Salif S.

Direct Response Creative For eCommerce Brands | Clients Include Setu, eComm Scaling Secrets, True Classic, FitTrack, Laura Geller, Perk, Alpha Lion, Glow25, PetLab, KraveBeauty, and more...

Siba Consulting is a lean eCommerce agency that helps 7-9 figure brands scale their new customer acquisition through Meta and YouTube ads. 

Our partners include Omnilux, Laura Geller, True Classic, Obvi, FitTrack, Solawave, PetLab and more...

We specialise in end-to-end performance creative development, media buying and multi-funnel testing.

Check out our work -> https://www.sibaconsulting.com/

Book an intro call with me -> https://calendly.com/sibaconsulting/discoverycall

Founder

Founder of a boutique performance marketing and creative agency for high-growth eCommerce brands and info-products.

We specialise in direct response creative and landing page development.

Learn more here: sibaconsulting.com

Made these statics recently 

Which one will perform better? and why?

Salif S

Founder @ Siba Consulting | Lean creative agency for 7-9 figure DTC brands

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The only 6 AI tools you need to crush creative in 2026:

Gemini → Research & scripting 

Nano Banana → Image gen

ElevenLabs → Voiceovers

Veo/Sora → Video gen

Arcads → AI avatars

This week I had a look at 3 accounts spending $20k+/day

I keep seeing the same patterns

First, brands copying other brands

Even big ones do this

There's nothing wrong with copying

But if you're going to copy something, at least make sure it’s proven

Throwing money at copied ideas without knowing their actual performance 

Is one of the worse thing you can do

A brand I know tested 300 ads last month

Their ad account is in the worst shape it’s been in months

Volume means nothing if you're just launching random ads

If your brand is spending $250k+/mo, this is the ideal creative playbook you should follow:

Everyone knows this, but only a few are actually executing it well

Step 1: Run 3-5 min UGC and VSLs to cold audiences

Target unaware, problem aware ppl (even solution aware, depending how big the market is)

Find winning cold traffic frameworks that you can replicate

Focus on cracking scalable angles and mechanisms on those frameworks and acquire new traffic and eyeballs

Step 2: At the same time, run a ton of raw, organic creatives to warm audiences

TT style ads to convert skeptics and existing customers

Creators speaking to the camera with the product, minimal editing, etc..

Opposite of the first step

All the 8-9 figure brands we work that are crushing do this

Our clients are spending $15M/month on Meta

Here are winning hook frameworks I'm seeing work across different accounts

Test them out 👇

THIS is what a winning ad looks like

$70k spent -> $400k in revenue, 60% lower CPA than account average

Market is US

Funny cause I remember exactly the talks my team had when planning this concept 

The picked the creator and wrote the script super carefully

And went through like 4 rounds of revisions internally before delivering it to the client

Focusing on quality wins

A killer script is nothing if the editing is dog shit

Video too fast? Confused viewers scroll away immediately

You need to make the video slow enough so viewers can follow the script and what you're showing them

(Unless you're deliberately trying to generate an 'information overload')

But it also needs to be fast enough so it doesn't get boring  

Attention spans are 3 seconds, lose momentum and you lose the viewer

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Chris Nawrocki

Ecommerce Consultant | Director | CMO | CCO & Founder @ Heur

Co-founder at Heur - an award-winning DTC-as-a-service ecommerce agency.

We run end-to-end ecommerce for ambitious brands, owning strategy, trading, digital marketing and retention. In practice, that means becoming your senior ecommerce team on demand and taking responsibility for performance, not just activity. We currently operate and grow some of the world’s most ambitious B2C ecommerce businesses.

I’m a hands-on ecommerce and digital growth operator with 17+ years’ experience across international luxury, lifestyle and FMCG. I’ve worked brand-side, agency-side and alongside investors, with deep, practical exposure to scaling ecommerce businesses across markets.

