The Brand Marketing Show

In the last 2 weeks alone I've had three brand owners come to me, all with the same story. They've been told by marketing "experts" that every single EDM, every Meta ad needs a discount incentive. Every website needs a countdown timer or some other kind of FOMO bells and whistles. One of them showed me her email marketing calendar. Every. Single. Week. A different discount code. Flash sale this, 2...

Let me paint a picture that I see all the time with ecommerce brands. You're spending money on marketing. Ads, SEO, social media, maybe influencers. You're driving traffic to your website. And you can see in your analytics that people are visiting. Some of them are even adding things to their cart. But then... they just disappear. They don't buy. They don't come back. They vanish into the ether. A...

January is supposed to be about. It's goal-setting season. It's "new year, new you" energy. It's the time when every business podcast – including, historically, this one – tells you to set your revenue targets, map out your marketing calendar, and basically plan your way to world domination. And look, I'm not going to tell you planning doesn't matter. It absolutely does – all of that stuff IS impo...

We're in that strange, liminal week between Christmas and New Year. The turkey's been eaten, the presents have been opened, and there's this quiet space before the new year kicks off. It's a natural time for reflection as well as for looking ahead.   I know many of you are ambitious and have big goals you want to achieve. But that kind of impact requires reach. Reach requires visibility. Visibilit...

It's Christmas week. The orders have shipped – or at least, most of them have. The mad rush is behind you. And hopefully, you're either on a beach somewhere or at least within striking distance of a cold drink and a good book. So today's episode is a little different. This isn't a tactical deep-dive. I'm not going to give you a framework or a checklist or an action plan. Instead, I just want to pa...

Right now, you've got about a week to prepare for what could genuinely be one of the most profitable – and least stressful – marketing periods of your entire year.   Now, I know what you might be thinking. "Cath, I'm exhausted. I've just pushed through the Christmas rush. The last thing I want to think about is more marketing." And honestly? I get it. By mid-December, most of us are running on fum...

We're in the first week of December now. Which means you've got roughly 14 days of meaningful marketing time before most of your customers mentally check out for the holidays — and before your shipping cut-off dates make the whole thing a bit irrelevant anyway. Now, I know what you might be feeling right now. It's that familiar end-of-year cocktail of exhaustion, overwhelm, and a nagging sense tha...

I know exactly where you're at right now. We're in the thick of Black Friday promos – or as I like to call it, the 'beautiful chaos' portion of the retail calendar. Your ads are running, your inbox is overflowing, your inventory is moving, and you're probably surviving on caffeine and pure adrenaline.   I also know that this period isn't just physically exhausting – it's emotionally exhausting too...

If you run the kind of premium brand that either does not participate in Black Friday, or does so differently to the mass-market brands running huge discount promos and turning Black Friday into Black Month…. Then I bet your November started slower than you expected… Maybe not disastrously slow, but quieter than you'd like… Meanwhile, your inbox is absolutely exploding with promotional emails. 50%...

If the only time you email your list is when you're running a sale, what do you think happens? Your customers start waiting for the sales. They see your regular-priced products and think, "Nah, I'll wait. They'll have a sale in a couple of weeks." And then you're stuck in this cycle where you have to keep discounting to generate revenue, which destroys your profit margins and devalues your brand....

So we're in early November now, and I have a question for you: how are those ad costs treating you right now? Yeah, I thought so. Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this – if you've been running ads in the last few weeks, you've probably noticed your costs have gone absolutely mental. And it's only going to get worse as we head deeper into Black Friday and Christmas territory. So today, we need to t...

Today we're diving into a story that perfectly illustrates what it takes to scale a premium brand in today's competitive eCommerce landscape.   If you've been paying attention to the wellness and café scene lately, you've probably noticed matcha is having a serious moment. It's everywhere – from your local café's menu to your Instagram feed. And whilst that wave of popularity creates incredible op...

