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31 Genius Strategies to Build and Command Your E-Commerce Empire

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By Chris Alarcon

Operating an e-commerce business is a rewarding experience. However, venturing into online selling without a plan can hamper your chances of success. You may ask yourself, “Where do I start planning? What does it truly take to operate an e-commerce business in today’s age?”

Thankfully, we’re here to help answer those questions. This post will teach you how to start and grow your e-commerce business!

Let’s dive in.

Define Your E-Commerce Business Idea

Before entering the e-commerce world, you need to define your business idea. Defining your business idea will ensure you have a clear vision of what you want the business to be and determine if it will be successful.

By doing this, you’re finding your niche in the e-commerce market and learning how to do it better than the rest.

This step takes a bit of brainstorming and research, but soon, you will be on your way to financial freedom.

Choosing Your Right Product(s)

Choosing your product can seem like the easiest part of creating an e-commerce business plan, but the truth is that it takes quite a bit of forethought.

To find the right product for your business, you need to do some market research and sense what you are passionate about. Deciding what to sell means more than purchasing goods from a supplier.

You are identifying which market you want to tap into. Consider selling and creating a new business from various niche markets and products.

If you are unsure of what products or which markets you would like to tap into, here are a few examples:

  • Clothing
  • Home goods
  • Children’s toys
  • Homemade and handcrafted items
  • Digital services

No matter which product or market you choose, performing research is critical.

Validate Your Idea

Once you’ve decided what your product will be, you must validate your e-commerce business idea.

This process entails researching to ensure an audience for your product, learning about the market’s problems and why they are facing them, and finding out how to solve them. You should also see if there are potential trends you can capitalize on.

Answering the questions above will give you the insight you need into whether a business will succeed.

Any business idea can sound ground-breaking at the moment. But moving forward is put on hold until you validate it by ensuring that there is a market for your product or that you can create the need for it.

Define Your Target Audience

Beyond discovering if there is an audience for your product, you will also need to define your target audience.

Is your audience the younger crowd that enjoys and needs trendy items and marketing? Or is it an older audience that prefers straightforward marketing and practical products? Of course, the gender, income level, and general location of your audience also factor in.

Further, you must know your intended audience’s lifestyle factors, interests, wants, and needs.

Implementing a solid definition of who your target audience is will help you shape your marketing approach and tailor your product offerings.

This definition will give you a sense of direction before jumping into the launch of your product or business. Then, you can visualize the prize you should focus on.

Brainstorm What Will Set Your Business Apart

Brainstorming how your business will differ from competitors is vital.

You need to give potential customers a reason why they should choose you over what else is available currently. Without a solid aspect that sets you apart, your business can become lost in the sea of emerging e-commerce businesses.

Research Your Competition

Knowing what sets your business apart from others in the market is critical. That’s why we also recommend spending a substantial amount of time researching your competitors.

To start researching your competitors, pretend you are a potential customer and search for the popular keyword and search queries pertaining to your business.

Then, take note of the pages with the highest rankings, as they will be your main competitors. Don’t stop there!

Dive into your competitors’ social media accounts and note how they brand and market themselves on the platforms. (Also, don’t forget about Amazon!) Use the infamous online retailer as a database to identify similar product offerings.

After you gather all of this information, organize it into a spreadsheet, listing the top competitors for your business.

Build Strong Branding

Branding is everything when marketing your products and your e-commerce business. It conveys the overall message that your company believes in and offers.

For example, brands like Nike will use motivational language to motivate their established customer base and draw potential customers.

But what does branding entail? How do you build your business with strong branding?

Building a strong brand doesn’t have to be costly; it simply takes consistency, planning, and research.

Audience Persona

Your audience persona is what customers will come to know your business for.

As previously mentioned, companies will utilize specific language to convey a message regarding branding. That helps build a company’s persona and brand identity.

You can implement your brand persona in all forms of marketing, from the colors you use in the marketing campaign to the vocabulary you use in social media posts. This implementation will help formulate the characteristics and emotions customers associate with your company.

When you are creating your persona, remember who your target audience is. For example, the persona for a brand like L.L. Bean will not have the same effect on a younger modern audience.

Brand Voice

In addition to vernacular and language, brand voice is critical for conveying your message. It will further tell your audience what your company is and what it can do for them.

This branding portion focuses explicitly on the language and vernacular part of the branding strategy.

To create a strong brand voice, you should first figure out how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand’s online presence.

If a relaxed vibe is what you are going for, a laid-back tone and casual language are what you want when creating e-commerce marketing materials.

But on the other hand, if luxury and glamor are the vibe of your company, sophisticated language with flowery descriptions is what you need.

Social Media Branding

In our digital age, branding efforts extend into the social media sphere with most audiences, including older generations. In short, social media is the number one place to reach potential customers.

Your brand’s social media presence should be more than posting advertisements and product launches. Engaging with your audience is critical for building rapport and further ingraining brand voice, persona, and identity.

You can increase your audience engagement by hosting polls, commenting back to followers, and organizing live streams where they can interact with you and your company.

Brand Identity

Finally, we reach brand identity. This encompasses your voice, persona, and social media presence. It gets into the fine details of your visuals and content choices that will set you apart from your competitors.

With a proper brand identity, customers recognize your brand through adverts and social media posts without seeing your company’s name.

Visuals and Content

To establish your brand’s identity, you will want to choose your brand colours, design your logo, create content creation guidelines, and formulate your strategy.

Your branding guidelines should entail information about marketing copy, colour palette, brand story, and image guidelines.

Your strategy should also entail plans for reaching your intended audience through stylized branded content and marketing materials.

If you need help formulating these guidelines and plans, professional brand strategists are available on freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. They can help take your current vision and turn it into an actualized plan.

E-Commerce Websites

Next, incorporate that information into setting up your e-commerce website.

Your company’s website is a hub for selling your products to customers and establishing a home base for all things relating to your brand. In addition, this website is the place for driving your brand voice, persona, and identity into the hearts of established and potential customers.

So, remember to strictly enforce your brand guidelines when building and maintaining your website.

Again, if you need help building an e-commerce website, you can find website builders and your brand strategist on platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork.

Create Your Shipping Strategy

If you are running an e-commerce business with physical products, like clothing, home goods, or kids’ toys, you must create a shipping strategy that gets the product to your customers safely and efficiently.

First, you must determine if you will transfer the shipping costs to your customers or factor shipping into the product’s price and offer free shipping. Offering flat-rate shipping is also an option.

Additionally, no matter which shipping cost method you choose, you will want to keep a database of the weight of your product(s). This data will help you consistently track the price of shipping your products when it is dependent upon their weight.

Finally, you need to source your packaging materials. From boxes to envelopes and wrapping materials to filler, your packaging should help safely deliver the product to the consumer and leave a lasting impression with its presentation.

If you have downloadable digital products to sell online, you will want to find the best platform and software for delivering these materials. Consider these top five:

  • SendOwl
  • Shootproof
  • Shopify Digital Downloads
  • Fetch app
  • Digital Product Delivery

Each has unique offerings, and depending on the type of digital products you sell and your target audience, some will be more suitable than others.

Launch Your Business

After choosing your products, formulating a brand identity, creating a website, and developing a shipping strategy, it’s time to launch your e-commerce business!

Although you have accomplished so much already, the adventure is still ongoing because you need to start selling products.

When launching your business, it’s critical to remember that anything can happen, and you may have to reformulate your previous plans. But don’t be too quick to jump ship; the plan was created for a reason. You simply want to open yourself up to new possibilities.

