What the TikTok ban scare means for your 2025 strategy

2 weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a friend and it left me thinking a lot about his situation.

A big part of his revenue came from organic TikTok content and TikTok Shop.

When the TikTok ban was announced, his team went into full panic mode.

While they believed the ban wouldn’t last forever, they had to prepare for the worst.

So they scrambled to come up with a backup plan.

Team meetings and Slack channels turned into brainstorming sessions.

They tapped into their network, seeking advice from other agencies.

Pivoting to other platforms was possible…

But the thought of starting it all over again was scary. 

Fortunately, the ban was removed in the end.

But that was one hell of a chaotic week for him…

And who knows what’s gonna happen in the future…

I’ve been in the eCom space for 6 years now.

I’ve seen so many businesses shut down because they relied on factors that were out of their control.

I still remember the chaos after the iOS 14 update 4 years ago.

Brands running Facebook ads suddenly saw their revenue plummet by 50% in a matter of days…

And they had to change their entire strategy because of that.

Or the recent Meta change for Health and Wellness brands.

Where they restrict you to only optimize your campaigns for traffic and brand awareness.

Platforms like TikTok and Meta have been delivering great returns for our partners.

But it must be frustrating to be always at the whim of an algorithm or rule change.

I believe businesses need a solid foundation to stand on.

There’ll always be a percentage of your business that feels unpredictable.

But the smaller that number, the better.

That’s one of the reasons why I like Google Ads and proudly promote it.

It’s far more stable than social media.

They roll out updates and new tools occasionally.

But most changes are designed to boost your performance, not disrupt it.

Lately, people talked a lot about how AI overview or ChatGPT is going to replace search.

But I don’t think that’ll be the case at all…

Especially for eCom brands because:

1. People don’t use ChatGPT to find a product

2. The AI overviews don’t show up for transactional keywords.

For us, that’s reassuring.

We know there won’t be sudden shifts forcing us to rethink our strategy.

And more importantly…

We can refine our system over time rather than starting from scratch each year.

We can take what we learned from over 200 accounts to perfect our craft.

And it allows us to get these kinds of results for our partners…

Over 12 months, we scaled this brand’s ad spend from $20k/mo. to $250k/mo. while keeping the same profitability.

That can only happen because we work with such a stable platform.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn.

How we can help:

• Get a free Google ads audit: For brands spending more than $20k/mo. or making over 1 million annually, we’ll identify the key bottlenecks in your account, and turn it into a free 90-day scaling plan. Click here.

• Get a 1-time Google ads buildout: For brands that are new to Google or looking to add another revenue model WITHOUT a retainer. We’ll do a one-time buildout over 30 days for you to profit from day 1. Click here for more info.

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