with Shopify familiar with building companies together to talk about tactics and not talk in platitudes and you know and all of this but like people who are in the Weeds on a daily basis sharing what they do on a daily basis with you guys um so like I said

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this is our third installment I just wanted to thank the people from Shopify here who have coordinated all of this and put all this together this is obviously a beautiful space so we're very privileged to be here um who am I I'm Jackson Corey I'm a co-founder of dark room and our chief creative officer um dark room is a full service growth marketing agency uh we work with a lot of fast growing cpg Brands fashion brands um furniture brands and most of our clients are Shopify uh Brands and

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are and are built on Shopify we also have a an Investment Portfolio called dark matter where we invested in the following uh companies as well so you know we're very founder um Centric we love we love Founders we work with them every day uh that's a little bit about us um the title of tonight's office hours is how to scale your business in 2024 so pretty broad topic but we're going to be really talking about the tactics the strategies and um you know the week to week work that these folks

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do um and I'm going to try to tap into that and and pull it out I'm I'm not going to try to I'm not going to interject too much we'll just keep it flowing but if I hear something interesting I might double click on it um Okay cool so I'm not yeah you can read this pretty well so we've got like I said a lot of marketing wisdom in these chairs we've got Kate Loris and orle and I'm going to have them introduce themselves uh for themselves but just to give a little brief

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background um Kate was is the senior director of marketing at globar actually globar and Heyday are very similar businesses which is kind of interesting L Loris is the Oddball out um but uh but uh Kate was um previously at Flamingo which is a brand that's owned by Harry's um and then moved to 30 Madison but throughout was a marketing consultant so lot of experience in marketing and and is now one of three leading the marketing team um at globar so you know a lot is on her plate uh lores is the director and general

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manager of sa the duck uh overseeing us Market expansion sa the duck is an outerware company that is prominent in Italy in Europe uh and so he's tasked with with growing the market share in the US previously at mji if you're familiar with that brand and was a director at Puma um and then orley is Chief marketing officer at Heyday which is a growing company I think what 38 35 35 locations all of all three of these folks have uh have to manage both online uh digital e-commerce marketing programs

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as well as Birkin mortar so they have that kind of breadth uh which is really cool orle was pre previously at Verizon um and then uh before that was at 360i which is a which was a big agency that was bought by denu so anyway I just say all that to say like we can trust what they have to say um and uh and let's let's get into it so Kate I want to start with you if you can give us a few things um how did you get into the marketing space um what does globar do if you could just explain a little bit of that

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context and then you know what are you most excited about for this year uh leading your marketing team hi everyone I'm Kate the first question in that I think is what is globar I'm guessing the women in the audience might have an idea the men may not you're nodding your head globar is a skincare services company we offer 30 minute expert facials and we have nine locations in the New York Region today we are doubling in studio count this year which is really exciting and launching into new markets with that

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as well so how I got into marketing I'll take you way back my first job out of college actually was at the New York Post on the advertising sales team and I had known that that is not what I wanted to do long term but it got me to New York where I wanted to be after college which was really exciting and I figured it would be really great to have this big name like the post on my resume so I ended up spending I think about six years in the media world but pretty quickly pivoted to much smaller startups

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in that space so if anyone here is familiar with well and good maybe Fitness I see okay um I was the seventh higher there at a time when we were still working out of one of the founders old apartments which is pretty funny that to think about and that was actually my first introduction into marketing um we were partnering with some really cool Brands like pelaton and Adidas and so I was helping to shape how those Brands were reaching well and goods audience whether that be through an event series a Content series

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influencer Partnerships etc etc I would say after a bit of time kind of started to feel like it's cool that I'm getting to do this but I don't really know what impact this is having on the brands that I'm getting to work with and so started to hunger for I with a a deeper and broader understanding of what marketing actually looked like at a brand um that is what ultimately led me into the consumer marketing space which I can talk a little more about later um and in terms of what I'm excited for marketing

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wise for globar in 2024 the team has been effectively one person up until a month ago which is crazy um and so I think there's a lot of like low hanging fruit we have to optimize um and I'm just excited to put real strategy behind a lot of the different efforts across all of our marketing channels that we're investing in this year awesome thank you I think that's a really interesting perspective that you have working on such a small team I think with a lot of Founders in the audience they may be

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wondering you know how to be effective with a within a small team working with limited human resources to actually have an impact so maybe we can draw that out a little bit throughout the throughout the night Loris same questions to you good any R first of all thank you for being here thank you for having me can you hear me good yes so for Save the dark let's start there who is familiar with save the dunk no one awesome we are an Italian aware brand we are a brand with a commitment the name

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is sa at all we are 100% animal free and mostly we are a sustainable band with the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030 we had a b core so we do a lot of good but not just sell awesome product how got how I got into marketing so I'm a I'm a computer science major but I quickly decide I'm from Milan I'm from the capital offish and I quickly decided what I want to do what I didn't want to do was coding I found a boing and then I want probably I made a mistake back then you know probably I could have made a

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lot more money but in war class but I decided that that's not what I want to do and I started working in the fashion industry I started working in sales and then from there I also decided that I don't have the stamina to be a Salesman you know it's great it's fantastic I want to do other things and the life brought me to to experience marketing the life brought me to experience uh merchandising operation working in a store I did everything I could do to really learn every aspect of

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of the business and that's what brought me you know and I sorry and I work in big company I work in Fortune 500 I work for P I work for A6 I work working very small company like I'm jamming and I actually decided that I like small company and that's I like the startup I like the that roll up your sleeve and uh you know motivate your team and build things is what I'm C for right if I get an our call from at Fortune 500 probably say no I'm going to end out my career to save the dark um that brought me all the