Previously, I’ve worked with brands including H&M, Lyle & Scott, Vivobarefoot, Drake’s, Resident Home, Derek Rose, Jaded, The Ragged Priest, Duke & Dexter and Tangle Teezer.

Today, I work directly with founders and leadership teams in CMO, COO, Growth Director and NED capacities. Typical mandates include rebuilding ecommerce foundations, restoring growth momentum, professionalising teams and trading models, or preparing businesses for investment or M&A.

My experience spans full ecommerce ownership: P&L accountability, multichannel acquisition and retention, marketplaces, CRO, tech stack decisions, and the operational realities behind the storefront - from procurement and fulfilment through to delivery and customer experience.

I specialise in designing and executing growth strategies that are commercially rigorous, scalable and profitable. I’m comfortable operating from board level through to hands-on delivery, translating complexity into clear decisions, and building systems that stand up under pressure.

Director Of Ecommerce Strategy

End-to-end Ecommerce and marketing growth agency. Delivering managed Ecommerce and fractional growth support for growing brands.

Working with clients such as H&M, Union Coffee, Drakes and Jaded London.

Yesterday Heur held our first in-person board meeting.

The kind with sticky notes, whiteboards, and enlightening conversations that are far better face-to-face than on Zoom.

A few firsts worth calling out:

- Our Chair joined us for the first time (More on this soon).
- The session was led by our NED (More on this soon).
- Our senior management team presented together, in the room, for the first time.
- Our senior management team lead on the direction of where Heur will go.

What stood out most wasn’t the slides or the numbers.... It was the clarity.

- Clarity on the opportunity in front of us.
- Clarity on what needs to be optimised.
- Clarity on where we need to focus in 2026.

None of it felt intimidating. It felt energising. There’s something powerful about getting the right people in a room, being honest about the work ahead, and leaving with shared confidence rather than false comfort.

Big thanks to everyone involved. Humbling moment that really shows how far we have come.

DTC As A Service | Ecommerce Consultant | Founder @ Heur

A sales target isn’t a strategy. It’s just a number.

I see revenue goals set top-down all the time. Ambitious figures, clean slides, then a quiet expectation that the team will “find a way”.

That’s not a strategy... It’s pressure! (NB: this also makes managing upwards impossible over time as they lose faith in the team's ability to use and understand numbers)

Ecommerce planning can also work in reverse. You don’t start with the number. You break it down into the things that actually drive it:

- How much traffic do you need, and where can it realistically come from
- What conversion or AOV uplift is genuinely achievable
- Whether stock, fulfilment and cash can support the volume
- If the team is built to deliver growth, not just react to it

That’s the difference between ambition and execution.

When targets are reverse-engineered properly, priorities sharpen. Trade-offs get clearer. Teams stop guessing and start deciding.

My advice? Take your headline revenue goal and rebuild it from the drivers up. If the mechanics don’t stack, the number never will.

If your ecommerce manager is project managing, they’re not growing your business... is this why you are standing still?

I see some of the best ecommerce managers spend their days chasing tickets, coordinating agencies, updating timelines and unblocking everyone else. They’re busy. Always responsive. Always in meetings.

And growth quietly plateaus.

That’s rarely a talent problem. It’s a structural problem.

When your ecommerce lead becomes the default project manager, strategic thinking is the first thing to go. There’s no time to step back and work on margin, customer behaviour, channel mix or the big bets that actually move the needle.

What tends to happen next:

- Lots of activity, little impact
- Reactive trading instead of planned growth
- Incremental optimisation dressed up as progress
- Accountability without real authority

Ecommerce managers shouldn’t be policing delivery. They should be owning outcomes.

The better setups protect thinking time, separate ops from commercial ownership, and reduce the amount of work that needs managing in the first place. 

This is why we started Heur - to put a battle-hardened structure in that allows for growth.

Leadership isn’t about filling gaps. It’s about unlocking strengths.

A lot of ecommerce leaders try to fix everything. They jump in, smooth over weaknesses, and quietly become the glue holding the team together.

