Every SKU has a job™. Why we built our ecommerce advertising approach around it.

A catalogue contains competing priorities

From an advertising perspective, two products can look equally successful. Both sell. Both generate the same revenue. Both report a similar return on ad spend.

For the retailer, their value can be very different.

Margin, discounts, fulfilment costs and returns affect what each sale leaves behind. Stock availability affects how much demand the business can fulfil. Seasonality affects how long it has to sell. Repeat purchases and basket relationships can change the wider value of an acquisition, where those relationships are measured.

A blended account result compresses all of that into one number.

It can tell you whether an account met a revenue-efficiency target. It cannot, on its own, tell you whether the budget supported the right products or priorities.

We use Every SKU has a job™ to bring those priorities into the conversation.

The question behind the phrase

Before discussing how hard to advertise a product, we want to understand what selling it should achieve.

Is the business trying to grow profitable demand? Improve contribution? Defend an important part of its range? Release cash from excess stock? Acquire customers whose subsequent behaviour creates additional value?

The answer changes what good performance means.

It also creates useful discipline. A product should have a reason to receive investment. “It is in the feed” is not enough.

For a retailer with thousands of products, that discipline matters. An account can become very efficient at generating the outcomes it is asked to pursue while overlooking commercial priorities that were never reflected in its objectives.

Five commercial jobs

Within BOI®, we organise that thinking around five jobs. Each product has one primary job at a time.

Scale

Grow demand where additional advertising can produce worthwhile additional contribution. Strong historical performance is a starting point; the commercial question is whether further investment still makes sense.

Profit

Generate contribution after advertising. Revenue matters, but the business also needs to understand what remains after the relevant costs of making and fulfilling the sale.

Protect

Support demand that is strategically important to the business. That purpose needs a clear justification. Attributed sales alone do not establish that advertising caused additional purchases.

Recovery

Release cash tied up in ageing or excess stock, within agreed commercial limits. The value of selling that stock includes its effect on inventory and cash. Low stock, by contrast, is a constraint on advertising.

Gateway

Introduce customers to a wider commercial relationship, supported by measured repeat purchases or basket economics. A weak first-order result needs evidence before it can be justified by future value.

These jobs give the retailer and agency a shared language for discussing investment.

They also expose disagreements early. Finance, merchandising and marketing may have different views of what a product needs to achieve. Those differences are worth resolving before more budget is committed.

A product’s job can change

Commercial purpose changes as the business changes.

Costs move. Stock ages. Seasons end. Demand strengthens or weakens. Evidence about customers develops.

The question is whether the product’s current job still reflects those conditions.

This is where commercial judgement matters. Labels are useful only when they remain connected to the business. A catalogue organised once and then left untouched will gradually stop reflecting the priorities it was meant to support.

Our role is to keep advertising decisions connected to those changing priorities.

How Every SKU has a job™ connects to BOI®

Every SKU has a job™ expresses the principle. BOI® is the framework we use to apply it to ecommerce advertising.

“Intent” means the commercial intent behind investing in a product: what the business needs that investment to achieve.

Google can use the signals and objectives available to it. The retailer and its agency still need to define those objectives and understand their implications.

That responsibility includes knowing when to pursue growth, when to question apparent efficiency and when a product should receive less advertising support.

It requires conversations about the business alongside conversations about the account.

What retailers should expect from this approach

For an established ecommerce business, the benefit is a clearer explanation of where advertising investment is going and why.

You should be able to discuss which parts of the range support growth, which produce contribution, where stock is tying up cash and which acquisition arguments are supported by customer evidence.

You should also be able to challenge a good-looking account result when it does not match what the business is experiencing.

That is the standard we want Every SKU has a job™ to represent at JudeLuxe: advertising decisions with a clear commercial purpose.

We’ve used the phrase in client conversations for around four years because it keeps bringing us back to the question that matters:

What does this product need to achieve for the business?

If you run an established retail or ecommerce business and want to understand whether your advertising reflects those priorities, book a commercial review with JudeLuxe.