Marketing Happy Hour - Intro to TikTok Shop (+ More Paid Media Strategies) | Ellie Bresler of Beekeeper's Naturals

Starting point is 00:00:00 you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. Hi, Ellie. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing so well. I'm so excited that you're

Starting point is 00:00:54 here. You and I have connected quite a bit in the past, and it's just, I feel like a long time coming to have you on the show. So thank you so much for joining us. But I do have to kick off by asking you what's in your glass. We're recording like kind of afternoon morning ish, but what do you enjoy sipping on on a regular basis or what do you have right now with you? Well, thank you for having me. First of all, I'm so excited. I'm an avid listener. So really excited to get to chat with you. I just finished my morning coffee, so I'm onto water now, but I will say if I have to pick a happy hour drink, it's either a poppy. I feel like poppy at any time of the day. Like I always have one in on hand. Or if I'm really like at a happy hour,

Starting point is 00:01:39 like a nice patio, you know, with my friends, it's either going to be a spicy margarita or I've recently been really into orange wines. I'm like obsessed with them. They're so good. So that's my, like my new obsession. Oh my gosh. Erica, that's Erica's favorite thing ever is orange wine. And I feel like spicy margaritas. We've had so many people on recently. That's their go-to. Yeah. Have you done like a Tahin rim? I know, I don't know if people do spicy Mark with a Tahin rim, but maybe that's too much spice, but no, I like that. It's like a little extra kick. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Oh my gosh. I love spice. I haven't done spicy Mark with Tahin rim yet. Um, so I'm dying to try that. So I'll definitely

Starting point is 00:02:21 check that out. Um, well, Ellie, I, you know, it's been so fun just hearing about your journey and kind of where you've been, where you're going, what you're working on now, but can you share everyone with everyone else, kind of what you're doing today and just your journey into the world of digital marketing and how you found your niche and kind of the luxury apparel beauty and CPG brand space? Yeah, of course. So I'll start from the beginning. I was a 2020 COVID graduate and pretty much immediately after I graduated college. And I should note, actually, I majored in ballet, which is irrelevant to my career now, but it's just always a fun fact.

Starting point is 00:03:06 But my other major was strategic communication. So I knew that I was really interested in the whole, you know, communications, marketing, PR realm. And I was really lucky that only a few months after graduating, I landed a role at a digital marketing agency. And it was a really small boutique agency. I think there were 15 of us at our largest when I was there. And that was, I always say the best first job experience I could have asked for. I think I got so, so lucky in a number of different ways. You know, it was really like drinking from the fire hose immediately just in terms of all things digital marketing. So I really got

Starting point is 00:03:46 immediate hands-on experience with paid search, paid social, affiliate marketing. I also dabbled a little bit in email and influencer marketing during my time there. And I had a ton of different clients that all spanned luxury fashion and beauty and CPG. So it was really just like diving into the deep end. And I don't think I could have learned that much anywhere else. So I credit them with like so much of where I am today. It just was such an amazing experience. And while I was there, I really fell in love with, like you said, the kind of luxury fashion, luxury beauty and lifestyle area, and also CPG brands. And I think part of the reason I gravitated towards those types of brands was because as a consumer, that's what I'm interested in. And those are the brands that I'm,

Starting point is 00:04:36 you know, saving to my inspiration boards, and I'm following their, you know, marketing campaigns, and I'm purchasing from them. So I just loved being on, you know, the marketing side of that as well. But I did decide I was there for about two and a half years and I decided that I really wanted to try a role on the brand side. I think because I was so interested in how kind of the whole marketing ecosystem works, you know, that my agency was purely paid digital marketing. So I didn't really get to touch the organic side. And I felt like my role was lacking a bit of creativity. It was, you know, very analytical, which again was such a great learning experience,

Starting point is 00:05:16 but I just really wanted more, more creativity. And I wanted to kind of be able to observe and learn from other marketing functions and just like see how everything worked from a brand side perspective, which is insight that you don't necessarily always get at an agency. So that led me to my next role, which was at a very small fashion brand in-house in Chicago. And that was, I will say a shorter, shorter lived experience. I learned a ton there in terms of the fashion world and kind of the ins and outs of how a fashion company runs, which was part of what I was interested in. So that was fascinating for me. But I will say I also learned kind of the importance of good management there and having

