A while ago Shelley Easter, Shopify designer extraordinaire and I sat down to teach a class on the 5 things every ecommerce homepage needs. We covered everything from your top navigation to your footer copy.

Katie Mleziva is a Fortune 500 CPG veteran, expert startup coach and mastermind mentor. I was honored to join her on the Real Food Brand podcast that just went live. We recorded this in February 2020, so if you're seeing this now in April, you know we were clueless about what the current marketing scene would be. But the good news is this content is absolutely timeless - it was applicable in February, it's more important now, and it'll still be fresh next year.

As small business owners, it can feel like we're in between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it's easy to understand why people aren't spending on gourmet treats right now.

On the other hand, we still have our own leases to pay and lights to keep on, not to mention the staff members and vendors who's own livelihoods rely on GPG businesses staying open.

Here’s a quick round-up of 5 specialty food brands getting email marketing right.

Cutting costs doesn't mean you have to shut down your marketing - keep your momentum going with these three *totally free* ways to market your brand right now.

As more and more natural/healthy food startups enter the snack space, I thought it'd be interesting to look at how some of the top players on local grocery shelves are presenting their products online.

It's official: robots are now writing real ad copy for major corporations.

When J.P. Morgan Chase announced its new hire of AI firm Persado to write their ad copy, I admit I was shocked. But diving into the examples, I can see why they chose the robots.

In a surprising turn of events, the robot-written copy actually sounds more human.

Despite all the hype about eCommerce giants like Amazon, Jet.com, and numerous grocery delivery services, the fact is that the vast majority of CPG products are still purchased in brick and mortar stores.

But ecommerce sales of these items are steadily increasing - in fact online sales grew by 35% in 2018 alone.

Your product page is the last copy people see before they click “buy.”

Even if they’re onboard with your brand, and think they like what they saw in the thumbnail image, you can still lose people at this stage.

Copy is all around us – following us at every turn – impacting the decisions we make, and as a result, affecting many aspects of our everyday lives.

And yet, outside of advertising agency circles, the term copywriting is still relatively unknown.

How do you know when you’re ready to hire a copywriter? Well there aren’t any rules set in stone.

As with any service, you’re usually welcome to hire someone and pay money whether you’re ready or not.

But for best results, I’m outlining a few things you should know before you dive in and invest.

If you've spent any time in an office, or any time watching The Office, you've been inundated with business jargon, whether in the form of acronyms, buzzwords, or other over-used slang.

Bosses seem especially prone to using hyper-inflated, nearly meaningless words. And we all see through it.

Your About page is usually the second-most visited page on your site, after your home page. That means that people are more likely to click About, than they are to click on your services page, shop, testimonials, blog, or contact pages.

So we've got to shore up your copy and make sure your About page is in tip-top shape for all your visitors to see!

Great copywriting comes down to one thing.

There are hundreds of philosophies, theories, and formulas outlining the keys to writing that unlocks consumers pocketbooks. Hey, I write about a lot of them myself.

But today let’s scrape away all of those checklists and boil it down to the core. The one thing that makes for great copywriting.

Ok friends let's tackle this li'l debate today:

DIY-ing your website copy VS. outsourcing to a writer.

As you'd expect from a copywriter, I fully support outsourcing your website copy for a million reasons. But, there are also some good reasons to write your own:

ach week, the contestant challenges Bobby to making the contestant's signature dish, and usually, despite the chosen meal NOT being Bobby's specialty...he still wins.

What can small business owners learn from Bobby's habit of winning? Here are my three top lessons to apply to your website copy today:

Let's look at what small local businesses and online entrepreneurs can learn from these Warby Parker-style brands.

Adweek published a terrific overview this week that pulls four big ideas that all marketers can apply. It's worth reading the full article, but I wanted to focus on my favorite one here: "They believe the brand is bigger than the product."

This week HBR published an article on how consumers choose to buy products online. Ecommerce is a different ballgame from brick and mortar business for a few big reasons. One of them is that way fewer shoppers convert to purchasers online than in stores. And it makes sense.

When you write copy for your website, who are you really talking about? If you’re just talking about:

– Your business

– What services/products you sell

– Your team

– Your history

– Your values

…then you’re missing the most important piece – your customer.