In next week's members-only issue I'm going to share creative strategies for reaching “middle of funnel” (MOF) audiences. That's the "what".
This week, we’re going to discuss the "how": building a qualified, profitable MOF audiences on channels outside of Meta.
Before we get into it, I want to thank this week’s sponsor: WorkMagic is a comprehensive measurement and experimentation platform that combines the actionability of attribution and the guidance of MMM with the grounded truth of incrementality lift tests, giving omnichannel brands a strong understanding of what’s truly driving growth across your business.
The result: brands using WorkMagic have improved marketing efficiency by 10–30%. Click here to book a demo and learn more.
The “see it, like it, buy it” strategy has one major downside: your growth is limited by the existing pool of demand for whatever it is you sell. You have two options for breaking through this plateau: expanding your product assortment, and building your own MOF audience.
MOF audiences in fashion are analogous to “problem aware” audiences for problem/solution brands. These audiences have an urge to shop, but they don’t have a specific item in mind.
There is also the longer lead “top of funnel” (TOF)–audiences who will probably be shopping in the next 30 to 90 days, or longer. Advertising on lower cost channels like YouTube, AppLovin or Connected TV (CTV) is a great strategy for getting yourself in these shoppers’ consideration set without losing money.
If you participate in the DTC community online, you’ve probably heard a lot of hype about diversifying spend away from Meta. Various brands and agencies have claimed that AppLovin, YouTube and CTV are this solution. But what’s real, and what’s hype?
This week, I’m partnering with WorkMagic to answer this question by highlighting three case studies from real brands who tested these channels.
In-platform metrics don’t tell the whole story, but incrementality testing can, especially when you integrate those results into your own custom MMM and MTA models–a unique WorkMagic feature.
I’ll also be sharing some creative considerations specific to fashion brands who want to effectively test MOF and TOF advertising.
More Money, More Problems?
There are two inflection points where brands can either see growth take off like a rocket, or get stuck in a doom loop: media channel diversification and sales channel diversification.
When you start selling on Amazon and/or with national wholesale accounts, your direct response ad dollars do have a positive impact on those channels. But that impact isn’t captured by click-based analytics or (obviously) in the Shopify dashboard.
And when you start to invest in MOF and TOF marketing campaigns, the old rules of attribution that worked when you were just running Meta and Google no longer apply. The in-platform analytics on these campaigns will look terrible, and they can take weeks to start showing the real impact.
If you want to succeed in these situations, your media testing framework needs to do two things:
- Provide that media channel’s true incremental contribution to sales (click-based solutions don’t do this).
- Provide that information at the lowest cost possible. Testing and SaaS shouldn’t become a huge recurring cost that drags down your contribution margin.
WorkMagic’s Launch-to-Measure incrementality testing makes this possible, enabling you to validate new channels with 60–80% less budget than traditional incrementality tests. Here’s how three brands used WorkMagic to transform uncertainty into sales growth:
Scaling YouTube With Salt & Stone
The Brand: Salt & Stone is a premium bodycare brand and maker of “the internet’s favorite deodorant” that pairs elevated, minimalist packaging with sophisticated scents.
The Challenge: As Salt & Stone expanded from eCom-only to true omnichannel (Amazon and a growing physical retail distribution), their old marketing attribution strategies were leaving money on the table.
The customer journey had become a lot harder to measure. A customer could learn about the brand from a Meta ad, follow the brand’s Instagram, purchase for the first time in Sephora and then re-order on Amazon.
Click-based attribution that focused on eCom orders wouldn’t capture customer journeys like these. Adjusting advertising budgets based on eCom performance alone could potentially hurt Salt & Stone’s performance in its other sales channels.
Why YouTube? Salt & Stone had experience with YouTube, investing in influencers and UGC back when the brand was eCom-only. These programs were measurable, profitable and effective, so the team knew that their audience was active on the channel.
Unfortunately, capturing the full impact of YouTube as a media channel was not as straightforward. That’s why Salt & Stone turned to Workmagic to measure the full impact of their YouTube ad spend.