From here on out, your mission is to achieve financial freedom, which sometimes requires testing variables to improve performance.

Market Your Business

After getting your business up and running, you must increase your marketing efforts to ensure your business grows.

But unlike decades past, with your online business, physical advertisements on billboards and in print newspapers won’t cut it. So instead, you need to learn the ways of e-commerce marketing.

Learn Basic SEO

Learning the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) is your ticket to boosting your business among the Google ranks.

Have a Baseline

To start venturing into the world of SEO, you need to have a baseline.

By utilizing a service like Semrush, you can see your domain overview, and it will tell you how visible your business/webpage is on mobile and desktop apps. Its domain overview section covers all the data and analytics you need to understand where your business currently stands.

Know Your Keywords

Additionally, you will want to research and learn the most prevalent keywords and search queries for your type of business. You can then use this information to create content that will help lead shoppers back to your website.

Discover The Power of Backlinks

Backlinks are also essential for creating online traffic for your business, as they are links to your website from other websites.

The more links you have from trustworthy and high-traffic web pages, the more search engines like Google and Bing will see your business and website as valuable and reliable sources.

But the most critical component of all when it comes to basic SEO is staying informed. SEO is an ever-evolving world that takes ongoing reform to remain successful.

Blog Consistently

While looking for the best ways to market your e-commerce store or business, you may have seen the phrase “content is king.” But what kind of content is best?

Blogging is one of the best forms of online content for marketing your business. By publishing blog posts consistently and utilizing the keywords and search queries that pertain to your business, you can increase your chances of climbing the Google ranks and accruing more backlinks.

Your blog posts should always surround topics pertaining to your business.

For instance, post frequent blog posts about what’s trending in fashion if you have a clothing business. Or, if it’s a digital service company, publish articles that discuss the benefits of utilizing a service like yours.

Implement Social Media Marketing

We live in the golden age of social media, and if you’re searching for more customers, you need to utilize Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

You can do this by posting relevant branded content frequently. Your social media content should also utilize hashtags to help further increase your visibility among your target audience.

Like SEO keywords, hashtags can help lead potential customers back to your page, and the more interaction you have on a post, the more likely you are to appear on Explore and For You pages on social media.

Build and Grow an Email List

Building and growing an email list is the best way to create a direct line to your customer base. You can ensure they return and purchase more products by staying in touch with them.

But people prefer to keep their personal information, like email addresses, private. So how do you grow an email list?

You need to offer a deal in return for a customer’s email. Whether it’s free downloads or special sales offers, customers will take note of what you are willing to give in return.

Analyse Your Results

Adapting your e-commerce business to the ever-evolving world is crucial for long-term success.

After spending time in the market and gathering data, you should analyse your results. You will want to look at critical metrics, like your popular products.

Once you notice consistent growth in your business, you will want to optimize your online storefront for high-scale volume. Think about performing the following as your business grows:

  • Display popular products on the front page.
  • Manage fluctuating stock volumes by sending email invitations and allowing backorders.
  • Allow for more checkout options: guest checkout, abandoned shopping cart reminders, etc.
  • Match your brand and website messaging to the current market.

No matter what your results are after performing an annual analysis, being prepared to make a few changes is always wise.

FAQs

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business Without Money?

You can start an e-commerce business without money in a few different ways. One of the best and easiest ways is to sell your expert service.

Whether you are a great writer, marketer, virtual assistant, or graphic designer, you can create an online e-commerce business today with zero or minimal start-up costs.

You can also start a drop shipping business, where you have an online store that customers can order from, and the supplier does the product fulfilment directly. AliExpress or Alibaba are popular suppliers for such storefronts.

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business on Amazon?

Starting an e-commerce business on Amazon is simple.

First, you must choose what kind of products you want to sell; the possibilities are endless when you choose Amazon as your e-commerce platform.

Afterward, you must sign up for an Amazon seller’s account and select your business model. Wholesale, private label, and retail arbitrage are the most popular.

Once you have the basics covered, it’s time to start listing your products, send them to Amazon to handle storage and shipping, and then market yourself.

What Does an E-Commerce Business Do?

An e-commerce business is a business that sells goods or services online. These goods and services can range from writing and graphic design services to clothing retailers and home goods storefronts.

What Are The Four Types of E-Commerce?

What industry leaders commonly refer to as the four traditional types of e-commerce are business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B).

Each type has specific traits and offerings that set them apart. The most common type is B2C.

Is E-Commerce Really Profitable?

E-commerce can be an incredibly profitable business venture. But if you’re looking for an entirely passive way to generate income, this venture isn’t for you.

Running an e-commerce business takes time and dedication. You have to be willing to devote all of your time to managing the business and potentially marketing yourself to thrive.

How Do You Start up an E-Commerce Business?

Suppose you want to start up an e-commerce business. In that case, you must follow a plan to define your business, create a branding and marketing strategy, and perform market analysis regularly.

Free and low-cost start-up options exist whether you want to sell a service or a physical product.

No matter what e-commerce business you decide to open, be prepared to dedicate a lot of time to starting it. However, it is a rewarding venture.

Start Your Journey to Financial Freedom Today!

Whether you want to operate a small business like a small-scale online retailer or an industry-leading digital service, e-commerce is a way to set yourself up for future financial freedom!

All it takes is time and dedication to ensure smooth sailing in e-commerce. So why not start today?

Start researching your ideas, get to know the current online marketplaces, validate those ideas, and start drawing up a plan.

By Chris Alarcon

Christopher is the driving force behind Financially Well Off – the ultimate destination for those looking to achieve financial independence, explore the world and stay motivated daily. If you’re ready to transform your perspective on money and take charge of your life, you’ve come to the right place.

Sourced from Parent Portfolio

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Pinterest’s Male Audience Is Booming. Here’s What They’re Searching For

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BY FAST COMPANY

Pinterest now counts more than 171 million male users, driven by Gen Z interest in wellness, grooming, AI tools, and fatherhood content.

A growing number of men are flocking to Pinterest.

The company’s first-ever trend report reveals that male users now make up more than one-third of its 570 million global active users. That equates to over 171 million men, most of whom are part of Generation Z, according to Pinterest. Interestingly, these men challenge the typical stereotypes of social media behaviour.

“Our data paints a picture of a nuanced group of male users on Pinterest that largely rejects the toxicity you might find elsewhere online—and engages with content in positive, authentic ways,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Pinterest has been on a roll lately. Its stock is up more than 25% year to date, and it has risen 34% in the past year. The company is scheduled to report its Q2 earnings after the bell on August 7, and Wall Street expects a 14.2% year-over-year increase in revenue.

This influx of male users is engaging with a wide range of content, from Pilates to smart parenting. Many are also turning to Pinterest to research products before buying or to find unique travel destinations, the company said.

To attract even more men to the site, Pinterest has introduced a “Pinterest Man” hub, where male users can explore trending topics and shop the latest styles. This move may intensify competition with TikTok, which is projected to draw over 50 million buyers to its TikTok Shop this year, making it the fourth-largest social commerce platform in the U.S.

Here’s a closer look at what men are interested in on Pinterest.

Health and fitness

Well-being is a key driver for men who join the platform. Searches by male users for Pilates and rock climbing are surging, with Pilates outfits up 300% and rock climber searches up 115%. Interest in health hacks like electrolytes and coconut water is also climbing (both up 45%), along with searches for hydration, which are up 50%.

Style

According to audience insights platform GWI, half of Gen Z and millennial men on Pinterest care about their appearance. This has sparked increased searches for grooming and fashion tips. Healthy hair routines, such as using sea salt spray, have surged, along with skincare trends like micro needling, which some believe has anti-inflammatory and antiaging effects.

