SPF Drama, Polaroids & Pitch Slaps 👋

This is Marketing ATM, your go-to podcast for growth tips and trends, marketing ideas and industry secrets. It's time to withdraw some cash. Hello. Hello. Welcome back. Okay. What episode is this? This is Season 2, Episode 15. Wow. I know. And I'm going off to Greece soon, so we have to get a lot of episodes done. We have to do them right now. I can't believe you're going to Greece and Italy and London. I know. Damn you. And then Tasmania. Amazing. More to discuss. But how are you? I'm good. You've got a birthday coming up? Well, in three months. Not really. Oh, two months. Two months. Yeah. Well, you're going away. You're leaving me alone for like five weeks. And then we go on a founder's retreat, which will be so exciting. And then it's my birthday, but again, you're going to be leaving me and going away, I think. Look, I haven't booked New York yet, but it's a maybe. But I'm sad to do New York without you. That'll be like... It won't be the same. It'll be sadder for me sitting home alone without you for my birthday. It'll be birthday week for you. You'll be fine. Okay. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. Keeping up with the rich list. How did they get so rich? Rich list. She literally knows everything. We are talking SBF today. Oh my God. Okay. So, Ultraviolet. Oh, what a schmuzzle this whole thing is. Okay. So, how do we begin this? So, Choice. Choice is like a review kind of platform, right? It's like an independent review platform. Of all these different things. You would have seen like Choice, like reviews, don't they do cars and stuff? They do everything. Yeah. So, they analyze certain things and then they help you pick which one is the best in a certain industry. And so, I've never really given any kind of thought to Choice in the past, but now they're like front and center. So, what they did was, I think earlier this year in March, I believe, they ran this whole independent study or test on sunscreens. And some of our favorite brands were included in that, including the Australian like Cancer Council ones, Ultraviolet, Naked Sundays, like a whole bunch of them. I didn't actually see anything to do with Naked Sundays. I was just aware of the Ultraviolet one because that was very publicized by the brand. It was. So, Choice came out and said, so all these sunscreen brands say that they're all 50 plus in their SPF ratings. SPF 50 plus. Yeah. Which, and like regulation in Australia for SPF is really hardcore. In fact, you have to be 60 something in order to call yourself 50 plus. Really? Yeah. It's really hardcore. Okay. Ultraviolet came out and said, Choice has found that we have an SPF rating of four, I think it was, instead of 50 plus. However, that sounds like really bad, but the way that they did their Instagram post made me feel like, nah, they're on top of it. They made it sound like Choice was in the wrong. Yeah. So, you've heard the product, maybe it's been out in the sun for hours. We don't know how they tested it. We run our own testing. Obviously this is concerning and we're on top of it and we're doing all these things. It was the founder's face to camera content and they were going through receipts like we test this over and over and over again. We are absolutely okay. You are safe in our hands and we will continue selling this sunscreen because we know it is good and Choice has been known to not have the right results. That's what they said. Yes. But then the plot twist was that they then came out and said, we've done testing again on our own products and the testing has now returned SPF data of four, sometimes 10, 21, 26, 33, 60, 61 and 64. That's not good enough for us and it isn't good enough for you and they pulled the sunscreen. But also this was the only product that we do with a third party manufacturer and we trusted them and dah, dah, dah, dah. What do you think about this? I feel really sad because Australia, well, not for them, for consumers who, I love Ultraviolet, but it's not that product that's being called into question. It's only one product in their range that's being called into question, but the ripple effect for Ultraviolet is huge because it makes them look at the brand as a whole as if it's sort of untrustworthy, but like hats off to them for tackling this very front facing. I think after their reaction to the choice results, they had no other option than to eat their words a little bit and be like, you know what, we did do independent testing and whoops. Well, they have to be honest, obviously, they can't hide that. But there are people out there who use sunscreen because of cancer related things. Cancer runs in people's families. It's huge in Australia. Skin cancer is massive. Someone has trusted this brand for probably four years just using that sunscreen and now knowing that their sunscreen could have been a four, like an SPF rating of four, it makes me really, really nervous. Yes, it's really sad for the brand and I get it and I do feel for them because their brand sentiment is down the drain for a lot of people, but it's a dangerous industry to go in. You have to make sure it is absolutely perfect. Yeah. And you know what, if we were in America, they'd be facing lawsuits galore. Yes, a lot of action. They are in America. I wonder what's going to happen. But this news is Australian news. It is Australian news, but it's products that they're, I think, retailing in the US. But to be fair, Choice found that even the Cancer Council one, their ones were not meeting the standards. Is that right? Yes. Choice found that Naked Sundays were not meeting the standard and Naked Sundays, as of, I think, a few weeks ago, maybe a week ago, have also pulled one of their products off. Wow. See, I haven't seen... How have Naked Sundays handled the comms around this? They just pulled it off the shelves. Okay. See, that's interesting. That's a completely different reaction to Ultraviolet. Ultraviolet's being way more honest and transparent about it, for sure. You know what? They're the only brand I've seen. I had no idea that the Cancer Council also had a product called into question, saying Naked Sundays. I had no idea any other brand. So then what's the right answer? Do you just fly by under the radar, pull it off the shelves and don't say anything? No, no, no. I think the