Starting point is 00:06:04 good leadership. And I learned how important company culture is for me as an employee. And also, you know, later down the line as a boss one day. So I decided to leave that role after only a few months. It just wasn't the right fit in a number of ways. I still learned a lot. So, you know, no regrets there. But that led me to a few months where I was freelancing and really trying a ton of different things within the marketing realm. I was working for a luxury travel brand, another luxury fashion brand. So really kind of testing out different marketing functions for each of those brands and also trying different industries. But I knew that, you know, ultimately I wanted to land back brand side. I love the structure of a

Starting point is 00:06:52 nine to five and that more kind of corporate environment. So that led me to my current role. I'm at Beekeepers Naturals and I sit on the digital team within the growth division. So I work really closely with our brand marketing team and our retail marketing team, and then the rest of my team, which is our e-commerce and digital team. And I am primarily focused on D2C growth marketing, retail performance marketing, and then omni-channel brand awareness strategies. So I've been here for about six months and it has been just the best time I'm having a blast. Oh my gosh. Love that. And I love how you talked about kind

Starting point is 00:07:31 of this journey from the corporate world, freelance back to corporate. And we were talking a little bit about this off, uh, off record, but I think it's so important to remember that making those slight pivots is okay. And giving yourself time. I love how you kind of left that position and then you're like, okay, I'm going to just kind of sit here for a minute, do my own thing, learn a lot, work with a number of different brands, and then take that and put it back into another position. I think that is so huge and so beneficial. And I, I would hope, or, you know, maybe that time also gave you space to just kind of chill and relax and like reset a little bit as well. And so I'm always a huge advocate for if you have the financial capability and just the time

Starting point is 00:08:20 and space and it works out to like, take a beat, take a minute, learn some stuff and then jump into the next position. I think that's so incredibly beneficial. So I hope that time was wonderful for you as well. Yeah, it was so educational and, um, you know, I, I honestly would not go back and do it another way. I think that especially because I am, you know, only a few years into my career now is the time to try a bunch of different things and see what works and what doesn't and um sometimes things are not going to work out and I think just being able to kind of like realize that not being afraid to leave when you need to and um when it's like healthier for you to leave of course like

Starting point is 00:09:01 you know make sure that you're financially stable and able to support yourself still. But yeah, I think that having the courage to do that is, is huge and, and will ultimately, you know, only lead to, to good things, which it did for me. And so, yeah, I always encourage people to, to, you know, try a bunch of different things and, and be able and willing to pivot when you need to. For sure. 100%. Okay. So let's talk strategies a little bit for performance marketing. This is a space that we have been wanting to talk about more on the show. Some, a space that I'm also eager to learn about. So I'm curious if you had like a couple of just key strategies, and I know this really depends on what channels are you using?

Starting point is 00:09:49 You know, what's the goal of this campaign, but just overall, if you were to share a couple of just main strategies, if someone came to you and they're like, okay, the first few things to consider, whether it's targeting creative messaging, what are some questions we can ask ourselves or like approaches that we can take or things to think about when it comes to building an effective performance marketing campaign? Yeah, absolutely. So I think my answer here is twofold because it's going to vary a little bit in my experience, whether you're running a D2C campaign versus a retail campaign. So from a D2C perspective, you know, we're running performance marketing campaigns on Google, just paid search ads.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And then we're also running meta ads, which serve a full funnel approach. So some of our ads are very top of funnel brand awareness, but we do have campaigns set up that are that bottom of funnel, you know, strictly a purchase objective. So from that perspective, I think that targeting is really important. You know, audience targeting is, that's kind of like the first thing that I tend to look at is, you know, within these different funnel stages, who do we need to be targeting within each stage? We're at the point now where the algorithms can do a ton of that targeting for you. I know, you know, you kind of always hear from meta reps or their, you know, support teams and stuff like that, that you're supposed to just like let meta do whatever it wants to do, especially now that we have this like advantage plus feature. And I will say the algorithms are very strong,

