Selling High-Ticket Products on TikTok Ads

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

We strive to deliver the latest growth marketing news and trends in the DTC space straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

Topics we'll cover today:

💠 Shopify's "Boring" Edition: Everything You Need To Know
💠 Selling High-Ticket Products on TikTok Ads
💠 Customer Acquisition Lessons from 10 Years

Want to Make 2025 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet?

In 2024, we audited over 120 brands, and we found that many of them have been stuck in a revenue plateau for 2, and even 3 years.

So, the question is: will you stay in the same place for yet another year, or will you draw a line in the sand and start a new chapter for your brand?

At BSR Digital, we have just 2 spots left for brands that want to unlock the next level of growth.

Will you be one of them?

Shopify's "Boring" Edition: Everything You Need To Know

Last week, Shopify announced its Winter edition, and it's 🤯

Here's what you need to know:

Btw, on their website, there's the "boring" and the "not boring" (recommended) ways of going through these updates.

𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 & 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:
🔎 Smart collections based on taxonomy attributes
🛠️ Custom metafields for product categories
🌐 Configure combined listings for search
🔍 Filter by category metafields
🖇️ Metaobjects everywhere
📋 Category filter ordering

𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:
✏️ Edit subscriptions inline
🎁 Buy X Get Y works with subscriptions
❌ Oversell protection for subscription renewals

𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 & 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:
📊 Reporting for bundles
🔢 More automatic discounts

𝗕𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:
🪞 A clearer view of bundles
🚨 Accurate bundle inventory

𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝘀 & 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:
🌎 Markets rolling out soon

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗲 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀:
⚙️ Streamlined theme editor settings

𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:
🔧 Custom search filters on Shop
🔄 Returns in Shop

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Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Selling High-Ticket Products on TikTok Ads

Last December, this brand didn't believe in TikTok Ads as a revenue-generating channel.

12 months later, they've generated over $634,000 from it.

And, you know what?

This brand sells high-ticket ($800-$1,300) auto parts.

Not exactly what we'd normally call "TikTok-friendly". Right?

Today, I'll share the BTS to show you how our team at BSR Digital pulled this off.

Ready? Let's go!

First, here's some context:

🤝 We've been doing Meta ads and email marketing for them for almost 3 years.
💔 They had hired someone to do their TikTok Ads, and generated literally $0.
🔒 In September 2023, they fired them and asked us to take over.

Here's what we have done for them since August 2024:

Influencer outreach:

Even though the brand already works with a handful of creators, we needed more.

We found some really interesting people who generated pretty good videos, so we gave them a 5% discount code and then ran Spark Ads.

In exchange, they received free product + commission.

Ad campaign structure:

Here are a few things we did in the ad account:

♻️ We started doing remarketing of warm audiences, with a 10x ROAS.

🛒 In October, we launched a cart recovery campaign using catalog ads and, although the audience is small (low match from the pixel), the ROAS has been really strong (>20x).

🔍 That same month, we launched a search campaign (it’s something newly released). At first, we couldn't get it to spend, either because of a low bid or not enough search queries. But after many optimizations, it started to pick up and, in the first 10 days of December it started producing some sales.

BFCM approach:

In the last 2 years, we've been running a 10% discount in November, called Black November.

So, on TikTok, we ran a separate campaign for it with all our audiences (both cold and remarketing, organized in ad groups) and launched the promo ads here.

As we were getting winners we also scaled them to the evergreen structure to continue amplifying them (spend more).

This helped us guarantee that the performance of the evergreen campaign was not affected by pausing/enabling all the ads at the same time.

We could do this because we had the whole month to learn and optimize.

Something else we wanted to try is creating videos out of images and see how they worked.

Turns out, they performed very well. 💪

The results?

😀 August: $61k / 7.68 ROAS
🙌 September: $76k / 9.66x ROAS
🤯 October: $130k / 14.51 ROAS
🔥 November: $114k / 7.92x

In the mini-guide I linked above, I proudly mention that we generated $49k in July.

Now, we've more than doubled that only 3 months later!

What are the plans for 2025?

Now you know, it's gonna be 🚀

I hope it was useful!

--

If you'd like to grow on this channel too and would like to explore how we could help, let's chat.

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Customer Acquisition Lessons from 10 Years

What’s the secret to lasting 10 years in DTC?

Hint: it’s not tricks or shortcuts.

Ryan Beltran, co-founder of Original Grain, joins me on The DTC Insider podcast to share how they:

👉 Turned a $500k Kickstarter into a global watch brand.
👉 Sold 500k+ watches made from reclaimed materials.
👉 Partnered with Jack Daniels & the Yankees.
👉 Planted 700,000 trees along the way.
👉 Track numbers daily.
👉 And much more!

If you’re building a lasting brand, this episode is a must-listen.

Check it out 👇

We discussed:

👉 How Original Grain started with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013
👉 The brand's focus on creating unique watches from reclaimed materials
👉 The evolution of e-commerce over the last decade
👉 Challenges Original Grain faced during COVID-19
👉 The importance of understanding contribution margin for business success
👉 How daily tracking of metrics provides actionable insights
👉 Identifying customer trends to shape marketing strategies
👉 The risks of over-investing in unproven products
👉 Why Q4 strategies should focus on proven products instead of experimentation
👉 The importance of diversifying marketing channels for future growth
👉 Opportunities and challenges of TikTok Shop for high AOV products
👉 Leveraging partnerships to drive revenue streams
👉 Building a brand through community engagement, not just ads
👉 The role of authenticity and connection in content creation
👉 The value of strategic planning for long-term growth
👉 Why founders should actively participate in content creation
👉 How licensing deals can expand brand visibility and customer reach
👉 The impact of real-life activations on brand loyalty
👉 Balancing metrics with building long-term customer relationships
👉 Understanding customer needs beyond sales to drive e-commerce success

Tune in:

📺 YouTube
🎧 Apple
🎙️ Spotify
🌐 Website

More episodes our listeners love:

💎 Unlocking New Revenue Streams in 2025 with Neal Goyal
💎 The Secret Sauce Behind BattlBox's Success with John Roman
💎 IQBAR’s Journey to 10,000 Locations And $50 Million with Will Nitze
💎 Supplement Brand Bootstrapped $10,000 and Built It Into Sales of $30 Million in Three Years with Ronak Shah
💎 Unlocking 9-Figure Growth: The Blueprint That Transformed Two Brands with Brett Swensen

Also Happening in the DTC space

📰 Is In-House Order Fulfillment Right for Your Business? (2025)
📰 TikTok takes U.S. ban challenge to the Supreme Court
📰 Google Ads 2024 Recap: With An Eye To 2025

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