right move is a transparent move and also a very proactive move to get ahead of it. But by them being transparent, they're getting most of the hate. However, if journalists were to really pick this up and do any kind of research at all, then Naked Sundays would be in trouble because it looks bad if you hide. They have been in articles, but you still haven't heard about it. I just, yeah, I don't know about this transparency thing. I always advocate for it. I think Ultraviolet should have mentioned that it wasn't just then called into question. They should have been like us along with five other Australian SBF brands have all returned results. So obviously, it's almost like the manufacturing process as a whole needs a huge review. Maybe the restrictions and the testing need a review as a whole. There's lots of things to talk about that isn't them, but look, they've taken the angle of ownership and I kind of respect that because that's a hard thing to do. It's going to be really hard for them to come back. But they shouldn't have called into question choice before they've done all of their testing. Because it made choice look like the bad guy. They said physician choice is like, well, this is, you know, nasty, and then it was like, oh, whoops, whoops, we were wrong. What I think I would have done, it would have been really hard as a brand, but I would have stopped selling them when choice came out with that and said, we're actually going to do an independent review ourselves. Yeah. And we'll come back to you with the results. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Damn. All right. Well, anyway, in better news, I've got actually some really good news for Rich List as well, which is Adore Beauty. They do you remember we spoke about there must have been bloody like months and months and months ago, but at that time, they were doing some hundred million or something in rev or 200 million in rev with only a 2 million EBIT or profit of 2 million. They bought a company called IQOO and they're like physical retail shops, but also they manufacture their own skincare and candles and things. Yeah. And you know what? It's so funny you brought this up because I thought about them the other day. Yeah. I was like, I wonder how they're going. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened to me. So I looked it up and IQOO at the time that they bought them, they were doing 8 million in rev. I can't remember. I think it's 8 million in rev and also 2 million in profit. So the same as Adore Beauty. And so Adore Beauty bought them because they wanted more physical retail. They wanted to manufacture their own stuff, white label goods. And they also wanted to kick up their butt in terms of profit. And so I looked at the results and this is what I found. So EBIT or profit, you would call it, jumped 75% to $4 million. So they doubled their profit. This is Adore Beauty. And their customer acquisition costs decreased from $75 to $59. Overall. Overall. Which is amazing. Just for IQOO? No, overall. Okay. Interesting. Overall for Adore Beauty. They were able to cross sell products in IQOO's audience. That and also because I think they open up their own stores. Yeah. So I think their customer acquisition dropped way down because not only are people going in store, but also the reach of content of all of that is reaching more people through the people that visited those stores. And then they don't need to pay as much. You know what though? I bet you they're not factoring in the store rental or fit out costs into customer acquisition costs. No, they're not. They're not. Of course. So if you actually look into the cost of getting a space and retail space up and running and all that kind of stuff, that would have been a huge cost to the business. I wonder how much of a dent that made. Yeah. You kind of just have to, you know, average that out over. I think that's just included on fixed costs. Yeah. Not even thinking about that as customer acquisition. Of course. Of course. But interestingly, marketing. But using it as an acquisition channel. Like a, of course. Of course. There's people walking past and seeing it and going in. I wonder how that works. Yeah. It wouldn't be included in marketing expenses. It would definitely just be fixed. I bet you average order value climbs because people physically, if I'm in a store, I'll spend more than I do online. Yes. And because they're opening it up, they'll also incentivize higher average order values in store as well. But marketing spend dropped from 15% of their overall revenue to 11% as well, which I think is really great. Because they redirected the rest of the spend to fixed costs into getting retail up and running. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So I think the wins of this is they've got a new tiered loyalty program. They have got better promos. They're spending less online with ads, opening new stores, brand acquisition, and basically using iQOO's white labeling and profit to boost their bottom line. They actually grew in profit just by acquiring a business. Love that. But yeah, that's some good news for you. So good. All right. Let's get into highway robbery. Dealing probably isn't the right word here. This store is highway robbery. This is highway f***ing robbery. All right. What is yours for today? I've got such a good one. Then tell me. Whether you ever want to go on Shark Tank or you want to pitch investors, or if you just want to get an elevator pitch really tight, it's so takes practice. You know, you have to really refine it and practice and practice. And there's not many opportunities that you can practice in like a real world context and get feedback. Yeah, I wouldn't do it in front of your friends and family because they're like, well done. It's even worse in front of friends and family. You want someone who has like layers of knowledge that can give the right kind of feedback for you. So I'm recommending a tool that is free for now, but I don't think it's going to be free for long called pitchslap.me. And it's like a humorous but harsh critic on your pitch that's AI led, but it was created by Sarah Jane Curtini, who's the co-founder of Tiny Beans and absolutely knows her stuff when it comes to pitching and investment and building businesses. I tried it out for the new secret business that