Amazon Product Photography: How to Increase Conversion Rate

Speaker A: As a copywriter, this fact crushes me

Speaker B: just a little bit.

Speaker A: And it's uh, that most customers are not actually reading your product pages and instead they're just judging your photos. And I know, I get it, this sounds really dramatic and it is, maybe, perhaps, but in the world of E commerce, your visuals are often doing more selling than your copy and your features and sometimes even your ads. If the customer cannot quickly see what, what your product actually is, how it works, whether or not it fits into their life, they're probably going to keep on scrolling or they're going to go to your, one of your competitors. So in this episode, A Few Minutes of Growth, I'm, um, joined by Liz, the CEO over at suna, to talk about why visual content has become one of the biggest growth levers in E commerce. And while we talk about visual photo shoots and product photography and UGC and Amazon and why brands need content that works across different aspects of the marketing funnel, this is really a conversation that applies to service based businesses as well to local businesses. If you own or market a business, yes, this conversation is E commerce related, but this applies to you because at the end of the day, our job is to help customers see themselves using and engaging with our products and services before they ever click the buy button. So with that being said, let's jump into the episode.

Speaker B: Liz, welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me, Ally.

Speaker B: So, Liz, I introduced a little of the professional side of you, but in a sentence or story, who are you as a human, what's bringing you joy right now?

Speaker C: Well, I think first of all, I always think of myself as a creative first and a founder second. And I think that's probably one of the most important parts of my identity is that I spent the first 10 years of my career in production as a professional creative person. And before I started being a founder, before I started entrepreneurship, that was my heart. That was where my heart always was. And as a result, what's bringing me a lot of joy right now is, uh, I've actually just been finished a book called Fame Sick by Lena Dunham. And I loved the book. I thought it was like a great industry read, but it was also a great read as a woman, it was a great read. As a writer, as a creative person person, I find her to be really provocative and interesting. And in general, actually what's giving me a ton of joy in 2026 is reading. I'm a voracious reader, but this year I feel like it's been especially intense and I have a, I Have a hack for people, for how if you want to become like a really, uh, good reader, somebody who reads a lot.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: The thing, the thing you have to do. So you have to do it in set. You have to read books in sets of threes. A lot of people will just like pick one book and then they will just like try to finish that one book. But actually what I have found is if I read like a memoir or kind of a juicy sort of book first, then I read a business book. So, uh, I read Fame Sick. I was like, in my most recent set of three, I read Fame Sick. That was like a juicy one. Then I'll read, um, a business book. I read Reset, uh, by Dan Heath, which I also really recommend. A great book about resetting culture or resetting your approach to problems. And I finished that book and now I'm on, uh, my third book of the month, which is a book called Heir Apparent, which is about the royal family. So like, I will kind of like mix it up with like something kind of, something kind of like juicy and provocative, something very businessy and then something kind of historical or bigger picture. And that set actually makes it so that you, one, never get bored of reading. Two, you find yourself kind of like excited for a change of pace in between all these different types of books. And three, you honestly, your brain actually works really well in sets of three. Three is like a magical number in art, science, math, everything. Uh, and so I often find that if you can find sets of three in your life, you actually will pick up the habit more intentionally. And so it's a habit former as well. So reading, reading is giving me a lot of joy.

Speaker B: Okay, I love that. Are you like a morning reader or like at night sort of reader after the kids have gone to bed?

Speaker C: I'm a morning reader, yes. So, uh, I have an eight month old. And so when he wakes up in the morning and sort of starts his day and has his first bottle and is sort of like, uh, in my arms waking up for the day I'm reading. And that's like a really great time to get the day started with, with a book.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh, I love it. And I'm assuming you're physical books, not audiobooks.

Speaker C: It depends. Like, I will go back and forth, um, especially when I read business books, actually I will listen to the audiobook and hold the book in my hand at the same time. Helps me kind of connect the dots a little bit better. If I'm reading like a really heavy historical book or something, I have to sit and read the book. But then Lena Dunham's book. I actually did choose to do the audiobook because I wanted to hear her VO So I'll kind of go. I'm all over the place. I'm agnostic about four.

