Joe Anhalt is a New York-based copywriter turned designer turned all-around marketer. He consults with direct-to-consumer ecommerce corporations on progress methods, together with branding.

He emphasizes storytelling and conveying a model’s standpoint. “You possibly can deliver consumers into your world,” he instructed me. “Model-building is like world-building.”

He addressed a number of progress ways in our latest dialog, together with advertising and marketing channels, design necessities, multichannel promoting, and, sure, the significance of the model.

The complete audio of our dialogue is embedded under. The transcript is edited for readability and size.

Eric Bandholz: Inform us your story.

Joe Anhalt: I ran progress and advertising and marketing for six years at Koio, a direct-to-consumer luxurious footwear enterprise. I’ve lately left the corporate and have been doing freelance growth-marketing consulting for smaller DTC corporations, from $3 million in annual income to $50 million.

It’s been enjoyable being on the opposite aspect. I’ve solely labored in-house at manufacturers all through my profession.

I began as a copywriter, studied promoting, and minored in movie at school. I’ve all the time gravitated in the direction of the humanities, particularly the visible arts, whether or not it was nonetheless images or video. I liked it, and I nonetheless do. However as a copywriter at an early-stage tech startup, I advanced into SEO, e-mail advertising and marketing, social advertisements, and content material advertising and marketing. That morphed right into a generalist progress advertising and marketing hacker.

Bandholz: How do entrepreneurs handle the design elements of their enterprise?

Anhalt: First, founders must set expectations. They need to lose their ego and admit they’re not artistic or design consultants. Suppose you will have a finance or consulting background and are attempting to construct a model. In that case, you must educate your self and experiment. There’s a stage of expertise with creatives and artwork, however quite a lot of which you could study. You possibly can study style, type, aesthetics, and easy issues like composition, the rule of thirds, coloring, storytelling, and depth of discipline, all of which you’ll study in a cinematography or images class.

You can begin going to museums and study in regards to the historical past of artwork. I’m blessed to stay in New York Metropolis. I can go to the Met or the Whitney. Each metropolis has lovely artwork. You should continue to learn to succeed and acknowledge that you simply’re behind the design eight ball, however you possibly can study and deal with it like every other college subject or enterprise problem.

I encourage people who find themselves much less expert in artistic or artwork path to begin educating themselves. The attractive factor about artwork and design is that it surrounds us and hits us within the face. A good looking panorama can encourage you.

Bandholz: Many companies are attempting to save cash. How can they produce high quality photographs or movies affordably?

Anhalt: The iPhone is an excellent funding should you’re capturing content material and need it to be prime quality. Lighting is tremendous essential. By no means shoot noon. The shadows and the sunshine are method too harsh. Location issues. Location, very like actual property, helps enhance manufacturing worth. For instance, somebody in Austin, Texas, can drive two or three hours west to a distant panorama. It’s much like Palm Springs or Joshua Tree, the place many luxurious manufacturers shoot campaigns.

Going to obscure places and utilizing the pure environment and sensible results is an effective way to raise the manufacturing worth. We had been lucky at Koio as a result of we stay in New York Metropolis. For those who shoot in Tribeca, you slap a emblem on the picture, and all of the sudden it turns into luxurious. With the iPhone, you probably have nice lighting, an excellent wardrobe, and a very good location, you’ll get 90% of the best way there with out spending $20,000.

Bandholz: A variety of ecommerce manufacturers struggled in 2023. What advertising and marketing channels supply probably the most alternative in 2024?

Anhalt: The market is sifting out the winners and losers. There are nonetheless many winners. 2024 is about profitability, not progress in any respect prices.

Fb and Google advertisements stay the prime channels for progress. There’s quite a lot of optimism for TikTok, however success there is determined by the product class. TikTok could possibly be a house run should you’re a magnificence product and your common order worth is lower than $50. Nevertheless, greater AOVs must get artistic with channel allocation.

I’m pushing my workforce to consider visible channels, akin to YouTube and tv. These are a few of the finest locations to inform a narrative. Fb can drive a ton of knowledge, visitors, and conversions, however I query long-term model constructing with Fb alone.

For those who aspire to be a family model akin to Nike or Apple, in some unspecified time in the future you’ve bought to develop a multichannel strategy with retail, wholesale, and collaborations. DTC is an effective technique as a launch, you’ve bought to make some bets to be an enormous participant. Give retail a shot. It’s top-of-the-line, if not the perfect, locations to inform your story and your standpoint as a model. You possibly can deliver consumers into your world.

Take into consideration Apple. They’ve constructed these lovely retail shops in superb places with superb structure. Stroll in there, and also you enter their world.

Model-building is like world-building.

Bandholz: The place can individuals rent you, assist you, observe you?

Anhalt: My web site is AnhaltAdvertising.com. I’m @joefromnormal on Twitter and Instagram. You possibly can attain me on LinkedIn, as effectively.