we're working on and the pitch document. And it was so funny. Basically the tagline for this tool is honest feedback minus the public humiliation, which I love. And that's exactly what it was. So you typed it all in and it was just like, yawn, boring, rephrase this, and copy and paste it from our pitch deck, literally. Oh no. So I was like, you know what? And it wasn't wrong. I was like, yeah, I can see. We could make it more interesting. But not only does it do that, it rewrites it for you. So based on the information you put in there, it goes, here's how you could frame it instead. And how was it? Fantastic. Was it? Really good. So can't recommend that enough. I think everyone should do it, whether you're raising capital or not. It's really good to be able to nail down your elevator pitch so that when you're telling anyone about your business, you can do it in a way that's interesting, that makes people listen. Yeah. That's mine. I really want to use it. I don't think you can, I don't think it's just for businesses who want to have a, like a pitch to investors. It could also be for you when you need to talk about your business on a podcast or if you're answering questions, perhaps you could put all of those commonly asked questions in there with your answer and they could be like, actually, this sounds so dumb. Like why don't you say it in this way instead? Could we do that? Kind of. It structures questions. It's like, tell me what, like a gap in the market you're filling. Why you? Why you as a unique team? But you do get these questions. You do. Yeah. And I feel like that would be awesome for founders as well to get really clear on how they can say it properly and succinctly on podcasts, on stage. Like I really, really believe that that is so useful. I'm actually going to use that. Yeah, try it. It's really fun. I'm a bit nervous about it. That's the thing. No one has to see. It's just great. No one has to see. I love it. I love it. Love it. Okay. Mine is something that people are still sleeping on and I was sleeping on it until last week and I talk about it so much, but I didn't actually put into practice. And mine is TikTok ads, specifically they're smart ads. So it works a lot like Meta Advantage Plus. It's all AI and the only thing you really need to do is put in your budget. You also pick your goal, which I pick conversions or sales, and then you just put in multiple ad creatives. And the ad creatives, you just pick your current TikTok videos, whichever ones you want. But started running them like about a week ago and I love it. So conversions are not high. So one of them is a traffic campaign because I just wanted to test a traffic campaign to see how many people I can get to my landing page and does it actually do anything. Also I wanted engagement on those videos. And the second thing I wanted was the smart campaign, which is a conversions campaign. And that one is just testing conversions. But what I do- That would retarget the traffic. Yes. But it also is going to the right people. So now the comments on my- so obviously I'm B2B, I'm a packaging company, I'm selling boxes. And so it's a very- it can't just go to anybody. It's quite specific to business owners, especially e-commerce business owners. But all the compliments are of Australian business owners. I love that. And like they're actually saying, I'm going to order. I love this. Like, oh, this is- this reminds me I need to get 500 boxes from you. Like all these comments that weren't there before. I have a video that was- that got me, I think, 400 views or something. Now has about 20,000 views with all these amazing Australian business owners who now know that we do boxes. And I've done it on Instagram. I've done Facebook ads. How long ago did you start running the ads? A week ago. Okay. So I reckon like a month in, you'll probably get an idea of how they're converting. Yes. Because also TikTok needs to learn about me and my audience. It's a smart ad ultimately. And it doesn't- it's probably going to people that don't know, like don't need packaging, it's going to start being smarter about it. What about- what happens if you turn the advertising off? Does that organic post that you posted now all of a sudden just keep that engagement? Yes. So it's like boosting a post on Instagram, except with like an advantage plus style AI layer. Well, you can do that with meta ads too, right? Like you can pick an Instagram post to boost, like on- but on the ads manager. And so the engagement stays. As soon as you turn that ad off, though, obviously it's not going to keep on going organically or anything. No. No. But the engagement stays. If anyone was to look back at your organic content- It looks like it's done really, really well. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I highly recommend it. So I'm doing the bare minimum cost. I don't want everyone to think it's like hundreds of dollars a day. My smart campaign, I'm paying $30 a day. Yep. And my other campaign, which I don't know what it's called, I think it's just a regular TikTok campaign, but traffic related, it's also $30 a day. So I'm testing both at the same time to see which one generates better results. I'm going to go away from our podcast recording and do that for number two. For number two, if you don't do TikTok ads by the next time I speak to you- No, it's been on my list. It's been on my list. I'm so upset because- Why didn't you do it for the U.S. too? Desperately. Okay. The U.S. is a different- I know it's a different beast, but I'll run an Australian one and a U.S. one and I'll report back. Please report back. Oh, we went to that TikTok event thing. There's one thing that stood out to me. What? The average age of a TikTok user. Okay. So everyone just needs to guess. I guessed 22, I think, or 23. I don't know what you guessed. Whatever I guessed was right because I won all of the things. Oh, she did. Anyway, for everyone listening, the average age of a TikTok user is 33. So interesting. Yes, because we all think it's so much younger, but I mean, all of my friends are on it and I'm, you know, pretty old. Yeah. And people who post aren't necessarily the people who are watching. I think that's the thing to keep in mind as well. It's like your consumers are probably watching. They're just consuming. They're not necessarily posting