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experience brought me in the position where I'm now managing and I have managed for the last uh uh 10 years teams I managed marketing teams I manag retail teams I manage e-commerce team really give me the opportunity to be the dumbest guy in the room and to hire people that can lead that can bring Innovation they can bring idea to the table and they can help us to to grow and uh and uh bring save the duck at the moment to to the next to the next thre I think we're all Builders here I think

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that's what Shopify ethos is so resonate with that by the way uh um save the duck has a beautiful Showroom on Broadway um so look it up you know I I highly recommend going there the product is beautiful um last but not least we have orle take it away same same uh question sure um so uh I share your experience of not having studied marketing um I didn't think I wanted to go into marketing I studied semiotics um and narrative Theory um very esoteric I thought I was going to be a filmmaker um or a writer I wanted

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to write screenplays um and um spent a number of years post College um not doing that not doing really anything um related to uh any kind of Tri career trajectory um I lived in Prague and taught English and it was wonderful um and then um ended up Landing um back here in New York where I grew up um in advertising as I started as a copywriter in ad agencies actually um and very quickly pivoted to content strategy um spent the next uh dozen years or so uh working in ad agencies as you mentioned I worked at most of that time at 360i

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which is was a wonderful agency um and um you know in that time I was extremely fortunate to um contribute to the growth of all sorts of incredible brands cocacola Oreo HBO um gosh per noard so absolute um Target un name it I mean really like it was it was a dream we worked on all sorts of incredible um creative work that I'm sure you all have seen um and experienced in in your lives over the years um after a while um I started to feel um frustrated about how little I was was able to impact the

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actual businesses uh that I was touching a lot of really fun work um impactful in sort of culture um but I was really craving to get to sort of like fly closer to the Sun of a business um and so um I left the agency world and um pivoted to work on the brand side you mentioned I spent a little bit of time at Verizon um which was a wonderful experience um but really um felt like I was craving a smaller brand experience um and so I have been at Heyday since um September so still pretty new um Heyday

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is a competitor at globar um so um so we do very very similar things we are a um facial Studio we have over 30 locations across the country we started here in New York we have five locations in New York um a number of locations in LA and then uh over the last um two years or so we've expanded pretty rapidly you can find us all across the country with more locations opening soon um and what am I excited about in 2024 um I am excited to sort of Usher in a new era of growth for the brand um we've expanded rapidly in terms of our

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footprint um and I think now is the time for us to really solidify what our brand means um skincare has uh seen an incredible Evolution over the past um couple of years uh we've been around for almost eight years and um we've provided an incredible service and now I think the sort of world is catching up to us in terms of people's interest in facials as a core component of skincare um and I'm excited about what that means for the future of he day awesome okay on that note um I want to dive right into the

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meat and bones because this first question is kind of like on that on that point um so let's discuss priorities it's now February geez um but still beginning of the year so I'm sure you guys have just gone through you know annual planning and Road mapping and figuring out what the what the targets are for the year um if you could explain a little bit about how you went about that with your teams like where do you start how do you uh you know finalize a line Etc and then how are you thinking

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about balancing efficiency which you know we could call profitability uh with Topline growth which is kind of like a prevalent theme uh of the time even though it it kind of always is a through line it's very prevalent on LinkedIn and Twitter right now um so I'll actually just start with you early um and yeah and so how did you do that and when when did you start doing this exercise by the way uh well I just joined Heyday in September so uh definitely spent um a couple of months kind of getting my feet

00:16:02 - 00:17:09

wet um and figuring out you know where all the bodies are buried and what's going on within the company and and and all of that stuff um but you know we started it pretty much immediately you know you're planning for 2024 in like octo you know September October if you don't have your plans set by the end of the year um I'm just kidding we did not have our plans set by the end of the year we're still talking about it you're still doing it um and you're constantly revisiting it um and figuring out you

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know where you are where you plan to be where you are now how do you you know how do you adjust um based on the realities on the ground um but yeah I mean I think that um it's a partnership between operations finance and marketing depending on your business sales um and all three um sort of Partners need to come together and develop goals that are attainable um and you know and also going to drive the business um and it's really a constant process we we meet every single week we're constantly

00:17:17 - 00:18:58

reviewing the state of the business and adjusting our plans accordingly um I think to the question of balancing efficiency with Topline growth um I I think it's sort of like a FAL economy um in my mind you know people spend a lot of time thinking about CAC right what is the cost of us acquiring ex customer um and not enough time um talking about what is the cost of US retaining the customer or like how can we create the best in our case client experience that you know our lifetime value with each client is maximized you

00:18:07 - 00:19:20

know you can have a $50 C but if your lifetime value is only $100 like it's not going to be it's not going to be efficient so um I think like you know you can only optimize your C so much for us really the priority is making sure that our product is really solid our communication with our existing clients are really solid that they are recommending us to their friends and we have all the mechanisms in place for them to do so so optimizing like the the experience and like the entire ecosystem

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around the experience is um really the path to profitability more than it is more than like the Topline growth is obviously you you know you do have to keep bringing people in but like the right kind of people who are going to stay with you for the Long Haul yeah so I think it's you know I don't always think it's like a useful conversation um to have around like that balance and if I could just bold this on and this will apply to you to you guys as well what because as Founders there are a lot of

00:19:13 - 00:20:11

metrics that you can monitor on a daily basis on a weekly basis there could seem like you know infinite amount um but really it it at the end of the day it can be quite simple so I just wanted to bolt on on a daily or weekly basis what are those Northstar metrics that you're looking at uh I'm I'm posing this to you as well um yeah I'll just keep talking um but but then I want you guys to answer this too um to make sure that you're on track yeah I mean well obviously it's appointments for us we're