Speaker B: I love. I love a good audiobook. That's like business, but it kind of just feels like listening to a podcast at that point.

Speaker C: That's true, yes. And there are some that are really, really good. Um, the Adam Grant books are really good because he's also a podcaster. So if you ever get a chance to do one of his audiobooks, those are really good ones.

Speaker B: And I'm assuming he did his own voiceovers.

Speaker C: He did, yes. Almost all of them.

Speaker B: See, I love it when it's like the actual author does their own voiceovers and not. We paid somebody whose voice I've heard seven other times elsewhere. That's what I. That's the audiobooks that I can get behind. And they're. They're fewer and far between, more than we m. Realize.

Speaker C: I think you're right. In fact, the other one I read last month, I read Empires of AI by Karen Howe, and that was like my kind of businessy book that I read last month. And she read her whole book, and it was amazing. It was wonderful to listen to her read her whole book. So if the author reads their book, I do try to listen to it, because there's something about that that. I think you're right. There's a magic to that. There's a person. There's something very personal about it as well. Anyway, we could go on about.

Speaker B: We could go down this rabbit hole.

Speaker D: Let's not.

Speaker B: I'm gonna pivot us, so I'm gonna make you to give me another word vomit. So I actually, in the intro, did not introduce Suna, and I did that on purpose. So I want to hear from you. You're not a traditional marketing agency or really necessarily a traditional production company either. So tell me a little bit about how soon it works.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Happy to. Uh, Suna. You're right. Suna is not an agency at all, actually. We don't think of ourselves as an agency, and we don't think of ourselves as a production company. We think about ourselves as a platform for content creation. And what that means to us is every single thing that we interact with on the Internet, whether it's an e Commerce store, TikTok, going to Amazon, the way we make decisions about what we want to buy, what we want to interact with, what brands we become a Fan of is through the visual. The visual medium is actually about 90% of the purchase decision making process for the vast majority of consumers. And creating those visuals has historically been a really slow, very arduous and oftentimes incredibly expensive process. And so SUNA is a platform to make that more affordable. The way we do that is we give brands a technology platform for planning their content creation. So think about all the pre production steps that you're used to doing. Things like what's the right shot list for Amazon? How do I get the right mix of content for TikTok we take all that away and we make it very easy to plug and play very popular formats, recommended formats, the best formats so that you can pre select the content type you need based on where you're trying to market something and what you're trying to market. And then we match you with our platform and our platform has a. I'm sorry, we match you with our platform talent on our platform. So our talent is our photographers, our stylists, our models, our UGC creators. You have over 15, uh, hundred types of professionals on the platform and we match you to the people who are best for you. So that can be, you know, the right makeup stylist who's exceptionally awesome at developing, you know, brilliant swatches for imagery. It could be a photographer who specializes in food, uh, all those things, things get matched together. And then because we do that, we also offer brands and the ability to either join their shoot in person or join virtually. And that's, they're really one of the biggest innovations behind SUNA is that we've pioneered something called the virtual photo shoot. We are all working all over the place, all the time, trying to get a lot of things done. And if you spend any time in the production industry, you know that these long, all day shoots, the, that take up sometimes, many, many days of your work week, they can be kind of all consuming. And so what we decided to do is we decided to give brands visibility into their photo shoot. Visibility into the camera actually. So they can see every single photo and video as it's created in real time from their creative team and they can comment on it, give feedback on it, like things actually get edits done in real time on any of those assets without having to leave their desk, leave the train, leave their office, leave their vacation, if that's where they are. Uh, and so that virtual photo shoot component, that ability to really be there without having to be there is one of the biggest things that we offer. And then finally when we talk about Being a platform, it means connecting to all the places where this content lives. So soon it integrates with your Shopify store, your Amazon store, your social platforms, your Canva account. So if you want to go edit your content on Canva or put it in different templates, you can do that. Uh, it's really thinking about the end to end creative experience and how we can make that a more seamless process so that your content creation is faster. We're about twice as fast as traditional production, more affordable, we're about 30% less expensive than traditional production and frankly more scalable, helping brands be able to create just significantly more content while they are, uh, working on all these different productions. I like this.