and being content creators. Yeah. So when people say to me, oh, I never thought to do TikTok because like my audience is too old. No, your audience is on TikTok. Even if it's less than what it is on Facebook, they are still there and they're consuming. And also because everyone who's targeting that audience doesn't think that they're there. The market is not saturated for ads and for content on TikTok. So go to TikTok, start posting or run an ad, run an ad for $30 a day and tell me, yeah, tell me what you think. Yeah, definitely keep posting organically because then you can reuse all of those posts in ads. Oh, yeah. Love. Ad break. Who have you got? Looks like we're both buying dog food today. Something new. Welcome aboard. This is a call from Amazon to inform you. I have got Annabelle from Clutch Glue. Do you know Clutch Glue? I do. I've met Annabelle. She is a real firecracker. She's amazing. Yes. I think, you know, when you just meet those founders, you're like, oh, you're destined to be successful. You're destined to be expensive. I am destined to be expensive. She is one of those people. She's destined to be successful. I haven't met her, but when I look at her online, I just know she's got the thing. You know, when you just see people and you go, you got it, like there's something about you and you've just got the drive and the smarts to just be something. I think that's her. The reason I like her, sorry, I should be talking about her brand. And I do love the brand. I love the product. But I actually like her more. And what I love about her is she does everything to get brand awareness. Like, you know, she went on Shark Tank. She doesn't need to, right? She needed it for exposure. And it really worked. I mean, she got investment from there, but she got more exposure from there. And then everyone started talking about her. I found out about Kludge initially through TikTok ads and TikTok organic content. She nailed that before ever going on Shark Tank. But that's what I mean. I don't think she needed the money from Shark Tank. I think she is just that extra bit of exposure. You get to see that opportunity. And it is a huge opportunity for exposure. It's risky though, because you don't know how they're going to cut it. No, you don't. But it's still exposure. Yeah. I still think that it is. And it's what you do after Shark Tank, no matter if it's negative or positive, that can make you go crazy or not. Look, I don't mind the whole like pitching thing. I don't mind speaking, but I would be so shit scared to go on Shark Tank. Would you? Yeah. Because I'd be so stressed of getting a negative cut and it making me look like an idiot or something or making me look like, like if there's one number I don't know off the top of my head or something, they could just twist it in a way. Yeah. That's so interesting. It's whether the benefits outweigh that risk, you know, it's sort of just like, well, is the reach genuinely that good that even if it's negative press, it's still positive. A lot of people who've been on it say yes, but the people who say yes, got positive cuts. Interesting. I think I don't care, but also because the judges are like people that I know. So it could work. Yeah, that's true. We know some of the judges. I'd be like, hi. Hello. Do not make me look bad, I will kill you. Well, look, she is amazing. So she went on Shark Tank, okay. I love that she's all about the numbers. She just raised like some massive number. I think it was like 1.5 if I'm not mistaken. Sorry if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure it was that number. I just love the idea of this product because it reminds me of, what's that? Is it Slick Stick? Yes. It reminds me of that because it's a small, easy to distribute, really great for international shipping and distribution. It's really marketable. She painted the formula, I think, too. She did. Yeah. And it's like the first of its kind and like I just feel like that little product that she's got is so powerful and it can go anywhere and she's like getting it everywhere, international, like into distribution, online. She's getting all the exposure. I think she's a very, very clever marketer and it just, I look up to her more than the product itself. I know why she created it and I love that for her, but just her, she's smart. Yeah. She is. She's my little grand crush of the day. Love it. My ad break is a cake company, no surprise from me. I love cakes on Instagram. This is the company called Baked in Space. The reason I love this Instagram account is I found this because someone ordered a cake from them and shared it and all that kind of stuff. It's just old school, like word of mouth marketing at its best. What I like that she's done is she's got really interesting, unique looking cakes, but every cake she makes, she takes a Polaroid picture of the cake in the fridge and then holds the picture of the Polaroid in front of the cake and takes a photo with it. Dude, I'm looking at it now. It's actually adorable. It's so nostalgic and recognizable as hers. Look at the cherries. Oh, I want one. I want one. I want one for your birthday. Well, when you're in New York. Let's not talk about it. I'll be back. I'll be back from New York at some point. We've got to eat. At some point. You know what I like about the way she has done this and look, cake companies and sweets companies, I guess they do this really well. They kind of always have this consistent vibe about the way that they post. So when you see it, you know who it is before you even check the name of the account. And I think that every business needs to do this too. It has to be something consistent about it. And okay, actually, can I just quickly go on a little rant here? Of course. Okay. So I've had this idea where storytelling is no longer about storytelling. Like once upon a time I was a finance girl and then I moved into this and then no one has time, attention spans, like this, right? So my thing is visual story, visuals, it's like consistency in your like little things like the background where you are posting, um, like the elements of the post that you're doing are consistent and you can say whatever and you can do whatever, but these little elements are consistent and it tells you a story in the background. And what? I mean, my worry with this particular