In today’s digital world, consumers expect brands to be accessible and deliver a seamless experience across all channels. The days of interrupting customers with TV commercials or a giant print ad are over. Growing businesses have to find innovative ways to engage with their customers at every step of their journey. To keep up with the evolving needs of today’s consumer, brands must implement a growth marketing strategy that includes social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.
However, many companies struggle with implementing these types of strategies because they don’t have the right resources in place or they don’t know where to start. In this guide, we’ll take a deeper dive into these strategies and walk you through how you can use them to grow your DTC business.
Social Media Marketing
Social media has become an essential marketing tool for any business, as well as one of the most effective ways to grow your DTC business. By using social media, you can reach a wide audience and interact with your customers in a way that traditional marketing methods can’t, which can lead to increased engagement and sales.
There are a number of different types of social media channels that you can use to market your business. Each channel has its own unique features and pros/cons. Some channels are better suited for certain types of businesses, so it’s important to choose the right channel for yours. The most popular channels for DTC products are Instagram, Instagram Reels, and TikTok, but the channel that will work best for you largely depends on your target audience. So if you’re marketing to an older audience, many brands have great success with Facebook and YouTube as well.
Here are some tips on how to use social media marketing to grow your DTC business:
- Identify your target audience. As mentioned earlier, this will determine which channels you should be using to best engage and begin building relationships.
- Use a consolidated platform – Social media is all about having a presence online. Having a unified platform for all of your social channels lets you post content across all channels in one spot. This makes it easier for people to find you and engage with your brand.
- Use hashtags – Using a single hashtag across all of your social channels makes it easier for people to find you and engage with your brand. People will be able to see which posts are related and how many people are talking about them in real time.
- Be consistent – Consistent posting across multiple platforms helps build trust and leads over time. Check out this resource for best times and days to post across channels to help you be strategic with your posting schedule.
SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an important part of every DTC business. The goal of SEO is to make your website as visible on search engines like Google as possible. When people search for products or services on Google, they are most likely looking for the same things that you are offering. By optimizing your site so it appears at the top of these searches, you can gain new customers and increase your sales. SEO takes time, effort and patience to succeed, but it is well worth the effort in the long run.
When it comes to DTC businesses in particular, SEO can be one of the most effective ways to reach new customers. While traditional advertising may work when you have an established brand, it’s hard to compete with a well-known company when you first launch your business. But if you use SEO, you can quickly gain exposure and increase the likelihood that someone will find your site. From there, you can build trust and eventually attract new customers who are looking for what you offer.
In order to optimize your website for SEO, there are a few things you can do:
- Make sure your site is easy to use (easy navigation, clear copy).
- Link to other sites from your site that have relevant information (i.e. if you’re talking about fitness, put some fitness-related links on your site).
- Update your site regularly with new content (i.e. every month or so).
- Use keywords in your site titles and other text that match what people are searching for when they search for something related to your business.
- Be sure to add descriptions when you post images on social media platforms like Facebook.com.
- Construct schema markup that tells Google how the content on your site should be displayed.
- Ensure that all links on your site are pointing to relevant pages and are not broken or missing metadata.
PPC Campaigns
PPC advertising is a form of online advertising that allows businesses to advertise their products and services on Google and other search engines using Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. PPC ads can be highly effective for businesses in the DTC space, as they allow for high levels of visibility and engagement among potential customers. When done right, PPC can be a powerful tool for increasing your business’ visibility and revenue, leading to more profitable and sustainable growth.
However, PPC advertising can be challenging for DTC businesses to navigate, as it requires an understanding of both paid search and digital advertising in general. By carefully choosing which keywords to target and implementing a PPC marketing strategy that takes into account ad performance and cost, DTC businesses can maximize the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns.
First, you need to choose the right keywords. Make sure that they are relevant to your business and that they aren’t already over-saturated with other ads.
Then you need to choose a strategy. There are two main options: pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) advertising. PPC advertising is when you pay per click on a user’s ad when they land on your website. CPA advertising is when you pay for each visitor that comes to your website. While both work, CPA has the advantage of being more cost-effective as you only have to pay once for each visitor who lands on your site. So, if you have a low conversion rate — meaning fewer people become customers — then CPA might be the better option for you.
Once you’ve chosen the type of ad that works best for your business, it’s time to get started! PPC ads can take several forms: text ads, image ads, and video ads. For example, if you sell skincare products then an image ad would be most appropriate since images are easier to see than text and provide a better visual experience for visitors.
PPC advertising is a great way to grow your DTC business, but it requires careful planning and optimization if you want to see results.
Conclusion
In an age where bigger is no longer better, visibility, engagement and optimization are the name of the growth game.
The strategies listed in this article can also grow with your business as it scales, keeping you ahead of the curve and in control of your company’s growth and reach.
Remember, true growth comes from continuous improvement. Successful companies that utilize the principles of growth marketing constantly strive to optimize and improve their strategies so they are able to sustain this growth in the long run. Having a strategic cross-functional process will not only help grow your business quickly, but it’ll also ensure you’re doing so in a sustainable way.
The team at Woodmill Strategy , located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area of Texas, has managed over $100,000,000 + in performance advertising campaigns, and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for businesses both big and small. They offer a multitude of growth and scale services for ecommerce businesses, and are offering free, no-obligation consultations to discuss your marketing goals and needs.