Speaker B: This is so cool and fascinating because I've talked to a lot of production companies and like the amount of like let me go haul my gear to the client or and like the pre production, during production, post production, it's so time consuming and be able to like

Speaker C: not clean up your life.

Speaker B: One shoot can be an entire week of your life in prep. So if I'm an E commerce brand here in Nashville and I have my products here, am I then just shipping them to wherever the photo studio essentially is?

Speaker C: Precisely. So say for example you're a cosmetics brand and we've matched you with one of our photographers. Uh, we will give you the address where you need to ship your product. We'll give you all the information about what you need to ship. If it's your first photo shoot, we'll actually ship it for free. So we'll cover the cost of shipping for free you on your first photo shoot and uh, say for example, it's shipped to our Minneapolis warehouse. Once it gets there, you're going to get all the notifications about it's arrived. How does it look? We'll intake it for you, inventory it for you. Uh, one of the things we also have is we have a robust prop library with thousands of props so you can actually pick the prop. Once your product arrives in our location, you can see what props are available in that location and grab props off the platform and book them, um, to be included in your photo shoot. And so every single thing about the process is really meant to be virtual and really, really easy to do. Just like running your e commerce store.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh, I love.

Speaker C: This is fascinating.

Speaker B: Uh, especially because when you think of like a lot of E commerce brands try to do like their product shoots in house, which is fine. And if you have a good photographer that you're best friends with, like, sure. But yes, Being able to pull in like all of the props because, I mean, I used to do a ton of photography. Not in the product space, but it's like, okay, now I'm going to Walmart and Target and Dollar General to go get how many hundreds of dollars in props for XYZ photo shoot that I'm then going to use once? And then because I technically took the tag off them and shouldn't ethically return them, I'm not stuck with, yes, it's true.

Speaker C: I mean, production is incredibly expensive. A lot of people don't realize, you know, SUNA does not charge for things like our prop library. We do not charge for our sets, we do not charge you studio time, we do not charge you for equipment rentals. All of these things are included in becoming a user of suna. And so, you know, when I was in my professional creative production career, in the early days of my career, let's say, for example, uh, this actually whole thing started because a friend of mine said, hey, I'm starting a Shopify store. Would you take some, some pictures for me? And I was like, okay, I gotta go rent a studio. Well, there's a thousand dollars to rent it for four hours. I gotta get a specialty light to be able to capture this product and the kind of style that they're looking for. There's another $300 for that rental. And then I gotta, uh. To your point, you know, this was a. Happened to be a food product. I gotta get some fresh food and fresh ingredients to, to show with the product. And there was another hundred dollars, and I've spent over $1,500 before I've even taken a single picture. And that's normal. That's how the industry has worked for a really long time. SUNA really inverted that model. And what we wanted to do is we wanted to say we want to give you as much of this as we can, inclusive of becoming a user of the Suna platform. Costs $69 a month to be a SUNA, uh, member.

Speaker D: Hey, guys, real quick. This episode is sponsored by Parisan Network. Parisan Network is a matchmaking service that connects businesses to marketing agencies that will actually get you results.

Speaker B: Results.

Speaker D: There's over 50,000 agencies in the United States alone. And picking the right one can feel, well, pretty impossible. Parrison Network simplifies the entire process by doing all of the vetting for you, from the initial agency search, to interviewing and vetting the top marketing agencies, to getting proposals and helping you the discovery call. Parasan Network does it all this way you end up partnering with a marketing agency that actually delivers outcomes, not empty promises. If you're ready to stop wasting money on marketing that just doesn't work, visit perrynetwork.com and get your free agency search started today. That's perrysonnetwork.com P E R I S S O N network.com to use all

Speaker C: of our integrations, all of our tools, have unlimited access to our prop library, have unlimited access to our seven production kitchens, our five production living rooms, our three production bathrooms. Like anything and everything you can humanly sell, we've got a set to show that off, right?

Speaker B: So I love it.

