Unlocking Growth for Direct-to-Consumer Brands | Sponsored Content

This article was contributed and sponsored by Google.

Ecommerce sales has seen explosive growth in 2020, increasing as much in the past eight weeks as in the past 10 years, according to the US Department of Commerce. This seismic shift to ecommerce has enabled brand discovery for consumers as they spend more time online. Forty-sixty-percent of US shoppers reported that they are discovering new brands more than they were prior to COVID-19, according to Ipsos’ COVID-19 tracker, commissioned by Google.

The combination of brand discovery and an in increase in ecommerce sales is a winning formula for digitally-native, direct-to-consumer brands. Below are three winning direct-to-consumer strategies to drive long-term growth that any retailer can learn from:

Step 1: Build your brand with targeted audiences through a compelling story and visually rich assets. Understanding who your consumers are, where they shop and why they select your brand enables you to tell a more compelling brand story.

  • Leverage the power of visual storytelling with YouTube. With 97% reach, YouTube connects a brand’s story to its target consumer with unmatched scale, according to Comscore. Shoppers are four times as likely to use YouTube versus other platforms to find specific information about a brand, product or service, and are five times as likely to watch a product demo on YouTube before making a purchase.
  • Offer visually rich product images to showcase your brand value. Eighty-six-percent of people say they're on the lookout for shopping ideas as they watch videos or explore content across the web. You can reach three billion people on YouTube, Discover and Gmail with visually appealing Discovery ads, according to Google.

Step 2: Drive new customer acquisition with a segmented audience strategy and engaging formats. The goal here is to use your best customers to find your next customers.

  • Segment audiences to better address shopping needs. Leverage first-party data to differentiate new versus existing customers and craft a strategy using lookalike audiences to find more customers that are similar to your best customers.
  • Activate machine learning powered solutions to reach new customers at scale. Google’s Smart Shopping campaigns reach shoppers across Google Search, Display, YouTube and Gmail with advanced optimization features that help you hone in on new customers based on a standard new customer definition or a brand’s custom definition.

Step 3: Drive profitable growth with advanced bid strategies and a comprehensive measurement framework.

  • Automate for business outcomes by bidding to profit to drive long-term value. Automated bidding optimizes for profit by incorporating margin and customer values to ensure you are competitive in all moments leading to profitable sales.
  • Establish a measurement framework to enable tests, learning and growth for your brand. Measuring and understanding the full scope of profit driving interactions helps power your automated bidding strategy with the best possible data to drive results.

To learn more about how to win in the ecommerce space and prioritize business outcomes, click here to discover Google tools and insights.

—Jane Butler, managing director of pure play retail and DTC, Google

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