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Marketing That Actually Sells: Strategy, Paid Ads, Automation and AI
HGA Takeaway
Marketing That Actually Sells
Less marketing waffle. More focus on the people, messages and numbers that actually help you sell.
Marketing can get complicated very quickly. SEO, PPC, ROAS, CAC, AOV, automation, AI... and that's before you've actually sold anything.
In this Business Growth Service webinar, Barry Tong, Founder of Sol Retail, stripped away a lot of that complexity and brought marketing back to what businesses actually need it to do: help the right people find you, give them a good reason to buy and turn those sales into profitable, repeat customers.
The session covered everything from ecommerce and paid advertising to SEO, customer journeys, automation and AI, but the overriding message was refreshingly simple. You don't necessarily need to do more marketing. You need to make the marketing you're already doing work harder.
More traffic won't fix a weak offer. It just gives more people the opportunity to ignore it.
Takeaway 1
Before you spend £1, answer three questions
It's tempting to think that more advertising means more sales. But putting more money behind something that isn't working rarely fixes the problem.
Before spending money on Meta, Google, Amazon or any other advertising platform, get really clear on three things.
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WHO? Who are you actually trying to reach? |
WHY? Why should that person choose you? |
NEXT? What exactly do you want them to do? |
Takeaway 2
Ignore the marketing alphabet soup
Marketing loves an acronym. ROAS, CTR, CPC, CPA, CAC, AOV, CVR, LTV, MER, ACOS... the list goes on.
You don't need to memorise every marketing term to run a successful ecommerce business. Instead, Barry suggested focusing on six numbers that tell you far more about how your business is actually performing.
The six numbers worth knowing:
Sales: How much did you sell?
Margin: How much did you actually keep?
TACOS: What percentage of your total sales went on advertising?
Conversion: How many visitors actually bought something?
Average Order Value: How much did each order spend?
Repeat: Did those customers come back and buy again?
Sales without margin is just an expensive hobby.
Takeaway 3
SEO starts with a really good product listing
SEO can sound technical, but for ecommerce businesses a lot of the basics come back to something much simpler: making your products easy to find and easy to buy.
That means thinking carefully about the information on every product page rather than simply uploading a photo, writing a couple of sentences and hoping somebody finds it.
Check your product listings include:
A product title using words people actually search for
Clear descriptions and benefits
Relevant attributes and keywords
Strong product images
Reviews and other proof
Clear pricing and availability
Takeaway 4
Your product pages aren't just being read by humans anymore
Search is changing. Your product information can now be interpreted by traditional search engines, answer engines, AI tools and voice assistants.
One of the simplest things businesses can do is answer the questions customers genuinely ask about their products.
FAQs can help with this. Think about the questions customers ask before purchasing and answer them clearly on the relevant product page.
Think like your customer.
What would they type into Google, ask Alexa or ask an AI assistant about your product? Put the answers somewhere they can be understood.
Takeaway 5
Specific beats generic
Messages like "quality products at great prices" could belong to almost any business. If your marketing could have somebody else's logo added to it without changing the message, it probably isn't specific enough.
Strong marketing speaks to a particular person, problem or reason to buy. Relevance is more useful than simply shouting louder.
A useful test
Would you actually click your own advert?
Takeaway 6
Marketing is basically matchmaking
A good marketing strategy doesn't start with deciding that you need to post more on Instagram or spend more on Google.
It starts by matching the right person with the right message in the right place.
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Audience Who actually wants this? |
Message Why should they care? |
Channel Where will they actually see it? |
Takeaway 7
Different stages of the customer journey need different marketing
Somebody who has never heard of your brand shouldn't necessarily receive the same marketing as somebody who has bought from you three times already.
Discover: They don't know you yet. Think video, social and content.
Consider: They're comparing their options. Think search, reviews and retargeting.
Buy: They're ready to purchase. Think PPC, Shopping and a strong offer.
Return: They already trust you. Think email, SMS and loyalty.
Takeaway 8
There isn't one best marketing channel
Should you spend your money on Google, Meta or email?
The answer depends on what you're trying to achieve. Each channel has a different job.
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Catch existing demand from people already searching. |
Meta Create demand by reaching the right audience. |
Work the database and sell again to people who already know you. |
Takeaway 9
Don't feed the advertising machine blindly
Paid advertising can be brilliant when you understand what a customer is worth. It can also burn through money very quickly when you don't.
Clicks aren't the goal. Profitable customers are.
Rather than celebrating cheap clicks, look at what happens afterwards. Did people buy? How much did acquiring them cost? How much revenue came back? And, importantly, was there actually any profit left?
