July 18, 2025
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Shannon Curley is a familiar face at Prosper Show where she has shared her considerable wisdom with attendees. These days she is director of Marketing and Growth at Tactical Logistic Solutions, while also running her own consulting business.
With Black Friday only four months away, the Prosper Show newsletter sat down with Curley to get her thoughts about what sellers should be doing now to boost the brand and succeed during the holiday season.
Prosper Show: What are the biggest challenges these days for brands that are looking to boost their profile?
Curley: This is a really difficult time to launch a new brand. There is so much clutter everywhere you look, from social feeds to newsletters to AI-generated content. It makes it a challenge to know what is a legitimate, authentic brand and what is just being cranked out by the machine.
In marketing – especially brand marketing – we are in a bit of a virality crisis. The tried and true tactics aren’t working as well as they used to. It’s hard to say what’s going to take off and what’s going to stay stagnant. My advice is twofold, and in some ways a bit contradictory. First, decide what you want to do and stick to it. Want to try a newsletter? Give it a few months to see if it’s successful before throwing in the towel. Want to up your LinkedIn presence? Commit to being patient and seeing what consistently posting two to three times a week for three months does for you.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to experiment. With video in particular, there is a lot of opportunity to try different approaches. Who’s to say whether animation or live-action, scripted or improv is going to work better for you? With so many video editing tools available, this is a great time to throw a bunch of ideas at the wall and see what sticks.
Prosper Show: What should brands be doing NOW to prepare for the holiday season?
Curley: Get your supply chain in order and consider 3PL solutions. Look at your 2024 holiday sales numbers and project this year’s sales accordingly. Don’t forget to replenish your stock following Prime Day sales to make sure you are ready to rock for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
If you’re running ads (which you must be), make sure that your inventory planning includes expected spikes from those ads. If you want to avoid inbound fees and warehouse storage fees, use a 3PL to hold your inventory until 30 to 60 days out from shipping to Amazon FBA. What I’ve learned in the last six years in this industry is that the way to get ahead is to know all of the “tricks.” It’s also about avoiding the traps—like peak season storage fees—more than it is about going above and beyond.
Prosper Show: What type of brand and content marketing do you like best?
Curley: I’m a purist when it comes to brand and content marketing. I think organic marketing is the only TRUE marketing (snooty, I know). Anyone can put spend behind something, but it’s a true feather in your cap to see something be successful just because it’s, well, good.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t then put spend BEHIND the good thing. My preferred marketing style is: experiment, find what works, and boost the winning formula by repurposing the core content and putting money into expanding its reach.
Prosper Show: What is the biggest misconception about effective brand and content marketing?
Curley: One misconception is that increasing the budget will increase brand recognition. If you throw bad money at bad ideas, don’t expect good results. Another misconception is one size fits all. Every brand is different and every brand requires a different content strategy. Video won’t work for everyone; direct mail might actually work best for some. Even though there are trends and big absolutes (“Every brand NEEDS video”) about marketing, individual brands still need their own bespoke formulas for success.
Prosper Show: What is the nature of your work with Tactical Logistic Solutions?
Curley: I am currently the director of Marketing and Growth for Tactical Logistic Solutions. I am super excited about getting to work on the logistics and supply chain side of e-commerce, with customers spanning not only the old familiar FBA faces, but retail and D2C as well.
What I love about the team at Tactical is that, like me, they’ve been in this industry for a long time so they understand the challenges and what it takes to be successful. More importantly, they “get” that customers aren’t just their businesses – they are real people whose livelihood depends on their success in this industry. This understanding really drives the “why” of the entire organization, and delivers a level of comprehensiveness, transparency, and care that can be rare to find. It’s an exciting new chapter for me and I’m looking forward to continuing to develop in the role.
Prosper Show: With all the tariff whiplash going on, what is your level of optimism about the future of online selling?
Curley: If there’s anything that Amazon sellers are excellent at, it’s dealing with change and unpredictability. To say Amazon’s seller policies are “fickle” would be the understatement of the century. I’m optimistic that e-commerce entrepreneurs, as usual, will find ways to deal with the whiplash and be successful.
Consumers won’t stop participating in online purchasing regardless of the tariffs, which means online sellers will need to adopt new strategies to stay profitable and maintain their bottom lines. Easier said than done, but again, if anyone is used to pivoting on a dime, it’s folks who have been dealing with Amazon’s nonsense for the past decade.
Prosper Show: What are you up to career-wise?
Curley: Since my time as director of Marketing at Carbon6, where I helped lead Carbon6’s successful acquisition for $210M by SPS Commerce in February 2025, I have shifted to running my own brand and content marketing consulting business. I am still heavily involved in the industry with Tactical Logistic Solutions, but am allowing some time and space to bring on new clients across a variety of backgrounds and businesses.
Shannon Curley is founder of Shannon Curley MKTG and director of Marketing & Growth at Tactical Logistic Solutions.
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