Hey {{ First Name | Founder }},
One of the most expensive mistakes I see in eCommerce is this assumption:
“We’re an eComm brand, so we need Meta and Google.”
It sounds sensible. It feels balanced.
And it’s often completely wrong.
Because not every business is built to grow on the same channels.
And when you spread budget across the wrong ones, you don’t get diversification — you get dilution.
Let’s break this down properly.
Two Very Different Types of Growth
At a high level, there are two fundamentally different marketing motions in eCommerce:
Demand generation
Demand capture
Understanding which one your business actually needs will save you a lot of wasted spend.
Demand Generation: Where Meta Shines
Demand gen works best when:
You sell a unique product or solve a problem in a new way
You have a low SKU count
You have a clear hero product
Customers aren’t actively searching for what you sell… yet
This is classic DTC.
In this world, people don’t wake up Googling your product.
They need to discover it.
Meta is built for exactly this:
Interrupting the feed
Creating awareness
Telling a story
Showing a problem people didn’t realise could be solved
Strong creative, clear messaging, and repetition over time is what drives growth here.
Yes, Google might still show conversions.
But often it’s capturing demand Meta created upstream.
Demand Capture: Where Google Wins
Demand capture works best when:
You sell products in an existing category
You have a large SKU count
Customers already know what they want
You might be a multi-brand retailer selling other people’s products
Think someone searching:
“trail running shoes for winter”
“merino base layer men”
“best hiking jacket NZ”
The demand already exists.
The job isn’t persuasion — it’s being there at the moment of intent.
This is where Google absolutely dominates.
In these cases, Meta often becomes inefficient:
Broad awareness with no real edge
Heavy retargeting of people who would have bought anyway
ROAS that looks okay but adds very little incremental growth
The real upside comes from:
Excellent Google structure
Strong feed and category coverage
Tight margin-based ROAS targets
Winning the auction by being 5–10% more efficient than competitors
Why So Many Brands Get This Wrong
Because platforms report in isolation.
Meta says it drove conversions.
Google says it drove conversions.
Shopify shows total revenue going up.
So brands assume:
“Both channels must be working.”
But in reality:
One channel is often the growth lever
The other is just assisting or harvesting
And because attribution is messy, brands end up funding both — even when one is doing very little incremental work.
That’s how money gets wasted.
The Real Question You Should Be Asking
Not:
“Can we run Meta and Google?”
But:
“Which channel actually creates demand for our business model?”
If you’re DTC with a hero product → demand gen first
If you’re category-led or multi-brand → demand capture first
Both playbooks are valid.
What doesn’t work is a one-size-fits-all approach.
Final Thought
Very few agencies even stop to ask this question.
They just offer the same Meta + Google package to everyone.
But growth doesn’t come from more channels.
It comes from the right channel, done properly, aligned to how your customers actually buy.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re spending across platforms but not really scaling, this might be why.
Need help figuring this out? Let’s grab a ‘coffee’ - https://calendly.com/jessiehealy/coffee_with_jessie
x Jessie
