Best Seller Playbook for Scaling DTC Brands
Best selling products are the backbone of profitability. These top performers aren’t just revenue generators—they’re brand builders, customer acquisition tools, and loyalty drivers. Yet, many brands fail to manage their best sellers strategically. They ride the wave of initial success but fail to nurture these products, leaving money on the table as momentum fades.
Brands that don’t proactively manage their best sellers can find themselves scrambling to replace lost revenue when a top product loses steam.
That’s where creating a best seller playbook comes in. This strategic guide helps brands identify their most valuable products, implement actionable steps to sustain their success, and extend their lifecycle through iterative improvements and targeted marketing. It’s about maximizing the performance of your top products over time—turning short-term hits into long-term growth engines.
By the end of this article, you’ll have a step-by-step framework for identifying your best sellers, nurturing their success, and keeping them relevant through creative strategies like bundling, upselling, and relaunches. You’ll have the tools to drive sustained profitability and stay ahead of the competition.
Identifying Your Best Sellers
A best seller is more than just a product that sells in high volumes—it’s a product that drives consistent revenue over time, delivers strong profit margins, and enhances customer loyalty. Brands that focus on nurturing these products are better positioned to achieve sustained profitability and reduce dependency on new customer acquisition costs.
However, not all top-selling products contribute equally to long-term growth. Some may spike in sales due to seasonal trends, viral marketing, or deep discounts, but these short-term hits aren’t always sustainable.
True best sellers have staying power. They continue to perform well across different campaigns and buying cycles, and they often drive repeat purchases and increase customer lifetime value (LTV).
To unlock the potential of your best selling products, you need to dig into the data and identify which products have the most significant impact on your bottom line.
Key Metrics to Track
When identifying your true best sellers, it’s crucial to look beyond surface-level sales figures and focus on metrics that reveal the profitability and retention power of a product:
- Sales Volume: Look for products that consistently generate high sales across multiple time periods rather than temporary spikes from promotions or one-off campaigns.
- Gross Margin: Focus on products that not only sell well but deliver strong profitability. High sales volume with low margins isn’t sustainable.
- Repeat Purchase Rate: Identify products that keep customers coming back. best sellers often play a role in driving customer retention and brand loyalty.
- Lifetime Value (LTV) Impact: Analyze the products that contribute to higher LTV by encouraging repeat purchases or serving as entry points to additional purchases (e.g., through cross-selling and upselling).
By focusing on these metrics, you’ll gain a clearer picture of which products are your most effective revenue drivers.
Tools and Methods for Identifying best sellers
To effectively track the performance of your top products, leverage data-driven tools and methods that help you analyze trends and uncover hidden insights. Here are some essential tools to get started:
- Google Analytics / Shopify Analytics: These platforms provide a wealth of data on sales trends, product performance, and customer behavior. Use them to spot patterns in purchase frequency, conversion rates, and average order value (AOV) associated with your best sellers.
- Customer Feedback: Reach out to your customers to understand what they love about your best sellers. Tools like KnoCommerce make it easy to collect and analyze post-purchase surveys and gather direct customer insights that go beyond surface-level reviews.
- A/B Testing: Use A/B testing to experiment with variations of your best selling products, such as different packaging, pricing, or product bundles. This will help you fine-tune your offering and maximize conversions.
Look Beyond Revenue
It’s easy to focus solely on revenue numbers, but best sellers should be evaluated on more strategic criteria:
- Profitability: A product may sell well, but if it has slim margins, it won’t do much for your bottom line. Focus on high-margin best sellers.
- Retention Impact: best sellers that drive repeat purchases are more valuable than products that rely on one-time buyers.
- Upsell and Cross-Sell Opportunities: Look at how your best sellers can act as gateway products to other offerings. For example, if customers frequently purchase accessories or complementary items alongside your best seller, those products may be worth promoting more heavily.
Nurturing Best Sellers for Long-Term Success
Once you’ve identified your best selling products, the next step is to ensure they continue to perform over time.
A true best seller isn’t just a flash in the pan—it’s a product that consistently drives revenue, retention, and loyalty. But without careful nurturing, even top performers can lose momentum.
Optimize Product Marketing
Consistent, optimized marketing is critical to maintaining a best seller’s momentum. Even your top-performing products won’t sell themselves. To keep them top of mind, you need a multi-channel marketing strategy that evolves alongside customer behavior.
Here’s how to keep your best sellers a top priority across key marketing channels:
Use Lifecycle Marketing
Tailor your marketing messages to customers based on where they are in their journey with your brand. For example:
- New Customers: Introduce your best seller as a must-have item.