There’s also been a 115% spike in searches for male nail art designs and a 230% increase in men’s facials. On the fashion front, Goth and grunge looks appear to be making a comeback. (And—fair warning—searches for jorts are on the rise too.)

Next-gen tech

If you thought 3D printing was fading, think again. Men’s searches for 3D printing designs are up over 1,200%, outpacing even the 800% jump in AI video and the 265% rise in programming tutorials. Fintech is also heating up, with investment app searches increasing 620%.

Home, hobbies, and family

Interests vary by life stage. Gen Z users are diving into gaming content, with a 590% increase in searches for League of Legends characters. Millennials, who are entering parenthood, are searching for advice on everything from smart parenting to screen time—with “daddy and son” searches up 415%. Home décor is also gaining traction among this group.

“On Pinterest, men are finding a community that empowers them to pursue their unique interests with confidence,” the company wrote.

Feature image credit: Dima Solomin/Unsplash

By Chris Morris

This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company. Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

Sourced from Inc.

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Trust Is the New KPI: The Strategy Helping Brands Win Over Customers Today

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BY LAUREN KLEINMAN

Brands must stop siloing PR, affiliate, and paid media if they want to build consumer trust that converts.

For years, brands tried to split the difference by hiring a PR agency for visibility, an affiliate manager for commerce coverage and affiliate partnerships, and a media buyer for paid social scale. Seven years ago, I, in fact, was one of them as the former VP of Marketing and Founding Team at Ritual. On paper, it made sense. In practice, I found it created silos, competing agendas, and a lack of shared accountability and synergy across agencies and partners.

PR teams fought for glossy earned placements that drove awareness, but had no understanding of how to interpret the performance data that was now available through affiliate marketing. Affiliate was treated as a “last-click” discount lever instead of a strategic storytelling channel. Paid ads delivered reach, but eroded credibility the more aggressively they followed you around online and touted huge discounts (a never-ending race to the bottom).

Trust is the new currency

The customer journey has never been more fragmented. Discovery happens everywhere: a podcast shoutout, a Reddit thread, a TikTok Shop haul, a Substack product review, or even an AI-powered search result.

In this reality, trust is the only real currency. Consumers don’t care whether a placement was earned, affiliate-driven, or paid; they care if it feels credible, consistent, and relevant to them.

So how can brands actively build that trust?

  • Be transparent about incentives. Consumers aren’t turned off by affiliate links, they’re turned off when they feel misled. Work with creators and publishers who disclose clearly and genuinely believe in your product.
  • Invest in quality storytelling. Clickbait and discount-driven messaging might drive short-term traffic but rarely long-term trust. Prioritize partners and content that add real value or perspective.
  • Align messaging across channels. The fastest way to lose credibility is inconsistency. If your paid ad says one thing and your press coverage another, consumers notice. Every touchpoint should reinforce the same brand truth.
  • Measure what matters. Awareness, reputation, and conversion are all valid goals, but you have to know which you’re pursuing with each channel. That clarity builds internal trust, too.

The takeaway for founders and marketers is simple: if your PR, affiliate, and paid media aren’t working together, you’re sacrificing trust and growth.

The post-PR agency model

At Dreamday, we coined the term Performance PR: an integrated approach where affiliate and earned media work in tandem. Every consumer press hit is designed to drive not just visibility, but measurable revenue. For brand and business press (think: Inc. or Fast Company) we measure success using the Barcelona Principles, a global framework for evaluating PR effectiveness. In plain terms, the Barcelona Principles remind us that not all press should be measured by direct sales. Some coverage exists to build awareness, credibility, or influence perception, which are all valuable outcomes in their own right.

A feature on a founder’s leadership style, for example, may not drive immediate sale conversions, but it can meaningfully shape brand reputation, attract talent, and open doors for strategic partnerships. Performance PR refers to consumer press that can be measured, actually very effectively these days, through affiliate marketing and commerce’s growing role in publisher objectives (and revenue).

Quality Media has pioneered what we call Performance Publishing, a model where editorial storytelling, creator-led content, and paid amplification combine to outperform traditional brand campaigns.

At both agencies, our main KPI isn’t awards or impressions, it’s the case studies we create for our clients. We don’t rest on our laurels; we’re only as good as the last results we delivered. That focus keeps our teams sharp, ensures accountability, and, most importantly, builds client trust over time.

When we applied this model for clients like Quince or The Bouqs, it wasn’t about choosing between “story” or “scale.” It was about ensuring every placement, whether in Vogue, on TikTok, or in a sponsored story, pulled in the same direction: building credibility and driving conversions.

The key insight: trust compounds when PR, affiliate, and paid collide, not when they compete.

A playbook for founders and marketers

So how can brands put this into practice?

  • Audit your partners. Are PR, affiliate, and paid run by separate agencies or teams competing for credit with different KPIs? If so, you’re eroding trust before you’ve begun.
  • Bring your partners together. Get your PR, affiliate, and paid leads in the same room (or Slack channel). Share KPIs and have them co-own performance. When everyone is accountable to the same metrics, alignment, and trust, follow.
  • Consolidate when needed. If your agencies are working in silos or competing with one another, it’s time to rethink your structure. That might mean consolidating scopes, appointing an internal lead who oversees the full funnel, or finding a partner built for integration.
  • Think like a consumer. Ask yourself: if someone Googled my product, or if ChatGPT surfaced me in a recommendation, would they see consistent, credible validation across multiple sources?
  • Build for convergence. Instead of planning PR, affiliate, and paid as separate campaigns, design them as parts of the same trust-building system.

The future belongs to trust

Trust has always mattered in marketing. What’s different now is how fragile (and essential) it has become for growth.

The brands that win in the next five years won’t be the ones spending the most on ads or executing the flashiest PR moments. They’ll be the ones that can point to undeniable results: credible press hits, measurable affiliate-driven revenue, and high-performing creative that amplifies both.

That’s why we hold ourselves to the same standard we ask of our clients: results that stand up as case studies. Trust isn’t a buzzword—it’s the most valuable KPI left. And it’s earned daily.

Feature image credit: Getty Images

BY LAUREN KLEINMAN

Sourced from Inc.

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AI Video Has Changed Marketing Forever — and Standing Out Requires a New Strategy

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By Hope Horner • Edited by Chelsea Brown 

AI has stripped the cost and complexity out of video production. The result? An endless stream of content where attention, not output, becomes the true competition.

Key Takeaways

  • AI video allows anyone to produce polished content on demand. What once required crews, budgets and weeks of production can now be generated in minutes.
  • With an avalanche of professional-looking content, companies must pivot from competing on production quality to competing on authentic insight, genuine expertise and human connection.
  • Brands must use AI as a tool to amplify human creativity and understand that having something meaningful to say matters more than saying it beautifully.

AI video tools have crossed a threshold. What used to require crews, budgets and weeks of post-production can now happen in minutes. Text-to-video generators can create actual clips that replace live-action filming — no cameras, no sets, no talent needed. Every brand, startup and side hustle can flood social feeds with polished content that would have cost thousands just a year ago.

The result is an avalanche of video content most marketers aren’t ready for. And when everyone has access to infinite content creation, the bottleneck shifts to something much scarcer: human attention.

The great video inflation of 2025

Think about what happened when desktop publishing killed the printing industry’s pricing power. Suddenly, every business could create professional-looking brochures and flyers on demand. The market got flooded with mediocre design, but the cost advantages were too compelling to ignore. Printing companies that survived had to find new ways to add value beyond just putting ink on paper.