Starting point is 00:11:30 but I think that it's important not to rely on them fully. So if you see an audience that's not efficient, whether your KPI is clicks or revenue or leads or, you know, whatever it is. If you're seeing an audience that's not working for you, you still need to be able to go in and like make those adjustments yourself. And then the other piece that we've been playing around with a lot on meta is more of a content strategy. So, and I know we'll talk about TikTok later too, but this plays a huge role in my TikTok strategy, but, um, we're doing a ton of creative testing and seeing what works for a top of funnel audience, what works for a middle of funnel audience and what works for a bottom of funnel audience.

Starting point is 00:12:15 And, you know, we're testing things from messaging and the copy that we're using to the actual like media elements of the ad. And are we showcasing the product in a lifestyle format or is it just a product shot or is it animated? So that's been really interesting and has really become a big part of our like D2C marketing strategy. From a retail perspective, this has been really interesting for me because I, you know, didn't come in with a retail marketing background, but I obviously came with a performance marketing background. And so it was interesting to kind of like learn the retail side of it and marry those

Starting point is 00:12:55 two strategies. So we are running PPC ads on a number of our larger retailers.com sites. A lot of them have either native ad platforms or you can work with a third party like, you know, Acritio or Citrus to run these PPC ads. So from a day-to-day kind of nitty gritty perspective, I'm in these platforms. I'm looking at, you know, whether we're hitting our KPIs, again, whether that is just site traffic or for a lot of

Starting point is 00:13:25 these, it's a purchase objective. And if we're seeing a positive return there, and this is something I think ROAS can be a challenging target to hit from these retail campaigns sometimes because people who are conditioned to shop retail, I find are often more conditioned to shop in stores. So, you know, an online retailer is not necessarily their first point of contact. So I think you really have to be strategic as you do have to be with any PPC campaign. But, you know, from a retail perspective, you kind of have to drill down and be really specific with your keyword targeting, you know, where you're bidding. And also, you know, a lot of these platforms and retailers, like people will convert at different points on the site, which is really interesting. And so, you know, sometimes I'm drilling down even that far and looking at like,

Starting point is 00:14:23 do we need to bid up on a certain site placement because we're seeing more efficiency there, if that makes sense. From a bigger picture perspective, you know, I mentioned that I work really closely with our retail team. So I always want to make sure that they're supported on any upcoming sales at these different retailers because it does vary so much from store to store or you know if they if there's a product launch that you know a new retailer is getting a new product line um I want to make sure that that is supported budget wise and also you know that my keyword strategy is in place that my keyword strategy is in place, that my bid strategy is in place. And then also, you know, seasonality plays a role here where sometimes there's times of year,

Starting point is 00:15:16 for example, we're just coming out of allergy season where our nasal and sinus products were like really at the forefront and really a big focus for us. So I want to make sure that they're fully funded and those campaigns are, you know, doing really well because that is where people are going to be buying during that time of year. Yeah. So we talk about internal team collaboration a lot too. So I'm, I'm curious to ask you just about how should our thinking about social specifically, how should our paid social teams be collaborating with our organic social teams? Is there any learnings or things that organic social teams can be thinking about or providing or insights that they're sharing that makes someone like yourself on the paid media team their lives easier? Because I'm just curious because I know there's a lot of different data and just consumer behavior on these platforms that I'm sure would be super helpful for you guys. So what has collaboration

Starting point is 00:16:10 been like for you guys internally? And what do you feel just overall are these insights that you need to be pulling from the organic side of things? Yeah. I mean, this is a huge part of what my role has been is collaborating with our brand marketing team and our influencer manager and our social media manager both sit on the brand marketing team. So from a paid social perspective, I'll speak to like Meta and Instagram first because those are big channels for us from an organic and a paid perspective. Making sure that our content aligns across both channels is really important. So that's not necessarily to say that we need to be running ads

