Ecommerce growth measured against margin, not ROAS
Acquisition, retention, feeds and conversion — run as one system, because in ecommerce these are not separate channels. They’re one economic model with several inputs.
ROAS is the wrong number to run a store on
A 3x ROAS is excellent on a 70% margin product and loss-making on a 25% margin one. A campaign with poor ROAS that acquires customers who reorder three times is your best campaign. A campaign with excellent ROAS that mostly captures people who would have bought anyway is expensive attribution theatre.
What matters is contribution margin after all variable costs, and what a customer is worth over their lifetime rather than on their first order. Once you’re measuring that, decisions that looked obvious frequently reverse.
And the second-order point: most stores are dramatically under-invested in retention. Acquiring a new customer costs multiples of getting an existing one to buy again, yet the effort and budget usually run the other way round. Fixing the retention side often improves acquisition economics too, because a higher lifetime value means you can afford to pay more for the first order than your competitors can.
What’s included
Acquisition
- Google Shopping and Performance Max
- Meta advertising with creative production
- Product feed optimisation — titles, attributes, imagery, and the feed hygiene most stores neglect
- Marketplace and comparison shopping where relevant
Retention
- Email and SMS flows: welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase, replenishment, win-back
- Segmentation by purchase behaviour and value
- Loyalty and referral programme setup
- Review generation, which feeds both conversion and search
Conversion
- Product and category page optimisation
- Cart and checkout friction reduction
- Mobile experience — where most ecommerce traffic is and most abandonment happens
- Trust signals, shipping clarity and returns messaging
Measurement
- Ecommerce tracking done properly, including server-side where warranted
- Contribution margin reporting rather than ROAS alone
- Cohort and lifetime value analysis
- Product-level profitability
Platforms
Shopify · WooCommerce · BigCommerce · Magento / Adobe Commerce · Custom
Pricing
| From | |
|---|---|
| Ecommerce marketing retainer | $900/month + ad spend |
| Full-funnel audit | $600 |
| Email and SMS flow build | $900 |
| Product feed optimisation | $400 |
| Ecommerce tracking setup | $350 |
FAQ
How much does ecommerce marketing cost?
Full-funnel ecommerce retainers start at $900 per month plus ad spend, covering acquisition, retention and conversion work together. Individual pieces are available separately: an email and SMS flow build from $900, product feed optimisation from $400, and a full-funnel audit from $600.
What’s a good ROAS?
There isn’t a universal answer, and running a store on ROAS alone is a common and costly mistake. A 3x return is excellent on a high-margin product and loss-making on a low-margin one. We report contribution margin after all variable costs and customer lifetime value, which is what determines whether a campaign is actually making you money.
Should I focus on acquisition or retention?
Retention, if you’re like most stores — which are heavily over-invested in acquisition. Getting an existing customer to buy again costs a fraction of acquiring a new one, and improving lifetime value makes your acquisition economics better too, because you can afford to pay more for a first order than competitors can. We usually start with email and SMS flows for exactly this reason.
How important is the product feed?
More important than most store owners realise, and the most neglected asset in ecommerce advertising. Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are driven almost entirely by feed quality — titles, attributes, images and category mapping determine which searches you appear for. Feed optimisation frequently produces larger gains than bid adjustments and is far less frequently attempted.
Do you work with Shopify?
Yes, along with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento and custom builds. Shopify is the most common platform among our ecommerce clients. Each platform has characteristic constraints — Shopify’s checkout customisation limits, WooCommerce’s performance profile — and we work within them rather than recommending a replatform, which is almost always a bigger project than the problem justifies.
Can you help with SEO for our store too?
Yes — Zia handles ecommerce SEO, covering category and product page optimisation, faceted navigation and the indexation problems specific to large catalogues. Running paid and organic together is particularly valuable in ecommerce, since Shopping feed data and organic category performance inform each other directly.
Related
Store SEO is covered by ecommerce SEO. Conversion work is detailed in conversion rate optimisation, and creative production in social media design.
Tell us what you need.
You’ll get a scope, a price and a timeline within one working day — no call required unless you want one.