Speaker C: For $69 a month, that's a bargain. You're going to be able to get any kind of creative environment. Plus on top of that you have access to this incredible talent directory. And so that's another thing. Say you want to have a modern day model, show off your product. Well, how did you find a model? Well, I gotta go ask a friend to model for me or I gotta model myself or if I, if I want to invest, I have to go actually, you know, inquire with the talent agency. And a lot of people don't realize, you know, to work with a talent agency you're gonna have to pay a full day rate to that model. Most markets starts at $1200 a day plus the agency commission of a thousand dollars. So you're in $2,200 on that model fee. Uh, at Suna you can book a model for $149 an hour. And these are people that we have vetted, that we have photographed ourselves, that we have made sure can show off your product. These are all things that we just wanted to inherently take a different approach to and say hey, if we make really great content, our incentives should be aligned. We should be able to show you that we can do really great work, give you all the things that you need, um, support the overall economics of the business, of course, but really create a situation where you're walking away with great content for your business. And we're uh, walking away with a great business model that allows us to scale these services across many, many, many customers.

Speaker B: I love it. So speaking of ugc, a lot of brands think of UGC primarily in the context of social media, but it tends to influence the entire customer journey. For marketing leaders where what should they thinking of be thinking about using UGC for outside of organic and paid social media.

Speaker C: UGC has changed a lot. Uh, it started definitely you're right as a social only sort of extension and actually it's interesting, the history of this category is really an offshoot of influencing first influencing and celebrity endorsed content creation was first. Then there was this realization that actually real people have a higher, higher likelihood to purchase from someone who looks like them, sounds like them, lives like them. Um, and then user generated content sort of came from that offshoot as hey, I actually want to buy from people who look like me, not somebody who is a celebrity. So that started as a purely social exercise. But what we've seen at SUNA is that it has grown into every part of the purchase making process. So on your own website, uh, if you include user generated content in your gallery images in your pdp. So that's when you see your five images of your product at the top. If you highly curate two to three pieces of really well done user generated content in that photo set, it can increase conversion rate to cart by as much as 75%. Um, because it's reminding people oftentimes of their discussion discovery of your business as well as reminding you that it's supposed to live in a certain context. So if you just think about, I'm a, I'm really into gardening, I have a massive, a bit of a plant lady actually.

Speaker B: I love it, I'm here for it,

Speaker C: you know, when I go to um. But I was literally just looking for a specialty product for my olive tree the other night and I noticed I made the decision to purchase from the website that had put user generated content in the set because I could see how the product had actually influenced a real consumer, not just me. Right. Or not just a marketing asset, you know, that I would want it to look like and how that applies to me. Uh, so that gives you a perfect example. Another example of where UGC has become really powerful is actually in third party retail. So that's when you are launching into Amazon, when you're launching into Walmart, when you're launching into Target, uh, when you start moving into that big box. Retail user generated content is increasingly becoming a way to set yourself apart from the standardization that kind of exists across all of those retail platforms. Every single retailer has kind of their tried and true, totally tested set of content that they want you to create. To be able to sell on those platforms you need to check those boxes. But to create that differentiation of your products, you then need to be thinking about the next thing. Users generated content can play a huge role there. We uh, worked with a brand recently that started implementing user generated content. Just one piece of user generated content kind of before and after Content in their Amazon listing sets improved purchase rate by 11%. Right. So if you just think about what does that incrementality of user generated content do, it again creates that, that high conviction from a consumer that some somebody who looks like them, sounds like them, lives like them is also getting value from your product. So user generated content isn't just for social, it's also for point of sale. It's also for creating these kind of high conversion moments.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the use of UGC at uh, the point of sale, especially on places like Target and Amazon, because if I'm looking for like headphones on Amazon, all these headphones look exactly the same and you're mostly competing on purpose price plus maybe a little bit of feature differentiation. But as I'm flipping through trying to figure out what's the difference, subconsciously I'm going to choose the one that has the humid in the image or if I'm looking at like a new vacuum or something that where scale and size matters to me makes such, I think it makes such a difference and more than we realize, an 11% like lift in conversions, that's thousands upon thousands of additional dollars in revenue for you simply by having like one or two additional photos.