NB: This was/is me - I'm always drag netting to find problems to take on...

It feels helpful. It usually becomes the constraint.

When leaders compensate for every gap, strong people stop owning their strengths... decisions bottleneck... progress slows. Everyone waits for the same person to step in.

Good ecommerce leadership is orchestration, not heroics. Leads are the conductors. 

The teams that scale well don’t chase balance in every role. They lean into what people are actually good at and design roles around outcomes, not tasks. 

Specialists go deep. Ownership is clear. Leaders step back.

(At this point, I feel very lucky to have one of the best senior management teams in ecommerce: Rob McKenzie, Harpreet C., Esme Seddon, Ben Phillips, Ben St. George and Chris Raven)

What I’d do to fix this? 

Map the strengths already in your team, remove the friction in their way, and stop fixing problems that aren’t yours to solve. And remember - Its a journey!

Reforecasting isn’t failure.

Clinging to a plan that no longer reflects reality is...

I see ecommerce teams treat the original forecast like a promise. Miss it, and the tone changes. Updates slow down. Language softens. Everyone quietly hopes next month will fix the gap.

Spoiler: It rarely does.

Demand shifts. CAC jumps. Stock lands late. Conversion moves for reasons no one predicted. When leaders pretend the numbers still hold, teams feel it immediately. Confidence drops. Decisions get cautious. Trust starts to thin.

Reforecasting, done properly, is a strength. It’s a reset based on facts, not hope.

In practice, good reforecasting means:

- Resetting revenue and spend based on real demand signals
- Protecting margin and cash, not just top-line optics
- Giving teams targets they can actually rally behind
- Explaining why the numbers changed, not just that they did

The worst thing you can give a team is a target you no longer believe in. People stop pushing because they know it’s fiction.

The strongest ecommerce teams reforecast calmly. Transparently. Without blame.

If the inputs are wrong, the KPIs don’t matter.

I see a lot of ecommerce teams hiding behind dashboards. Great charts. Clean reports. Weekly KPI reviews that feel productive.
And the numbers still don’t improve.

That’s because reporting doesn’t fix bad decisions. It just makes them easier to track. (Harpreet C. talked about this this week to the team - platforms condition us to look and value certain KPIs as it helps the platforms hit their goals, not our performance!)

This usually shows up when teams obsess over metrics but ignore the foundations behind them:

- Optimising ROAS while over-ordering stock
- Chasing conversion without fixing product clarity or pricing
- Celebrating AOV while returns quietly erode margin
- Tweaking channels when the strategy itself is misaligned

Dashboards create the illusion of control. They don’t create leverage.

The strongest ecommerce teams start with decisions, not metrics. They get clear on the commercial goal, fix stock, pricing and proposition first, then use KPIs to check whether those calls were right.

What would I do next? I'd fix the inputs before I optimise the numbers. Strategy beats scorekeeping every time!

Scaling ecommerce doesn’t typically fail loudly. It drifts.

In the early days, things are simple. The team is small, context is shared, and most decisions happen quickly because everyone broadly understands what matters and why. You don’t need to explain the trade-offs. They’re obvious.

Then the business grows. Paid becomes a team. CRM becomes a team. Trading, UX and ops all start pulling in slightly different directions. Everyone’s working hard, everyone’s competent, but when you ask what’s really driving growth, the answers aren’t as aligned as they used to be.

That’s usually where culture starts to slip. Not because people care less, but because clarity hasn’t scaled with the organisation.

I often see it showing up as:

- KPIs are being hit while margin, retention or stock health quietly deteriorate
- Channels optimising their own numbers rather than the overall outcome
- Ownership spread so thin that no one truly owns the result
- Decisions are slowing down as shared context disappears

Nothing looks broken on the surface. But the business feels noisier, heavier, and harder to steer than it should.

