---
title: "Sustainable Growth Playbook"
date_published: "2023-03-19"
date_modified: "2023-08-04"
permalink: "https://www.samtomlinson.me/insights/sustainable-growth-playbook/"
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    - "Article"
seo:
  title: "Sustainable Growth Playbook"
  description: "Let's talk about sustainable growth and more importantly, what you need to do in order to achieve it in today's pre-recession environment. How marketers can drive sustainable, profitable growth in today's environment"
  canonical_url: "https://www.samtomlinson.me/insights/sustainable-growth-playbook/"
---

Let's talk about sustainable growth ̵1; and more importantly, what you need to do in order to achieve it in today's pre-recession environment.

How marketers can drive sustainable, profitable growth in today's environment where there is more automation, more regulation, lower consumer confidence and increasingly tight fiscal conditions?

This is something I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about ̵1; and here's where I land: sustainable, healthy growth comes from the relentless optimization of four variables:

Data Quality

Traffic Volume

Conversion Rate

Net-Present LTV

That's it. Everything you can think of falls into one of those four buckets for any business. Sustainable growth comes from an ongoing obsession with optimizing each one. Let's get to it:

### Data Quality

The best data always wins ̵1; and one of your primary jobs as an advertiser is to ensure your core platform(s)(read: Meta, Google, Amazon) is armed with the best and most relevant optimization data for your business. Fortunately, if you've done your homework vis-a-vis simplification + forecasting, this data should be at your fingertips:

The operative phrase here is relevant optimization data (ROD).

ROD: the optimization event with sufficient volume that is closest to people + profit.

Sufficient Volume = At least 100 events per week per campaign

Closest to Customers and/or Contribution Margin = MQLs, SQLs, Contribution Margin, Etc.

Let's make that actionable:

If you're running a services business (say plumbing) or B2C business (like a car dealership), you should be focusing on one channel (say, Google Search) until it can consistently + reliably generate at least 100 SQLs per week (and in the latter case, maybe a LOT more).

For a D2C business, the same overall math applies ̵1; though the platform (Meta over Google) might change. You should still have sufficient budget to sell 150 units or bundles per week at or above a ROAS of 1/(tCAC as % of Revenue).

In this case, the ROAS target is determined by your target new customer acquisition cost (tnCAC) as a percentage of revenue ̵1; so you are selling profitably AND training the platform for what kind of customers you want to attract. The 150 units per week is also a baseline ̵1; you may have a campaign that can move 1,500 per week ̵1; and if so, great!

The bottom line here: an investment in data is an investment in your business' most valuable asset. The clearer your picture of your business & your customers, the more confident you can be in making decisions for both.

**A Warning On CAC & ROAS: it is extraordinarily tempting to set sky-high ROAS targets or dirt-cheap tnCAC targets; but the reality is that efficiency comes at the expense of scale, and obsession with hyper-efficient acquisition tends to undermine net-new customer acquisition. Let me give you an example:

Business A: $10 CAC

100 customers

$100 Revenue/Customer

$50 COD/Customer

=$4,000 contribution margin

Business B: $25 CAC

1,000 customers

$100 Revenue/Customer

$50 COD/Customer

=$25,000 contribution margin

>

Which one would you rather be? Compounding the issue above is that virtually all ad platforms will prioritize ̶0;known̶1; customers ̵1; especially at lower CAC targets ̵1; killing your incrementality. Exclusions will help, but ultimately, they are not perfect. The stricter the acquisition target (tnCAC, tROAS), the more likely platforms will skew delivery toward people who know you (branded search, existing customers) ̵1; and the less likely you'll expand your pool of customers.

In essence, hyper-efficiency is a loan from your future profits. In a pinch ̵1; it's worth taking. But don't think that it is free.

### Traffic Volume

If you want to make more sales, you need more visitors to your storefront ̵1; whether that's a physical or digital location is immaterial. Think of your business as an engine ̵1; without a sufficient volume of fuel (that's traffic), introduced at regular intervals, you're not going anywhere.

For a larger organization (>$25M in TTM sales), that traffic should be driven by a relatively balanced set of sources: paid traffic, organic traffic, referrals/affiliates/PR + email/SMS.

But for a smaller company (