Welcome to the Marketing in the Wild podcast. I’m Julia from Stratos Creative Marketing, where we are obsessed with finding real-life examples of the good, the bad, and sometimes wild, in marketing.

For today’s Marketing in the Wild, I want to share with you guys about an ad that I recently saw. It’s for a brand called Kizik’s shoes. It was an ad on Facebook and it was 100% targeted. If you’ve been here for a minute, you know that I’m expecting a baby and this ad was a video of somebody who’s pregnant putting on these hands-free shoes. Now we all know hands-free shoes are like not new per se. Like we all had slip-ons like at some point. Many of us, myself included just slip on our tennis shoes without thinking about it. So what’s cool is Kizik’s actually has some patented technology that they look like tennis shoes, but they’re meant to be slipped on without like, you know, those crushed heels that my mom always complained about.

They’re really stylish shoes. And this whole ad was for pregnant women. Like don’t bend over anymore, put your shoes on by yourself. You don’t need your husband to tie your tennis shoes for you, et cetera. And so it was just really interesting caught my eyes and then I went down a Kizik rabbit trail.

And so I just want to tell you guys why I liked them, tell you a little bit more of what I saw on their profile. But I want to start first with this marketing concept that we’ve talked about before, which is problem solving. If your company, and I firmly believe this, it’s kind of harsh, but if your company does not solve a problem for your customer, you should not be in business.

I know that sounds harsh, but you need to be able to define your problem that you solve. So for example, Stratos; the problem that we solve is that business owners either don’t know how to do their marketing or build a website, et cetera, or their marketing isn’t working and they need more leads. We solve problems related to marketing. And we have like a core problem, and then that looks differently for websites. Like we solve a problem of needing good marketing and then we solve that through websites, social media, lead generation design, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 

And so Kizik’s found a problem: crushed heels in tennis shoes, because we would like to all have hands for your shoes and that we can just slip on that looked like normal tennis shoes, look like normal shoes, but many of us would rather slip them on than actually untie them, put them on, etc.

So that is the problem that they solve. Really, it’s not a new problem. They just have tackled it with this technology that they know. But this is the part that I like, is that they don’t just talk about it. Like it is their tagline. They talk about this hands-free stuff all the time, but they show it in their social media and in their marketing. So just scrolling through their page, their Facebook page for about like 10 minutes, I saw so many examples of how they solve the problem.

So I already mentioned one ad for people who are pregnant. They also had a photo of women who, it was female nurses and at a hospital who all were wearing Kizik’s. And the whole point of the post was like, Hey, these nurses are working in germy environments and like, they don’t have to touch their shoes or tie them and transfer germs from their shoes to their patients or vice versa.

Another problem that they solve with our shoes is traveling through security. I don’t know about the rest of you, but taking your shoes off during TSA, I have cracked the code and figured it out, but you always know who the newbie is because they’ve never, they’re not taking off their shoes. And so that was another example that they gave of solving a problem.

Another one was parents on the go. They had a video of a dad carrying a toddler and carrying a baby carrier, needing to put his shoes on and he was just able to slip them on and get going. My favorite, favorite, favorite one is they had a man who has Parkinson’s and it was actually a testimonial video of how he, because of Parkinson’s, is unable to do a lot of things for himself, but he could put his shoes on by himself and he reveled in the fact. It was like amazing. It was so cool. And actually I was looking at all of their reviews and a lot of the reviews said people had bought them for family members who had medical issues, like backs that didn’t work, et cetera. And so it was cool because they’re also solving that sort of problem. 


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So yes, they’re solving a major problem of like, Hey, I don’t want to put my hands on my shoes when I put them on, whether it be because I’m lazy or because I have other things going on. Really for me, it’s mainly convenience, but they didn’t just say, Hey, we have hands-free shoes. Hey, you don’t have to touch your shoes when you put them on. Like, they’re not just saying it. They’re showing it; they’re showing it through their marketing. They’re showing it through videos of women who are pregnant, putting their shoes on. They’re showing videos of people with Parkinson’s putting their shoes on without having to touch them. They’re showing. it was actually a TikTok, which was super creative of somebody traveling through security and not having to take their shoes off. Or they took them off, but not having to touch them. 

They show pictures of parents on the go, nurses in germy environments, et cetera, et cetera. They’re all advertisements, but they’re not just shouting from the rooftops. Like, Hey, if you buy our shoes, you don’t have to touch them ever again. They’re showing us. Showing people like us. And so I think that’s what is cool. 

I am not like a firm believer that everybody needs to have a very specific audience. Like “This is the demographics and that’s it,” because I think you could have multiple audiences who have the same problem that you’re solving, and we can see that here with Kizik’s.

So, I looked through their reviews. I’ll be honest. I haven’t tried them. Honestly. I found the ad today and I was so excited. I figured I should record about it, but I haven’t tried them. Somebody on our team has them and really loves them. So I would trust her word a ton. Amazon has four and a half star reviews for like a lot of reviews. Their Facebook has really, really great reviews on them, too. So if you’ve tried Kizik’s, can you let me know what you think about them? I would love to see how they solved your problem for your particular situation and not just solve your problem at large. 

So what does this mean for us? First of all, define your problem. If you’re a business owner, what problem do you solve? Maybe you solve putting meals on tables for dinnertime and you’re a meal delivery service. Maybe you solve lack of childcare because you are a daycare. Whatever it might be, define your problem. But then instead of just talking about it, show it. Show how you solve the problem. Show your different audiences, show your different demographics. Show how your situation or how your service solves the problem in a particular situation. Just show people. Don’t just tell people because then I, as a pregnant person, can picture myself, quite literally, pun intended, in her shoes, in the ad, just as perhaps a nurse can say, “Oh wow, I might also not want to touch my shoes in the hospital.” They saw other nurses in that picture and then they can again, picture themselves in their shoes, pun intended. 

Same thing, the Parkinson’s testimonial. Even if I’m a family member watching that Parkinson’s testimonial about the man who can feel self-reliant and he can put his shoes on it without asking for help. That makes me think of “Oh, who in my life could benefit from that too?” 

So that’s the thing you guys is, we all need to start showing how our solution or how our service solves a problem. Let’s stop just telling people and let’s show people. So, if you have another example of somebody who shows how they help, how they solve the problem and not just tells people, I would love to hear about it. So send us an email, find us on Instagram, whatever you want. I just really appreciate hearing any feedback from you guys and any examples that you all also might see.

All right, friends, I will talk to you next tweet. Find me back here, but in the meantime, make sure that you are doing marketing with excellence. I hope you guys are all also taking the opportunity to look around and see what sort of marketing you see in the wild and see how you can take some of those principles and apply them to your own business. All right. Talk next week.