Starting point is 00:16:54 with the exact same content as what we're posting on paid social. But again, looking at seasonality, looking at what the brand is focused on at kind of a higher like brand story level at the time being, you know, we want to make sure that we're highlighting that in both places. The other part of that is making sure that our organic team, organic social team, and our influencer team is always briefed, you know, well ahead of time of any D2C sales or marketing pushes that are coming up so that they can promote that organically. Because we know that that's close to home for us. Well, that's where our ad strategy is going to go. But we want to make sure that that messaging reaches across the board. From a TikTok perspective, I would like we work even more closely because a lot of

Starting point is 00:17:48 our paid TikTok strategy is based on sparking our creator videos so um again you know kind of from like a brand wide standpoint I'm always making sure that the brand team knows what product launches are coming up what product product focuses, any sales, so that they can create the content around those key moments. And then from there, I'm sparking a lot of that content and pushing it out to more audiences. I think, obviously, because I'm working in the paid ad platform, I have a little bit more influence over the targeting and who these sparked videos are going out to. So yeah, it's a very collaborative effort,

Starting point is 00:18:34 I will say. I don't want to always put money behind every organic social media post because I think that growing an organic brand presence is also really important but there are some times when we really do need to get a video out there and so those are the times when you know I will kind of specifically brief my social team on a video that we need for the purpose of sparking it or boosting. Definitely. So let's talk about TikTok a little bit. This is something I'm so curious because just seeing the way that the platform has grown and there's all these different features for paid influencers, creators, brands, everything on this platform. It's absolutely wild. So how are you guys using and leveraging TikTok? And then what are some of the unique challenges or opportunities that you've just

Starting point is 00:19:30 encountered as a whole with paid TikTok campaigns? Now, TikTok is such a rabbit hole that I could go down for hours and hours and hours. But I love it. It's so fun. It's been a really big part of my role since I joined. And it's funny because if you had asked me a year ago, I never thought I would be saying that because I think I was part of the, you know, kind of like, oh, TikTok is not a legitimate sales channel. Like, I totally like, you know, saw it more as like a brand awareness or like organic social play. And I don't think I, I think a lot of people like, you know, a year ago didn't see it as a, as a scalable sales channel, but it totally has become that. So TikTok for us is an omni-channel strategy. You know,

Starting point is 00:20:21 on the organic side is very brand awareness based. We do a lot of brand education and then product and ingredient education there too. I think because our products are so, they're unique because of the ingredients that we use. And so a lot of that, you know, we have to educate and video is a great way to do that. So I always kind of think as TikTok as like the way to break the fourth wall with your audience from an organic perspective. And I think that's where you can build a lot of community. You can really engage directly with your audience. So again, that's kind of more the organic side. From a paid perspective, again, like I mentioned, it's really an omni-channel strategy for us. So I am using it to, A, grow

Starting point is 00:21:13 brand awareness, even from a paid perspective. I'm using it to grow retail awareness. And then I'm also using it to grow D2C traffic and drive sales. So I think that when you're approaching a strategy like this, where you have several different KPIs and campaign strategies, the low hanging fruit is to start by differentiating with campaign optimizations, again, be it traffic or landing page views or purchases, and then also audience targeting. So again, you kind of have to find this balance of letting the algorithm do its thing, but then also realizing that you can't just kind of like throw your ads out to a broad targeting ad set and expect it to

Starting point is 00:22:00 work for every stage of the funnel. So I'm constantly looking at our audience analytics and looking at what demographic groups and also what interest-based groups are engaging with our ads and converting. So it's kind of like always a dance of, you know, what's working, what's not. Again, like it's always important to me to kind of like be nimble. And if, you know, what's working, what's not, um, again, like it's always important to me to kind of like be nimble. And if, you know, a certain age group or a certain demographic all of a sudden isn't, you know, the click-through rate is really low or a CPC is really high or it's not converting. Um, I know that I need to switch gears. Yeah. Um, I mentioned this earlier, but something that I have been working on implementing is

Starting point is 00:22:46 kind of marrying the like campaign optimization and audience strategies with a full funnel, really intentional content strategy. So, you know, somebody who has already engaged with our brand, whether it's on another social media channel, or maybe they're already a DTC purchaser for us, they're going to respond differently to content than someone who is, you know, brand new to the company is going to. So we've really gotten specific with what videos and what content we are serving to our top of funnel audiences and who were, you know, the content that we're serving to either like people who have abandoned their carts or they have purchased in the past and we're trying to, you know, turn them into a repeat purchaser.

