TL;DR: I spent the last two days at ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas talking to brand owners in the $1M–$15M range. Four problems kept coming up: AI search visibility, out-of-control customer acquisition costs on Meta, retention, and the weight of macroeconomic pressure on their customers’ wallets. These aren’t fringe issues, they’re industry-wide. Here’s what’s actually driving them, and what brands can do to get ahead.
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One of my goals for this year is to spend more time in rooms with brand owners… not on Zoom calls, not in DMs, but in person at industry events where the conversations are real and the guard is down.
ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas was the first stop.
Over two days, I made it a point to have as many honest conversations as I could with founders and marketing leaders at ecommerce brands, most of them in the baby, kids, and family space. I wasn’t there to pitch. I was there to listen.
What I heard wasn’t surprising, but it was validating. The same four problems kept surfacing, conversation after conversation. And if you’re running a brand in the $1M–$15M range, there’s a good chance at least one of them sounds familiar.
Problem #1: “We Know AI Search Is a Thing. We Have No Idea How to Show Up In It.”
Nearly every brand I talked to brought up AI search: ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity. They know customers are starting to use these tools to research products. They’ve seen their own traffic patterns shift. But when I asked what they were doing about it, the answer was almost always some version of: “I don’t really know where to start.”
Here’s the thing: AI search isn’t a black box. It pulls from content that already exists on the web, and it tends to favor brands that have clearly, thoroughly answered the questions their customers are actually asking. The brands showing up in AI Overviews and AI-generated recommendations right now aren’t doing anything magical; they’ve built content that directly answers specific, high-intent questions (you know… Good SEO).
What to do about it:
- Audit your existing content for question-and-answer depth. If a customer searches “best organic baby formula for sensitive stomachs” and lands on your site, is there a page that genuinely answers that? Not just a product page with specs, but real, useful information?
- Build topical authority around your niche. AI engines look for brands that have covered a topic comprehensively, not just once. If you sell baby sleep products, you should have content on sleep schedules, sleep training, safe sleep environments, and product comparisons, not just a homepage talking about how great your swaddle is.
- Invest in video content, particularly YouTube. Citations from YouTube videos in Google’s AI Overviews are growing at a rapid pace. Brands that are getting in front of the camera now, answering real questions, showing products in context, and educating their customers are building a citation asset that most of their competitors haven’t even thought about yet.
- Use structured data and clean site architecture. Make it easy for AI engines to understand what you sell, who you serve, and what problems you solve. Schema markup, clean category pages, and well-organized product descriptions all contribute.
The window to be an early mover here is still open. It won’t be forever.
Problem #2: Meta Ad Costs Have Become Unsustainable and Brands Are Scrambling
This one had the most emotional weight behind it. Brand after brand told me that their Meta CPMs and cost-per-acquisition numbers had climbed to a point where the channel simply wasn’t profitable anymore. One founder told me they had been running Meta ads for four years, and the CAC they’re seeing now is more than double what it was 18 months ago. They’ve had to pull back significantly.
A lot of these brands built their entire acquisition model on Meta. That made sense when the platform was efficient. It makes much less sense now. The brands I talked to that were holding up the best had done one thing differently: they hadn’t relied on Meta as their only customer acquisition channel. They had SEO and Google Ads underneath it, so when paid social got expensive, they had somewhere else to lean.
What to do about it:
- Shift budget toward intent-based channels. Google Search Ads target people who are actively looking for what you sell. That’s fundamentally different from Meta, where you’re interrupting someone mid-scroll and hoping the timing is right. For brands that haven’t invested seriously in Google Ads, now is the time.
- Build SEO as a compounding acquisition asset. Paid ads stop the moment you stop paying. SEO compounds over time; content you publish today will still be driving traffic two or three years from now. Brands that invest in SEO now are building a channel that gets cheaper per acquisition over time, not more expensive.
- Don’t abandon Meta entirely – right-size it. Meta still works well for retargeting warm audiences, running brand awareness campaigns, and amplifying content to existing customers. The mistake is using it as a primary cold acquisition channel at high spend levels. Pull back the cold prospecting budget and reinvest it in channels with stronger intent signals.
- Get serious about your unit economics. Know your blended CAC, your channel-by-channel CAC, and your LTV by acquisition source. A lot of brands are still optimizing for ROAS without understanding whether that customer is actually profitable over time. That’s a dangerous way to run a marketing budget.
