Footwear is a fashion category that is close to my heart–my first eCom marketing role was with Donald Pliner, a footwear brand, and some of my biggest consulting clients (Larroude, Johnston & Murphy) have also been footwear brands.
Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Layers. Layers is the first AI search & merchandising tool built exclusively for Shopify Plus. Faster, smarter, and more modular than the legacy tools, for a fraction of the price.
Layers has an exclusive offer for my readers: sign up here get your first 30 days free! No seat limits, No usage caps.
Shoes are an interesting segment of the fashion market–shoes have more functional requirements than a tee shirt or a pair of sweatpants.
Uncomfortable or poorly fitting shoes can cause pain and long term issues with your back and spine. Poorly made shoes can fall apart mid-stride, stranding you in the middle of a nasty city sidewalk.
This opens up more opportunities for problem/solution messaging and positioning–even for fashion-oriented brands. On the other hand, most consumer are rejecting footwear brands that are purely functional, with zero aesthetic appeal.
I've included a mix of fashion-focused and function-focused brands in the round up. Reminder: the ads might take up to 60 seconds to load, especially if you click the links within the same hour the email was sent.
Brand #1: Margaux
I've been putting ads from Margaux in my swipe file for years. They do a great job applying creative diversity to a relatively limited assortment. They also have a knack for making platform-native content look aesthetically appealing.
***
Let's face it: Shopify's native product search and category sorting are WEAK, and these are two critical features for fashion brands.
So, how do 9-figure brands with thousands of SKUs like Rainbow manage to scale on Shopify? They use Layers to enhance their site with best in class product search and merchandising capabilities.
​Layers lets you deliver AI-powered sort orders and lightning-fast visual discovery on the front end, without synonym spreadsheets, ranking rules, or manual merchandising on the back end.
Brand that use Layers have cut bounce rates, reduced “no result” searches by 30% and let go their merchandising VAs. It's up to 60% less expensive than the legacy search & merchandising tools, while providing even more functionality.
Get your first 30 days of Layers completely free. No seat limits, No usage caps. Just fill out this form.
***
Brand #2: Loeffler Randall
The Loeffler Randall ad account can be hit or miss–sometimes they're running five ads, sometimes they're running 50. But the good times are good enough that it warrants an inclusion in this list.
The brand does a great job of taking the best practices I outline here and filtering them through a more "branded" aesthetic.
Brand #3: M. Gemi
M.Gemi is one of the OG direct to consumer brands–"made in Italy" quality without the designer price tag. Their ad account contains a diverse mix of different ad formats, including partnership ads.
Brand #4: Kizik
Kizik is a hands free step-in shoe brand. They patented this technology, so for a number of years they were the only brand on the market who could make this claim.
The step-in tech solved a real problem and it was visually interesting–the recipe for ads that scale. Today, their account is a great example of how to talk about a simple message in hundreds of different ways.
Brand #5: Charix
This brand does a good job of using comfort as a differentiator, while also focusing on style. Similarly, they have a good mix of SILIBI-style ads and direct response-style product storytelling.
These ads are a great example of how to spin up creative diversity based on a relatively simple differentiator.
Bonus: Tanner's Shoes
When I saw this brand pop up in my research, I had to include it. They are using a ton of drop shipping tropes that are rarely applied to the fashion category–a perpetual "going out of business" sale on the website (complete with elderly AI shopkeeper couple), AI-generated green screen ads, etc.
I don't know where they're sourcing product from (AliBaba?), but the hooks and narrative structure of these ads is worth studying.