Starting point is 00:23:36 So that's become very intentional. And, you know, I think that content strategy should never be ignored. And, you know, like I mentioned, we also are doing a lot of sparking. And so I'm working hand in hand with our organic team and our influencer team on, you know, maybe we do need a video that's a little bit more geared towards our bottom of funnel audiences and that can go out organically and then we can put money behind it as well. Yeah. Yeah. There's like we said, there's so many different things you can do on TikTok. It's fascinating. And I want to talk about TikTok shop here in a minute, but I have a question. It might be kind of a loaded question, but I know sometimes explaining to marketing

Starting point is 00:24:24 leaders who, I mean, I would hope most marketing leaders would be aware of how paid social and paid advertising works, but people who may not be as averse and how testing different types of ads works. Um, and you know, I've worked with clients in the past to where you get an ad running and it looks like it's not working because it's still in the learning phase or whatever. And so do you have any either advice insights on, you know, not only testing things and the importance of doing that, but also not seeing campaigns as a quote failure or, um, you know, I, I don't know, just how do you, how do you kind of change your perspective around being open to trying things? And sometimes things may not work the way exactly that you hope them to, but taking that insight and putting them into future campaigns and learning from there.

Starting point is 00:25:18 Yeah, absolutely. I think that testing is just like such an integral part to any growth strategy, especially because of how fast the digital landscape changes. Something that worked a year ago is not going to work necessarily now. Or, you know, the flip side of that, something that wasn't doing as well a year ago might be exactly what you need right now. So from, you know, kind of an actual like tactical standpoint, a lot of times I think it's helpful to set aside a little bit of budget for testing if you know that you is kind of a safe way to test and not have it impact your overall channel. And similarly, you know, if you can separate your tests out into a separate campaign, again, like that will lessen the impact on the rest of your campaigns that are already running. They're already out of the learning phase and they've, you know, kind of the algorithm is already working with them. Right. So

Starting point is 00:26:30 we will, when we, when we're doing more intentional kind of like AB testing, we will separate those, like the new testing ads out into their own campaign, give them their own little budget. And then after, I think that 14 days is kind of a good, you know, measurement standpoint, anything shorter than that. And you can't always guarantee that they'll leave the learning phase before then. But also you don't want to let things run for too long if they aren't working. So we'll give them about 14 days. And if, you know, we're directly testing two creative elements against each other, whichever one is performing better, that one gets to go into our full funnel strategy. And that becomes, you know, one of our more evergreen ads.

Starting point is 00:27:16 And, you know, the one that doesn't work as well, sometimes it's something that you just kind of have to scrap and say, okay, that didn't work for us. But other times you can tweak it and test it against to scrap and say, okay, that didn't work for us. But other times you can tweak it and test it against another strategy and see, okay, well, if we make, you know, these changes, will that work for us? And again, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. And you just have to kind of close the door on that strategy and move on to the next. Right. Yeah. No, that's so helpful. Thank you for that. Okay. TikTok shop. Let's talk about that for a minute. Cause I know you, you guys have dabbled there and just learned a lot on that side of

Starting point is 00:27:52 things. So how has that experience been? Do you have any insights there and how has it benefited the brand overall so far? Yeah. So TikTok shop is actually something that we implemented right around the time when I joined the team. So it been really fun to grow this channel from the ground up. It's something, again, that I touch really, really closely. I'm in our seller center all day, every day. Again, it's been a huge, huge learning experience. I feel like I sound like a broken record, but I think that the key to success on TikTok shop is again, to test everything and see what sticks because it is such a new channel and you have so many advertisers that are flooding to it right now. There's kind of no precedent for what does and doesn't work long-term. So you really just have to try everything. We last year, last summer had a product go viral organically on TikTok,

Starting point is 00:28:48 but that, and we saw a huge halo effect from that, which was amazing, but we didn't necessarily see it correlate directly to sales on TikTok shop at the time. However, you know, in the months since then, we've done a ton of testing. We've tried, you know, driving regular kind of TikTok, like just feed ads to our shop. We've tried sparking. We've tried brand, native brand content. We've tried creator content. We've tried educational content. We've tried more trendy content.

