She Charges Your Favorite Brands Thousands For This Advice!

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the show. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of Female Founder World. And today I'm chatting with Joanna Marissa. She is the founder and creative director of Willa Creative. Welcome. Hi, thank you for having me. For people that don't know Willa Creative, what are you guys doing? We're an e-commerce source agency rooted around web, like first and foremost, but content and brand is equally as important to like the actual infrastructure of the website. So we had all those three pillars. So we came across you trying to think how we, because we don't talk with a lot of agency owners or creatives.

0:30Like we talk with a lot of founders of consumer product brands, But I think Natalie on my team sent me through and she's like, these guys work with everyone. Cool. They're working with set. They're working with half days. Like they work with all of these brands doing really amazing, amazing stuff. And we need to have them on the show to figure out like what their process is and what they're doing and learn from them. And I love that. I was kind of surprised too. I was like, ooh, like it's so funny. I always tell my friends, I'm like, oh, I want to be like a founder. And they're like, you are a founder.

0:55You are a founder. And I'm like, I know it's different, but it's true. I am a founder and I work very closely with a lot of founders. It's kind of the bread and butter of our company. We actually have this like sub tagline internally that's like we're an agency built for founders and we don't put it forward facing as much. But it's the way we make decisions and how we operate and how we want to provide a service as if it was our own brand. Like how do you service founders in a way? Because it's such a personal thing when you're working directly with founders. You know, it's like they care so much.

1:22Yes. And the vision is sort of like, yeah, yeah. It's so strong. Yeah. Talk me through some of the brands that you work with. Going back, we worked with like Colgaia, Nicholas Label, a lot of wellness, even CBD brands. More recently, you know, brands like Brightland, the Olive Oil Company, Dead Cool. We've worked, we worked with them very early days, very long time. The fragrance brand. Kelpak, Material Kitchen, Set Active, as you said, is one of the newer brands. Half Days, worked with them last year. This year, Facile, which is an incredible skincare brand that just launched into Sephora. We just signed to R28.

1:52I mean, we just, beauty has been such a big sector for us. But it's every time we're in like a category that's kind of defining of the moment, it's because that's where the e-commerce kind of growth has been going. So that's usually where we see our our clients coming from. And what kind of work are you doing with these brands? So it ranges. But being e-commerce first, I'd say that's probably like 85 percent of the brands that come to us are looking for a website, whether it's like I need a new website. I need a reinvention of my website. It's all our clients are on Shopify, but you know, Shopify releases new versions over time.

2:25And sometimes our clients are scaling at a certain point where they no longer can support their growth. Like their tech stack is now working against them. They're like installing plugins or they, let's even say from the lowest function is like went to the point where they should upgrade to Shopify. I'm sorry, Shopify plus like they just keep growing. So it's either a launch of a new website or a launch, a reinvention of the site. It was like when I started this 10 years ago, even a little more than that, it was more of like, how do I get online? How do I sell online? Yeah. Now that's not the biggest friction point.

2:51It's actually really easy for like young kids out of college. I'm going to throw up a Shopify theme and I'm going to test some things. I'm going to create a really great product, focus on marketing and TikTok. And I have a website that could sell products. So it wasn't really the biggest problem anymore in the last couple of years is actually like, how do I like really make noise and create like awareness for my brand within these like free channels that are fully accessible to me? Because I don't have a lot of paid dollars. I don't have, you know, how do I really optimize content and messaging?

3:13So in the last couple of years, you really like double tapped into that need and we're servicing brands beyond and post-launch from like a content and some like growth tactic strategies and I do kind of think that's the future of Willa. Yeah interesting okay I want to talk about this a little bit more when you're thinking about content creation and growth strategies for brands from that organic perspective who are you working with on that are there any specific campaigns you've worked on I just want to double down on that a little bit. Yeah so you know it's funny I just had a call yesterday can't say the name it's pretty big like legacy brand you know who they are okay and she like reached out just on info at willa and i'm like wow these like big brands are starting to reach out to us all the time from in like random inboxes no most random inbox and i'm like because up to today up to like recently we've been referral only every brand founder that i've told you it's like this person recommended this person it's all our founders that really like speak up for us in a room which is really something to be proud of but we're getting these like random inbox people reaching out to us because of the work we're doing for existing clients that they see on the organic channels and at the end of it she's like i'm so excited to chat with you i've been looking for a really strong social media agency.