AI video is that moment for content marketing. When every solopreneur can generate Hollywood-quality product demos and every startup can create testimonial footage without actual customers, the video landscape inflates, and we’re not talking about a gradual shift. This is a supply shock.

The number of professional-looking videos published daily is already increasing by orders of magnitude. Marketing teams that were previously constrained by video budgets suddenly have access to unlimited content creation. The creative brief that once became one hero video now becomes 50 variations optimized for every platform, demographic and use case.

For marketers, this feels like winning the lottery. Unlimited content at near-zero marginal cost? What’s not to love?

But there’s a catch. When everyone has the same superpower, no one has an advantage.

Why this time is different

Previous waves of content democratization (think YouTube, smartphones or social media) expanded the pool of creators but didn’t eliminate production friction entirely. You still needed some combination of equipment, skill or time to create compelling video content. That friction acted as a natural quality filter.

AI video removes that filter in many ways. The barrier between having an idea and having a polished video is getting smaller and smaller. A text prompt becomes footage. A description becomes a testimonial. A concept becomes a commercial.

This creates what economists call a “lemons market” — when quality becomes indistinguishable at first glance, markets get flooded with mediocre products. Your audience will face an unprecedented signal-to-noise problem. Professional-looking content will be everywhere, but most of it will have nothing meaningful to say.

The brands that understand this dynamic — and position themselves accordingly — will have a massive advantage over those caught off guard.

The coming brand extinction event

Here’s what most marketers aren’t seeing: AI video doesn’t just make content creation cheaper — it makes content forgettable. When every video looks professionally produced, none of them stand out visually. When everyone can create testimonials and product demos, the format itself loses credibility.

We’re heading toward a content landscape where production value becomes almost meaningless as a differentiator. The slick graphics, perfect lighting and smooth transitions that used to signal “professional brand” will be table stakes. Worse, they might even signal “generated content” to increasingly savvy audiences.

This shift will be brutal for brands that have built their entire content strategy around looking polished rather than saying something meaningful.

How to survive the content inflation

The companies that survive will be the ones that pivot from competing on production quality to competing on authentic insight, genuine expertise and genuine human connection. The production quality will be a given, so it’s the content strategy that will stand out.

This means treating AI video tools like what they actually are: incredibly powerful production assistants that still need direction, strategy and human judgment to create anything worth watching. The technology can generate and optimize the footage, but it can’t generate the insight that makes someone care.

Smart brands are already preparing for this shift. They’re investing more heavily in understanding their audiences, developing unique points of view and building authentic relationships that can’t be automated. They’re using AI to amplify their human creativity, not replace it.

Most importantly, they’re preparing for a world where having something meaningful to say matters more than saying it beautifully. Because when everyone can make beautiful content, the only competitive advantage left is having something worth saying.

The content inflation crisis isn’t coming — it’s already here. Early adopters are already flooding feeds with AI-generated content, and the volume is only going to increase. The brands that recognize this as an existential shift, not just a new tool to experiment with, will be the ones that survive.

Importantly, this conversation isn’t about whether AI video is good or bad. It’s about understanding that when production costs get lower, everything else about marketing changes. The rules, the strategies, the competitive advantages you’ve gotten used to — all of it gets rewritten.

Your choice is simple: Adapt to the new rules now, or get swept away by the brands that do.

By Hope Horner 

Hope Horner is a serial entrepreneur who built Lemonlight from her bedroom. She’s been named Inc.’s Top Female Founder (twice), landed on the Inc. 5000 list (seven times), and won 30+ awards. She writes about entrepreneurship with clarity, candor, and bite.

Edited by Chelsea Brown 

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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WPP Launches a Self-Serve Version of Its AI Platform To Court Small Biz Dollars

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By Kendra Barnett

WPP Open Pro is a new push from the holdco to expand vertical and horizontal integration of its flagship AI platform.

British advertising titan WPP is rolling out a self-serve version of WPP Open, its AI-powered marketing platform.

Unveiled Thursday, WPP Open Pro is a platform marketers can use to build campaigns, develop creative assets, and activate on their own, with the help of AI.

The platform is designed to streamline the entire marketing process, from ideation to execution, with the help of automated tools.

Users can craft campaign strategies with the help of AI agents that pull from a well of proprietary WPP data, partner data, and broader industry insights. Then, the platform can help marketers generate branded content for various channels.

To deploy campaigns created within the system, users can publish directly to major ad platforms. WPP Media clients can also connect to WPP’s Open Media Studio, which offers more advanced audience identification, bid optimization, and programmatic management.

Image- and video-generating features in WPP Open Pro are powered by a range of generative AI models, including Google’s Imagen and Veo platforms, OpenAI’s DALL-E, Sora, and GPT Image, Adobe Firefly, and others. Text generation, meanwhile, relies on Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Courting Small Business

WPP expects the tool to meet the needs of smaller enterprises and performance marketers who don’t need the high-touch managed service version of the program—and might also find uses in the organizations of existing WPP clients.

“We often don’t service the entirety of a client’s business, so it gives us reach into business units and areas that we might not service already,” said Matt McNeany, who helms the Open Pro project at WPP.

He added that smaller businesses open up a new market for WPP beyond its typical slate of Fortune 500 clients. “Now they can get access to professional-grade tools and AI capabilities, and do that in a pretty straightforward way.”

Users pay a fee to access the tool and are charged by usage, though WPP declined to share specific pricing details.

WPP Open Pro will be piloted by Google and some other undisclosed WPP clients. Initial feedback from clients has been “tremendous,” according to McNeany.

Google and WPP earlier this month announced a five-year extension of their ongoing partnership focused on advancing AI and cloud technologies for marketing. As part of that arrangement, WPP has pledged $400 million to bake Google AI tools into WPP Open.

Google declined to comment.

AI push

WPP Open Pro comes as the holding company aims to further align itself with AI to turn around its sinking fortunes.

Since it launched last year, WPP Open got a shiny upgrade in June with the launch of Open Intelligence, a foundational LLM trained specifically for marketing use cases. The platform has also added an integration with TikTok’s generative AI tools. Today, it’s used by brands including L’Oréal, LVMH, and Nestlé.

The launch of WPP Open Pro is among the first major announcements under new WPP CEO Cindy Rose, the Microsoft and Disney alum who succeeded Mark Read on September 1.

Rose’s appointment came after a grueling few years under Read’s leadership in which WPP suffered significant profit losses, client departures, and felt the squeeze of Trump-era tariffs—all while battling rivals over AI promises.

The rollout of WPP Open Pro, she hopes, will give the holdco the opportunity to expand into new markets.

In a statement shared with ADWEEK, Rose said WPP Open Pro’s low barrier to entry will put the company’s AI marketing capabilities “directly into the hands of a much wider array of brands and businesses.” If successful, the shift could drive revenues and bolster WPP’s business more broadly.

A marketing leader at a global brand, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ADWEEK this week that WPP has been pushing the brand aggressively to do more with WPP Open.

McNeany, for his part, is confident in the positioning; he suggested that the tool surpasses rival agencies’ AI-powered marketing offerings today.

“[We’re] taking our data assets, our partner data assets, our agentic capability, the generative partnerships that we’ve got with Google, OpenAI and so on…content automation, media activation, and bundling that up into one solution,” he said.