Starting point is 00:29:21 So we really have tested so much with this shop. And we've just been able to see exponential growth from our TikTok shop. So it's been really exciting. And I will say it's been a huge joint effort between my team and then our influencer team who's running our TikTok shop affiliate creator program. But it's been, yeah, really exciting and like rewarding to see that kind of start to take off. And we're certainly aware that at some point we might have to pivot again. And so I think, you know, going back to testing, even though we're leaning into this one product

Starting point is 00:30:13 right now, and a lot of our content that's linking to our shop is linking to this product. Um, the, the content itself is heavily, heavily focused on product usage, product education. But I'm still testing other videos and other products because we know that at some point, again, we might have to pivot and focus on new products. So it is certainly always a work in progress, but it's been really fun. And, you know, it's, I think, has really become a reputable sales channel for a lot of brands and is something that a lot of people are starting to see success from. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Yeah. It's been exciting to watch it grow and just other brands, small brands, large brands all find success with it and excited to continue to watch that. But you've mentioned a lot in this conversation, just the idea of having to have clear communication across different functions in your business, whether that's influencer, organic, retail teams, there's a number of different hands in the pot, right? And we've talked a little bit about this, but any other tips around just ensuring streamlined communication across the board? Are you guys meeting weekly as

Starting point is 00:31:27 a whole? Like any tips of what you guys have kind of applied internally that you can share that's been, that would hopefully be helpful for other teams. So we are a small but mighty team and everyone kind of owns their own role. I will say like operationally, know we're in slack all day every day we're a slack company I love slack um and so I am chatting with people from my team and from other teams all day if I if I need anything just kind of you know as a one-off if I need to pull a spark code or I you know need to ask our retail team something about you know a product that we're launching, something like that. I know I can easily reach people in Slack. And then every couple of weeks, we actually meet all three of our teams meet. So retail, e-commerce, and our brand marketing team, we all meet together to align across the board on

Starting point is 00:32:18 upcoming content, upcoming launches. What do we need to focus on? Where do we need to put ad dollars and where can we focus more organically? So that has been really helpful to have that communication, you know, kind of face to face every few weeks. But I think it is just kind of important to constantly stay in contact with people across teams. And I think that you can learn a ton. I think that communication with teams outside of your own can only benefit your role as well in your team. I'm a huge proponent of learning from other functions and other teams. And I just think that that, you know, is how a business grows successfully. Oh, 100%. And I think just remembering that everyone is working towards similar goals. So you can only improve your potential of achieving those goals even more by communicating and having that clear line of communication and building relationships with other teams. And it's so incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:33:27 And I think opening your eyes to other departments and learning how their functions work, asking them, you know, what do you need to ensure that what you guys are doing would be more successful? What can I teach you? What can I show you? I think it's just important to open that line of communication and just build trust between departments. And to your point, it can only just support you and help you guys grow as a team even better. So yeah. And I think too, you know, it makes me a more enthusiastic employee when, you know, I know that all of my team members are also working for the same goal and we are employing

Starting point is 00:34:06 different strategies to get there. But ultimately, like you said, we all have the same goal. And that was really, you know, the main reason I wanted to be on a brand side team is because that, you know, communication is so fascinating to me. And, you know, before I joined, I never would have known how a retail team functions and, you know, they're meeting with the buyers and, you know, before I joined, I never would have known how a retail team functions and, you know, they're meeting with the buyers and, you know, if they want to promote a certain product in store, sometimes we need to put ad dollars behind that to show that we're supporting this certain retailer. And so, yeah, that whole kind of ecosystem I just think is so fascinating. And yeah, I always, I encourage people to like