00:19:41 - 00:20:42

you know our 95% of our revenue is people coming in and booking and you know having facial appointments in our shops and you we have a lot of shops so you've got to look at like what is the what is the appointment count and what and then breaking that down like how many how many of those are members how many of those are returning clients what is the average order value and so we're those are the metrics that we're that we're looking at it's a pretty simple yep in in a way some cohorting and and

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aob yeah yeah so I'm jealous of this two marketer because they work in the hotest industry which is the beauty industry in the moment so super jealous of you on the other hand we work on a fiscal year that ends March 31st so we are really actually just started our planning for 2024 you know and for us planning it's really looking at what are not just the growth but also what are the priority of the brand in terms of channel uh what differentiate us from their business we also have a solid all sale part of it

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retail is pretty new to us we only have seven store Global only one in the states but we have a grow plan that is pretty significant on that side so there's really Channel diversification and where we going to invest the money in which partner in all sale are we going to bet are the best partner for us to grow where are we going to expand stores and that dictate geographically are we going to invest uh more of our marketing money and obviously there is always the e-commerce business uh part of our

00:21:21 - 00:22:22

business that you know is changing so much right now that we don't know what the we're going to do s right now already we're throwing everything in the air and try to figure it out how to do it we're trying to steal a page of what this women are doing and the beauty industry doing it because they're doing it quite well we don't know if it works if it's going to work for uh for uh a brand like ours and in terms in terms of growth and profitability I totally agree with that

00:21:52 - 00:23:00

the lifetime value very difficult for us we are a brand that we're trying trying to actually sell you less we from brand that we are trying because of our commitment to become a carbon neutral you know I always say what is the only product that doesn't pollute the one that is not made right even if we do recycle we do recyclable we doing amazing things in terms of prodct evolution to limit the carbon footprint there is always a carbon footprint so it's a little bit opposite it's a little

00:22:26 - 00:23:39

bit absurd for us to say hey buy more but we want to be carbon neutral and so it is probably know consumer lifetime value it is something that we look at it but it's how we bring more customer is right now to to know about what we do and not just appreciate the product because they walk into an aam and they see a beautiful jacket at the right price point with a funny duck on his s but really understand what's behind really understand that you're buying not just just in a you buy into a brand that is

00:23:03 - 00:24:08

doing something amazing for the planet for the future and and all of that so you just told us that you have swimwear you have outerwear you have sweaters and and things like that how do you balance thinking about product expansion so like you're taking maybe more of the share of a person's wardrobe one person uh and lifetime value that way versus capturing more of your total add that that is exactly what what we're trying to do so if we looking at that person and appreciate that jacket that

00:23:35 - 00:24:47

that bought for us how do we adding more items that they can lay in in their wardrobe instead of trying to sell them another jacket right it's that too but the problem with that is it's investment heavy right to versus it's a it's development investment have in terms of time in terms of supply chain you know we we think about this too again going back to sustainability we work with a very uh small pool of factory because we need to make sure them too do everything correctly not just in terms of minimum

00:24:11 - 00:25:20

wage not just in terms of working hour everything do they filter the water what they do with uh the leftover scrap material that is that are on the floor what they you know it's so every time that we want to do swimwear because we told that was a cool thing to do and we told our customer will appreciate that know sourcing a factory takes 18 months to make sure that that factory is up to standard and they you know they they do what they preach they're not just showing you a beautiful Factory and then

00:24:46 - 00:25:47

everything else is produced in a sister Factory a few few kilometers away and a few miles away sorry sometimes I get that confused yeah yeah thank you before we move on to K definitely want want to hear your answer I think it's just interesting if you're very early stage to just think about once you reach a certain level whether that's you know seven8 figure hump in in Revenue like what happens then you know because you run into these challenges and it takes a lot of planning it takes

00:25:16 - 00:26:30

a lot of capital uh to start to expand so I think it's an interesting problem can I add one thing to that absolutely you know there is a lot of times that we are living money on the table we say no to a an amazing opportunity that will only bring money to the shareholder will not bring an advancement to our pursuit of becoming a sustainable brand so that you know and that is all part of TW of the planning of next year that we we are doing you know it it is very important for us awesome I'm going to skip the last

00:25:54 - 00:27:03

question because I'm literally looking at the exact same metrics every day that or's look at because the businesses are so similar what I'll also say is that I'm very new to globar I'm on my fifth week right now so I have largely missed the 2024 planning process it's not done yet um we I was basically handed company objectives and okrs for the year does everybody here know what okrs are stands for objectives and key results it's essentially a template to follow for goal setting um so we have our company

00:26:28 - 00:27:33

level okrs for the year that basically lays out what do we have to do across all these different areas of the business to hit our financial targets um the process we're going through right now is taking those objectives and key results and translating those into Department level okrs so I'm saying from a marketing perspective how do I help us achieve X in revenue or reduce member turn by x% um we're also looking at things like customer experience which I think or mened to tracking NPS whether

00:27:00 - 00:28:02

that's NPS around total experience in the studio or specific to the esthe that our client saw for her facial so that's something we're working through right now and then largely on the topic of balancing efficiency with Topline growth I would say something that really encouraged me actually to join globar in the first place is because I think the business was built in such a sustainable and really smart way a lot of that is due to Scrappy on the team we can be quite cheap about things and like I