strategy with the Polaroid is it's, it's very easy. It's copyable. It's easy to imitate, but I've not seen anyone else do it. So I think she should stick to this for as long as she can before someone else rips it off. I mean, I think for right now it's so recognizably her. The Polaroid makes it so nostalgic. It's so nostalgic. And also just on that note on visual storytelling, I think everyone should go away and try and build a mood board, even on Pinterest or something. You are so good at mood boards and you've been building a few for colorways we're looking at for this new business. And I mean, I, you are like a genius at mood boards. What the hell? Yeah. It's a secret hidden talent. I just love Pinterest so much. But you can create such brand worlds with like immediately communicate a vibe through visuals. It, I've never realized that I was such a visual person, but I have been really loving putting things together and going, you know what? That makes me feel happy. And that's what I want. So like you'll see on my phone background as well, I've got like a board of things that I want to aspire to be or like to have. And it just makes me feel happy. Even creating this new stuff with a new brand that we're doing, it makes me feel like that's the ultimate goal. And we just have to work backwards from there. So like Pinterest boards are my everything. Just as a side note, actually, that reminded me of a little tip for everyone. If you are like, you've got a mood board kind of goals thing on your phone background. When I was deciding on designs and stuff, I would change my phone background to like a logo to see if I get used to it and get familiar with it. And when I was launching number two, I remember I had this mood board of number two and what I wanted the brand to feel like on my phone background. So that's a really good thing to do because you see it constantly through the day and it becomes familiar. And also other people see it and they're like, Oh, what's that? You know when you wear a perfume and someone says to you, Oh my God, what are you wearing? It literally never happened to me. You know, it's so funny. I love my perfumes, but I reckon no one else. Because you like tomato smells. I love tomato. You just want to smell like a tomato. So that's why no one tells you because you smell like a garden. I smell like a fresh garden, darling. So no one comments. They're just in the garden. I forgot my point. When they see something on your phone and go, Oh, what's that? You know, when something's good, when other people keep pointing it out, like I know I'm wearing a good perfume when at least three people in the day are like, what is that perfume? What are you trying to say? You saying I smell like a tomato. That's the point of this whole episode. She does. Her bloody hand wash is tomato smelling. It's Lawayne Bay tomato leaf. Tomato perfume. She likes tomato smells and she just asked me where she can buy a tomato candle. I use the Maison Mardella from the garden. It's actually called from the garden and it's like citrus and tomato. No, but it's beautiful, I swear. Why does my house smell like a garden? I don't know. But I smell like a garden. I'm going to harvest you. We need to get back on track here. Okay. That was my ad break. Let's go into Redeemable. Okay. You have a good Redeemable for today. It is brilliant. The secrets I refuse to gatekeep. That people can identify with. Redeemable. It's fully Redeemable. Okay. So this Redeemable is basically all about brand storytelling as well in brand world. So very tied into what we were just talking about. This idea actually came from ashy.branding on TikTok. She created a video about this. So I definitely don't want to take credit, but it's all about customer narratives versus simple probably problem solving. It's all about customer narratives versus problem solving. And I think a lot of small businesses fall into the habit of just talking about, you know, their features and benefits. We're biodegradable. We're plastic free. We're whatever. And actually creating a customer narrative is where you get loyalty and buy-in and word of mouth marketing. So who does this well? I want to know what your examples are. So my examples are like, not my example. Ashy's examples are Nike, which is about the journey of self-belief or Glossier. You know, the mirror selfie where it's like, you look good. It's actually about the confidence booster. Notion, their tagline is for your life's work. So it's all about building something that matters. Bigger than you. Exactly. Aligning to something. And then the Row, which is the Olsen Twins brand. Really, that's all about quiet taste and people wanting to align themselves with that idea of like quiet taste. So I think take a step back. Like the redeemable here and the thing that you can take away and implement in your own business is to actually think about aside from your, the problem that you're solving or the features and benefit. What is the brand world that you're creating that people want to align with? How do they want to perceive themselves or be perceived in the world? Is it that you want that they want to feel as though they have quiet taste or that they have expensive taste or that they are an ethical do-gooder or something like that? Knowing what the customer narrative is can really inform your content. How would you do this for number two? Like what is the overall picture of number two without talking about the product itself? So I don't want to mention a competitor, but there's a major competitor that we don't want to be exactly like, but like Aesop, for example. You know when you walk into a bathroom and there's Aesop soap and you go, ooh, nice. Yes. Everyone knows it's a bit more expensive. It smells really good. A little bit of luck. A little bit of luck. So I want people to have that feeling. But what I want to be super different is it's accessible. So it's accessible luxury. It also is a signal to other people that they are like they have taste and they care about design and they care about their home. They care about other people's experiences in their home, things like that. So it comes back down to taste, I suppose, for number two. What about Hero Packaging? I don't know. It's really hard because I always go back to we're helping brands to be more sustainable