The teams that scale well don’t fix this by adding layers, processes or more meetings. They simplify. They align everyone around the same commercial truths, design KPIs that force collaboration, and make end-to-end ownership clear, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Where would I start? Fix the clarity first. Everything else gets easier after that.

If everyone’s stretched, no one’s steering.

I see this a lot in ecommerce teams that are busy, capable, and quietly stuck. Trading’s firefighting. Marketing’s chasing performance. Ops is holding things together. Everyone’s doing their job.

But direction is missing.

This usually isn’t a people problem. It’s a leadership-layer gap. Ecommerce is complex now, and when senior teams don’t have deep ecommerce experience, decisions slow down, priorities blur, and momentum leaks away.

That’s where Heur's consultants earn their keep. Not by replacing teams, but by filling the strategic gap. Acting as coach and co-pilot.

Done well, that means:

- Clarifying what actually matters this quarter
- Pressure-testing decisions before they get expensive
- Translating ecommerce complexity into clear commercial choices
- Giving teams confidence to move faster

My advice?  Ask who is truly steering ecommerce right now. If the answer isn’t clear, that’s the problem to fix first!

Ecommerce involution is when you spend more to earn the same.

A deeper marketing strategy is how you break the loop.

A lot of ecommerce teams are stuck here. CAC creeps up, margins tighten, targets stay fixed. So budgets increase, campaigns multiply, and everyone optimises harder just to stand still.

That’s involution. More effort. Less leverage.

The usual response is incrementalism. Tweaking bids. Refreshing ads. Adding promotions. Useful in isolation, but collectively, it turns growth into a treadmill.
What actually changes the equation isn’t more spending. It’s clarity.

Brands that escape this loop tend to:

- Invest in brand and positioning so acquisition works harder
- Sharpen product stories so conversion and AOV improve
- Build loyalty deliberately to reduce paid dependency (Don't do a points program!)
- Stop asking the media to fix structural problems

This isn’t anti-performance marketing. It’s anti-magical thinking. If your growth only works when spending keeps rising, it’s fragile.

What would I do next?

When you’re spending more to earn the same, don’t default to optimising harder. Step back and deepen the strategy. That’s where leverage lives.

If you’re not willing to support a market, don’t enter it.

I see a lot of ecommerce brands talk about “testing” new markets. A translated site. A bit of paid spend. Then surprise when it doesn’t convert.

That’s not a test. It’s underinvestment.

International expansion isn’t a switch you flick. It’s closer to launching a new business. When brands cut corners, the symptoms are predictable. Low conversion. High returns. Messy CX. Paid media that looks inefficient.

The conclusion is usually “the market didn’t work.” More often, it was never properly supported.

The brands that do this well are honest before they launch:

- Can we deliver quickly, clearly, and handle returns locally?
- Do we understand local pricing, competitors and demand?
- Is CX ready for language, time zones and expectations?
- Do we have stock confidence, not hope?

Customers don’t know you’re experimenting. They just know whether the experience was good.

My thoughts? Pick one market, commit to supporting it end-to-end, and judge it like a real business. If you’re not ready to do that yet, wait.

Stop measuring success by your highest weeks. Start designing for your average ones.

Ecommerce loves a spike. Big promo weeks, record days, screenshots in Slack. 

It feels like progress.

Then demand normalises. Costs stay high. Teams are tired. And the business feels harder to run than it should. Peaks are exciting. Peaks can be unpredictable. Averages pay the bills.

A lot of brands accidentally design for peaks. Ops flex for peak. Marketing lurches from launch to launch. Teams sprint, recover, sprint again. It looks like momentum, but it’s fragile. Real scale comes from improving the middle at the same time.

What you should focus on:

- What a “good” normal week looks like for revenue, margin and cash
- Whether ops, CX and stock can handle that comfortably
- Building repeat demand, not borrowing it from the future
- A steady team rhythm, not constant fire drills

My advice? Define your target average week and design everything around delivering it consistently. If that works, the peaks look after themselves.

Control is comforting. Agility is more valuable.