00:27:32 - 00:28:32

think it's actually like quite a positive thing but everyone on the marketing team is doing effectively everything there is nothing um that somebody's going to say no to or feels like they're too good for and so that means that my social coordinator and I are responding to Instagram DMS all weekend long and on week nights it means that I'm copyrighting our emails and building them in Photoshop it means that our marketing manager is filming and producing and editing all of our Instagram ad content herself so I think

00:28:01 - 00:28:56

that scrappiness built into the culture of the company has been really essential and I hope that we can maintain that as the company grows in Scales too awesome cool I I know you just been I'm going to start with Loris on this one um just because you guys are a little bit newer at your companies but maybe you can apply what you've learned from your past companies into uh what you're doing in Heyday and globar respectively so what marketing initiatives have driven the most impact for you in the past two

00:28:29 - 00:29:35

years and how are you doubling down on those in 24 and maybe another thing to add here is is there a platform a channel a strategy that you feel like is underutilized Right Now by a lot of brands that you want to capitalize on maybe maybe not so I can tell you what has worked in the last two years as I said before we don't know what's going to work in the next year and beyond that you're trying to figure that out now so obviously like everyone influencer has been key partnering with the right

00:29:01 - 00:30:19

influencer has been key for us and we took a what we call a circular approach instead of picking you know the king Kardashian of the situation and trying to spread the message from a big influencer out to the to the rest of the world we chose tons of smaller influencer on the out Circle and try to spread in the message that way that was for us was very one cost efficient two was unfortunately very labor for our team because again you have to you have to deal with hundreds of personality you have to deal with hundreds of people you

00:29:41 - 00:30:59

tell them don't do that sure they do that you have to deal with uh a lot of adversity and a lot of logistic to to make that happen but for us was very was very successful right was very successful to create that sensor Community everyone talks about Community what community is in reality is you know it's still really to be discovered and uh and uh and that in connection to the old digital you know the all Facebook media me did you find that you could just seed product for for and you didn't have to

00:30:20 - 00:31:37

pay for a post you could just send them the product for the most part we so if we're looking at 100 post that do in a in a week uh 80 of them are just a gift the product and 20 20 is people that we pay and people that we we have longer longer relationship got him you know something that we are really trying to figure it out for 2024 it's now what we're doubling that what we're changing and we we think is the time to go back to to Brand ambassadors is the time to go back in the street it's the time to to go back

00:30:58 - 00:32:30

with uh experience in activation that are not digital that are real and people can experience what that means for us we have few ideas but nothing concrete yet yeah I will 100% Echo those sentiments around um the I mean obviously you know paid digital has been a boon to all kinds of businesses for a long time and it does continue to be sort of a baseline necessary evil in a way um however I think that um it's been a little bit of a red herring over the past decade for a lot of a lot of businesses and I agree that you know we

00:31:44 - 00:33:11

we are really doubling down our investment on community building advocacy ambassadorship um in all of its forms and um experiential offline marketing um you know we're thinking about um out of home and you know experiences and just ways for people to engage with our brand in more meaningful ways um yeah we've seen you know I I think you know we we grew a lot over the past couple of years um we expanded our footprint and we have an incredible in shop experience I think that um with that expansion uh

00:32:27 - 00:33:29

we put a lot of money into PID digital and some of them panned out I think a lot of it was probably wasted um and you know well there's always that there's that you know famous saying right 50% of my marketing works I just don't know what 50% um and that is 100% true it's an it's an art you're constantly pulling levers up and down um and for 2024 we're definitely thinking more about some of the things that you said as well cool Kade maybe are are you applying anything

00:32:58 - 00:34:13

oh Loris may add something for all of you I mean very important right now is to take your consumer and make them your biggest and brand Advocate how you've realize why you have a VIP the people that come every week to do the facial and have them talk to their Community you make them build your branch for you there's literally no substitute that word of M yeah 100% um in addition to every thing these two guys just said really hyper local community marketing efforts have been super important for globar given

00:33:36 - 00:34:44

that we are largely a brick-and-mortar business and so that means that with every new studio opening um we are activating within a certain radius around that location so we are creating lists of 100 plus influencers in that area and conducting Outreach we are contacting like-minded brand Partners in local businesses to host popups and conduct mini facials or bring the business owners into studio so they're spreading Word of Mouth for us we are ourselves going around and putting hundreds of Flyers up which is actually

00:34:10 - 00:35:10

what globar did for their very first Studio opening in Tribeca in 2019 with grab Ando promo codes so a lot of those things have been really effective and are also like very cost effective which is great and so we'll have to figure out how to test and scale that as we open many new Studios this year and also into new markets but it's been something that's really successful and I imagine we will be doubling down on in 2024 cool do you have any contrarian perspectives of the marketing ecosystem in

00:34:39 - 00:35:40

2024 yeah so I I don't know how contrarian this actually is um and it's advice maybe I wish I took when I was earlier in my career starting in consumer marketing but I would argue like don't spend money on marketing especially growth marketing until you're really good at acquiring your customers organically um I hear people in the audience saying yes and nodding um organic social is really amazing for this right now community building is really amazing for this I'll share a very quick story I have a very good

00:35:10 - 00:36:06

friend who I met at my second job at a college at well and good actually who knew that she wanted to start a brand in the home decor space she started posting on Tik Tok about two years ago lifestyle content Wellness content home decor content and over that span of two years like learn pretty quickly what type of cont content was resonating what was getting views what was getting engagement she built an audience of 30,000 followers on Tik Tok 20,000 on Instagram launched her store actually on Shopify about 6 months ago it wasn't an