Starting point is 00:34:45 learn from other teams and ask questions, even if it doesn't directly apply to what you're doing, just, you know, education across the whole brand is, is so important. Yeah. And last thing I'll say in that, I think too, a lot of times we allow these meetings to happen under the guidance and schedules that our leadership puts into place. But I think too, another thing to remember is don't be afraid to go and set those meetings up yourself. Like if you are confused with how a function in your business works, or you have a problem you're trying to solve about the way that you're putting creative together or whatever, like don't be afraid to initiate those conversations as well. And I think leadership will see that too and know,

Starting point is 00:35:29 okay, maybe we need to meet a little bit more often, or maybe we need to be asking different questions or open this line of communication even more. So, um, I think, you know, for you listening, don't be afraid to do that as well. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, Ellie, I want to talk about just some of the creative projects that you have worked on outside of your nine to five. And you mentioned you were doing freelancing prior to your role now. Um, but just overall with some of these different projects you've worked on, whether it's writing for your blog, um, how do these creative endeavors compliment your professional work or just enhance blog, how do these creative endeavors complement your professional work or just enhance, you know, the creative endeavors outside of your nine to five enhance

Starting point is 00:36:10 what you're doing professionally in a corporate sense and what value do you feel they bring just overall to your skillset as a marketer? So, yes, I have always had creative projects going on the side throughout my whole career. And I think that they've benefited me in a ton of different ways. You know, earlier on in my career, I did a lot of writing and copywriting as kind of like a side hustle. And that was more so so that I could keep in touch with my creative side while I was in a nine to five that was a little bit more analytical and based on data. And then,

Starting point is 00:36:47 you know, more recently this past year, my creative freelance work really was what allowed me to leave that job that I mentioned that really wasn't serving me. And so I spent a few months doing a lot of marketing consulting and creative work and, you know, copywriting social media strategy for small brands. And that kept my skills sharp as a marketer while I was, you know, copywriting social media strategy for small brands. And that kept my skills sharp as a marketer while I was, you know, hunting for my next full-time role. But it also allowed me to kind of try on a bunch of different mini roles and a bunch of different industries that, you know, I didn't know if I was really interested in them or not. But I think that also kind of like guided where I ended up now. And, and, you know, some of the projects that I worked on that I was really passionate

Starting point is 00:37:29 and excited about are things that I now do in my full-time role. And I, you know, can say that I am here because of that experience. And now I just write for myself. It's more of a passion project. I have a blog and an interview series that I write. And, you know, even though now my role actually, I do get to do a ton of copywriting and creative concepting and stuff like that. So my role now is there is a huge creative component to it. But the writing that I do in my free time is like completely different from the writing that I do or the creative elements to my day to day job. And, you know, I always I just think it's important to kind of like have an outlet on the side that's, you know, in a different industry or a different topic than whatever you're working on all day, every day. And when I look back at all of the side projects that I've taken on over the years, they're all different, but I will say that the common thread is that they've been in industries

Starting point is 00:38:36 that are different than my nine to five. And, um, they're more heavily creative based than my nine to five. And, um, I like when I in the past took on freelance roles, it was never with the intention to like scale it into like a full-time role or anything. Um, but I think that taking the initiative to try things outside of what your daily roles and responsibilities are is one of the best ways to learn new skill sets that again, like might eventually serve you in your career down the line. You know, now as an example, like if my company, if we need newsletter copy written, or we need a TikTok brief, which is something that, you know, happens frequently. I know that like, this is a skillset that I now possess and I can confidently bring that to the table. And then

Starting point is 00:39:29 that saves us the, you know, time and resources that would otherwise be spent outsourcing that. So, you know, that was a long-winded way of saying that, yes, I think having creative projects on the side is good personally, and also can really, really benefit your career. Yes, 100%. And that can look so differently depending on your interests, your passions. But I think you'd be surprised even if it's like not writing, it's something completely unrelated, how a lot of those things, those skills, those hobbies or whatever can really benefit what you're doing. Even if it's just like a time for your brain to just unplug from your normal thoughts that you have during your corporate career. Um, I think it's, I think it's so incredibly important just to have