Speaker C: I gotta tell you, one of the things I see so consistently too is as UGC exists in more places in your funnel. So if you think about a lot of brands use UGC and organic social, increasingly brands are using UGC and paid ads. The thing to remember is that we're taking consumers on a journey always. And so having UGC at the point of sale, whether that's on your website or in a third party retail website, it actually just reminds them of the context with which they discovered your product as well. And so it is creating this longer term buy in. Right. So maybe they first thought about your headphone product when they got a targeted ad on Instagram and then maybe they saw some organic posts from user generated content on TikTok. Then they got to Amazon and they saw your product on Amazon and again they're clicking around, they're comparison shopping. But then they see that ugc, it's in whether or not it's conscious. You're remembering there's a through line, there's a through line of conviction that's forming through all this different creator led media. And I think that's the thing that makes UGC especially so powerful is that it actually has the power to tell a story in a way that marketing content traditionally has done. But it's a new kind of story and it's a more human story that I think we're all really craving right now.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: So going back, you have multiple points of sale for a single product. You have their native website, you have Walmart, you have TikTok Shop, you have Amazon. How does the UGC that you put at these different points of sale and also across different channels like Facebook, Instagram, you name it. How should that be changing? Because you did mention earlier, I think at the beginning that's like these are the photos that perform best per channel, I think.

Speaker C: Yeah. So uh, we'll m. Just use Amazon as an example because it's the one that I probably get asked about the most and it's the place that I think the vast majority of brands are all trying to crack all the time. So yeah, I often say that Amazon is kind of, it's a, both a black box and, and totally transparent. And what I mean by that is Amazon's actually quite clear about what kind of content they want you to use. They want you to use content that shows the product at scale. They want you to show content that shows a human in the image. They want you to use content that shows comparison. I. E. Before and after, before I use the product or after I use the product, if that's relevant. Um, these are all things they're quite clear about. But what's not always clear is in how that pertains to your category. So how can you creatively apply those ideas to whatever you're selling? Say that's a kitchen appliance or a home good or a children's clothing item. Right. Like you've got to figure out how to make that relevant to your particular category and your particular business model. And so what I often say is that when you're thinking about how to come up with this content sets and your, your plan should be first, how do we honor our brand given this set of rules? And what is our brand about? Is our brand about, you know, fun? Uh, if our brand's about fun and if our brand's about colorfulness, then okay, great, we're going to lead with fun and colorful images. Whether that's our Amazon content or our uh, user generated content that should, that should fit the brief second, then it's got to be about how do we be as complete as possible in explaining and checking the boxes for a part of a retailer like Amazon. The more you give Amazon to work with, the better. Uh, you don't want to actually be skimpy when you're using something like Amazon. The reason Is, is that to your point you mentioned, you know, consumers are comparison shopping. They're oftentimes, you know, making decisions both on price and these sort of like micro comparisons that they're doing, they're also oftentimes able to discern those comparisons almost exclusively based on those image sets. Uh, the vast majority of consumers are only reading about 10 to 15% of what you've got in that long block of copy. And so your images have to do a lot of work. So if your features, for example, let's say that you're a homegood product, you've got to be able to call out what is the scale of the product, how many inches is the product, what's the dimensions, the product you should be calling out, what are features of the product, Is it rechargeable? Do you plug it in? Does it, you know, have a solar, solar battery? All of these things, these are things that you should call out in your image set and what, these are not things that you would maybe do on your own website, right? On your own website you're probably not going to put the, the dimensions, you're probably not going to put crazy call outs to every single feature for how your product is powered. The reason I call out all of this sort of minutia is because it's a mindset shift. It's a mindset of how do you make the rules of the road of these massive retailers work for you while still honoring what's important to your brand and what's important to your business. And for a lot of folks, the way that they can make that connective tissue between their website and these third party retailers is also ugc. It's being able to use that same ugc, those same types of creators, that same kind of focus consumer. So if you say for example, a dad in his 40s is your target consumer, having that image of the dad in his 40s across all your media sets can be that connective tissue that helps to make everything come together. Um, these are the things that I advise brands to focus on so that you can create both an on brand experience and a high conversion experience at the same time.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think it's interesting with Amazon, like they do have a lot of guidelines of you have to have XYZ in the photos. And as you're talking I'm thinking of like, yeah, I very rarely, unless I'm looking at like tech, I'm going to read through any of like the big blocks of text that they have. It's like I'm just Looking for like what's in the images and what's the text. But I think something that you said was super unique is like the image of the 40 year old dad across all the channels. Because I originally came from an ad, that's what reminds me of like this is how I got connected to this product in the first place.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: While still having to adhere to like the Amazon brand standards for better lack of terminology.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: Um, so with that being said, um, Amazon is a super competitive place. What should a marketing team be looking at when they're auditing their top three