00:35:38 - 00:36:42

overnight success because she still had to learn how did she turn this audience into actually paying customers for her product um but it's been growing very very quickly and like is basically exploding now she's been featured in architectural digest and who what where hasn't spent a single Dollar on marketing on press on influencers on Facebook ads um so it's really impressive and I think there's a lesson there to be taken for all types of Brands both big and small it's a great

00:36:09 - 00:37:30

perspective lordes can you f Square your fair that square so before spending any money really figure it out what is that you want out tell to your consumer what is your brand voice what is your aesthetic and you know when you have that figured out then try different things without changing that message without being um inauthentic thank you for being my helper over here being inauthentic just don't follow the trend just because you know that is the coolest song to be on to have it as a background or on Tik Tok if that doesn't

00:36:50 - 00:38:03

resonate with what your brand stands for don't try to be just follow the others find your voice your aesthetic your way of telling this your story that is important for for you yeah I mean I don't know that I have that much to add I agree with everything you guys said I think the the point about finding your story um and what your brand stands for and articulating that in a really clear and simple and concise way is um often overlooked you know people have a logo people might have like a mission or like

00:37:27 - 00:38:40

here are my products and my products are really great but you know what is the story that you want people to believe about your brand what do you want to be telling it's um it takes work it takes a lot of deliberation you have to be really intentional um I started actually by saying I studied semiotics and narrative Theory and you know did not do so with the intention of using that for marketing or advertising but it had has um been probably the single best thing I could have done as an entry point into

00:38:03 - 00:39:10

this industry because I really understand and believe in the importance of really clear and compelling storytelling these things don't just happen um narratives are built intentionally and over time you read a great book it that's what it's doing and that is what your brand should be doing as well and then only then can you really have true brand Advocates you know build community um because you have a real story to tell yeah you have to be patient in that Pursuit there's the time

00:38:36 - 00:39:35

is just the inevitable element um I want to pause and just say that we were we're going to have a Q&A at the end of this for about like 15 minutes so you can think of a question and we'll be calling on people um so I just wanted to pause and just say that so you can you can prepare um there we have a we have a bunch of questions I might skip over a few just so so that we can hit you know what I think is best and have enough time um this one I definitely want to touch on so you know creating a Content

00:39:06 - 00:40:08

engine and a steady stream of content to your points about brand and even when it comes to Performance Marketing It's a Grind you know I don't think anyone uh is going to lie about that so how do your teams plan and produce content for the quarter and how do you balance you know this very um on brand or you could even say like higher fidelity creative with more direct response Performance Marketing creative and we could just go down the line uh I don't know that there really has to be much of a much of a

00:39:37 - 00:40:55

difference um I don't well I don't think about it that way at least I think the highly produced content can be great at performance and some of the more um sort of low-fi kind of off the cuff socially native kind of content can be great at Brand building thing um so we really do a mix of both um as uh you know we're not quite as as small and Scrappy as Globe are we have a few more folks on the team and but we're still a pretty uh new and fresh brand with limited budgets and so we don't have millions of dollars

00:40:16 - 00:41:32

to make highly produced ads all the time um so we do really really really intentional about our content shoots um and ensure that we when we C when we capture when we're investing in um a photo or a video shoot we're doing so um with like a really solid plan in mind and that content has to last us all year or for two or three years and so we do it in a way that can be cut you know in a million different ways and and resliced um we make sure that it's not like sort of on Trend so to speak

00:40:55 - 00:42:17

because those Trends are going to go out of style um so when we do invest in photo shoots or video shoots we we we do it with that kind of intentionality and then we constantly are we're also taking lowii content on those shoots to be used you know in a more sort of um regular or off the cuff kind of way um are you planning that out quarterly I'm just curious for myself quarterly monthly annually um those bigger shoots the bigger shoots probably like twice a year at most um at most maybe even once a year

00:41:36 - 00:42:42

um depending um but then we're constantly doing like little shoots here and there um like a lot scrappier but then you'll extend the content of the bigger shoots for a long tale a very long time yeah that's cool yeah well Loris I'm sure it's different for you being in fashion maybe so speak to that yeah I mean Weis is our business you know we have a spring summer and a full winter collection so we tend to produce a brand content for every new season that it's very much Inspire right

00:42:09 - 00:43:25

where the design team the ver team and come up with as the team of the collection you know whatever they decide to be Montaine earing escaping from the city whatever those I don't know where they get those ideas and so we we we tend to hire creative agency to help us really set the tone on what is the season how we tell the seasonal story while we continue to talk about all the other great stuff that I said about the brand but then you know then on a monthly base we set aside budget for monthly quick very easy production that

00:42:47 - 00:44:03

we do internally that we do you know one of the nice thing that we did by work with all those influencer tons of them are amazing creators they might don't have a great following right but working with them directly we are able to quickly use their skill to produce highly high quality uh content that we can use in Social that we can use in email that we can use in many other form so really being flexible being seasonally relevant being you know having the opportunity monly to create things because you know it's September

00:43:25 - 00:44:26

has been October has been very warm so let's not push the Abby Park and then jary comes and uh all over the sudden we got all snow so let's move quickly and push that product as more more season appropriate we have to leave that that flexibility yeah yeah y Kate do do do you have a similar approach to Orly or do you approach things differently from a Content perspective so we don't plan out content very far in advance at least not right now um we don't change out our paid ad creative very frequently our

00:43:56 - 00:44:51

advertis ing budgets are not huge and so what's working for us we just kind of keep it running and then refresh as needed we are building out our first ever year-long social media strategy right now which is very exciting for a number of reasons part of that work will be new content pillars by platform so we're looking at Instagram Tik Tok and Linkedin for the year and so once we have that done we also have a highle marketing calendar for the first half of the year it should be pretty easy for a