The Results:
- Incremental orders measured through geo lift testing were 2.7x higher than platform-reported results
- iCPA was 67% lower than reported in-platform when the halo effect on Amazon was effectively measured
- 82% of incremental orders came from new customers, proving that YouTube was an awareness channel that was also effectively driving conversions
Scaling AppLovin With Immi
The Brand: Immi’s mission is to reinvent Asian comfort foods and make them healthy enough to enjoy every day. Their flagship product is an upgraded instant ramen with 24g protein and just 5g carbs.
The Challenge: Immi’s marketing team took a data-driven approach to paid media from the start. When they first experimented with AppLovin, their ad spend was close to break-even based on in-platform performance metrics.
Based on the business-level sales trends, Immi suspected that AppLovin was driving additional sales that weren’t being captured in-platform. But they didn’t want to scale budgets based on a hunch.
Why AppLovin? In addition to the brand’s owned eCom channel, Immi is stocked in over 3,000 retail locations and on Amazon. The team wanted to diversify its ad mix because broader distribution would allow it to capture additional sales from its marketing investments.
Other brands in the category were seeing positive results with AppLovin, and many of them were repurposing their Meta ads creative, which made it a low-lift test compared to other channels.
The Results:
- AppLovin drove an 11.31% incremental lift on Shopify and 7.38% lift on Amazon via halo effect
- iCPA was 46% lower than reported in-platform when Amazon halo effect included
- AppLovin's iROAS was 36% better than other ad channels in the marketing mix
- 40.7% of sales driven by AppLovin were happening on Amazon, which made it a powerful lever for growing that channel
Scaling Connected TV With Branch Furniture
The Brand: Branch Furniture believes that office furniture can be beautiful and functional. Most office furniture forces you to pick a side–beauty or comfort? Branch Furniture delivers both.
The Challenge: Branch Furniture explored connected TV as a tactic for creating more reach and brand awareness.
The results from the initial CTV campaign were so far from Branch’s typical performance benchmarks that the team was close to abandoning the channel. To make it a significant investment, it had to deliver value on par with the rest of the brand’s performance marketing mix.
Why Connected TV? Branch Furniture is still online only, selling through its own website and an Amazon storefront. To sustain growth, the brand needed to drive awareness despite the challenges of maintaining mindshare as a digital pure play. TV was the perfect channel for this goal…if they could make the numbers work.
The Results:
- CTV drove 4.18% incremental lift in Shopify orders, which was 20x more than traditional last click reported.
- Combined with Amazon lift, the test implied a 1.46x iROAS, cementing CTV as a top paid media channel for Branch.
- 86% of CTV orders came from new customers, proving the channel's ability to drive brand reach beyond its normal audience.
Creative Considerations For Fashion Brands
Building TOF and MOF audiences can work for fashion brands too! Workmagic works with fashion brands like Steve Madden, Aviator Nation, True Classic and Comfrt.
But you’ll need to keep the following creative principles in mind to make your campaign as successful as possible:
- Art direction should align with the platform users’ expectations. Brands can usually succeed on AppLovin by repurposing 9:16 Meta ads creative, but CTV and YouTube tend to perform better with more polished visuals.
- Narrow down your goal before you start briefing or shooting ads. Middle of funnel audiences are likely to purchase in 7-30 days, and they have a specific use case in mind. Top of funnel audiences might buy in 30-90+ days, and have no use case in mind.
- To convert MOF audiences, build your ad creatives around a broad use case (wedding guest dressing, vacation dressing, officewear, etc).
- To reach TOF audiences effectively, you have to be memorable. A more polished founder video (paired with product) can work here. So can classic “branded” fashion video shoots.
- That said…make it clear what you’re selling! One colleague shared a story where a client ran a 3+ minute mini documentary about an athlete that had nothing to do with their product, and didn’t even mention the product until the end. Don’t do that!
In next week's members only issue I'm going to do a much deeper, more tactical dive on creative and messaging strategy for BOF vs MOF audiences, with a focus on Meta. Click here to become a member so you don't miss out.