By Kendra Barnett

Kendra Barnett is Adweek’s senior tech reporter. @KendraEBarnett|[email protected]

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How To Optimize Your Content For Google AI And ChatGPT

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By Megan Poinski,

AI chatbots are not created equal. Chatbot developers at competing companies often place a different emphasis on what gets suggested, the sources that are used, and how they intend the user to act on the information presented. In a new report, SEO consulting firm BrightEdge dove into the differences between Google’s AI Mode and ChatGPT. While both gave similar responses to basic comparison questions, they took different tactics when users asked for actions.

“AI search is no longer one thing—it’s splitting into at least two distinct philosophies,” BrightEdge founder and CEO Jim Yu says in the report.

When asked for advice to accomplish a certain task, BrightEdge found that Google tends to surface more things to read and learn from. ChatGPT, meanwhile, often suggests tools and apps to do the task. For example, with a prompt asking how to find a doctor, Google provided directions to a hospital. ChatGPT suggested users try Zocdoc, an app with medical professional listings and information. When asked how to learn Python, Google directs users to GitHub and Medium blogs, while ChatGPT suggests online course site Udemy. And a query on how to make a budget has Google sending users to NerdWallet research and blog posts, while ChatGPT suggests financial apps including Mint and YNAB.

BrightEdge also looked into the differences between results from Google’s AI Overviews—the curated information that shows up at the top of several search result pages—and Google AI Mode—the new button to the right side of the search bar. AI Overviews are constantly changing, but showcase brands in 43% of queries. They also can include 20 or more inline citations. AI Mode, on the other hand, surfaces brands in 90% of its responses, and it’s 3.8 times more likely to feature a unique brand.

What does all of this mean for marketers? As a practical matter, you should continue to hone your AI strategy. It’s time to go deeper than just having content. How does your content show up in an AI search, and what do you want users to do once they find it? Should you concentrate on broad content that helps others learn, actionable solutions, or both? It’s also important to remember that the number of people searching on a particular platform can shift. Search leader Google is quickly rolling out AI Overviews, but AI Mode may become more of a default option. And ChatGPT could see its search fortunes grow through strong performance or a well-placed agreement with an operating system, browser or device.

Regardless of how people find content online, once it’s out there, it can serve as content for everyone in the world—part of a global content strategy. There are many nuances between a winning global strategy and a successful local one. Nataly Kelly, CMO at market research platform Zappi, recently co-authored a book about it with Katherine Melchior Ray titled Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures. I talked to Kelly about the two strategies. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

By Megan Poinski,

Sourced from Forbes

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The new search frontier: How TikTok is redefining discovery

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By Peter Allen Clark

Search has seen an enormous upheaval recently in terms of tools, intent, and expected experience, with social platforms like TikTok forging new consumer routines.

“Search has fundamentally transformed from this old model of ‘I have a question, I need an answer,’ to really a place for stories and perspective,” said Rema Vasan, TikTok’s head of North America business marketing, at a panel during Advertising Week New York. “This isn’t just a change in behaviour, this is a fundamental shift.”

According to TikTok’s data, Vasan said the top three reasons people search on the platform are to explore personal interests, educate themselves, and entertain themselves. And for younger audiences, the shift is even more pronounced.

Here’s how experts are viewing changing consumer habits when it comes to search and product discovery.

From answers to inspiration

Cypress Villaflores, vice president of social at Publicis, described what she sees as driving the change during the panel.

“People are really going to a platform like TikTok because we want inspiration,” she said. “We want information. And when you go into TikTok search, it’s giving you all of that and then that added layer of in-the-moment engagement.”

For US shoppers TikTok is the most useful social platform (28.4%) for researching and evaluating new brands/products, according to June 2025 data from EMARKETER.

“You’re not only getting an influencer’s perspective, but you’re also really getting ordinary people,” said Villaflores. “And sometimes that’s what you need to finish your search journey.”

Vasan noted that 86% of Gen Zers now search on TikTok instead of traditional search engines.

“Consumers’ intentions have changed,” she said. “They’re not just looking for quick answers. They’re looking to explore, compare, and really shape their perspectives.”

The middle-funnel battleground

In partnership with WARC, TikTok mapped four stages of search: Understanding, exploring, evaluating, and buying.

“TikTok plays a very strong role in the exploring and evaluating phases,” Vasan said. “Eighty-four percent of searches on TikTok happen in that exploration phase, which is 1.2 times higher than on traditional search platforms.”

Villaflores said that journey often leads directly to purchase.

“It really helps you make the purchase and create things that are more meaningful,” she said. “By the time I hit that buy button, I’m very confident in the thing that I’m purchasing.”

Keywords, but smarter

While culture drives discovery, precision still matters if TikTok is to remain vital to business’ strategies. Some 64% of worldwide B2B and B2C marketing leaders say TikTok drives more business impact than other social media platforms, according to a June 2025 survey from Sprout Social.

“Keyword strategy is so important to any search campaign,” Vasan said. TikTok’s new Keyword Planner, now in open beta, helps advertisers identify high-value terms and track search trends before committing spend.

Villaflores noted that traditional tactics still apply. “You can do branded versus non-branded, exact versus broad match, and a lot of those strategies are transferable to TikTok.”

For marketers still viewing TikTok as “just social,” Villaflores offered a challenge.

“Search has changed overall as a behaviour. It’s not anything anyone can truly ignore,” she said. “Be open to testing and integrating it as part of your larger strategies, because human behaviour is always continuously evolving.”

By Peter Allen Clark

Sourced from EM Marketer

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OpenAI’s ChatGPT Instant Checkout: The Dawn of Conversational Commerce CX

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How OpenAI’s new shopping feature will fundamentally reshape customer experience expectations in ecommerce and retail.

The Gist

  • Instant Checkout transforms ChatGPT into a commerce platform. Users can now buy directly from Etsy and over one million Shopify merchants without leaving a conversation—collapsing the traditional ecommerce journey into a chat-to-checkout experience.
  • Frictionless buying raises new CX expectations. Merchants retain order control, but customers will expect conversational ease across all post-purchase support channels.
  • Agentic commerce reshapes trust and transparency. As AI gains more autonomy in purchasing, CX leaders must redefine safeguards, metrics, and relationship ownership in a world where experience becomes inseparable from conversation.

Since its November 2022 launch, ChatGPT has become synonymous with general AI capabilities. Now OpenAI is extending its influence toward a new frontier: ecommerce.

OpenAI has officially transformed ChatGPT from a discovery tool into a complete commerce platform with the launch of Instant Checkout, powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol developed in partnership with Stripe. Starting with U.S. Etsy sellers and expanding soon to over one million Shopify merchants, including Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, and Vuori, this development represents more than just another checkout option.

It is a fundamental reimagining of the customer experience journey that could have been implications on the customer experience industry.

Customer experience professionals in e-commerce and retail recognize OpenAI’s entry as a signal that the entire paradigm of how customers discover and purchase products is shifting toward agentic commerce — online shopping managed with AI.

Table of Contents

What OpenAI Is Offering: Instant Checkout Explained

Instant Checkout enables ChatGPT users to complete purchases without leaving the conversational interface. When someone asks a shopping-related question—”best running shoes under $100″ or “gifts for a ceramics lover”—ChatGPT displays relevant products from across the web. For items where Instant Checkout is enabled, users see a “Buy” button that lets them complete the entire transaction within the chat.

How Instant Checkout Collapses the Ecommerce Journey

The technical foundation is the Agentic Commerce Protocol, an open-source standard co-developed with Stripe that OpenAI is making available to any merchant or developer. This protocol creates a secure payment framework where ChatGPT acts as the user’s AI agent, passing information between customer and merchant while the merchant retains full control as the merchant of record. Merchants handle orders, process payments through their existing systems (Stripe or otherwise), manage fulfilment and own the customer relationship post-purchase.