in the easiest way possible. But I don't know how to say it in like a purpose-driven way. And I really need to go back and think about it. And you've really made me think because that's what I do focus on. I'm like we're anti-single-use plastic. You know, we are all these things and we're recycled board. And I always talk about that. Yeah. But I don't step back and go, what is the bigger picture of why? I mean, there are so many brands like us who sell very similar things. Why us? Like what are we doing that is making people want to shop with us? I don't know. I think I know. Okay, go. I think for Hero Packaging, it's two-pronged. The first one is that packaging matters as part of your customer experience. So packaging matters to actually improve and grow your business and all this kind of stuff. And customers notice the packaging that you're using. The second one is that you champion small businesses. And you're a hero for small businesses. And small businesses themselves are also heroes in their own right. So other small businesses want to support other small businesses. And so it's like you're kind of a hero in the mix as well as small businesses being the hero. Well, I've written it down. Stealing that. Other small businesses. I'm just quickly writing this down. I know that we always talk about not picking each other's brains or like picking brains and stuff and how that can get annoying. But thank you for letting me. Pleasure. You know, it's a really important thing for all brands to do. I'm really glad you brought this up because we are now living in this age or this economy, I should say, where money is a little tight for some brands or for a lot of brands. And so we revert back into our product is better. Like our product benefits features. Like come on, buy my product. Buy my product. People who are brands that can step back and actually do the bigger picture stuff end up having a better retention rate. So what I find is people are getting that acquisition. They're like, we need a new customer. We need a new customer. You do more brand stuff, you get more customer retention and more people coming back and have loyal followers. And that's what we want because that's ultimately the goal of any business. People are playing way too safe and they just want to do what's easy and guaranteed. This ad brand, I made money off of it. Let's move on to the next one. You know, the ROAS. Whereas like brand strategy stuff, it's really hard to measure ROAS until you've had like a long bit of time off the back of a campaign and you can measure retention, all that kind of stuff. But we both know it works. We see it happen again and again and again. Brands that focus on like top of funnel strategy and actually like building community and all that kind of stuff, it does trickle down and ultimately make your ROAS way more effective and things like that. Yes. And can I do a shout out to B2C Furniture and Carmel, who's a friend of ours. And I asked her why B2C Furniture is doing so well. It's doing really, really well, right? It's growing. And she said, we've just focused more on brand than we have on product stuff. Like we had Google. They're always doing well. Now it's just scaling up. And like they're focusing on brand. They've done these like B2C Cribs. I love B2C Cribs. They've done all this cool brand stuff. And all of a sudden, they're seeing these massive results. And it's nothing to do with the products themselves. So anyway, I just thought that that's awesome. Really good. All right, Cruel Summer. Let's do it. Okay, so we found this brand who commented on the post, like our podcast post on Instagram. And again, if you guys want to be Cruel Summer'd, please comment your brand on that post. But this brand is called, and I'm going to butcher the name. Okay, I'm just going to say it. Maison Appret. Can you say it in a French accent? Maison Appret. I have no idea if that's right. I don't think that's right. I don't know what it means. Maison, I think, means house. Okay. I don't know. We should have looked that up. Whatever. So what they do is… Chopping boards. That are actually made from rice husk fiber. And they've got these wavy designs. And I actually really like what she's done with thinking about two things. You know, the grip of a chopping board is really like slippery and slidey on your bench. She's actually got like a wavy rubber line on the back of the chopping board so it doesn't slip and slide. Love. The other thing is she's got a wavy ridge around the top front bit of the chopping board that catches juices and things. So her husband, I believe, he's a chef, a cooking class instructor. He's got a fair bit of stuff going on. And I just think there's a story there so much around cooking and the home and them that we could tap into. But before we do that, is there anything else you want to say to introduce Maison Appret? No, I just think it looks beautiful. I think that she needs to move fast though. There's quite a few competitors. Right. But she has a little bit of an advantage with the husband being a chef. I think she can really claim that, like you said. And a lot of brands, they just create this beautiful like chopping board and stuff, but they have no backing to that. She's got this thing, this secret sauce. I think she needs to tap into it more. But like you said, before we get there, can we go through the basics of what she needs to do before we get into the cool creative stuff? I actually don't have that many cool creative ideas because there's quite a list of basic things. I know that sounds mean. I don't mean to be mean. I want you to succeed so, so well. So we come bearing gifts of ideas that you can very quickly improve your website, your social media, all that kind of stuff so that you can get the conversions up and then ultimately grow. So let's start with the website. Let's talk about doing a website audit. Please, anyone who is listening to this, go to your website and just do an audit. And by that, I mean go through like on mobile and on desktop at the same time. Go through your homepage and click on every single link. Look at your favicon, you know, the little icon that comes up in like the tabs also on Google. Make sure everything is looking clean and professional. It's clicking through to the right place. There's no error messages. Make