Starting point is 00:40:16 those outside pursuits, like you said, so could not agree more. Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, I mentioned writing a lot because that's what I, a lot of what I do right now, but also, you know, in, in past like freelance gigs, I've done content creation role, you know, I would read job descriptions that had tasks. And I was like, you know, I've done that for a freelance client. I really didn't enjoy it. I don't think that's the role that is a good fit for me. So yeah, there's two sides to the coin there for sure.

Starting point is 00:40:57 So good. Yeah. And I think having those areas or functions in mind too, when you are looking for a new job is so incredibly important because you know for a fact, or at least functions in mind too, when you are looking for a new job is so incredibly important because you know, for a fact, or at least you hope, right. That you're going to get into a situation that, you know, you are not only well-suited for, but that's something that you will not lose energy for. Um, because I cannot tell you how draining it is to be doing something that you do not enjoy every single day. And it really just

Starting point is 00:41:25 takes away your, your joy and excitement for your role. And you definitely don't want to fall into that. So yeah, so important. So important. Okay. So Ellie, I have to ask one of our favorite questions that we ask guests on the show. And that is, what do you know now that you wish you knew earlier on in your career? And it can be anything life-related, career-related, really anything you want to share with that. Yeah, I love this question. I will say I wish that I knew earlier on that your career won't always be linear and it can be really fun to change things up and it can be a good thing to kind of step out of your comfort zone and try something

Starting point is 00:42:05 new. You might succeed at it. You might fail at it. But at the end of the day, trying a ton of new things is, I think, what is going to lead you to a career that you're passionate in. And I think that the second part of that is that it's never too late to make a change. I realize I say this and I'm, you know, four years into my career, but I think I had to make a couple of like pretty drastic changes early on that I wouldn't have expected. And those only ended up benefiting me in the end. So yes, 100%. Yeah. It's so interesting how the generations have changed so much over the years. Like we think about our parents and our grandparents and they literally stayed in the same job for like 20, 30 years and the same industry for their whole lives.

Starting point is 00:42:53 And I think times have really changed. And I, I think it's for the good because we have to be energized and excited about what we do. And it's okay to kind of go through different steps and different avenues in order to find out what we really get excited about and also like where our skillset lies and everything. And so I think don't be discouraged by that. Don't be afraid to pivot, make drastic changes, small changes. And I think it's only getting you closer to where, you know, you ultimately should be. So yeah, totally. Yeah. Yes. Well,

Starting point is 00:43:25 Ellie, thank you so much. This has been so wonderful. Thank you for sharing more about just performance marketing and your career overall, um, was very excited to learn from you today. Uh, and we got to know where we can stay in touch with you and beekeepers naturals. So where are the best places online just to learn more about you and learn more about the brand as well yeah you can find me on linkedin um i'm just ellie bressler on linkedin um my personal instagram is at ellie dot wrestler so that's where all my you know writing personal stuff will be yeah so beekeepers underscore naturals on both instagram and tiktok if you want to perfect come and interact with our brand.

Starting point is 00:44:06 Perfect. And then what about your blog and interview series? Where can we find that as well? Yeah. Um, so again, it's linked in my Instagram bio. Um, I've actually been trying out sub stack recently where I'm playing around with it to see if I like that better. Um, my blog itself is by Ellie Reed. My interview series

Starting point is 00:44:26 is called 20 something. So by Ellie Reed.com slash 20 something. Again, yeah, linked to my Instagram bio. There's always, you know, new fun things going on there. So oh my gosh, awesome. Well, Ellie, thank you so much. Again, we'll definitely follow along. We'll have all the links below in the show notes. And thank you again for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.

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Marketing Happy Hour - Intro to TikTok Shop (+ More Paid Media Strategies) | Ellie Bresler of Beekeeper's Naturals

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