✍️ Dear Jeff Bezos...

The community has spoken

December 13, 2024

👋 A lot going on this week: TikTok Shop is redefining what success looks like with its massive sales leap during Black Friday. Meanwhile, Amazon faces hard questions about fairness, and platforms like Roblox are opening new doors for Shopify sellers.

In this week’s issue:
🎯 The ad efficiency framework you didn’t know you needed
💬 The community fires shots at Jeff Bezos
🧠 A case study for inspiration

And of course, our collection of value-dense pro tips at the bottom.

Enjoy!

WHAT’S HAPPENING

📈 TikTok Shop smashes Black Friday records - TikTok Shop achieved $100M in sales during Black Friday, with SMBs driving over one-third of purchases. However, its U.S. future is uncertain amid a potential ban​.

💔 But will TikTok survive the US government? The platform’s future in the U.S. hangs by a thread as a D.C. court upheld a law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban. It’s last hopes: the Supreme court and Donald Trump.

📦 Amazon faces discrimination lawsuit - D.C.’s Attorney General claims Amazon delays deliveries in predominantly Black neighborhoods, sparking debates about fairness in its Prime service​.

🛍 Roblox-Shopify integration boosts in-game merch sales - Shopify's checkout in Roblox led to a 10x increase in merch sales for early testers. Developers are optimistic about the platform's commerce potential​.

🚨 Buy Now, Pay Later surges during BFCM - BNPL platforms saw record usage, accounting for nearly $1B in Cyber Monday sales. Merchants are leveraging BNPL to increase average order values​.

💬 EU tightens rules on Chinese imports - New laws aim to curb low-cost shipments from platforms like Shein and Temu. These regulations could reshape competition across Europe​.

TACTICS

🎯 Mastering Efficient Ad Spend: The Framework for Sustainable Growth

Balancing ad spend is tricky.

Spend too much, and you risk losing margins. Spend too little, and your growth plateaus.

That’s where the Efficient Ad Spend Framework (EASF), championed by Taylor Holiday at the Common Thread Collective, comes in—a guide to scaling profitably without burning cash.

EASF provides a roadmap to turn ad spend into a sustainable growth engine by aligning budget with real-time performance, smart segmentation, and creative iteration.

Here’s how to apply it to your business:

1. Set Guardrails Around Your Budget

The first step to efficient ad spend is protecting your margins.

  • Start with your ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale): This is the percentage of revenue you’re willing to dedicate to ads. For example, if your product has a 40% gross margin, keep ACOS under 40% to avoid eating into profits.

  • Be flexible but firm: Adjust budgets weekly based on performance but don’t exceed your ceiling. Tools like Triple Whale can simplify tracking and enforcement.

Why it works: Clear boundaries prevent overspending, keeping cash flow healthy.

2. Segment Audiences for Smarter Scaling

Not all audiences respond the same way—tailor your approach to maximize ROAS:

  • Cold Audiences: Focus on awareness. Use bold creative that grabs attention and introduces your brand’s value proposition. Make shorts (see our last issue for how).

  • Warm Audiences: Retarget website visitors or email subscribers with mid-funnel offers. These are your most convertible prospects, so create urgency with limited-time discounts or exclusive bundles.

Pro tip: Use first-party data (like your email list) to create custom audiences on Meta and TikTok, ensuring your dollars target the right people.

3. Make Creative Iteration a Habit

The best campaigns don’t happen by accident—they’re the result of relentless testing.

  • Test at least 3 variations of creative for every campaign. Include different hooks, formats, and calls-to-action to find the winning formula.

  • Review weekly and refresh monthly: Analyze performance data to optimize current ads and rotate in fresh creative every 30 days to avoid fatigue.

  • Leverage tools like Motion to track creative performance and spot trends quickly.

Takeaway: Bold italics Creative is your biggest variable. Make it your strongest asset by constantly refining what works.

4. Build Long-Term Loyalty with First-Party Data

Privacy updates have made paid acquisition trickier, but first-party data remains a goldmine.

  • Segment high-LTV (Lifetime Value) customers for targeted upsells and retention campaigns.

  • Sync this data with ad platforms to create lookalike audiences, ensuring you attract similar high-value customers.

