Wednesday 15th October | #51 | Join Free
Hello, and welcome to Wednesday’s issue of Beyond the Basket. We all know cost-per-clicks keep climbing, and when you pair that with rising costs and shrinking margins, it’s starting to feel unsustainable. Today, we look at what you can do right now to counter rising ad costs. Plus: Royal Mail’s latest run-in with Ofcom, and new research showing that while most UK consumers are ready to shop using AI, brands still aren’t. Let’s jump in 👇 - Mike Callachan (BtB founder)
In today’s beyond the basket:
⏬ Lower Your CPC Without Cutting Reach
💬 UK shoppers are ready for AI - most brands aren’t
📦 Royal Mail hit with £21m fine for late deliveries
📊 Top 100 FMCG brands now own 21% of all eCommerce value
🛒 Temu doubles EU profits with just eight staff
➕ Plus four deeper reads - covering the rising threat of cyber crime for eCommerce brands, and decoding TikTok’s latest “6-7” trend.
FEATURE
⏬ Lower Your CPC Without Cutting Reach
CPCs are climbing, margins are thinning, and everyone’s feeling it. The answer isn’t to spend more, it’s to spend smarter. Here’s how to stretch your budget without watching your ROAS evaporate.
Four Ways to Cut CPC Starting Today:
Fix Relevance First
Platforms reward relevance with cheaper clicks.Match your ad copy to what people are searching for and keep your landing page consistent with your promise. Google confirms higher Quality Scores directly lower CPCs, it’s relevance economics.
(Source: Google Ads Help – Quality Score)
🧠 Quick check: If your ad headline and landing page title don’t use the same key phrase, you could be paying extra for the mismatch
Tighten Your Targeting
Every irrelevant impression drags down CTR and pushes up CPC. Add negative keywords like “free” or “how-to” on Google, and switch to lookalike or engaged audiences on Meta for more efficient reach.
Refresh Your Creative Regularly
Ad fatigue kills performance fast. Rotate visuals, tweak headlines, and lead with benefits. Meta’s Creative Hub shows that lifestyle imagery, people using your product, often drives higher engagement and lower CPC than static product shots.
(Source: Meta Creative Guidance Hub)
🎯 Pro tip: Even small creative tweaks, a new background, updated colour palette, or different product angle, can reset performance and restore efficiency.
Bid Smarter, Not Harder
Automated bids aren’t always efficient. Test manual CPC caps or Target CPA, and move budget toward audiences or times with lower CPCs and strong ROAS.
(Source: Google Ads Bidding Strategies Overview)
📊 Rule of thumb: Don't chase impressions; chase profitable clicks.
Lowering CPC isn't about gaming the algorithm, it's about relevance, focus, and freshness. The better your ad feels to the right person, the less you'll pay to reach them.
QUICK TIP
Add delivery cut-off timers to PDPs
Add a live delivery countdown: “Order within 2h 14m for dispatch today.” It’s simple to implement and adds urgency without feeling pushy. We’ve consistently seen delivery timers lift conversion rates compared to PDPs (product detail pages) without them.
ECOMMERCE
💬 UK shoppers are ready for AI - most brands aren’t LINK
TL;DR: New research from Klaviyo shows UK shoppers are far ahead of brands on AI adoption, 81% already use it for shopping, and most are comfortable with the idea of AI managing orders and reorders.
Why it Matters: According to the research UK consumers are already ahead of the brands that serve them. They already expect AI to handle routine support, tracking, returns, and updates, not in the future, but today. Yet many eCommerce teams haven’t connected these touch points back into their CRM or retention stack. The result: a widening gap between what shoppers want from AI and what brands actually deliver.
Your Move: Start small but smart. Automate the basics, order updates, reorders, first-line support, and make sure your AI speaks in your brand’s tone. Then tie every AI interaction back into your customer data. It seems in 2025, AI competence is fast becoming the new expected customer experience.