Speaker C: competitors on Amazon specifically?

Speaker B: Yeah, let's start with Amazon.

Speaker C: Okay. Um, well one of the things I always tell people is that when you're looking at your competitors on Amazon, the first thing you want to do is you actually want to go look at their use user reviews and the user submitted images. It's going to give you a clear insight into where people are happiest for their product and where people are least happy with their product. And where people are least happy with their product is your green space. In other words, if you discover that you know, every single one of your competitors have a lot of unhappiness around, let's call it the color of the products or the available, you know, available skew of variants of uh, patterns or prints, uh, that's an opportunity for you to focus on how are your colors different, how are your prints different. Showing as many of your colors as humanly possible. So it's almost reverse engineering and saying where my competitors, consumers are least happy, where can I make them most happy and how do I show that in my visual set. Second thing I always recommend is the power of people. Uh, so many. There's a really a dearth of brands who have invested and human LED imagery in their Amazon storefronts. Uh, whether that's fashion, whether that's footwear, whether that's home goods or supplements cpg their way. Because it is only a recommendation from Amazon that you include a image ah, of a person. It's not a requirement. The vast majority of brands will go askew of that, that recommendation and just do the easiest thing which is not include a human person in any of their images. What I see time and time again is brands that invest in, you know, a real human in a real kitchen using that home good, a real human with a real body trying on that shoe. A real human with a real body, you know, using that supplement or using that fitness product. It, it almost is regardless of category on Amazon Specifically, anywhere from 7 17% to 27% lift by the inclusion of a real human. A lot of folks will try to cheat this by sort of just like photoshopping a human or using AI to put a human in. What I'll tell you now is because of recent legal changes in the state of New York, every single one of those AI generated humans will need to be labeled as AI. And so I don't think consumers actually want that. I think consumers want to see a real consumer using the product product. And so investing in that imagery that shows a real person using your product is the second way that I'd stand out from the competition. And then the third way that I'd stand out from the competition, um, believe it or not, is through the use of video. And uh, only Today only about 19% of Amazon stores implement uh, video with any kind of consistency or scale across their stores. It is a wide open green space. And video we know from many, many a B tests regardless of category, but especially high in electronics, home goods, gifts, toys, anything that's sort of considered like a, a nice to have purchase, not a have to have purchase video, uh, in those categories improve conversion rate by anywhere from nine to 13 points. So we know that video helps people make purchase decisions, help someone them decide when they're comparison shopping if your product is a more complete product, if you will, for what they ultimately want. So implementing video and it doesn't have to be complicated, they can be anything as simple as an unboxing, right? Somebody just unboxing the product, showing how the product works. It can be an assembly video. If you have a lot of assembly or you have a lot of, you know, preparation that has to be done for the product to be used. Um, if you're in fashion it can be as simple as a walk video, a model walk, walking with the product to seeing how the product moves or flows. Uh, any of these things can really just help confirm uh, what the purchaser wants to do or whether or not you're the right thing for them. So those are the three things. Reverse engineering your areas of opportunities, focusing on real humans in your images and then adding video where you can.