- Repeat Customers: Send personalized upsell offers or reminders to replenish.
- Lapsed Customers: Use retargeting ads and email reminders to reignite interest in your hero product.
Call Your Best Customers And Prospects
Merchants can leverage a new retention channel to drive sales growth in 2025. Tools like Consio.ai enable you to efficiently call customers, leave personalized voicemails, and boost conversions. This approach is especially effective for merchants with high AOV and LTV.
- Abandoned Checkout: Answer outstanding questions keeping people from completing their purchase
- Churned Subscribers : Provide a unique offer to reactivate your past subscribers
- Dunning Subscription: Recover failed payments over the phone
Leverage Influencers and Creators
Social commerce is a powerful tool for keeping best sellers relevant.
Influencers and creators can consistently promote your top products, providing fresh content and building trust with their audiences. TikTok, TikTok Shop and Instagram, in particular, are ideal for keeping best sellers top of mind.
Run Limited-Time Promotions
Periodic promotions help create urgency without eroding long-term demand.
Use flash sales, loyalty program rewards, or exclusive discounts to keep customers engaged. Just make sure promotions are strategic—over-discounting can devalue your best seller.
Implement Effective Inventory Planning
One of the quickest ways to lose momentum on a best seller is through poor inventory management.
Stockouts can kill a product’s momentum, frustrating customers and hurting your brand reputation. On the flip side, overstocking can tie up cash and force you into discounting, which erodes profitability.
- Monitor Sales Trends: Use historical sales data to predict demand and make informed decisions about inventory. Pay attention to seasonality, promotions, and customer behavior patterns to avoid surprises.
- Automate Inventory Reordering: Use tools like Shopify Flow or inventory management apps to automate replenishment orders based on demand. Automation helps ensure that your best sellers are always in stock without overordering.
- Prepare for Seasonality: Your best sellers may experience spikes in demand around holidays, promotions, or product launches. Plan ahead by increasing stock levels before busy periods to avoid missing out on potential revenue.
- Automate for Visibility: Use AI-driven merchandising tools to optimize product exposure on your website. These tools can dynamically adjust how and where best sellers appear, ensuring they get maximum visibility and conversions.
Gather and Act on Customer Feedback
Your customers are your best resource for keeping a best seller relevant. Gathering feedback can help you identify ways to improve your product and extend its lifecycle. Whether it’s through new features, colors, or bundles, iterative improvements based on customer insights can keep a product fresh and desirable.
Ways to Gather Feedback
- Post-Purchase Surveys: Use tools like Knocommerce to send short, automated surveys after purchase. These surveys can help you gather valuable insights into why customers choose your best seller, how they’re using it, and what additional features or products they’d like to see.
- Social Media Listening: Monitor social media mentions, comments, and DMs to see what customers are saying about your best seller. Social listening can reveal trends, complaints, and opportunities for improvement.
- Customer Reviews: Analyze product reviews to understand what customers love and what they want more of. Reviews can also highlight pain points that you can address to improve the product.
Extending the Lifecycle of Best Selling Products
No product stays at the top forever. Even your best sellers will eventually face declining interest or increased competition.
However, brands that know how to extend the lifecycle of their top products can keep driving sustained revenue from these high-performing items.
Leverage Product Bundling and Upselling
One of the easiest ways to extend the lifecycle of a best seller is to pair it with other products that complement its use or enhance its value. Product bundling and upselling not only boost average order value (AOV) but also help introduce customers to new products while reinforcing loyalty to existing ones.
Bundle a best seller with a New Product
Pairing your best seller with a new or lesser-known product can help you boost visibility for both items.
Bundles also offer a perceived discount, which customers love. For example, a skincare brand might pair its best selling moisturizer with a new serum to increase sales of both. Or a coffee brand could bundle its best selling coffee blend with a new limited-edition mug or seasonal flavor, encouraging customers to try something new while purchasing their favorite product.
Upsell Premium Versions or Complementary Products
Upselling involves encouraging customers to purchase a higher-end or premium version of your best seller, or a complementary product that enhances their experience.
If your best seller is a basic water bottle, offer an upgraded version with enhanced insulation or a bundle that includes a carrying case.
Cross-Sell Related Products
Use cross-selling tactics to suggest items that are frequently purchased together. You can do this on product pages, in post-purchase emails, and even at checkout.
“Complete Your Look” recommendations on a fashion website or “Frequently Bought Together” bundles on a tech site can encourage customers to add more to their cart.
Use AI-Driven Personalization
AI tools can help you dynamically recommend bundles or upsells based on customer behavior, ensuring that your offers are relevant and more likely to convert.
