“We need to grow 25% year-over-year — at a 4x return!”
If you’re the marketing director for a $50M+ ecommerce business, you’ve heard some version of this directive from company leadership.
As a goal, it makes sense — of course they want to grow profitably.
But, at this level of revenue, it’s much easier said than done.
Your executive board is looking for ROI. It’s all they want to see. So most marketers resort to an obvious tactic:
Maximizing the ROI of individual channels.
After all, if you can show leadership that paid social, paid search, email marketing etc. all have 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x ROI, they’ll be happy, right?
Yes … until they discover short-term profits have turned into long-term losses.
That’s because focusing on efficiency alone leads to a predictable set of behaviors:
- Pushing paid social-media budget deeper into remarketing
- Overspending on easy-win branded search campaigns
- Using email to run discounts and boost same-day revenue
All of a sudden, your customer base has dried up. Soon after, top-line revenue follows. And then — worst of all — bottom-line revenue.
So … what should you do instead? What’s the key to scaling up without breaking down?
The short answer: acquire first-time buyers at a lower ROI while maintaining a profitable LTV:CAC.
The long answer: implement the methodology in the Enterprise Scaling Guide from Common Thread Collective.
Whether your brand is digitally native or you’re a legacy retailer launching a Shopify store, the Guide will show you how to unlock DTC scalability — and how to show stakeholders the profit-generating operating system you’ve built.