4:15And I kind of got a little, maybe it's my ego. I think social media agencies are fantastic, but I like, I'm like, I do social media. How dare you? Interesting. But I was like, and then I, this kind of came out naturally as it came. I just want to make sure, you know, that I am actually not a social media strategist. I want to be very clear about that. Like there are agencies that do that very well, that like understand social, like the back of their hand. I know you come very well, but what I can tell you, I know really well, I know like brand first. I'm like really a brand first agency. So the content we've been doing for our clients is less about, you know, I mean, old olden days, like UGC is like everyone just swiping in front of the camera.

4:47And it's like, yeah, that works for paid now. But for your organic channels, it's very much this like, secondary, it's like your personality as a brand, right? Consumers want to be brought into a story and like, they want scroll stopping content. That's why tech talked it so well, it was like kind of something to stop you and get your attention. And so for let's say Instagram, we've been doing a lot of great stuff with Fistile, the client I mentioned before. And we're kind of leaning into more cinematic storytelling for them when they launched into Sephora I was like we need to make this big we are going to and a lot of brands have done something similar since maybe they copied us maybe they didn't I don't know we also got inspiration I'm sure from somewhere else but we did a they're an LA based brand LA born brand I'm from LA so I like any brands that are really like you know LA born we took my friends red Mercedes put like the facility license plate on the back and our art director and prop stylist like built this big mound of products in the back and we took the car around we rigged a camera to the back And it was this idea of like born in LA and now available nationwide was like the story.

5:42But you didn't know what was happening. You just were following this car with this really cool perspective of driving by iconic places in LA. It was like the Chateau Marmont. You were driving by the Hollywood sign. You were driving by, she drove through In-N-Out and you saw her like get a burger real quick. And at the same time, we had a camera in the front seat on the floor as she's just talking. The founder's like, you know, it's so cool to see us having started this location in LA and now going to be in 300 stores nationwide. wide and that's how she announced her Sephora so is this like movie you're watching with this end credit and I mean it blew up like I feel like between our feed and their feed people were just so and it's the first type of content that Fasil did like this and so we're like our audience loves it let's double tap into that and I think that's what more and more brands have been looking for how do we just stand out within the noise and really identify our own look and stop doing what everyone else is doing.

6:30Yes. Oh my gosh. And I also think people are just tired or hesitant to kind of dive into the just constant like TikTok trends. And a lot of founders that I speak to who are really brand first, they want this kind of content and they want to know how to create this kind of content that feels different, feels cool, feels like them, but still performs really well. Yeah. And that's really hard to do because like, I feel like some of the big legacy brands are creating these very polished very beautiful but not like the personal element that performs well on social right and then what I think you guys are really good at doing is like finding this wedge of actually know the type of stuff that performs really well is um it is still kind of social first but you've you've infused that like very important like distinctive brand yeah element to it's built in the brand universe you know what's also exciting about it is you know because we've done commercials for clients in the past and these big campaigns are dumping all this money we're prepping for like six months.

7:25And then you're like, just kind of hoping it does well with this stuff. We shot something on Friday. I was just telling you about that's going live today or tomorrow. It's going live in three, four days. And if it doesn't do that great, it's like, okay, we take it off the feed. Not a big deal. You know, it's, it's like always on content mentality that we've given our clients. And I really invested into the agency. We took over a big studio space in Venice and it's, it just allows for them to be more iterative. And what I love about digital and why I started in e-com was I also felt it was so iterative.

7:54You know, I was like, oh, should I get into print design or should I do like digital design? And when I learned and heard from my teacher, I was like, it's, you know, in digital, it's better to be imperfect and on time than perfect and late because you can always iterate. It's like not the end of the world, you know? It's like, you can get it up, test it. And really the way to grow is based off analytics. Web, launch something, put it in the world, get some feedback, iterate. Digital, social, you get to like read the analytics people who are loving, iterate, double tap into the things that are doing better.

8:20and it's been really fun for me too because you know having an agency for 10 years you're like how many beauty websites can I really make yeah you know what's the best practice and what's conform I was like listen at the end of the day I've seen websites and some of my current clients before sort of working with them come to us with this beat-up theme so slow the worst analytics performance wise and then doing upward of 50 to 60 million a year DTC because they've created this demand and this like need for this product and I mean we're women if we want something like we're going to go to Black Martin and buy it.

8:50It doesn't matter. Like, you know, and I started realizing that and saying, okay, Willow will not sustain in this just doing websites. Like it's more than that. Like you're really building this like brand world and always on content mentality and using analytics to really support creative, you know, without also then doing paid, you know, it's like, there's so many pieces. What kind of work are you doing with set? We've had Lindsay on the show before and she's working at our events. She's wonderful. Yeah, she is wonderful. So Kara's a good friend at the company. I adore her. We have done their site two times now.