00:44:24 - 00:45:24

social coordinator to take the content pillars take the high level marketing Cal calendar and build out the organic social calendar for the upcoming month say um but that said I think we still try to leave a lot of space in that to hop on trending content coming from Tik Tok um memes something like what come came out of the Grammys the other night um and I will also say that in January we've been playing it very fast and loose because we just haven't had a plan in place and it's been a lot of fun for

00:44:54 - 00:45:49

the team and it's actually been working extremely well our engagement on Instagram is up over 100% compared to December without a plan in place so I say that to all of you who are starting your own Brands and companies you don't need a Content calendar like you can just have fun with it I would just make sure that you're posting consistently too do you have one person that's hopping on those meme Trends and we have one person that's creating the content but there's three of us in marketing

00:45:22 - 00:46:17

there's a number of like young people on the team in general so an idea could come from anywhere at the company um and it typically ends up being a collaboration but it's a very fun process for everyone which has been great that's awesome um Okay cool so you each manage your own brick-and mortar stores as well as e-commerce even though it may be you know not a huge part of the pie how do you think about offline versus online um marketing initiatives and I'll just start with you Kate yeah I

00:45:49 - 00:46:42

don't know that I have a ton to probably add to this topic I think you might have more here because the majority the large majority of our business today is Services done in brick and mortar um product sales we also sell product in stores and also online that is mainly for convenience of our members who maybe have run out of one of their favorite skincare products need to restock and they're not coming back in studio or theyve moved away so that's essentially like the rationale behind why that

00:46:16 - 00:47:08

exists today and again that could change in the future um I think when it comes to analyzing marketing initiatives we just try to be really clear with ourselves about why we're doing something before we go and do it so we can actually measure performance against that goal when we wrap up so we're constantly asking ourselves like what's the purpose of this is it to make sure members are using their month monthly V voucher for their facials in come in studio is it to bring in net new clients

00:46:42 - 00:47:55

to get their first phasal with glowbar is it to convert um firsttime clients to membership after their first appointment uh etc etc so trying to be really intentional with your goal up front has been helpful cool oh that's an interesting way so we we really are focusing on dividing cord of uh where we acquire the customer and we really treating them differently depending if it's a customer that we acquired online or it's a customer that we acquired at our store because we know that they their

00:47:18 - 00:48:28

expectation of their first introduction on the brand is completely different think about if you walk into a store somebody's there somebody's St you the St the brand you come up with just a better understanding of what what we do and how we do it and why we do it online there is uh uh less of that education now there are some amazing tool that you can start incorporating videos and other like that to really tell that story but it's never as personal so while we're concentrated really on the e-commerce

00:47:52 - 00:49:09

consumer to to constantly REM them the story of the brand we are concentrating on the consumer that we acquir in store to really bring them back and to experience the store again and to experience that uh that uh atmosphere and that enjoyment that the store does we are also really focusing on a lot of right now a lot of activation that are on the street a lot of artificial that are not digital because we really want to build that trust in our store build the trust on the Bricker M more than we do we do

00:48:32 - 00:49:42

online I don't know that is uh of he to anyone maybe a little confusing but uh how I think about offline versus online performances right now we're thinking a lot more about offline right now we really focus on figuring out what offlines means and you know and offline is not just around our store offline is what can we do in in into an arum right what can we do in partnership with any of our all sale to create the momentum to create that incredible experience that people will talk about people will remember people

00:49:07 - 00:50:22

say oh that was cool that was new that was an amazing things I learned something and really so those are moment that will stay with the consumer those are moment that the consumer will talk about it again going back to what I said before making your consumer your first brand Advocate these are all things that very very important yeah yeah um yes you know 90% of our Revenue comes from people 95% uh comes from people um getting facials at in the store location so um the brick-and mortar experience is

00:49:44 - 00:51:03

probably the most important asset that we have um as our brand for our business that said a huge number of people but you know we're not an e-commerce brand we do sell products online as well um but you know a huge number of people are booking their appointments online so there is um a very significant digital component to the in store experience and so that um that user experience so to speak online on our website and all the different touch points where people are engaging with our brand digitally is

00:50:24 - 00:51:34

really really critical um we have to tell our Brand Story in a compelling way um digitally in addition to the Bricker it's to to me it's it's one holistic experience and we try to think about it um on like a Continuum so to speak right we have a the client is really at the center and the client experience and we know that that client is experiencing our brand uh both in real life and with you know when she sits down in the chair with her conversations with s ition and her experience with the service that

00:50:58 - 00:51:58

she's getting um and then when she goes online to book her next appointment um or Explore More um you know we have an app as well um and so that's a really immersive client experience so for our like most deeply engaged members and clients and so really is sort of a a holistic um Brand Story that we're telling across all of those touch points there's so much that we could tab into there but I in the interest of time I'm going to keep it moving and maybe someone ask questions about that I'm

00:51:29 - 00:52:32

going to skip the seasonality question luris you're off the hook um okay great if you could give yourself one piece of advice as someone getting started in marketing what would it be and why and maybe this will be the last question will open it up for Q&A and then if there's not enough answers they have a few more questions too so orley why don't you kick this one off just one um just one piece of advice I you know the I so like probably most people in this room I kind of grew up in maybe

00:52:00 - 00:53:38

not like when I was a kid but like in my professional career in my career in in marketing and advertising I grew up in digital um spent you know the really like the for my formative years in his industry in Social and search and digital overall and um I did not really understand in innately the importance of like boots on the ground pavement pounding um you know real life experiences Word of Mouth community building until you know quite late in my career um I was just like oh okay yeah sure um you know be at this event haha