Meta is having a moment. And not the good kind…  If you've been running Meta ads and feeling like something fundamental has shifted – like you're suddenly playing a completely different game – you're not imagining it. Meta has essentially staged an algorithm coup, and a lot of brands are scrambling. So what's happening? And what should you do about it? Most brands are going to struggle with this....

I need to tell you about something that happened last week that's been living rent-free in my head ever since. I got DM'd on the Indagare Beauty Instagram account by a marketing agency from the UK. And here's the kicker – several of my clients got the exact same message. Same guy. Same videos. Same promises. Same everything. Now, I could have just deleted it and moved on. But instead, I decided to...

Today we're diving into something that's absolutely critical for brands right now. We're talking about how to build a brand that doesn't just survive, but absolutely thrives in this new AI era.  And I'm not talking about just using ChatGPT to write your Instagram captions faster – though that's part of it. I'm talking about a fundamental shift in how premium brands need to think about visibility,...

It's October, which means we're about to be hit with the annual consumption tsunami. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Then straight into Christmas panic-buying. And somewhere in all of this chaos, your customers – the ones who chose your brand because they care about quality, sustainability, conscious consumption – they're feeling pressured. Pressured to spend for the sake of getting a deal. Pressured...

Over the past few weeks I've had several conversations with brand owners who have used the exact same word to describe their experience with previous marketing agencies or coaches. That word is "burnt." And I don't mean slightly disappointed or a bit let down. I mean properly burnt. As in, lost significant money, wasted months or even years of time, and worst of all, lost confidence in their abili...

Want to see what happens when you stop wasting money on marketing to the wrong customers? We were burning through our ad budget on Meta, showing skincare ads to everyone and anyone. The problem? We were in one of the most competitive categories online, customers couldn't try before buying, and we were accidentally running campaigns that repelled our ideal buyers – simply because they were ads we c...

Many brands are haemorrhaging money on the wrong customers, often without even realising it. While marketers obsess over age groups, income brackets, and geographic data, they're missing the fundamental psychological divide that actually determines buying behaviour.  Today's guest, Dr Ross Honeywill, has spent many years uncovering why traditional demographic segmentation fails so spectacularly –...

It's 2am and you're lying awake, mind racing through endless to-do lists, wondering if you've invested everything into a dream that's slowly becoming a nightmare. Sound familiar? You've created an incredible product – something you know could change people's lives – but somehow the customers aren't beating down your door.  You're working every night and weekend, straining relationships, watching y...

Here's a challenge for you: go to any brand's website in your category and read their "About Us" page. Then go to their competitors and do the same before comparing them all to your own. I'll bet you that 80% of them sound very similar.   "We're passionate about quality." "We use only the finest ingredients." "We're committed to sustainability." "Our products are handcrafted with care."   Blah, bl...

Here's a sobering statistic that'll make you rethink everything about your Black Friday strategy: 80% of Black Friday customers never purchase from the same brand again.    Let that sink in for a moment. Four out of five people who bought from you during your biggest sales event of the year will never come back.   But here's the thing – it doesn't have to be this way. How do you ensure those new c...

What if I told you that the most successful Black Friday campaigns aren't about slashing prices by 80% or screaming 'EVERYTHING MUST GO!' in bright red text? What if the real winners are the brands that actually increase their perceived value during Black Friday whilst everyone else is racing to the bottom?   Here's what most ecommerce brands get completely wrong about Black Friday: they think suc...

Today, the final episode in this mini-series, we're tackling something that every brand thinks they're doing, but honestly? Most are getting spectacularly wrong.  And frankly – I've had so many conversations in recent weeks where pretty much every single brand is making this mistake. We're talking about true omnichannel marketing in 2025. Most brands think they're doing omnichannel because they've...

Today in episode four of our core trends mini-series about the Great Ecommerce Realignment, we're diving into a force that's not just changing ecommerce—it's completely redefining it: The Creator Economy Takeover. Here's a stat that should wake you up: the creator economy is now worth over $104 billion. That's not just big—that's bigger than the entire GDP of many countries. But here's what's real...