The Hidden Marketing Complexity in Your Business (and what to do about it!)
Why does marketing your eCommerce business feel hard and so complicated? Why is is it so challenging to see what is actually bringing ROI and working?
Short answer: It’s your business model (s).
Here's what I've noticed in all my years of and advising eCommerce business owners, most product-based business owners are actually running a mix of business models at once, which is exactly why marketing feels messy, confusing, and nearly impossible to track for ROI.
Think about it.
You might be selling directly to consumers through your website, placing products in retail stores, managing wholesale accounts, managing the rules and whims of marketplaces, offering digital downloads, and maybe even running educational workshops or courses.
Each of these models has completely different KPIs and success metrics. Yet we often try to market them all with the same approach and wonder why nothing feels quite right.
I once heard a definition that explains the key role of your business model, a business model is simply how money flows into and through your business. Not revolutionary, but somehow this simple framing clarified everything.
Your Marketing Plan Needs to Flow With Each Model
Here's the thing - your marketing strategy needs to align with each model individually. They can absolutely fit together beautifully, and one model can support another, but without mapping it out first, you're essentially throwing darts in the dark.
Consider how different these approaches really are. Your direct-to-consumer model thrives on brand storytelling, customer reviews, and social proof.
Your retail partnerships need sell-through data, seasonal buying calendars, and relationship management.
Wholesale requires different pricing strategies, minimum order quantities, and B2B sales processes.
Digital products might convert through email nurture sequences.
Educational offerings depend on demonstrating expertise and building trust over time.
You need to understand and define the hierarchy of importance inside your business and for your business goals.
What's the volume goal for each model? What's the revenue target? Which one actually drives your business forward versus which one just feels comfortable because it's what you've always done?
Without this clarity, you'll likely waste effort on activities that drain company resources - whether that's staff time, ad spend, inventory costs, or operational inefficiencies. And when results don't match expectations, you won't even know where to look for the issues.
The Mix Might Be Off-Balance
This is where it gets interesting.
Sometimes the problem isn't execution - it's that your model mix is fundamentally off-balance.
Maybe you're pouring energy into retail partnerships that require constant restocking and relationship management when your direct-to-consumer channel delivers higher margins with less operational complexity. Or perhaps you're underestimating how your educational content could become a profitable revenue stream that also supports your product sales.
I've seen product businesses discover that their wholesale accounts, while impressive on paper, were actually subsidizing their retail partners' success while creating cash flow challenges. Others realized their digital products could scale infinitely without inventory investment, but they'd been treating them as side projects rather than strategic priorities.
You might not think of these as marketing problems, and a lot of the deep work will be with your financial team, but it does have a down-stream impact on your marketing channels, marketing budget and where you allocate resources and attention.
Which business model needs more ad budget? What marketing channels and messaging do we prioritize? Well we can’t answer that until we resolve the higher level questions first.
What's Really Happening Here
Most of us evolved our business models organically.
A retailer approached us, so we said yes to wholesale.
Someone asked about digital versions of our processes, so we created a course.
We tested direct-to-consumer sales and kept what seemed to work. But "seemed to work" and "strategically supports our goals" aren't always the same thing.
The result?
Marketing that feels scattered because it's trying to serve multiple objectives without a clear focus or end goal.
You're creating content for end consumers while also trying to appeal to retail buyers. You're building email sequences for your digital products while managing trade show schedules for wholesale accounts.
Resources naturally flow to familiar, comfortable activities rather than the strategic (and profitable) ones.
This is exactly the kind of strategic foundation work I help business owners untangle in my "If I Were Your CMO" sessions.
We spend an hour mapping out your actual business model mix, understanding what marketing activities and goals belong to each revenue stream, and often discovering something surprising that can bring impressive results to both your bottom line and your internal marketing systems.
Because sometimes the most transformative insights come not from new strategies, but from finally understanding the strategy you're already executing.
Interested?