00:52:49 - 00:54:09

um but you know really like the advice that I would give is like there is there is no sub substitute for a face-to-face interaction with your with your customer understanding who that person is getting the feedback from them um and and then sort of passing that experience along from person to person to person absolutely no substitute for it 100% agree networking is the most important thing that you do but my the of advis is do everything in your company understand our operation Works understand what sales needs understand

00:53:29 - 00:54:51

what retail team needs understand how finance things because only if you have all of this you can make a plan that actually works because you can draw a fantastic plan but that operation say I can get that jacket to that c to that influence any time I can make that happen and so if you know all of it you'll really be able to make make a a plan that will be 100% successful 100% agree with the advice from these two what I wish I knew when I was starting out in consumer marketing so a bit of background my first role directly in a

00:54:10 - 00:55:11

brand was at a very very small beverage brand and I was the first full-time hire and the only person in marketing there I had no idea what I was doing because I was previously in media and AD sales and integrated marketing in that world so had no idea what was doing I spent a lot of time networking talking to Old co-workers friends acquaintances that also worked in marketing at a brand directly um but what I found is that not all of the advice or conversations I had there were actually that helpful in

00:54:41 - 00:55:33

terms of helping me make decisions and unblock myself from challenges that I was facing so as an example I had talked to the head of influencer marketing at a very large hundred million doll brand that has a team underneath her what she's doing for influence of marketing and what she might advise for me to do for influencer marketing is going to be very different than what I can actually do with no support and no budget with a brand that has zero awareness so all of that to say because I feel like some of

00:55:07 - 00:56:03

you here might relate to that like you're trying to find people to take advice from like look for people whether informal or informal like mentorship from somebody who has experienced not only doing what you're doing but ideally at a company of a similar size in stage and also a similar industry and just be thoughtful about the advice you're seeking from people and where they're coming from versus where you sit that's great advice excellent from all three of you so kind of like don't take every

00:55:34 - 00:56:32

perspective count it as equal yeah filter it because every company's a little bit different every company's at a different stage Etc um be more collaborative and integrated with each department at the company that's huge especially marketing Finance supply chain like these things work together um we need to consider one another uh and then and then prioritize boots on the ground Community offline stuff stuff that doesn't necessarily scale um but is but is super important for growing the

00:56:03 - 00:57:08

brand um actually pieces of advice okay so I'm going to open it up for uh some a AMA and Q&A and I'll just start your hand was up real fast so I'm going to go the perfect so I'm actually going to repeat all of the questions by the way this is one that I skipped over I'm so glad you asked this um how do you forecast and plan for seasonality in your business what you doing during those off off season times we were joking I said we we spell less we try to make more money it is in reality what we try to do

00:56:38 - 00:57:46

we're trying to maximize the investment more so we when we looking at CAC we're trying to improve and our CAC to be even higher than what we do in uh in in the winter season when our product is more relevant and but the other thing that we really doing is expand our prodct portfolio right so introducing new category introducing category that are at less that less seasonal in trying to really push those category to tell the story tell the story of the brand you know we launch swimwear it's all 100%

00:57:12 - 00:58:20

made with recy called ghost net everybody knows what ghost Nets are right all those fishing nets that are band them in the in the ocean because they're no longer using useful and but they are for all the sea animals so we're trying to gole make make swim wear using those so we're trying always to tell the star introducing new product that's what we really would do to create an over an an overall seasonal business and it Focus the investment on the new product category right we're not talking

00:57:45 - 00:58:55

about uh jacket in in uh in ail we're talking about swimwear we're talking about atleisure we're talking about other initiative that we doing still with a strong uh um messaging around the brand thank you so just to repeat the question so I think um how do you analyze the performance of maybe a macro influencer that has a lot of followers versus a micro infu influencer who has less followers how do you analyze like The Impressions that they're getting um versus actual conversions Revenue in the

00:58:21 - 00:59:22

door so how would you how would you tackle that how does make money how does make money I'm also taking this question is like how does your brand social platforms how do you take those people and convert them into customers too so this also might be a bit of a controversial take I don't see Instagram or Tik Tok for example as a conversion driving platform I see it potentially yes awareness generating but maybe leads driving if you can bring those people into your ecosystem in a really thoughtful way so I think number one

00:58:51 - 00:59:48

like are people engaging with your content are they commenting are they liking like that is a great first sign um we're trying to be a little bit less directly promotional on Instagram because it's not resonating with people I think the place to do that typically ends up being in stories where you can link them to your website um so I think trying something like collecting emails through social media something that feels a little bit like lighter touch and warmer than sending them directly to

00:59:20 - 01:00:14

a product linked to purchase tends to be a good idea there's also things that you can do when you start to spend on growth marketing um you can also boost posts on Instagram to reach more people or a similar audience and try to generate leads from that so that's where I would start but I don't see Instagram or Tik Tok as themselves as conversion driving platforms Loris I want to hear your perspective on this too that's a great that's a great uh perspective just because you talked about the circle

00:59:47 - 01:00:51

approach in the beginning so you've had a lot of uh experien seating product how would you yeah it feels like a word of mouth similar channel to me and not so much like an email where you're like click this link and buy this product yeah that that is exatic correct I mean we we are using Instagram right now especially with the fact it's less and less measurable yeah everything is like okay you're looking at at a meta platform and is those data is that c is that uh Ros believable or not we don't

01:00:20 - 01:01:21

know we don't know they don't know either right so we really using Instagram to to build the community to spread the message to build the brand we are we using more as a top Final Approach and not that it Ms as a lower fanel because it's it's just very difficult I think I think you have the same yeah the other thing I would say too is in general I don't think enough emphasis is placed on Community Management and customer service Instagram is a really great place one of the very few places where you have the