Cheap clicks can be very expensive if nobody buys.
Takeaway 10
Please stop boosting random posts
The boost button can feel wonderfully productive. You've spent £20, more people have seen the post and the numbers have gone up.
But before spending anything, ask what you're actually trying to achieve.
1. What is the objective?
2. Who is the audience?
3. What is the offer?
4. How will you measure whether it worked?
A button is not a strategy.
Takeaway 11
Test small before you spend big
Rather than putting a large budget behind an untested idea, Barry suggested treating your first £100 as tuition. You're buying information about what works.
Keep the test simple enough that you can actually learn something from it.
One offer. Don't test five different things at once.
One audience. Know who you're learning about.
One landing page. Give the click somewhere useful to go.
One decision. Scale it, change it or stop it.
Takeaway 12
Fix the leaks before turning up the budget
Paid advertising magnifies whatever is already happening. If your product page isn't convincing people to buy now, paying to send thousands more people there isn't necessarily going to help.
Before increasing your advertising spend, check the foundations.
Product: Is it genuinely compelling?
Page: Does the landing page actually sell it?
Proof: Do you have reviews, trust signals and clear delivery and returns information?
Tracking: Can you actually trust the data you're using to make decisions?
Takeaway 13
Let automation do the boring bits
Automation shouldn't replace customer relationships. It should make sure you don't forget them.
There are some really obvious moments in the customer journey where automation can make life easier for your team while delivering a better experience for customers.
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Welcome A new subscriber joins your database. |
Abandoned cart Somebody leaves without completing their order. |
Post purchase A customer has completed an order. |
Win back A previously active customer goes quiet. |
Good automation should make a customer think "good timing", not "oh no, the robots found me."
Takeaway 14
Treat AI like a very clever intern
AI can be fast, tireless and incredibly useful. It can also occasionally produce something completely bizarre.
The recommendation from the session was to use AI for the speed work while keeping strategy, judgement and final decisions with the human.
Good jobs to give AI:
Ideas: Hooks, angles and variations.
Drafts: Copy, briefs and emails.
Analysis: Patterns, anomalies and summaries.
Personalisation: Segments and recommendations.
AI is brilliant at acceleration. Accountability still belongs to you.
Takeaway 15
Follow the money and the customer
Big revenue numbers look exciting, but revenue on its own doesn't tell you whether your marketing is actually working.
Look at the whole journey. Are the right people arriving? Are they converting? What does it cost to acquire them? How much do they spend? Do they come back? And was the sale profitable?
Traffic: Are the right people arriving?
Conversion: Are they buying?
Customer acquisition cost: What does each customer cost?
Average order value: How much do they spend?
Repeat: Do they come back?
Margin: Was the sale actually worth having?
Put it into practice
Try a 30 day marketing reset
You don't need a 47 point marketing plan. The webinar suggested simplifying things into five moves, in this order, and then seeing what actually worked.
1. WHO + WHY
Get clear on your audience and why they should choose you.
2. FIX THE SHOP
Improve the product, pages, proof and customer experience.
3. BUY INTENT
Put your budget where there is a clear reason for it to work.
4. AUTOMATE
Remove repetitive work and make sure customers receive the right follow up.
5. ADD AI
Use AI to speed up the parts of the process where it genuinely helps.
For Home & Gift businesses
What should you do first?
For brands in the Home & Gift sector, there are endless things you could be doing. Social media, marketplaces, Google, email, influencer activity, content, SEO, trade marketing, AI and more.
Trying to fix everything at once makes it incredibly difficult to understand what actually made a difference.
Instead, identify the biggest leak in your marketing right now and start there.
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Audience Are you trying to speak to everybody? |
Message Does your marketing sound too generic? |
Paid Are you spending money without knowing what's working? |
Automation Are you still manually doing things that could happen automatically? |
The HGA Takeaway
Market smarter, not louder
1. Get clear on who you're speaking to and why they should care before spending money.
2. Focus on the numbers that tell you whether you're making profitable sales, not every marketing acronym available.
3. Make your products easy to find, understand and buy.
4. Match the right message and channel to where the customer is in their journey.
5. Test small, learn and fix the leaks before increasing your advertising budget.
6. Use automation to handle repetitive tasks without losing the human relationship.
7. Use AI to accelerate good marketing, not to replace strategy and judgement.
One thing, not ten.
Pick the biggest leak in your marketing right now and make that your first job. Do less, measure it properly and keep what works. Marketing gets a lot less mysterious when you stop changing everything at once.