Speaker B: I love it. And I think it goes back to humans buy from humans. At the end of the day we, we don't especially the more tech becomes prominent, AI becomes prominent. We want to buy from people we know like and trust that people are relatable. And by having people in your content, you fill that relatable space within the E commerce industry.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Humans aren't changing about in this way. Right. Like if you look at, if you look at. Why do people, we, uh, why do we like trends? Why do trends matter to us? Well, it's because someone somewhere started the trend. A person started the trend. The object didn't start the trend. The person who made it cool started a trend. So these are, these are human LED activities. Whether or not we always inherently understand or accept that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think under, under every data point is at the end of the day it's humans, humans, humans upon humans upon humans is what makes up any sort of data set. And I think as marketers we kind of lose sight of that every once in a while. So we get so obsessed with like the analytics and the features and the benefits that we miss the. Hey, don't forget the actual people.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: So I'm gonna flip a little bit and we're gonna go into rapid fire. So this is just the first thing that comes to mind. 100% industry and Ch. Channel agnostic. Because you've been in the marketing space for a minute or so.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: So number one, most overrated marketing channel right now.

Speaker C: Most overrated meta. Yeah, I just, we all spend so much time spending time optimizing, trying to understand it. I don't think it's ever been the same, uh, since the algorithm changes that started in 2020 and I've just gotten worse from there.

Speaker B: Yep. Um, most underrated marketing channel right now, Amazon ads. Oh, okay. If you had to start a non marketing business tomorrow, what would it be?

Speaker C: Well, here's the thing. I ultimately believe every business is a marketing business. In fact, in today's day and age, if you don't know how to get distribution for your product, you, you don't have a business at all. But that aside, if I was to uh, start a business just for the fun of it and just say like, well, because I'm excited about it or I enjoy it, I'd probably start a flower shop.

Speaker B: Oh my God, I love that. Okay, you have 20k to spend on marketing for the flower shop. What are you doing with the 20K?

Speaker C: First thing I'm doing is that I am hosting a really large party, uh, at the flower shop that's going to be designed to get people to create content, talk about the company, post social posts, share more information. Second thing I'm going to do is I am going to invest in an SMS platform and an email platform and really focus on building my SMS and email list. Third thing I'm going to do is probably build uh, out as best As I can. My initial kind of like geo awareness. So that's going to be getting my Google, uh, up to speed, uh, and actually starting to build out the framework for recommendation and LLMs. So, you know, every single time somebody's asking for a flower, how do I start building the content and the information required to get LLMs talking about my flower shop?

Speaker B: I love it. What is one marketing hill that you will die on?

Speaker C: Email still works.

Speaker B: Yep. Um, best marketing campaign you've ever seen.

Speaker C: I'm a little biased because I think as I'm an investor in this company, but there's a company called Half Days, which is a women's sportwear brand and they have been doing these things called mountain meetups for the last six years where women who want to. So for women going hiking, being outdoorsy, oftentimes it can be a little bit scary to go on a hike by yourself. And so they do these things called mountain meetups where in the summer it's hikes, in the winter it's skiing or skating. And uh, women get together and go do these outdoor activities. And it's a great way to create a lot of passion activation around the products and the business. But then the founders also show up wearing the products, talk about the technical aspects of the products I have, and it creates an incredible amount of organic, social and content for them. And so I see it as a great way to build. Community is an overused buzzword, but I actually think what people are looking for underneath the word community is they're looking for activated consumers, consumers that will get off their butts and go do something. And so I think it's a really powerful, uh, showing of how activating consumers can look.

Speaker B: Awesome. Ah, I love it. So, Liz, thank you so much for coming on the show today. If people, people would like to connect with you further, what's the best way for them to find you?

Speaker C: Well, I would love for them to do three things if that's okay. Power of three is one, I would love for them to go to Suna Co newsletters and sign up for our newsletters. Uh, because we, we write really great newsletters. Specifically I write one on the first of the month every month about trends that I'm seeing in e commerce and marketing. So if you're looking for good insights, free insights, you can use news on E commerce and marketing. Please sign up for the newsletter. Two, please go to our social media accountsuna studios and follow us. And three, I would love if you connect with me on LinkedIn. It's just Liz, Georgie, on LinkedIn. I write as much as I can and post as much as I can on LinkedIn with free advice. And sometimes, uh, I'll try to be a little bit provocative once in a while, too, just to keep it interesting.

Speaker B: Okay. I love it. For everyone tuning in today, thank you so much for joining, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Humans of Growth.