01:00:50 - 01:01:50

opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with somebody and a potential customer of your your brand and so make sure that whoever is doing that is integrated closely with your marketing team they're representing your brand voice um you can talk to them in a way that feels human and personal but also answers a question they have and potentially that person will come in as a customer one day so I think that's really important too well done okay all the way in the back with the hat so I just repeat that just for

01:01:21 - 01:02:23

the people who are watching this afterward so how do you prevent burnout as you scale you're hiring more people you're in a place of leadership you don't necessarily want to expect everyone to be working nights weekends Etc in a very Scrappy Scrappy environment um and then also as a leader when do you decide to actually scale your team up versus keeping it super lean and small yeah I think that's a really good question so thank you I have no formal process around this today and I'm sure that will change in the future

01:01:51 - 01:02:45

I just stay really close to the team and every week and our weekly one-on ones we're talking about this exact thing I'm I'm asking them like how is your bandwidth feeling how how are Instagram DMS feeling in terms of inbound quantity that you're getting like how much time are you spending on the weekends how much time are you spending on week nights can I help you like just because I'm in a leadership position does not mean that I'm above responding to people on Instagram DMS or responding to

01:02:18 - 01:03:21

customer emails and so I think just making sure you have that open communication with your team I found can go really long way and has been extremely helpful um in as far as figuring out when to hire out it's not to say that we do everything in house um we typically try to bring somebody in first on a freelance basis if we need help somewhere that we cannot tackle internally so a good example of this we're hiring out a freelancer for SEO support right now I don't have experience there it can be quite

01:02:50 - 01:03:45

technical no one on my team has experience there so we're turning to external support support I could spend a lot of money to hire somebody full-time we don't need that yet I haven't even proved out SEO as being something that's impactful for the business and so we're going to start small and then see how that builds I love that approach can uh orley answer this as well you have a bit of a bigger team so how do you structure that those responsibilities yeah I think um you know we're fortunate to be at a

01:03:18 - 01:04:37

different stage in our business our marketing team is um if you count this uh C team uh which sits under marketing we're about uh 12 or 13 people um so we um we do have um a structure where um you know it's not all hands- on deck in the same kind of way everyone has their roles and responsibilities and is um but it's still very very collaborative uh with each other um we help each other out um with anything that needs to get done um I agree with the idea of bringing in freelance land support um when you need

01:03:56 - 01:05:15

to scale up or it's very very flexible um allows you to scale up scale down um getting that sort of tactical support in specific subject matter areas that your team may not you know have emically um but I I really think it's um a matter of sizing up where your business is at the moment if you have a huge amount of consumer interest and like too many people dming you you know to when you need to you need to hire somebody to address that and to engage with those people in order to grow your business um I think sometimes

01:04:36 - 01:05:43

staying too small and too Scrappy will end up hindering your ability to grow because you just don't have the resources to capture the opportunity that's out there and so I think it's you know to some extent um like an opportunity cost um and you have to um you have to evaluate that and where your business the position that your business is in at that moment that's super true um you yeah when when people are getting stretched super thin for too long then you need you probably need to hire but I

01:05:10 - 01:06:20

also like the perspective of you know start small augment in a more temporary way experiment see what works before just hiring a net new person you know and and maybe that person needs to get cut after you know a few months because you haven't proven that out like that's just a harsh reality um cool all the way over there so for Loris uh is your supply chain end to end sustainable and how much of your budget goes towards marketing sustainability and and maybe showcasing your supply chain so we

01:05:45 - 01:07:04

wish we had an 100% endtoend sustainability supply chain is is impossible I said before the only the only prodct that is doesn't carbon footprint is one that's ever made so we're trying to offset through other of initiatives uh like bringing water to Island population that don't have water planting tree do many other things to offset some of the things that we cannot uh cut out of our production and our supply chain um such as you know we have to W powerder around we have to you know we

01:06:25 - 01:07:42

produce offshore we need to bring things in and so as much as we trying to use only certain work with only with certain ship and certain company we don't ship anything by air we ship everything by train around the country you know to avoid to to to Really minimize it it's there is still a carbon footprint so the only thing you could do is try to get better and and talk and talk and find new solution it takes takes time effort uh in terms of budget uh it it's 100% you know and everything that we do we

01:07:03 - 01:08:14

always include our B Corp certification we always talk about sustainability we always talk about initiative we always talk about uh Innovation that we do in product to to make them you know recyclable not to come from recycled material uh it's in everything we do it's it's in our DNA you know the mission is threaded throughout everything yeah you have right now to really pay attention because there is a lot of green washing so you have to be mindful that too you know how which word where you're using how you're using

01:07:39 - 01:08:40

certain word because you know you don't want to say we are 100% sustainable we are not we cannot be we we should not make anything to be 100% sustainable all right so thank you all for the questions I just want to respect the Shopify team they have to get out of here like at 8 um so just to wrap up maybe you can catch one of these three on their way out and you can ask your question um two two things I want to leave you with if you go to darker agency.com resources this video will be up there and the

01:08:09 - 01:09:03

previous office hours events are recorded and up there we also do a bunch of other events that are recorded a lot of amazing Keynotes from people in the city and across uh the country marketing uh also my email is Jackson darkam agency.com if you want to ask one of these three a question if you want to ask me a question email me very casual over email I'm sorry we couldn't get to everybody but thank you all for coming out thank you for being so engaged really appreciate it and we're going to be

01:08:36 - 01:08:56

doing more of these in the future thanks [Applause] guys