sure that, so for example, on this website, I clicked on the lilac board and it took me to the pink page, a pink chopping board page. Simple things like that annoy customers. You are just losing that one customer who is about to buy, you've just lost them. So really, like an audit of the homepage, go to the product page and make sure that everything that you have there, when you've got a link or you've got a buy button or you've got reviews or you've got whatever, click on everything and actually check that it's all in order. So that's my first thing that I would get her to do. 100%. And when you Google Maison Eprete, you need to just edit that SEO like website title in Shopify because at the moment you Google it and it comes up with just a word that says Eprete. It doesn't have any keywords of like beautiful wavy chopping boards or like biodegradable or like plastic free chopping boards or something like that. In fact, what it says is it just has Eprete and then it says Bonjour. Whether you're brightening up your regular cooking or planning a colorful soiree, Maison Eprete says you can have your cake and eat it too. Nothing about the chopping board. When I actually, you sent me Maison Eprete and I clicked through, I Googled it and I clicked on that and I landed on the homepage on desktop and I thought it's a catering company. It actually was my first thought because it's beautiful food and the chopping board actually is in the shot. But I didn't know what I was looking at until I scrolled down and I was like, oh, it's a chopping board company. So I think a really key part of this, there's two key parts of this. One is controversial, one is not. One is when you have a product or a business that you're just starting, ensure that the first thing that people see no matter where they click through onto your website, it says what it is. Like if you sell chopping boards, before the scroll, there is nowhere that says chopping board here. We're both looking at the desktop version. There is nowhere that says chopping board. So make sure you're very, very clear about that. My controversial opinion is that you can also remove that main banner or replace it with two and actually have one brand one which looks like this and it's so aesthetic. And then another one that actually really talks about a lilac chopping board. Shop here or shop now and actually remove just the branding side and just go straight into this is the product that I sell. Yeah, 100%. I'm actually working with a copywriter at the moment and we're redoing the website for two reasons, for number two. And she mentioned, she's like, you know what, you should just have like a subheading that says Australian toilet fragrance. And I was like, obviously, why hadn't I thought of that? Of course. It is the signal. It's the keywords of what it is straight up. You forget it. Everyone forgets because you're so into what you sell and you forget. Like ask ChatGPT, but you don't want to have anyone have to scroll to understand what it is that you sell. You need to have it in very clearly in visuals, very clearly in text. So does it sell? So it says shop boards. And when I go to shop boards, it just goes to one product. Oh, does it? Yeah. Different colors. Yeah. So it's just one product with multiple colors? I believe so. Yeah. So it's one product. That's what I'm, yeah. Okay. So there are so many brands out there. If I were you, I don't know her name actually. I really should have looked her up. But if I were you, I would be looking at those brands that just have one product and look at how they structure their website. For example, AG1 is like a greens company in America. They just sell one product. It's a really interesting thing to do when you've got this one thing to see how you can structure it so it's really easy to go and make that purchase. I do think a one product brand has this advantage of being able to go product page, add to cart, check out as opposed to looking at multiple different things. And I think you really need to like elongate that homepage as like a landing page owed to that hero product. It needs Tolstoy videos showing different features. So for example, we're having one video that shows how it's anti-slip. One video showing how it catches all of the juice in those little ridges. One showing how it's made from rice cutter fiber. And then one about it being design heavy and complementing your beautiful kitchen. Things like that. So having videos I think would be so good. And just elongating that homepage so that it's got reviews on the homepage and it's got your story on the homepage. So Crystal Jagger is the founder and she is with Callum Hahn who's a chef and author. So he runs, what's Roma Adelaide? Oh, it's a restaurant. Deli and Piazza. Oh my God, amazing. Wow. He runs Sprout Cooking School. He has classes in Sprout Cooking? It looks like it's his. So I just think there's so much opportunity to also tap into the story. If you go to the about page on the website, it's void of their story. It's void of their images. Correct. And I'm just so sad about that because there's so much to talk about. I don't even know how you found out it was made of that rice husk. And I also don't know how you found out that there's like an edging at the bottom to make it stop slipping because there's no product description either. Yeah. I just feel like all these basics, you tighten them up, it's going to work wonders for the brand. And you need to do all of this stuff before you start running advertising. Because I bet you if she started running advertising now, she'd get so much. It's like a leaky bucket. You get so much. Basics need to be done. Lost conversions because all of these little things aren't done. The rice husk thing, I saw it on the website on one of the features and benefits. It was like plastic free, biodegradable. Sometimes I ignore those. But I actually like on their Instagram, she's got the ultimate chopping board made for form, function, and fun. That's what needs to go on the website in the header banner. So look, I think the website needs to just, she just needs to look at it and make sure that it is absolutely a high converting website. And she has the potential to do that. After that is done, there are a few other things like her SEO, for example, is just not going to work out. So like