Why this matters: High-LTV customers are your safety net. Focus here for consistent, long-term returns.

5. Think Beyond Immediate Returns

Direct response ads are great for quick wins, but sustainable scaling requires a different mindset.

  • Invest in brand-building: Allocate a portion of your budget to top-of-funnel campaigns that keep your brand top of mind. These ads might not convert immediately but pay off by driving long-term awareness.

  • Create campaigns aligned with your goals: For example, instead of chasing one-time purchases, aim to increase subscription adoption or repeat customers.

Takeaway: Efficient ad spend isn’t about spending less—it’s about spending smart. Adopt these strategies to balance profitability with growth, and turn your ad budget into your most reliable growth engine.

COMMUNITY TALK

💬 When the Playing Field Feels Tilted

Every entrepreneur knows the thrill of building something from nothing—taking an idea, scaling it, and watching it grow.

But there’s also a less glamorous side: competing against the giants.

Recently, Molson Hart’s open letter to Amazon sparked a conversation that feels uncomfortably familiar to many small business owners.

The letter calls out Amazon for its alleged practice of underpricing small sellers, leveraging their sales data to introduce cheaper, private-label alternatives.

It’s a story that echoes a sentiment shared across the e-commerce community: How do you thrive in a system that sometimes feels stacked against you?

Whether you’ve felt the sting of a supplier hiking costs after seeing your success or struggled to stand out on an oversaturated marketplace, you’re not alone.

These challenges are part of the journey—and what makes every win even more meaningful.

Takeaway: It’s more important than ever to lean on what makes your brand unique. Tell your story. Build a following around it.

GROW YOUR VISIBILITY ONLINE

A $3.5M Mind-Set Shift

In 2017, privately-owned dental practice Smileworks was barely breaking even.

They had all the right resources—expert services, a niche market, and the drive to grow—but costs were high, and customers were barely trickling in.

Outbound marketing was costing them £6,000-8,000/month…

…not to mention the strain on their team and the frustration of only converting 20-30% of those leads. Sound familiar?

CEO and Co-Founder Ed Challinor knew something needed to change. He observed a simple truth: “People want to search and buy on their own terms—not be sold to.”

This insight led Ed to pivot from outbound marketing to an inbound strategy, focusing on optimizing their website and creating content to draw customers in.

The result?

  • In less than 1 year, revenue hit £1M.

  • Four years later, Smileworks became a £3.5M business.

  • They cut all paid ads, and their online traffic grew by 4,773%.

So how did they do it, and what can eCommerce brands learn from their strategy?

  1. First, Ed audited the Smileworks website to assess outstanding issues. This tool crawls any website and flags problems in order of priority so you can fix the most important ones first. Squeaky clean.

  1. Next, he analyzed his competitors' search engine presence to know where Smileworks stood. And he didn't like what he found — their competitors were ranking high for 30% of keywords, while Smileworks was at only 4%. 

  1. Looking at the data, Ed realized their website lacked local keywords, so he increased map pack listings. The result? A dramatic 300% increase over a 4-week period!

  1. Then he started creating content based on keyword findings. “Insights like that have been invaluable,” said Ed. In 3 years, their organic traffic grew over 3x. They went from 25,000 users/month to an average of 80,000. It's not magic, it's keywords.

  1. By this point, Smileworks was bringing in 25 leads/day or more. You'd assume this growth means a higher marketing budget, but no. Shortly after he started using Semrush, Ed decreased paid media, reduced marketing expenses, and saw a 20% net profit increase. Today? He spends $0 on ads.

“I don’t buy media [anymore]. Why don’t you work out how much Semush has saved us? We used to spend £8,000/month on media. So add all that up over a few year period and you get a pretty good ROI,” sais Ed.

Wrap up: In just 4 years, Ed redefined the business. He took it from a -5% margin to +38%, plus increased top-line revenue of 100%. 

Smileworks paid down all debts, minimized reliance on agencies, and cut ad spend by 90%, followed by 100%.

If 4,773% growth in online traffic isn't a success story, we don't know what is. 

PRO TIPS

How to optimize your P&L podcast, with Taylor Lagace and Drew Fallon

With ❤️,

The Early Checkout Team

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