Bought vs Earned: Your Two Paths to Ecommerce Growth

There are essentially two approaches to achieving ecommerce growth: buying your way to growth through paid advertising, or earning it through genuine value creation. Both have their place, but understanding the difference could transform your entire business strategy.

The Buying Approach: Fast but Fragile

When I talk about "buying" growth, I'm referring to the traditional performance marketing playbook. You pump money into Google Ads, Meta campaigns, and other paid channels, hoping to acquire new customers at a profitable rate (CAC). It's seductive because it's immediate and measurable.

The numbers tell a compelling story at first. You spend £100 on ads, generate £300 in revenue, and celebrate a 3x ROAS. But here's my take: this approach creates a dependency that becomes increasingly expensive and precarious.

The problems are systemic. iOS updates destroyed your targeting overnight. Google changes its algorithm and your cost per acquisition doubles. Your competitors enter a bidding war that erodes everyone's margins. You're essentially renting your audience from platforms that can change the rules whenever they choose.

I've seen too many ecommerce brands hit the "paid ads ceiling" - that point where increasing spend doesn't proportionally increase profitable growth. They become trapped in a cycle where they must keep spending just to maintain their current position.

The Earning Approach: Slower but Sustainable

Earning growth is fundamentally different. It's about creating so much value that customers actively seek you out, recommend you to others and become genuine advocates for your brand. This isn't about gaming algorithms or optimising ad creative, it's about building something worth finding. You earn your rank as the authority. You build trust. Educating. Entertaining. Selling in a way that feels natural.

When you earn growth, you own the relationship with your audience. The content you create, the community you nurture and the partnerships you develop become assets that appreciate over time rather than costs that compound.

Content marketing is earning growth

When you publish insights that genuinely help your customers solve problems, you're building trust and authority. That blog post you write today could still be driving qualified traffic two years from now. Compare that to an ad campaign that stops working the moment you stop paying.

Community building is earning growth

When you foster genuine connections between your customers and your brand, you create a moat that competitors can't simply outbid. These communities become self-sustaining ecosystems where customers help each other and naturally promote your products.

Example below of the user group created by Lanoguard, a UK brand creating a product that helps provide rust protection for cars. 20,000+ members in regular conversation about using Lanoguard and the cars they protect… it’s packed full of advice, tips and learnings all fuelled by community and owned by the brand.

Strategic partnerships are earning growth

When you collaborate with complementary brands or influencers who genuinely align with your values, you tap into audiences that are pre-qualified and trust-warmed. These relationships compound over time rather than depleting your budget.

Another example below, one of the many videos where auto-influencers are talking through their experiences with Lanoguard treatment.

The Hybrid Reality

Here's the nuanced truth: the most successful ecommerce brands I work with don't choose between buying and earning, they strategically combine both approaches while gradually shifting the balance toward earned growth. They think beyond just ads.

Paid advertising can be incredibly effective for testing new markets, launching products or capturing demand that already exists. But it should be viewed as a tool for amplifying your earned growth, not replacing it.

The smartest approach I've seen is using paid ads to fuel your content distribution and community building efforts. Instead of sending traffic directly to product pages, you might promote valuable content that attracts subscribers to your email list. You're still buying visibility, but you're using it to build owned media assets.

The Long Game

Building sustainable ecommerce growth requires patience and strategic thinking. The brands that will thrive in 2025 and beyond are those investing in earned growth while the competition fights over increasingly expensive ad inventory.

Start by asking yourself: if Google and Meta disappeared tomorrow, would your business survive? If the answer is no, you're too dependent on buying growth. If the answer is yes, you've successfully built a foundation of earned growth that can weather any platform changes.

The path forward isn't about eliminating paid advertising entirely. It's about building a business model where paid ads enhance your earned growth rather than replace it. When you get this balance right, you create a compounding effect where each element reinforces the others.

That's the sustainable ecommerce growth model for 2025 and beyond. It’s what I teach. It’s what I help brands achieve. From startup to 8 figures. Not just ads, but a holistic approach that puts earning growth at the centre of your strategy.