ECOMMERCE
📦 Royal Mail hit with £21m fine for late deliveries LINK
TL;DR: Ofcom has fined Royal Mail £21 million after it failed to meet national delivery targets, with only 77% of first-class and 92.5% of second-class post arriving on time, well below the required 93% and 98.5%.
Why it Matters: For eCommerce brands, this highlights just how fragile UK fulfilment still is, even at the national level. With Royal Mail still accounting for a major share of small-parcel delivery, these systemic delays ripple through customer experience and review scores, especially for brands promising next-day or two-day delivery.
Consider This: Build resilience into your shipping ops. Test and onboard secondary carriers (Evri, DPD, Yodel, Amazon Shipping) who can absorb volume or step in if Royal Mail stumbles. Split-test carriers by region and use fulfilment data to guide allocation.
ECOMMERCE
📊 Top 100 FMCG brands now own 21% of all eCommerce value LINK
TL;DR: Euromonitor’s new report finds that just 100 FMCG brands account for over one-fifth of global online sales, with private labels and DTC players driving much of the growth.
Why it Matters: The eCommerce FMCG market is consolidating around scale and data ownership. Retailer-led private labels now make up 25% of ranked brand sales, while DTC brands like Nespresso and Factor are proving that control over experience and retention beats reliance on third-party platforms.
Your Move: Treat marketplaces as distribution, not discovery. Build retention into your model, and make premium feel worth paying for, the brands that own their story online are the ones that grow.
ECOMMERCE
🛒 Temu doubles EU profits with just eight staff LINK
TL;DR: Temu’s EU arm reported $120m in pre-tax profits on $1.7bn revenue last year, run by a team of just eight people in Ireland. But the marketplace’s ultra-lean model faces new pressure as the EU moves to tighten rules on low-value imports.
Why it Matters: Temu’s rise shows how far a pure marketplace model can scale, connecting factories to consumers with almost no local infrastructure. But the EU’s planned €2 parcel tax and the end of the €150 duty-free threshold could raise costs for the billions of cheap parcels shipped from China each year, testing Temu’s margins and pricing strategy.
Your Move: Take a page from Temu’s playbook: design for leverage, not manpower. Map every repetitive task in marketing, fulfilment, and support, then automate or outsource it. The goal isn’t fewer people; it’s freeing your best people to focus on growth.
PLAN AHEAD
🎉 Dates to Plan For
October 17 - Amazon Sellers Conference 2025 - Location: Brighton, UK - A full-day conference designed for both current and aspiring Amazon sellers.
October 18 - 19 - eCommerce & Digital Marketing Expo North 2025 - Location: Thessaloniki, Greece - Technology event bringing together retail and marketing pioneers in Northern Greece
October 28 - 29 - NXT Media Days Europe 2025 - Location: Valencia, Spain - Conference exploring the future of content, advertising, and media across Europe.
📚 The Reading List
Curated deep dives, longer reads and analysis shaping the future of eCommerce and digital marketing.
How Revolve is using AI styling to fix fashion’s billion-dollar returns problem
The Drum (6 min read) Read Here ›
Revolve’s experimenting with AI-powered styling tools to reduce fit-related returns, a glimpse at how automation could tackle one of ecommerce’s costliest pain points.
The delivery problem: why 70% of your traffic never converts
Beyond the Basket (5 min read) Read Here ›
A deep dive into how shipping options and delivery uncertainty quietly kill conversion, and how small checkout tweaks can recover lost revenue.
UK retailers face rising cyber threats as resilience becomes key
Ecommerce News UK (4 min read) Read Here ›
Cyber-attacks on UK retailers are climbing fast. This piece looks at how tightening security and backup systems are now central to brand resilience.
What you need to know about “6-7,” TikTok’s latest brain-rot craze
Inc. / Fast Company (3 min read) Read Here ›
A quick explainer on the viral TikTok “6-7” trend, and why understanding these micro-moments matters for brands chasing Gen Z attention.
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