Rebuy is an AI-driven personalization platform that integrates with Shopify to provide personalized product recommendations, dynamic bundles, and upsell offers in real-time.
These AI-powered suggestions adapt to each customer’s unique journey, increasing average order value (AOV) and extending the lifecycle of your best sellers.
Re-Launch and Refresh best sellers
Re-launching or updating a popular product can create excitement, drive urgency, and attract new and returning customers.
Introduce New Colors, Flavors, or Designs
A simple change in color, design, or flavor can give your best seller a whole new appeal. This strategy works particularly well for apparel, accessories, and food brands.
By adding new variations, you attract new customers and encourage repeat purchases from existing ones.
A footwear brand could re-release its best selling sneaker in new colors each season to attract both loyal fans and new buyers. Similarly, a beverage brand could introduce limited-edition flavors to maintain excitement.
Launch Limited Editions
Creating limited-edition versions of your best seller builds urgency and exclusivity.
Customers are more likely to make a purchase if they believe the opportunity is time-sensitive. Limited editions also allow you to test new designs or features without committing to a full-scale rollout.
A luxury watch brand might release a limited-edition version of its iconic timepiece in collaboration with a popular artist or designer, creating buzz and driving sales.
Create Seasonal Variations
Another way to refresh best sellers is by launching seasonal versions tailored to holidays, events, or trends. This keeps your product relevant throughout the year and offers customers a reason to come back.
A DTC fashion brand could reintroduce its best selling hoodie in festive colors and patterns for the holiday season or launch a lightweight summer version with breathable fabric for warmer months.
Similarly, a home goods brand could release limited-edition, spring-inspired designs of its top-selling tableware set, timed around Easter or Mother’s Day.
Use Re-Launches to Re-Engage Lapsed Customers
When you re-launch a best seller, it’s an excellent opportunity to bring back previous buyers and re-engage lapsed customers. Use email and SMS marketing to announce the re-launch, highlighting new features, updates, or a limited-edition aspect to create urgency.
Tools like Klaviyo can help you segment your audience and automate personalized re-launch campaigns for maximum impact.
Utilize Customer Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are one of the most effective ways to extend the lifecycle of a best seller. By incentivizing repeat purchases and rewarding loyal customers, you can keep your top products performing well over time.
Exclusive perks and personalized offers help ensure your customers stay engaged with your brand.
- Reward Customers for Purchasing best sellers: Offer loyalty points or exclusive rewards when customers purchase your best selling products. This encourages them to keep buying and spreads awareness to their networks.
- Provide Exclusive Access to Relaunches or Limited Editions: Make your best customers feel special by giving them early access to re-launches or exclusive limited-edition drops. This not only builds excitement but also increases the likelihood of conversion.
- Offer Perks like Early Access or Discounts: Customers love feeling like they’re part of an exclusive club. Use your loyalty program to offer VIP perks, such as early access to product drops, free shipping, or special discounts.
Use Customer Segmentation to Personalize Offers
Not all customers have the same lifetime value (LTV), so it’s essential to tailor your offers accordingly. Use customer segmentation tools like Klaviyo to identify key customer groups and deliver personalized offers based on their purchase history and behavior.
For instance:
- High-LTV customers might receive early access to a new launch or a limited-edition product.
- First-time buyers might be offered a special discount to encourage a repeat purchase.
By understanding your customers’ unique needs and preferences, you can deliver relevant experiences that increase loyalty and boost long-term revenue.
Ecommerce Best Sellers: A Strategic Playbook for Driving Growth
Best Sellers are more than revenue drivers—they’re the foundation of long-term growth. Yet many brands treat them as fleeting wins, failing to nurture their success beyond the initial hype. Without a clear strategy, even top products lose momentum, leaving brands scrambling to recover lost revenue.
Creating a Best Seller Playbook changes that. By identifying what makes your best sellers thrive and implementing strategies to sustain their performance, you turn short-term hits into lasting profit centers. This proactive approach ensures your brand stays ahead in a competitive market, maximizing the value of your top products over time.
The brands that succeed aren’t just those with great products—they’re the ones that know how to make them last.
About the Author: As the Director, Marketing at adQuadrant, Nick Grant leverages more than 20 years of experience working across a variety of tech verticals. Nick grew up in California and earned his BS in Business with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. After college, he relocated to Seattle to pursue his passion for startups, where he worked at various dot-coms before co-founding a successful visual strategy agency in 2010. Now back in California, Nick spends his time hiking around San Luis Obispo County with his wife and son, honing his talent as a concert photographer, and perfecting his handstand skills.