9:22So the first reinvention of their site was meeting them where they were. They're one of the sites. I was very surprised the state of their site. She just created such this cult following that it didn't matter. Like she was selling out regardless. So we helped unlock, I think for their team, they're such on this drop model and always having to push new collections and drops and turning on the site, turning off the site. That was phase one. It was like one to two years. I think a new person came and I can't really speak to what happened internally. I don't really know. And they're like, oh, shoot, we need to like redo this.

9:51I think it was when Kira joined. She's like, our tech is not servicing us. So we worked them on just cleaning up. Looking good is a non-negotiable for when you work with, well, like it needs to look pretty. But another one of our values is like, websites need to be more than just a pretty face. You know, it's like, will we look at their reports prior to the redesign and see that we've made significant improvement? Is that the goal or is the goal, which for them specifically, I think it was more this goal. It was their e-commerce team was like, I can't do anything on this site or I'm, it takes me three hours to do this one thing.

10:26So it's about maybe time optimization. Maybe it's not direct, they're, they're doing great on money and financials. Maybe we'll unlock some there, but maybe it's more unlocking time for their team. So that was one of the things we did for them. We just relaunched their entire web ecosystem and They have an incredible head of e-commerce, Kayla, who worked with our team and just shared all the challenges. And then it was our team's responsibility to like address those challenges, whether it's how we're running our loyalty, how we're running our drop model. So we're kind of problem solvers within these e-commerce companies, you know, ecosystems.

11:00For founders who are listening and they're kind of at that point where they know the website isn't quite meeting what they need. What are some of those things that you look at to kind of like help them scale to that next level of e-commerce? Number one is site health. And this one almost feels like a little bit rudimentary, but it's like, listen, is your site load in a great way? Is there great hierarchy to your site? Do people know why they're coming to this site? That's like organic. And there's also you have to look at websites and kind of traffic from where it's coming in from. So organic is like somebody searched prenatal supplements, right?

11:33It's such a general term. They're going to get like quite a few. That's the person that's just like at the self-discovery phase. And that's usually your main homepage, your main dot com, usually treating that to the people who don't know anything about you. So that's super important. It's like the messaging, the storytelling, the speed is easy to navigate, easy to search. And then you have your paid content or your returning customer content. So related in like a three different channels of traffic, you know, site health is number one. And then two is probably PDP and landers, you know, from the paid side of things.

12:01I know paid experts are usually driving traffic to landers. So when we're working with the paid team, we'll make sure that those dedicated landers are really high performing. And what do you mean by PDP and landers? So PDP is a product details page. Sorry, like when people use that jargon, it's probably so silly. So that's your product details page. So it's like the shop page, like as a product, as add to cart on the side, has the details below. But a lander is usually built, you know, on either third party platform, like a rep low or any anything in that realm. And it is dedicated to paid. And it's usually like the marketing, the person in charge of marketing or head of growth or retention is really able to do whatever they want to that page.

12:37We make it so it's so tangible for them to like, boom, boom, swipe things up. It's way more easy to edit than like the main structure of your core product details page on your website. So they're able to test, A-B test and drive a lot of traffic to many different pages. So a brand's core website will have like your home listing page, PDP, and then like the marketing pages. But then there's probably like 20 landers that we as customers don't ever really see that they're driving all their dollars to because it's a lot more controlled. So that's a difference in the two. So we look at the PDP heavily because that's your highest converter, right?

13:08Are we doing storytelling in the carousel? Is your CTA really prominently displayed to the customer? Are we giving them like coddled support of being like, don't worry, this is 30 day free return. Oh, do you want to subscribe? You could save. Would you like to bundle? There are all these like little great ways to help guide them and give them like the dreamiest experience. They add something to card. You'd be like, hey, this is lovely. Would you like to add this to your routine? So, and then we keep a lot of the stuff below the fold. That's like more, if they want to go deeper. Ingredients before and after is clinical studies.