Currently supporting single-item purchases for U.S. users of the Plus, Pro, and Free tiers, OpenAI plans to expand to multi-item carts and additional regions. The company emphasizes that product recommendations are organic and unsponsored, ranked purely by relevance, with merchants paying a small transaction fee on completed purchases. For customers, the service is free and doesn’t affect product prices. ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers can leverage saved payment methods and shipping details for even faster checkout, though all users must explicitly confirm each step before purchase.

This represents OpenAI’s first major move toward what they call “agentic commerce”—a platform where AI doesn’t just help you find products but actively facilitates purchasing them on your behalf, with the long-term vision of more autonomous shopping experiences.

The Friction-Free Promise: What Changes for CX

Ecommerce has long been a goal of every digital platform, from the leaders of internet browsers to social media platforms. Yet the customer journey of most ecommerce attempts often includes friction points for customers to complete a purchase: multiple browser tabs and re-entering payment information, all while having users create an account, can lead to abandoned carts.

Many experts had hoped social commerce – retail through social media – would minimize the friction points. The volume of US social commerce did rise, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rise of direct-to-customer retail placed a spotlight on aligning click-through behaviour and sales, creating high interest in a cart checkout with just a few clicks.

OpenAI’s launch of Instant Checkout approaches a speedy checkout with a “chat to checkout in just a few taps.”

How Does Instant Checkout Work?

Here’s how Instant Checkout works: A customer asks ChatGPT for “gifts for a ceramics lover,” receives curated product recommendations, sees a “Buy” button on items with Instant Checkout enabled, and completes the purchase without ever leaving the conversation. For ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, the platform can prefill shipping and payment details, making the experience even more seamless.

This level of convenience raises the digital customer experience bar significantly.

The Rise of Conversational Shopping Behaviour

If customers can complete a purchase in seconds through conversational AI, they’ll increasingly expect similarly frictionless experiences everywhere else. Retailers who maintain clunky checkout processes will feel the comparison acutely.

The Trust Equation: Transparency in a Black Box

One of the most significant customer experience implications involves trust and transparency. OpenAI emphasizes that product results are “organic and unsponsored, ranked purely on relevance to the user,” and that Instant Checkout availability doesn’t influence product rankings. When multiple merchants sell the same product, ChatGPT considers availability, price, quality, primary seller status and Instant Checkout availability to optimize user experience.

One potential shift for customers is the kinds of trust signals to look while shopping online.

New Trust Signals in an AI-Led Environment

Customers have spent years learning which search results, sponsored placements and algorithmic recommendations to trust. They know when they’re being marketed to. Conversational AI collapses those visual cues. There’s no “Ad” label or comparison shopping pages, verifying that you’re seeing the best options.

For CX professionals, this creates a paradox. The experience feels more personal and helpful—like getting advice from a knowledgeable friend—but the mechanisms driving recommendations remain opaque. OpenAI’s commitment to relevance-based ranking is important, but maintaining customer trust will require ongoing transparency about how these decisions are made.

Merchants as Merchants of Record: Preserving Relationship Ownership

Unlike marketplace models where the platform intermediates the customer relationship, OpenAI positions itself as the customer’s “AI agent—securely passing information between user and merchant, just like a digital personal shopper would.” Merchants remain the merchant of record, handling orders, payments, fulfillment and customer support through their existing systems.

This architectural choice has profound CX implications. When issues arise—damaged goods, shipping delays, return requests—customers must navigate the merchant’s existing support infrastructure. They can’t simply resolve everything in ChatGPT. OpenAI explicitly states that “merchants use your order information to complete the order, but OpenAI asks merchants to not sign users up for marketing emails from their ChatGPT orders.”

This creates a potential friction point.

When the Chat Becomes the Customer Support Channel

Customers who complete purchases in a conversational environment may expect conversational support. They’ll ask ChatGPT about order status, return policies or replacement requests. While ChatGPT can surface information, the actual resolution still requires engaging with the merchant directly.

For retailers, this means your post-purchase CX needs to match the seamlessness of the purchasing experience. If ChatGPT makes buying easy but your support remains difficult, the disconnect will be glaring.

The Context Advantage: Memory and Personalization

ChatGPT’s existing features—Memory, Custom Instructions and conversation history—create opportunities for deeply personalized commerce experiences. The platform can remember that you prefer sustainable products, have a specific budget range, or are shopping for someone with particular interests.

Memory as the Engine of Relationship Commerce

This contextual awareness enables product recommendations that feel genuinely helpful rather than algorithmically generic.

For customer experience strategy, this represents a shift from session-based commerce to persistent relationship commerce. Instead of starting fresh with each visit, customers maintain an ongoing dialogue where preferences, constraints and needs are already understood. It’s the digital equivalent of shopping with a personal stylist who remembers your taste, size and budget.

However, this also requires rethinking privacy and consent. OpenAI notes that “to respond to your shopping question, ChatGPT uses your query and available context (such as Memory or Custom instructions).” Customers may not fully grasp how much information they’re sharing through casual conversation or how it’s being used to shape recommendations.

Multi-Item Carts and the Future of Agentic Commerce

Currently, Instant Checkout supports single-item purchases only. OpenAI plans to add multi-item carts and expand merchant and regional availability. But the real customer experience transformation lies in what OpenAI calls “agentic commerce”—where AI doesn’t just help you find what to buy but actually makes purchases on your behalf.

Imagine asking ChatGPT to “stock my pantry with staples I usually buy” or “replace my worn-out workout clothes with similar items” and having it autonomously complete those purchases based on your preferences, budget and past behaviour.

AI Autonomy and the Next Phase of Agentic Commerce

OpenAI emphasizes that “users stay in control—they explicitly confirm each step before any action is taken,” but it’s easy to see how this could evolve toward greater autonomy.

From a CX perspective, this promises ultimate convenience but introduces new anxieties. What happens when the AI makes a wrong assumption? How do you dispute an order you didn’t manually approve? What safeguards prevent accidental purchases during casual conversation? These aren’t theoretical concerns—they’re fundamental customer experience challenges that will need addressing as agentic commerce matures.

The Discovery-to-Purchase Continuum Collapses

Traditional ecommerce has maintained a clear separation between discovery (search engines, social media, content sites) and purchase (retailer websites, marketplaces). ChatGPT collapses this continuum entirely. The same conversation that starts with “how do I decorate a small apartment” can seamlessly transition to purchasing specific furniture pieces without the customer ever consciously entering “shopping mode.”

This fluidity creates immense convenience but also removes traditional decision-making waypoints. In conventional ecommerce, the journey from discovery to checkout includes multiple opportunities for price comparison, reading reviews and specification verification.

Discovery, Purchase and Confidence in One Flow

Conversational commerce compresses these steps, potentially reducing buyer confidence even as it increases convenience.

Savvy retailers will need to ensure their product information, reviews and trust signals are accessible within conversational contexts. If ChatGPT recommends your product, customers should still be able to access detailed specifications quickly, customer reviews, return policies and other information that builds purchase confidence.

Six Strategic Imperatives for Retail CX Leaders

Actions ecommerce and CX professionals can take to prepare for conversational commerce.