Problem #3: Retention Isn’t a ‘Nice to Have’ Anymore – It’s the Business Model
The third problem ties directly back to the second. When customer acquisition gets expensive, customer retention becomes your margin. And almost every brand I spoke with admitted they didn’t have a real retention strategy, they had an email list, maybe a loyalty program they set up a couple of years ago and hadn’t touched since, and the general hope that customers would come back if they liked the product.
Hope is not a retention strategy. Especially not when it costs you $60, $80, or $120 to acquire a customer in the first place.
What to do about it:
- Build a real post-purchase email and SMS flow. Most brands have a generic “thank you for your order” sequence and nothing else. The brands with strong LTV have thoughtful flows that educate the customer on how to use the product, cross-sell complementary items at the right moment, ask for reviews at peak satisfaction, and re-engage lapsed customers before they’re gone for good.
- Treat your loyalty program like a product, not a set-it-and-forget-it feature. If your loyalty program is just a points accumulator that customers never think about, it’s not doing much for retention. The programs that actually drive repeat purchase behavior are the ones with clear, attainable rewards, early access perks, and regular touchpoints reminding customers of their status.
- Create referral loops. Your happiest customers are your cheapest acquisition channel. Build a referral program that makes it easy for them to share and actually incentivizes them to do it. A referred customer also tends to have a higher LTV because they arrived with social proof already attached.
- If your product allows for it, build a subscription or replenishment model. For consumable or repeat-use products, a subscription offering dramatically improves predictable revenue and LTV. Even a simple “subscribe and save” option can shift a meaningful percentage of customers to recurring buyers.
- Obsess over the product and unboxing experience. At the end of the day, retention starts with the product. If what shows up at someone’s door exceeds their expectations, they’ll come back and tell their friends. If it underwhelms, no email sequence or loyalty program will fix it. The brands with the best retention numbers I’ve seen almost always have a product and packaging experience that people feel compelled to share.
Problem #4: The Economy Is Squeezing Their Customers, and Brands Are Feeling It Too
This one was harder to talk about, but it came up more than I expected. Inflation, economic uncertainty, and tightening household budgets are having a real impact on consumer spending, especially in discretionary categories like baby gear, kids’ products, and home goods. Brands aren’t just competing against each other anymore. They’re competing against a customer who has genuinely less money to spend than they did a year ago.
The brands I spoke with weren’t panicking, but they were being realistic. The question most of them were sitting with wasn’t “how do we grow fast right now” — it was “how do we stay visible and positioned so that when consumer confidence comes back, we’re the brand people think of first.” That’s actually the right question to be asking.
What to do about it:
- Stay visible to buyers who still have disposable income. Not every customer has pulled back. The brands doubling down on SEO and content right now are making sure they’re the first result when a high-intent buyer goes looking. Pulling back on visibility because the market is soft is how brands lose their position to competitors who kept showing up.
- Use this period to invest in brand authority. When budgets are tight, buyers get more deliberate. They research more, compare more, and choose brands they trust. Brands that are publishing helpful content, earning reviews, building credibility, and showing up consistently across search are the ones that win the considered purchase — even in a down market.
- Position now for the rebound. Economic cycles turn. The brands that invest in SEO, content, and organic visibility during a downturn are the ones that come out on the other side with a compounding advantage. The ones that go dark to conserve cash often find they’ve lost ground that takes years to recover.
This one probably deserves its own blog post in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.
You’re Not Behind & You’re Not Alone
If any of these four problems resonated with you, I want to be clear about something: you’re not failing. These are industry-wide pressures that are hitting smaller ecommerce brands especially hard right now, because you don’t have the budget cushion or the internal teams that larger brands have to absorb the impact.
But that also means the brands that figure out AI search, build a balanced acquisition model, invest in retention, and stay visible through economic headwinds are going to have a real competitive advantage coming out the other side. The window to move on these things ahead of the curve is still open.
The conversations I had in Las Vegas reminded me why it matters to get in the room. These aren’t abstract problems; they’re the things keeping real founders up at night. I’m going to keep showing up at these events throughout the year, and I’ll keep sharing what I hear.
If you’re working through any of these challenges and want to think through what the solutions might look like for your specific brand, feel free to reach out. Happy to have the conversation.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.