13:34And I'm thinking of beauty specifically. But we look at those two pieces mostly. That's like our first stab at performance. I, even just like listening to you talk about the product pages is really interesting. I want to know what else you should be, people should be doing on their website to be able to optimize it and make more money from this. Yeah, make more money. I mean, UGC is still doing really well. people love social proof on product pages on pdp pages and home page like we'll have them on both places anywhere we can sprinkle them in we love like founders povs um you know between experts social proof and just community i think that's really still driving a lot of our our experiences what you mean by community so community so like there's this platform called toolstoy a lot of our clients upload their own community but they want to see so it's a salty face and the brand salty face okay so we relaunched them last year they're really community driven so before we started working and this is a good point if you're a brand who has not done paid and you've grown organically and doing very well there's that's another type of brand that comes just like we're about to turn on paid once you turn on paid your analytics is going to drop period because you're now like have a bigger wide of people just dumping onto your site that have not heard of you that have not connected with you and haven't found you through social channels organically they were somebody who came just for that so we focused on optimizing making sure now they're turning on paid what type of things do new users need to understand but because they were so they grew so organically with organic i was like let's double tap on that so with shades let's say me and you are very different shades and so we had to see every woman in a different shade try something on in the different levels that they knew customers wanted to use so if you wanted to be like just a light little tan and i was like i want to go golden bronze like i've been to brazil we really tried to make sure that it was easy for people to find their shade and we even there's a lot of uh girls like hey like i'm this is the shade i'm using i'm going to pump it on for like four or five sprays and I'm going to sleep on to sleep in it.

15:21So it's just like as much as you can help somebody feel like it's so easy to find what they need, but have variable options for them. Like maybe I didn't know I wanted to use the brush, you know, other than, and that also supports upsells, you know, it's like once you see the whole routine instead of just buying the tanning spray. So they're a good example of how we really integrated just like community and just different skin tones, et cetera. You mentioned Tolstoy, I think Replo was another tool. Yeah. What other tools are there out there that you're kind of incorporating in this e-commerce ecosystem that people need to know about so my favorite one right now and such a plug is tyb try your gosh tyhanie's side yes yes amazing so brian her co-founder and i adore each other they actually co-hosted our women of will at dinner this year in march i actually refer them a lot of clients because i think so i was a big i've always been a big advocate for community within our clients like hands down i'm like listen like clickbait and all those type of like get that one sale it's not about getting that one sale it's about like long time you know lifetime value and it's about retention like yeah it really is and when subscription was a big part we would really support our clients on doing subscription and that kind of like flattened a little bit and people are kind of subscription overload but then there's tyb that came into the scene it was really about just really rewarding customers and helping customers be seen through brands and brands feel like they have a better way to directly connect what connect with them so huge fan of tyb for the brands that fill right for it um sets on tyb mara do you know mara skincare oil yeah pop sugar be the editor oh yeah she was yeah and then so she has her skin so we're actually in the middle of like relaunching her site she's onboarding on a two i mean brand founders are just finding it so valuable like and they're actually directly seeing financial growth from it but aside from that they're seeing this way to like have their customers help decide what should we launch next or their true like diet who are actually buying their product right it's on something just like i don't know like add their 15 bought one time never came back they're like no we've been your fan for very long yes replo has been great i think my dev is like he like likes it doesn't love it's the best out there for right now for like landers tolstoy is really cool it's a very easy way to integrate like how-to videos and user user generated content sprinkled throughout the entire website that is very shoppable so that's also cool because you can open it and see what the products is.

17:37You can tag products to like what they're talking about and quickly kind of live shop, kind of like live shopping. You know, a lot of our clients use Recharge for subscription. I'm going to put links to all of these tools in the show notes as well, guys, if you want to check them out. I want to get your advice on how and when brands should work with agencies. I think there can be like a lot of fear and hesitation about bringing in agencies because it can feel really expensive versus working with like individual contractors or freelancers and how you find the right agency? Yeah, it's a really good question.

18:09You know, this is, this is a question I get asked a lot. And I think about it a lot because I really, truly do love working directly with founders and smaller companies. I really do. As I was gabbing too early, these bigger brands are reaching out and it's like so exciting, but I'm also just like, you know, you just lose a direct connection with somebody. Yeah. And a lot of startup brands reach out and I'll share with them. I like to be very transparent up front like listen like our minimum rate is this and I even sometimes feel like awful saying that but it's you have a company to run you have like operation expenses and we are in a big team intentionally because I still like to be involved in all the things coming through our doors so you know when they should use an agency I mean there's so much you could do on your own I really do I feel like it all comes under budget sadly when they are deciding what they want to start So let's just somebody who's like, okay, I'm going to put my own money and I'm going to just start.

19:00And the money needs to go to the product. Because at the end of the day, what I do is only like, I don't know, 15 % of the battle when it comes to the pretty stuff. You can have an awful website, as I said earlier. But if your product is good, people are going to keep buying. So have a good product for us. And you don't need me for that. You don't need fancy packaging. And there are so many resources. I feel like now, like, what's that platform? Had a couple of friends use. Gosh, what's the P? I'm not going to remember. What's it for? It's for what you just like, you can start a product, like any product.

