A rocky marriage of eComm brands & performance marketing
In the world of eCommerce, we’ve all faced the challenge of maximising marketing performance in an increasingly complex digital landscape. Whilst technical issues like conversion tracking can silently and significantly erode your results, a less subtle yet equally dangerous threat exists; poor communication, misaligned expectations and tactical tug-of-war between eCommerce brands and their performance marketing partners.
In this post, we’ll summarise the insights shared in our latest episode of the Leaf Collectivo podcast, where we tackle the pitfalls of the client x agency partnership and the solutions to building stronger, more collaborative relationships.
The High Cost of Reactive Decisions
One of the loudest killers of performance is the cycle of reactive changes. When brands shift their marketing objectives mid-month—say from prioritising efficiency and return on ad spend (ROAS) to a sudden order volume/revenue push—it disrupts campaigns, resets optimisation efforts, and often does more harm than good. This is particularly challenging when paired with external pressures such as investor demands or an approaching sales period.
As performance marketers, we understand the stakes and the urgency, but dynamically shifting objectives is often symptomatic of poor planning and panic, rather than progress. All stakeholders need a crystal clear understanding of unit economics and need to agree both short and mid-term priorities, so expectations are aligned. Avoiding last-minute changes to targets and timeframes, where possible, is also crucial.
A solid roadmap of tactical activity and milestone achievement against clear targets, helps prevent the destructive effects of reactive marketing.
Paid Media Alone Won’t Cut It
Another common pitfall is putting excessive weight on paid media as the sole driver of revenue. Paid media is an essential element for a lot of brands, but it’s only one piece of a larger ecosystem that includes offline and organic traffic, email, affiliates, marketplaces/retail partners, your website, inventory, and customer experience. Brands frequently assume a drop in blended ROAS can be fixed by adjusting something within paid media activity, without considering other performance factors and traffic sources. Paid media optimises traffic volume and quality, but it can’t solve issues related to other channels such as user experience or product logistics.
For a balanced approach, eCommerce leaders should assess every traffic source at all parts of their funnel—not just paid media. Even minor issues like broken links or 404 errors can significantly impact retargeting and diminish the ROI of your paid media campaigns.
Trust Your Experts, Not Just the Process
In a high-stakes environment, internal teams often feel pressured to micromanage their marketing partners, dictating tactics and optimisations. However, trusting your agency’s expertise, and good two-way communication, is key to making the relationship work. Agencies work across multiple brands and are tuned in to real-time industry trends. They can apply learnings from, and across, many brands and this allows them to make well-informed decisions from a tried and trusted standpoint. When brands try to orchestrate all the button pushes in an ad account, it more often than not works against the tactical strategy of the agency and negatively impacts results.
A successful partnership requires both parties to operate to their strengths. Whilst agencies bring data insights and performance expertise, internal teams have unique knowledge about the brand’s goals, customers, product strengths, and upcoming business changes. By focusing on collaborative planning and setting clear priorities, a much more productive and effective environment is created.
Practical Takeaways for Effective Partnerships
So, what can brands do to ensure their relationship with an agency or in-house team is successful? Here are some actionable steps:
Set Clear, Consistent Goals
Establish performance objectives at the outset, and avoid regular dynamic shifts unless absolutely necessary. A well-defined roadmap minimises the risks associated with reactionary changes.
Take a Holistic View of Performance
Measure and evaluate your entire marketing ecosystem. Paid media is powerful but operates best when supported by a healthy mix of traffic sources and conversion points. Pay attention to all your traffic sources alongside your inventory, website performance, and customer experience metrics.
Optimise Communication
Use tools like shared Slack channels to facilitate real-time communication between your team and your marketing partners. Keeping everyone informed of changes, such as stock updates, web releases and offline activity, can prevent misaligned tactics and have a significant bearing on performance.
Leverage Your Partner’s Expertise
Agencies offer valuable insights from their work across multiple brands and industries. If they have a clear understanding of your unit economics and targets, trust them to make decisions and be open to pushback if they advise against certain tactics. Their goal, like yours, is to drive growth, but be clear about what type of growth you want.
Keep the Blame Game in Check
When performance dips, it’s tempting to place blame. Instead, approach it as an opportunity for collective problem-solving. Both internal teams and agencies share the same goal, and fostering a culture of solution focussed-collaboration yields better long-term results.
Final Thoughts
As we head into peak shopping season, remember that your performance partner is there to help, not to shoulder all of the responsibility alone.
A performance dip isn’t always due to flaws in your ad strategy; sometimes, it’s the result of other channels, operational or market factors. Building a strong, trust-based relationship with your marketing team is the best way to deliver results and not fall prey to avoidable performance killers.