E-commerce brands face intense competition across all major platforms. Growing sales on channels like Amazon and Shopify often involves using a combination of in-house teams, Shopify experts, Amazon experts, and various agencies or freelancers, not to mention AI. With each AI model, agency, freelancer, and in-house team pulling in various directions, brands can often fall victim to brand dilution, brand pollution, and stalled sales. To make this work, they need a proven system that fundamentally makes their brand irresistible to consumers, then packages it as a single source of truth for their teams, agencies, and AI can bring to the world.
The Source Approach eCommerce growth consultancy, solves this scaling issue. Led by Fractional CMO Tanner Rankin, the firm blends artificial intelligence with a proprietary methodology that serves as a brand’s operating system to drive massive sales increases for lean teams. We spoke with Tanner to discuss buyer intent, data-driven marketing, and how his methods recently achieved record growth for a luxury pain relief brand.
Q: You recently helped a luxury pain relief brand achieve a 640% increase on Amazon and a 506% increase on Shopify. What specific challenges was this lean team facing before they brought in a Fractional CMO?
Tanner: This brand innovated a new product, but didn’t know how to tackle the 3 innovation horizons. Specifically, they didn’t have an approach to educate their current market, educate new markets, or create viable future options. They also had challenges maximizing the impact of their small 2-person team of new marketers working alongside a few agencies and freelancers.
Q: Your firm operates using the proprietary “Source Approach” method. How does aggregating brand and buyer data into centralized “Source Codes” improve a company’s daily marketing execution?
Tanner: The Source Approach method creates a single source of truth of the brand, customer, competition, and product data, so it can be easily leveraged by AI, in-house teams, and external help like agencies and freelancers, so everyone can operate from the same playbook to move quickly, consistently, and effectively to generate growth.
Q: Targeting the right buyer is necessary for e-commerce success. How do you identify customers with clear purchase intent to improve conversion rates across different platforms?
Tanner: Once we get clear on the pains we alleviate, problems we solve, and desires we fulfill, AI now makes it easy to identify large enough total addressable markets with those pains, problems, and desires. Then I use the Brand Operating System to focus on at least three customer avatars, each with unique reasons they need a brand’s product.
Q: Artificial intelligence plays a major role in your services. How do you blend AI tools with human-driven copywriting to connect with customer emotions while detailing logical product benefits?
Tanner: I blend AI tools with human-in-the-loop controls at every level, from neuromarketing to automations. The key to detailing logical product benefits is to articulate how they help each customer avatar solve a problem, alleviate a pain point, or fulfill a specific desire, and which ones you discuss at each stage of customer awareness, from unaware to most aware.
Q: A key pillar of your strategy involves rigorous A/B testing. How do you use performance data to optimize product listings and visual assets for full-funnel growth?
Tanner: One of the aspects of the Source Approach method involves breaking the month up into 4 focus areas: Week 1 is focused on Conversion Rate Optimization, Week 2 is Advertising, Week 3 is SEO & GEO, and Week 4 is Brand & Community Management. Each week comes with its own suite of KPI’s we focus on to understand how we are doing and what we need to do to get to the next level. This makes sure you don’t look at certain channels in silos, and you truly understand the impact each channel has on the others. The biggest trap you see brands fall into is that they hire an agency for Shopify, an agency for Amazon, a freelancer for PPC, a freelancer for SEO, a virtual assistant for social, thinking they brought in specialists to handle each channel, but then everything operates in silos, and no one works together. That’s the fastest way to brand dilution, pollution, and entropy.
Q: For smaller e-commerce brands trying to compete in crowded markets, what is the most important step they should take to align their marketing ecosystem?
Tanner: Codify your subject matter expertise about your strategy, brand, product, customer, and competition into one single source of truth so everyone working on the brand, whether it’s a small in-house team or you layer in agencies, freelancers, and virtual assistants to fill holes, can operate from the same playbook.
The discussion with Tanner Rankin shows that scaling an online business relies on precise strategy rather than simply increasing the budget or hiring specialists for each channel. By prioritizing buyer intent and leveraging artificial intelligence, brands can optimize their ad spend effectively. Structured marketing systems allow lean teams to capture market share from much larger competitors.
The digital marketplace will continue to demand accurate, data-backed marketing. Companies that adapt their approach to target specific customer awareness stages will secure long-term profitability. Through expert fractional leadership, The Source Approach provides a reliable framework for sustainable e-commerce growth.
To learn more, visit https://www.sourceapproach.com/