Typically, when ecommerce growth slows, the default move is often to hire... Another role... Another layer... It can feel like progress...

Often, it’s just overhead.

Headcount is expensive. Salaries are the obvious part, but onboarding time, management load, and slower decision-making add up quickly. And once those costs are baked in, they’re hard to reverse.

The strongest commercial teams I see are more deliberate. They hire for long-term ownership, and they use external specialists when speed, depth, or flexibility matter more than control.

That usually means:

- Keeping the core team lean and commercially accountable
- Plugging in specialists for paid media, CRM, CRO or data
- Scaling capability up or down without rewriting the org chart
- Avoiding “just in case” hires that lock in fixed costs
- This isn’t anti-hiring. It’s pro-leverage.

What I’d do next: before opening a new role, ask what you really need. If it’s expertise, resource appropriately.

You wouldn’t leave your ad account with an intern. Why treat ecommerce any differently?

Most brands obsess over paid media. ROAS is watched daily. Budgets are tight. Tests are structured.

Then you look at the ecommerce engine behind it.

- Slow optimisation processes
- Weak decision-making
- Discount-led trading with no margin plan
- Stock decisions made in isolation

And somehow that’s acceptable.

Ecommerce is just as sensitive as paid media. Small changes in site speed, UX, pricing or stock have a direct impact on revenue and profit. If those levers aren’t being actively managed, you’re paying a tax on every click.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about rigour and process.

The brands that win treat ecommerce like the commercial system it is:

- Processes linked to revenue drivers with commercial outputs
- Decision-making linked to OKRs to drive a business agenda
- Trading tied to margin, not just volume
- Stock and demand planned together

There is the right way to approch ecommerce and a wrong way. 

My advice? Audit your ecommerce setup with the same seriousness you apply to paid media. If you wouldn’t trust an intern with your ad budget, don’t let your trading engine run on autopilot. If you want guidance on this, talk to my team at Heur - we do this day in and day out!

Launching DTC shouldn’t feel like building a startup inside a brand.

Too many brands overcomplicate their first move into DTC. Big teams. Over-egged tech stacks. Months of planning before a single order ships. By launch, DTC is carrying startup-level costs and expectations.

That’s unnecessary. And risky.

DTC works best when it starts as a lean commercial function, not a reinvention of the business. The strongest launches I see keep the scope tight and learn fast:

- A focused product range, not the full catalogue
- Simple pricing and fulfilment that protect margin
- One or two acquisition channels that they can actually manage
- Clear ownership of trading, CX and performance
- A team (Agency) that can deliver this with some autonomy 

From there, you iterate. Improve operations. Refine the offer and how you talk to customers. Scale what earns the right to scale.

This is where external partners help. 

This is why Heur exists - we accelerate setup, handle execution, and keep fixed costs low while the model proves itself. Making this a channel that works without financial weight and the risk of not knowing what you don't know! 

Why add more risk?

How would I do it? Cut your DTC plan back to the minimum viable commercial setup. Launch with the right agency before you hire, learn, then add team members where needed - Spoiler: this will likely be product/R&D or brand, not more ecommerce wizards.

Your cashflow shouldn’t be surprised by your marketing calendar.

I see this all the time. Marketing plans a big push. Forecasts look great. Spend ramps up. Everyone’s excited.

Then ops scrambles. Stock is tight. CX is stretched. Finance realises cash is going out long before it comes back in.

That’s not a marketing problem. It’s a leadership one.

Growth creates pressure as well as revenue. If finance and ops aren’t part of the plan early, that pressure shows up as stress, not scale.

Before any major campaign, good ecommerce teams ask:

- Do we actually have the stock to support demand? (This does happen!)
- Can fulfilment and customer service handle the volume?
- What does the cash dip look like between paying suppliers and getting paid?
- When those answers are clear, marketing gets braver and better. 

My advice - bring finance and ops into campaign planning, not post-mortems. If growth is real, the whole system needs to be ready for it.

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