Ecommerce: The Hammersley Brothers Ecommerce Podcast

Your Google and Meta ROAS looks great. Ad spend is increasing. The platforms are telling you everything is working.

 

So why isn’t the business actually growing?

 

In this episode, Mark and Ian Hammersley unpack one of the most common problems they see in ecommerce businesses: brands dramatically increasing their advertising spend while recruiting the same number, or even fewer, new customers.

 

They explain why a high ROAS inside Google or Meta can give you a completely misleading picture of performance, particularly when existing customers, brand searches and attribution are inflating the numbers.

 

The conversation covers how to step back from the advertising dashboards and answer the question that actually matters:

 

When we put more money into advertising, did we get more money and more new customers out?

 

Mark and Ian also break down the ecommerce advertising S curve, where increasing spend initially drives growth before eventually reaching a point where putting more money into the account stops producing meaningful additional revenue.

 

And when you hit that limit, the answer is not always better ads.

 

Sometimes you need to improve the business itself.

 

They discuss:

• Why a high ROAS does not automatically mean your ads are working  
• How Meta can attribute existing customer sales to advertising  
• Why one day view attribution can distort performance  
• How Google brand traffic can inflate ROAS  
• Why new customer revenue matters more than platform ROAS  
• How to identify when an ad account has reached its scaling limit  
• The ecommerce advertising S curve  
• Why simply increasing your budget eventually stops working  
• How conversion rate, AOV and lifetime customer value affect how far you can scale  
• Why agencies can sometimes show you the numbers you want to see instead of the numbers you need to see

 

If you run an ecommerce business and keep increasing your advertising budget without seeing the growth you expected, this episode could help explain exactly what is going wrong.

 

Subscribe for more ecommerce strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Shopify and business growth discussions from the Hammersley Brothers.

 

#Ecommerce #ROAS #GoogleAds

 

 

 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

 

 

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

 

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

3. Follow the Hammersley Brothers on Instagram and connect with e-commerce owners who are scaling too - 
https://www.instagram.com/hammersleybrothers

Most ecommerce businesses think about Black Friday as a day or a weekend. We think about it as an entire trading period from Halloween through to January.

In this episode, Ian Hammersley breaks down how we actually approach the biggest ecommerce trading period of the year, including when to start, how long to run your offers, how aggressively to email, what to do with Google and Meta, and how to make the most of increased demand without destroying your margins or running out of stock.

We cover the full Q4 rhythm, starting with Halloween and moving through Better Than Black Friday, Black Friday Week, Cyber Week, Christmas, Boxing Day and the January sales.

Ian also explains why ecommerce brands often start too late, why your email database becomes one of your most valuable assets during peak, how to decide how hard you can push based on stock and ROAS, and why merchandising can have a huge impact on what actually sells.

Topics include:

Black Friday timing and strategy
How early you should start
Offer architecture
Email and SMS frequency
Growing your email list before peak
New customer ROAS and CAC
Stock planning and forecasting
Shopify merchandising
Black Friday Week and Cyber Week
Christmas, Boxing Day and January sales
How to trade against daily revenue targets
When to push harder and when to hold back

If you run an ecommerce business, this episode gives you a practical framework for approaching the most important trading period of the year.

Subscribe for more ecommerce strategy, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Shopify, email marketing and business growth discussions from the Hammersley Brothers.

#Ecommerce #BlackFriday #Shopify

 

 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

 

 

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

 

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

3. Follow the Hammersley Brothers on Instagram and connect with e-commerce owners who are scaling too - 
https://www.instagram.com/hammersleybrothers

Your bestsellers can look available while the sizes your customers want are sold out. We made that mistake in our own Shopify bedding business, with replacement products available further down the collection pages.

Want help identifying what is holding back growth in your ecommerce business? Apply to work with the Hammersley Brothers:

https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=shopify_stock_mistake&utm_content=description

In this episode, Mark and Ian explain what happened and discuss the stock, merchandising and advertising decisions to review before Black Friday and Christmas trading.

We cover why selling out is not always a success, when spending more on advertising makes little sense, and how to investigate products you could have sold more of last year.

We also discuss avoiding panic hires, helping your ecommerce team understand what matters, and using AI to analyse business data without handing over the decisions.

Subscribe for practical ecommerce conversations about sales, margins and profitable growth.

 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

 

 

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

 

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

3. Follow the Hammersley Brothers on Instagram and connect with e-commerce owners who are scaling too - 
https://www.instagram.com/hammersleybrothers

Why do successful ecommerce brands suddenly stop growing?

After reviewing 100 ecommerce businesses and working with thousands of brands over the years, we identified the seven most common bottlenecks that prevent ecommerce companies from reaching the next level.

Watch the full episode to discover where your ecommerce business may be getting stuck and what you should focus on next.

Subscribe for practical ecommerce growth strategies based on real businesses, real numbers and decades of experience.

 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

 

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

3. Follow the Hammersley Brothers on Instagram and connect with e-commerce owners who are scaling too - 
https://www.instagram.com/hammersleybrothers

In previous episodes, we explored the strategies that help an ecommerce business navigate each stage of growth.

Now, we use our premium bedding brand as a real-world case study, following its journey from an unproven store with underperforming ads to a multimillion-revenue business entering the scaling phase.

Inside the episode:

 

• How to validate whether strangers will buy from an unknown brand
• Why some sales can be more encouraging than a low ROAS
• How to identify winning products and eliminate distractions
• Why mastering one advertising channel can beat trying everything
• How reviews, trust and positioning increased conversion
• Why average order value became the key to doubling ad spend
• How better supplier margins and payment terms accelerated growth
• How to make safer stock decisions during rapid growth
• Why every ecommerce type requires a different strategy
• What changes when a business moves from 5 million towards 20 million

 

You do not need more random tactics.

You need to understand your ecommerce type, your current revenue stage and the specific constraint preventing you from reaching the next level.

Watch the full episode to learn how to stop operating emotionally, build a reliable growth model and make better decisions with advertising, stock, margins and cash flow.

 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready... here are 3 ways Ian and I can help you grow your ecommerce business:

 

1. Talk to us. Book a call with us and let's talk about accelerating your growth - https://go.hammersleybrothers.com/apply-now/

 

2. Grab a copy of our book - https://gohigh.hammersleybrothers.com/get-the-book

 

3. Follow the Hammersley Brothers on Instagram and connect with e-commerce owners who are scaling too - 
https://www.instagram.com/hammersleybrothers