19:26I feel like a lot of influencers use it. Yeah. I've recommended it to people before. I can't think of it. It's going to come to us in the middle. I will think of it before this episode comes out. I'm going to put it in the show notes. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. I think after you've like proven that you're ready to kind of go all in and you're ready to really start taking your business to the next level is kind of the good time to bring in an agency and using them for things that you're not that great at. You know, if you have a good eye for aesthetic and you're like, I just need a tactical team, like use us for the tactical site.

19:53You know, there's not a lot of like founders are out there knowing how to dev a website, you know? So like, that's always been like, again, our bread and butter. And I think the brand founders really believe in aesthetic, but also want highly functioning and performing sites. They come to us. And then your next investment, I would say, if you can't do content very well, like ongoing content for your channels, organic, the free channels before even dabble into paid, because I also am a firm believer of not doing paid right away. I think that you stick with building an organic community, getting as much feedback from that community as possible.

20:22and learning how to play and turn up and down your levers that you can control before dabbling in the paid. So I don't know if that really answered your question. No, that's really helpful. Is it kind of just like... But the other part of the question that I want to know is like, how do you evaluate whether you should be working with an agency? Yeah, call references. Call references. I think reputation is everything. And not just the ones that they give you. No, no, no. Reputation is everything. And I think that, you know, I take a lot of pride in my work. Like I really do. It's super important to me that like people walk away feeling that we didn't like dupe them in any way, that they got what they paid for and that they have an open line of communication.

21:01I'm always down to have healthy conversation around like improvements, things that we could have done better. But also like, again, I would just, I really feel lucky for the community of women that have trusted us because I feel we have a good rapport or that we would be referring us, you know? So I think reputation is everything. have them show you some before and afters of things they've done I open my Figma files I'll be like hey and do you know what Figma is yeah okay good I showed them I was like oh you love this brand we worked on let me kind of walk you through that process like here was our kickoff here so they really see well this is what you handed off into dev or this is the mood board of the content shoot and then this is what actually came to life because I have noticed that it's so easy to put work on a website but you have to know what part they played in that role Right.

21:44So true. If somebody said, oh, we built a freelancer, I built this website. But did they just design it and hand it off and weren't a part of the full dev process? Because design, I also think, is only like 25 percent of the launch process. It's the rest is QA, testing, function, CMS, all those browser compatibility. Like, is it responsive? Do you try on the phone 10 times? To me, that's the bigger piece. So like really knowing I always get so heartbroken when founders come. Like I gave this person 50 grand and screwed me like my site doesn't work. and I'm just like, I'm so sorry. That's awful.

22:15So reputation, find references, ask them to speak to past clients and like have them show you their process. And if they get like turned off by that, they're probably like not telling the truth. I love that. You know, Joanna, you've given us so much good advice and specific tools, but I want to ask you just to round out the show, if there's another resource recommendation that you have that folks can go and check out. And this can be something that's like helped you as well as a founder, as an agency founder. Maybe it's a book that you've read or like a podcast you listen to or even just like a habit that you have in your day as you've been building your own team.

22:50I mean, I'm still pretty old school. I journal. Like I think journaling is super important. Every day. As many days I can find it in for, I told you I have a two and a half year old and my mornings go so quick that like sometimes I just want to like chill with her. And also like if you pick up a pen, you're drawing like smiley faces and flowers. All of a sudden she's like, can I draw? Exactly, exactly. But as much as I can, I do love Jay Shetty's podcast. Not even, I mean, I like his podcast, but I do his daily calm. The, I think it's 10 to 15 minutes. It's like away and I live in Topanga. So I have like outdoor space.

23:18I'll sit outside, listen to him for 10 minutes. And there's just like a minute to sit and breathe. In tandem of that, I'm kind of starting riffing beyond that. I read this book, Breath, which is just about breathing. And I feel like as somebody who's constantly on the go, it's like that, between that meditating and journaling, it's those only kind of pause moments I have to like really ground myself. those three things I think have been really integral in my ability to manage the amount of things that I have in my day yeah I love that Joanna thank you so much for coming on Female Founder World thank you for having me nice to chat I just wanted to end the show with a quick shout out to all of our paid business besties subscribers for$12.99 a month you get access to a weekly live call with mentors who we handpick from this podcast community these are founders who have been on the show, experts and operators that are helping to build their businesses.

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