Action Recommendation
Prepare for conversational commerce expectations Even customers who never use ChatGPT shopping will expect its convenience. Streamline your checkout to minimize steps between discovery and purchase.
Ensure your product data is AI-ready ChatGPT relies on structured data—pricing, inventory, and descriptions—to recommend accurately. Optimize catalogues for AI parsing, not just human browsing.
Strengthen post-purchase CX Make order tracking, returns, and support as effortless as buying through chat. Consider adding conversational AI support on your own channels.
Maintain transparent pricing and policies AI shoppers may buy without visiting your site. Ensure your product feeds include clear pricing, shipping, and return data to prevent confusion.
Rethink customer acquisition costs OpenAI’s per-transaction fees shift focus from ad-driven discovery to conversion-based models. Re-evaluate your acquisition and retention ROI.
Plan for autonomous shopping Prepare for AI-driven, recurring purchases where customer oversight decreases. Define safeguards, limits, and opt-ins to maintain control and trust.

The Larger Context: Commerce at the Conversation Layer

OpenAI’s move follows a broader trend of commerce functionality migrating to conversational interfaces powered by AI. Meta has been experimenting with business messaging on WhatsApp and Instagram. Google has integrated shopping into search results, hoping to further leverage its AI Overview integration with its search engine.

But OpenAI’s approach—combining product discovery, recommendation and checkout entirely within a conversational AI interface—represents the most complete implementation yet. OpenAI’s decision to open-source the Agentic Commerce Protocol suggests ecosystem ambitions.

Commerce at the Conversation Layer

By creating a standard that works across AI platforms and payment processors, OpenAI is positioning conversational commerce as infrastructure, not just a ChatGPT feature. Marketing professionals must monitor adoption of conversational commerce as an element of marketing strategies and campaigns.

Moreover, competitors who are still finding their AI strategy will see the Agentic Commerce Protocol as a significant competitor. Amazon, for example, has long offered shopping capabilities with Alexa. But partners in the Alexa ecosystem may move toward Open AI if Amazon does not launch a similar AI protocol for Alexa.

 

An orange infographic showing a bridge connecting “Fragmented Shopping” on the left—representing disconnected discovery and purchase experiences—to “Seamless Commerce” on the right, illustrating unified, personalized and convenient shopping through AI-powered conversational commerce.
An AI-driven bridge is forming between fragmented shopping journeys and seamless, personalized commerce as retailers embrace conversational AI experiences.Simpler Media Group

 

Measuring Success in Conversational Commerce CX

Traditional ecommerce metrics—bounce rate, cart abandonment, time on site—don’t translate cleanly to conversational commerce.

Metrics That Redefine Success in Conversational Commerce

New ways to measure engagement, conversion and satisfaction when shopping happens inside AI conversations.

Metric Definition
Recommendation acceptance rate Percentage of purchases made from ChatGPT’s initial suggestions versus alternatives.
Conversational conversion Ratio of shopping-related prompts that end in a completed transaction.
Repurchase through conversation Share of customers returning to ChatGPT for repeat or follow-up purchases.
Post-purchase satisfaction Customer-reported satisfaction after buying through ChatGPT, including fulfilment and support quality.
Preference drift How accurately ChatGPT adapts to a customer’s evolving preferences and feedback over time.

These metrics will help retailers understand whether conversational commerce delivers genuine CX improvements or simply novelty-driven early adoption.

The Questions That Remain

OpenAI’s Instant Checkout raises as many customer experience questions as it answers:

How will product returns work when the purchase was made conversationally? Can customers modify orders placed through ChatGPT? What happens when products are out of stock after ChatGPT recommends them? How do subscription services and recurring purchases translate to conversational commerce? What safeguards prevent accidental purchases during ambiguous conversations?

These implementation details are fundamental to whether conversational commerce is a fit for the seamless customer experience being sought. Marketers should consider whether the answers mean achieving the promised experiences or are an indicator of implementation frustrations.

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Dan Knowlton on how to make content audiences genuinely love

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By Tom May

Marketing agency Knowlton is a master at using humour in advertising. Its co-founder explains how you can replicate its success—with a little help from Adobe Express.

n a world saturated with intrusive marketing, Dan Knowlton has pioneered a refreshing approach. As co-founder of video and social media marketing agency Knowlton, Dan has perfected the art of what he calls Advertainment—a creative methodology that’s transforming how businesses connect with their audiences.

“Advertainment is our unique approach that fuses advertising with entertainment,” he explains. “Instead of pushing traditional, sales-heavy content that people tend to scroll past, we create content that audiences actually want to watch. It’s about being so engaging that it’s impossible to ignore while still weaving in strategic messaging that drives results.”

Intriguing, right? We caught up with Dan to learn more about his journey, how Advertainment is created in practice, the role that Adobe Express plays in his workflow, and his tips for crafting marketable content yourself.

Origin story

Knowlton was born of humble origins. In 2017, Dan and his brother Lloyd started their agency from their parents’ spare room after becoming “sick of intrusive, over-salesy marketing.” They began by producing funny videos to promote their company. Then, gradually, they realised the need to structure these videos strategically to drive business.

“For our clients, this approach has been a game-changer,” Dan reflects. “It’s helped us generate millions in trackable revenue and secure major contracts. Because people are not just seeing the content: they’re enjoying it, sharing it, and taking action because of it.”

Today, their client list includes Wahl, Sunny D, Boston Consulting Group, BBC Storyworks, and Channel 4. And the timing couldn’t have been better. After all, the social media marketing landscape has undergone significant shifts in recent years, requiring businesses to adapt their strategies accordingly.

“Social media marketing has become way more visual and fast-paced,” Dan observes. “It’s no longer about just pushing out long-form content or polished ads. People want something that feels more authentic and real. Video is massive, and short, engaging clips are what people are looking for.”

The right tools

Behind every successful creative is a toolkit that enables rapid ideation and execution. For Dan and his team, Adobe Express—the quick and easy content creation app for designers and non-designers alike—has become an indispensable resource for developing their content.

“Adobe Express is a really practical tool for us, especially when we’re working fast and need high-quality visuals,” Dan enthuses. “One specific way I use it is to make quick edits to pitches that our designers have created using other Adobe software. As I’m not a professional designer, it’s super-handy because it makes the process straightforward without needing advanced design skills.”

The team will also use Adobe Express to create social media graphics, video thumbnails and visual elements for campaigns. “It’s great for maintaining brand consistency while still being flexible enough to adapt to different campaign needs,” says Dan.

Standout features

The crucial thing is to boost speed and efficiency without sacrificing quality. Dan highlights specific features in Adobe Express that help square that circle. “The huge library of Adobe-quality templates is a lifesaver when we need to create visuals fast,” he notes. We can easily tweak them to fit our brand or the specific campaign.”

He particularly values the Brand Kit feature. “This keeps our branding consistent, especially when we’re working on multiple projects at once,” he explains. We can store logos, fonts, and colour schemes and apply them with just a few clicks.”

Adobe Express also excels at quick edits. “Things like background removal and resizing are just really easy to do without any hassle,” Dan points out. Finally, he praises the software’s collaborative tools. “Since the team often works on projects together, these make it simple to pick up where someone else left off,” he explains.

In summary, Dan explains that “Adobe Express is not about overcomplicating things—it’s a really practical tool that makes us more efficient.”

Real-world results

So, how does this all work in practice? Dan shares a specific example of how Adobe Express transformed a marketing campaign.

“We were working on paid creative assets for a large SaaS business we supported during their UK relaunch,” he recalls. “The client needed some tweaks to their existing designs to make them more engaging. We used Adobe Express to quickly adjust layouts, update messaging, and test a few different variations.”

The results speak for themselves. “The refreshed ads we created significantly outperformed the original assets they were using: higher click-through rates and way more engagement,” Dan reveals. “It just shows how making a few quick design tweaks can make a massive difference, especially when you’re working with a tight turnaround.”

