I’m sure your news feeds are full of articles on how DTC brands need to diversify their media strategies. To be honest, it’s true. But do you wanna know what else is true? Old is gold—which is why ad networks such as Facebook remain a darling for DTC growth and marketing teams.
While many of the largest DTC brands choose to lean towards Facebook for business growth, it’s not for nothing. In most cases, it’s because they have a few optimization tricks up their sleeve.
It goes without saying that DTC’s are heavily active on Facebook as part of a greater effort to consistently build up on brand awareness by establishing a strong presence.
When it comes down to growth strategy, there are additional goals that are factored by DTC marketing teams when using Facebook, which I’m sure your team does as well:
Offhand, it all seems elementary, doesn’t it? I mean, why aren’t all brands raking in big numbers after filling in the necessary fields while setting up their campaigns?
You guessed it: strategy. And there are quite a few technicalities that need to be factored as well, especially for DTC brands.
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As I mentioned earlier, there are lots of variables to consider for brands when it comes to the Facebook growth campaign experience. All campaigns are not created equal. The business size matters. The industry matters.
Here’s how some renowned DTC’s strategized to achieve business goals on FB:
This major US-based shoe company wanted a more efficient Facebook ad account setup that would help to increase sales and grow its business. They opted to automate ad placements, to automatically push ads depending on which placement is likely to drive the best results at the lowest cost at any given time. The ads themselves included videos, and ads in Stories.
In turn, they eliminated segmentations, selected a broader audience, followed mobile-first best practices and allowed Facebook to automatically select the placements for each ad. The results were quite favorable, including 37% lift in brand awareness, and 44% lift in ad recall.
This women’s apparel company wanted to run a more cost-efficient digital ad campaign to attract new shoppers and increase sales, because they were eager to find an even more efficient way to scale up its marketing efforts by increasing its investment. They tested a new campaign setup: dynamic ads for broad audiences.
They designed a test campaign to measure the effectiveness of Facebook dynamic ads for broad audiences, in addition to the carousel feature, and photo ads. The results included an increase in their weekly average revenue by 84% compared to the same period the previous month. They also saw a 92% increase in weekly average return on ad spend, and 41% increase in weekly average conversion rate.
This European online marketplace wanted to drive an incremental increase in sales conversions by reaching out to previous customers across all the countries it operates in. The new ad text referred to the number of months that had passed since these customers had last visited Joom. Then, it invited them to return to the platform and enjoy discounts for the products in their favorite categories.
To measure the effectiveness of this loyalty-focused campaign, Joom conducted a conversion lift test. The results included 2.3X incremental lift in sales conversions—not bad!
Then there are DTC’s that are opting to add an advanced tool into their arsenal to exponentially amplify their growth efforts by tapping into their datasets: Predictive UA.
Predictive UA is a beast in its own right for brands that have the infrastructure set in place to collect, analyze and activate their data. It plays a major role in easing the burden on growth teams that are looking to optimize ad campaigns to maximize LTV.
This was seen in the case of the powerhouse that is BoxyCharm (owned by Ipsy).
BoxyCharm wanted to conduct an LTV-based campaign, instead of only focusing on CPA. It especially made sense for them, considering that their highest 30% of LTV users generate 70% of the company revenues. So this is where we stepped in.
The BoxyCharm team optimized their user acquisition campaigns based on Voyantis’ prediction model. The prediction model itself was enriched by BoxyCharm’s zero-party data, as well as their historical retention data.
The results from their internal reporting system, which you can read more about in Facebook’s official case study, were amazing across the board:
Such numbers are only made possible with LTV-based predictive UA, because let’s face it, if you take on growth marketing without optimizing on data, you’re betting on luck.
For DTC’s there are many benefits in predictive optimization, as it can help win back churned customers, encourage upsells before finalizing purchases, and build on the interest of your most valued customers.
Top DTC’s know the importance of staying above the fierce competition across all the ad networks. There are plenty of smart growth teams out there, intelligently capitalizing on all the bells and whistles that ad networks have to offer. The utilization of predictive UA is essentially like putting down the ace of spades. You know the game and its winnings are yours.
There are multiple ways for D2C brands to achieve ROI-positive growth, which is crucial for long term success. Sure, there are plenty of variables to consider, and countless ways that campaigns can pan out. However, there is some common ground in the initial stages to efficiently achieve ROI-positive growth. Here are helpful pointers to help you get started.
It’s safe to say that for DTC’s, Facebook ad campaigns these days are a far cry from the walk in the park that they used to be. The reason largely has to do with changes in regulations with ad networks, and partially also ties into changes in customer tastes and preferences in the post-pandemic world. This is exactly why DTC brands must include LTV-based predictive UA into their arsenal and growth strategy, to ensure optimal results in the long term.