For online stores
You raised the budget and sales did not follow.
What is usually missing is not traffic, it is knowing how much each sale can take before raising stops paying off. Five points decide that, and the order you check them in changes the answer.
If this sounds familiar too
- You closed a bad month right after a campaign that looked like it was working.
- Peak season hits and you cannot keep up.
- You cut the price on your best seller to move stock and the month closed worse than it would have without the promotion.
- They fill the cart, reach the payment step and drop off there.
In this order
The margin on the product you are advertising
If the ad pushes the product that leaves you the least, raising spend brings you more of the sales that pay you worst. Start by knowing what you keep on every unit going out that door.
What a customer costs you against what they leave you
On a 40 order you keep 33 after tax. The product costs you 18 and shipping plus payment fees take another 7: you are left with 8, and you are paying 18 for every new order. Always run it per order and not per unit, because almost nobody buys just one, and that subtraction tells you whether the 18 has to be paid by the first purchase or by the whole year.
How many people buy from you again
If nobody comes back, every sale has to pay for itself on day one and it is the first purchase that sets your ceiling on spend. Check it with a fixed window: of the people who bought in January, how many had come back by April.
Which week of the year you are in
Your peak has a date and last year's sales will tell you which one. Raising spend before it starts is worth more than raising it once you are inside, when everyone bids for the same space and your costs climb with you.
What happens after the click
If checkout loses half of them, raising spend means paying for people who were already dropping off. This gets checked before you touch the budget because it is the only item on the list you fix without spending more.
Why the order matters
The first three tell you whether your sale can carry more spend. The fourth tells you when to put it in, because the same click does not cost the same in August as in November. The fifth needs no new budget: it works on the traffic you already paid for, which is why it is usually the cheapest thing you can touch. Raising the budget without the first three is paying more for the same result.
What kind of store this works for
If you are already selling and you raise budget but sales do not rise with it, you can see which of the five points is losing you that money. If you have only been selling a few months there are no repeat orders to count yet, and the other four read off your first orders. Margin is the first of the five, and it is the one that says whether the lever is in the campaigns or earlier, in the product or the price. I come from managing over 400,000 dollars in ad spend at Rockin, mostly on ecommerce accounts.
Half an hour with your numbers in front of you.
You tell me what you sell and what you are paying to sell it. You leave with the five numbers written down and the one holding you back marked.
Book 30 minutes