Last Updated on September 8, 2026
Next just told the City it will make £1.24bn in profit this year, £25m more than it promised a few months ago. Full-price sales in the last quarter were up 9.2%, when the company itself only expected 4%. That is £70m of sales nobody had planned for.
Everyone is crediting the heatwave. Warm weather sells summer clothes, and it did. But buried in Next’s own explanation is a phrase worth more to your business than any weather forecast. Next said it spent “much more on profitable marketing.”
Not more marketing. Profitable marketing. That one word is the difference between a shop that grows and a shop that just gets busier.
What actually happened
Next spent more to sell more, then checked that the extra spend paid for itself. When the sums worked, it spent again. That is the entire trick. It sounds obvious written down, yet most businesses never do it.
Meanwhile John Lewis, running the same high street, is warning of higher costs and a harder year. Same weather, same shoppers, very different position. The gap is not luck. It is discipline about where the money goes.
Why this matters for your business
Most business owners do not have a marketing problem. They have a measurement problem. They boost a post, sponsor a local event, rebuild the website, and then have no idea which of those brought in a paying customer. So when money gets tight, they cut all of it, including the bits that were working.
Next avoids that trap because it can see the return. You do not need Next’s budget to copy the habit. You need to know two numbers: what a customer costs you to win, and what that customer is worth once they buy.
Cost to win a customer: total spend on a channel, divided by customers it brought in.
Value of that customer: what they spend with you, first order and repeat, minus your costs.
If the second number beats the first, spend more. If it does not, stop. That is “profitable marketing.”
How to find your profitable marketing
You do not need software or an agency to start. You need an afternoon and an honest look at the last three months.
Write down every way you tried to get customers: ads, social posts, flyers, referrals, the lot. Next to each, put roughly what it cost you, in money or in hours. Then put how many customers it actually brought in. Ask every new customer how they found you for two weeks and you will learn more than any dashboard.
Some channels will surprise you. The one you assumed was working may have brought in nobody. The free word-of-mouth you ignore may be your best salesperson. Now you know where to put the next pound.
Structure before scale
Here is the part the heatwave headlines miss. Next could spend confidently because the plumbing was already in place. It knew its numbers before the good weather arrived. The sunshine just poured fuel on an engine that already ran.
If your measurement is a guess, spending more in a good spell only means you waste more, faster. Fix the tracking first. Then, when your own version of a heatwave comes, a supplier deal, a viral post, a quiet competitor, you can press the pedal and trust where the money goes.
The takeaway
Do not copy Next’s budget. Copy the word “profitable.” Before you spend another pound on marketing this month, make sure you can answer one question: which of last month’s spending actually brought in a paying customer? If you cannot answer it, that is the job this week. Everything else can wait.