when you type in cool chopping board. board or, you know, colorful chopping board or aesthetic chopping board, she's not going to come up because the product descriptions are just not there. She needs to have detailed product descriptions. When you click on shop boards, I almost want it to be like each color is a different product because then you can have a collections page with even more SEO content in there as well. Each product page could be the same thing with a different color. Create a brand world around each color. Yeah, like a personality. You know who you could look to for that? What is the name of that really beautiful, I'm blanking, the locker company, Mustard Made. Mustard Made. No. Oh my gosh. They do this so well. They choose a colorway and they create such a story around that colorway. So they'll do lockers and things. So they did like a sage green locker. And then all of the photo shoot was like everything was sage green and like the whole landing page was sage green. That is stunning. Another thing that she could do here is a really cool and easy thing to implement is that if someone was to click the lilac one, the whole page turns lilac. Exactly. Yeah. And if like I pick blue, the whole page turns. But really simple things like that add this element of professionality and makes people want to buy it. You know, I was on a Twiles website the other day and her product pages do that. You click burgundy and like the button changes to burgundy. And I love that. So cool. Shout out to Michelle. She's very smart. Very smart girl. The other just last quick thing I would say about the website is that the pop up is immediate. So there's no delay on the pop up. And that sort of interrupted my scrolling journey in a negative way. You just want to allow people to have a quick look before you're in their face of the pop up. I will say that Instant do a smart pop up. So based on the knowledge they have of that user, the pop up will show up at the time that they're most likely to make the purchase. We're talking about Instant in another episode because yeah. Oh yeah. But I want to say that I think the next step for pop ups is going to be a smart pop up. I think so too. Very exciting. Okay, cool. All right. Well, in terms of so all of that, all of those sort of basic website things nailed SEO is tightened up. Then I think what they really need to start playing into, there's so much opportunity with community cross promotion into her husband's or partner's line of work as being a chef and then the cooking classes and everything. Oh my gosh. It's content heaven. Like any brand would kill for that. I think she is selling a product that is just so worth doing in real life events for. I think so too. I think an event where people do a cooking lesson with her husband and it's just the most incredibly beautiful. She's got a space. She doesn't need to pay for it because her husband's got the restaurant. She's got the chef to teach them and she can just do the schmoozing. She's got the boards. Yeah, she's got the boards. It's just such a beautiful thing to do. And also the content and having the right people there and having building community through intimate events like that would be so good for her. And I really believe that these boards can sell. She should theme it based on like the cooking class could be themed pink and then like the chopping boards are pink and everyone comes up, show up wearing pink. That would be so fun. Great for content. I also think the opportunities for partnerships and collabs are endless because you've got food companies, but you also have homewares companies. You have service-based like chefs and things like that to create experiences, like bakers, you could do cakes. She could partner, like if she has a red chopping board, she could partner with a tomato. Well, tomato's not a brand, Anita, so. This is for you. Me, I'm a tomato. The partnership is with me. Yeah. There's so much you could do here with food companies. And then when you're ready for ads, I'm going to ask her to start with TikTok ads. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I just feel like this, this thing could be, this would pop off on TikTok ads. I think so too. I think a lot of quick cuts showing like the grip, the anti-slip, the juice collection, the cut, everyone wearing the same colour doing the cooking class. This beautiful board and the person who's chopping or whatever is wearing the same colour as the board and it's just like chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. Like a 10 second, seven second video of that with the board like on display. Oh my God, would work so well. Yes. Love it. I actually agree with you. I think it's a great first board. But her vibe definitely kicked home. Yeah. I also think that the boards would work well for like a girl dinner, like charcuterie kind of board. It could be a good way to show it off. And another use for it. Totally. Awesome. Did you have anything else you wanted to share for Maison Epres? I don't think so. I think the last thing I would say, and this is for everyone as well, but that influencer gifting thing, I think we need to start doing that again. Like I think that she needs to pass this on to people who have an audience, who love to cook. You know, like there's so many people who just love that feeling of cooking and not just females, men as well. Like I know it's a very feminine looking brand, but like sending this on to males and getting them to chop up and like having content that's a bit surprising. Influencer gifting for her needs to be like every month she needs to do it like at least 10 to 20 send outs. That's what I think. Agreed. It would be one of the, I think if you pick your influencer strategically and it's not just going for like a Margot Robbie and hoping for the best. It's going for people who have like highly engaged, smaller communities that are going to sing your brand from the rooftop. It's a niche thing. Like people who love cooking will watch people who love cooking and therefore when you're using a chopping board, they'll say, where'd you get it from? They'll mention it and off you go. That'll be the cheapest marketing you can do. Yeah. Love it. All right. That brings us to the end of the episode. Thanks everyone for joining. We'll see you next time. Love you guys.