No surprise, then, that Dan is now an Adobe Express Ambassador: you can find details of the programme, and how you can join it, here.

Content tips for small businesses

Dan has some valuable insights for small businesses aiming to create engaging video content using tools like Adobe Express. “Tell a story,” he urges. “Make your videos about people, stories, or real experiences rather than just products. That’s what makes them relatable. But make them short and sweet: People don’t have time for long-winded content. Get to the point quickly and make it punchy.”

Feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to create content? Then, step back and take a deep breath. “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel every time,” Dan stresses. “Some of our best content ideas come from seeing what’s already working for other creators, particularly on platforms like TikTok. If you see a format or trend that’s performing well, put your own spin on it rather than starting from scratch. Also, you don’t need to be everywhere at once. Pick one platform where your audience hangs out and master it before branching out.”

Furthermore, he emphasises consistency over perfection: “Use tools like Adobe Express to quickly repurpose content. For example, if you make a great video, turn it into a few shorter clips or add some graphics to create a new post.”

Finally, Dan encourages businesses to: “show your personality. Don’t be afraid to be a bit quirky or real; that’s what people connect with. But at the same time, stay on-brand. Use consistent colours, fonts and logos to make sure people know it’s you.”

The power of humour

The thing Dan’s best known for, of course, is his use of humour. And there’s no reason you can’t follow him down that route, too. “Humour is a game-changer when it’s done right,” he asserts. “Too many brands play it safe, but being funny is a great way to stand out and make people remember you.”

For inspiration, Dan suggests looking to the professionals. “Draw inspiration from comedy creators like Imogen Andrews, Al Nash, Jack Joseph, or even shows like Peep Show and Aunty Donna,” he urges. “These creators have a knack for making relatable, funny content that people can’t help but engage with.”

When it comes to creating your own content, he adds, “Don’t overthink it. Humour is about having fun, and if your content feels too forced, it won’t resonate. Experiment, learn from what works, and lean into that.”

A mission to transform marketing

What began as a rebellion against intrusive marketing has evolved into a successful agency with an in-house team of 15 and a pool of over 50 trusted freelancers. Dan’s mission is clear: “To rid the world of crap marketing”.

Through the power of Advertainment and with tools like Adobe Express at his disposal, Knowlton is showing that marketing doesn’t have to be an interruption—it can be content that audiences genuinely enjoy. As Dan puts it: “We make audiences enjoy the process of being convinced to buy your products and services.” And in today’s competitive landscape, that might just be the most valuable skill a marketer can offer.

Feature image credit: picsmart – stock.adobe.com

By Tom May

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AI Won’t Replace Marketers—Someone Using It Will

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By Greg Peters

AI is the biggest jolt of energy marketing has felt since the internet. Rather than fear it, smart operators will grab it and ride the wave.

In the Mad Men era of the 1960s, marketing lived in the boardroom, born from creative conversations and driven by strategy. The internet’s arrival in the mid-1990s flipped that world, pushing marketers from shaping big ideas to managing tactics like SEO, banner ads, pop-ups and content mills. Now AI is here, and the shifts feel constant. At a breakneck pace, it’s commoditizing once-core marketing tactics, doing the work so effectively that public opinion assumes machines can replace marketers.

Here’s where the pressure amps up: Clients and executives often don’t care how the work gets done, as long as it’s completed on time and within budget. You can manage revenue, risk, cost and cash flow however you see fit, as long as the numbers move in the right direction.

For some, that sounds terrifying and like a sure sign AI will decimate the creative process and eliminate jobs. But I’m here to tell you that this isn’t the end. You’re not going to lose your job to AI. But you could lose your job to someone who knows how to use it.

Creative Resistance And Adoption

You can see the resistance to AI playing out in the talent market. Countless writers have “open to work” on their LinkedIn profiles. The perceived value of writing has been eroded, hitting marketing intensely. AI makes tactics easier to access, so agencies and professionals must demonstrate that their work drives outcomes beyond what a tool can produce.

Those of us using AI daily know marketing has never stopped being valuable. Agencies need to demonstrate their value through tangible results. Smart AI adoption combined with expertise delivers faster, lasting outcomes. Understandably, the resistance often comes from creatives who are hesitant to adopt new tools out of fear.

I’ve always been a late tech adopter, but even I use ChatGPT. I rely on it for decks, engagement plans and strategy documentation. If I’m embracing it, the debate is over. The only question now is how to use it well.

Real-World Disruption In Action

Examples already show what this looks like. At my agency, we built an internal AI we call DirectorGPT. It captures our team’s knowledge so anyone can get quick answers without waiting for a senior lead. It saves time, facilitates onboarding and provides a reliable knowledge base. At the same time, agencies are experimenting with platforms that help analyse performance and optimize campaigns faster than ever before.

The lesson isn’t that agencies have no future. In fact, it’s a call to recognize where humans add the most value. Agencies must determine where AI is most effective and where human creativity remains essential. AI can generate a first draft of an email or a landing page. It can even create long-form narrative content and develop a brand strategy. But it can’t replace human creativity.

Inspired marketing pulls from culture, art, literature and even the bizarre. Think about campaigns that feel strange, yet stick because they capture attention in ways no tool could predict: A fast food brand sparring with competitors on social media. A beverage upstart disrupting the bottled water market with unconventional tactics.

True creativity takes something from one corner of culture and combines it with something unrelated to reveal something new. AI can’t make those leaps because it works only with what already exists. Humans can. When creatives use AI for mundane work, we gain time to focus on originality.

AI is the ultimate yes-man. It will flatter you into failure. It’s never going to push back and stop you from publishing something you’ll regret. The person behind the keyboard must be able to distinguish between good and bad. If those skills erode, teams will generate endless stale content that inspires no one to click, read or buy.

The Playbook For Using AI Right

Winning marketers will be the ones who use AI purposefully. These are the moves worth making:

• Leverage AI for speed. Summarize data, prepare talking points and cut down on research time.

• Build stronger engagement plans. Use AI to connect client objectives with practical marketing moves.

• Prompt with purpose. Iterate to refine results, and keep a library of the best prompts.

• Gut-check outputs. Never accept AI at face value. Apply human taste, style and critical thinking.

• Shift your lens to outcomes. Don’t view AI solely as a cost savings tool. Use it to drive outcomes and stay ahead.

Punk Rock Lessons For The Future

For me, adopting AI feels like punk rock. Punk was about breaking the rules, but the best musicians knew the rules first. It’s the same with AI—you must understand how the work is done before you can rebuild it with these tools.

The fear surrounding AI is loud, but like every disruptive technology, the noise will fade as adoption becomes commonplace. Conversations that feel urgent today will sound outdated soon. The same thing happened with the fax machine, the printer and the internet. Each one faced scepticism before becoming standard. AI is following the same path, albeit at a faster pace.

When the Spanish brought horses to North America, the indigenous Plains people had never encountered them before. Within a few generations, they’d incorporated horses into their way of life. They took a foreign technology and used it to leap forward. That’s what humans do. We harness technology and bound forward with it.

The tools are here, and the tide is rising. Marketing isn’t disappearing. It’s about to get more demanding, more creative and more fun. Grab hold, ride the wave and own it.

Feature image credit: getty

By Greg Peters

Find Greg Peters on LinkedIn. Visit Greg’s website.

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Greg Peters is the president and founder of 4B Marketing, a full-service tech marketing agency based in Denver, CO. Read Greg Peters’ full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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