D2C brand performance marketing, a data-driven approach focused on achieving measurable results, presents a powerful growth opportunity for today’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. Learn more about how this highly targeted tactic can deliver success for brands looking to ramp up their straight-to-the-consumer sales.
A powerful (and popular) path to higher profits
The D2C business model, fueled largely by the sell-to-anywhere nature of the internet, has exploded in recent years. Just how big has the boom been? Consider this: U.S. e-commerce sales have jumped from just under $76.6 billion in 2019 to a forecasted $212.9 billion in 2024 — representing a 178% growth rate in just five years.
For many brands, the D2C opportunity is a powerful one — and the reasons behind the model’s allure are plentiful. First and foremost, selling D2C offers brands the chance to bypass traditional retail channels and sell directly to their customers, enabling added profits. Further, by cutting out the middleman, D2C brands can control every aspect of the customer experience — from product development to marketing and distribution — while building stronger, more personal relationships with their audiences. This shift has allowed well-known D2C success stories such as prescription eyewear brand Warby Parker, beauty brand Glossier, and footwear brand Allbirds to disrupt entire industries, while capturing loyal customers and seizing rapid growth.
But such eye-catching sales acceleration brings added competition. And as more brands enter the D2C space, standing out and driving sustainable growth there has become increasingly challenging. This is where performance marketing — a data-driven approach that focuses on measurable results including clicks, conversions, and sales — can make a big difference for D2C brands looking to maximize their marketing efforts and stand apart from the pack.
Understanding performance marketing — what it is and how it’s achieved
Also known as pay-for-performance or performance-based advertising, performance marketing is a primarily digital marketing strategy in which brands pay for advertising spots only when they deliver specific, pre-defined results. While brands pay for exposure up front (via ad spots) in traditional advertising, performance marketing allows them to pay digital advertising platforms only when a specific action is taken, such as a click, a sale, or another type of conversion.
This revised payment structure makes performance marketing highly cost-effective, because for brands, every dollar spent is directly tied to results. It also shifts the focus from vague measurement metrics such as ad impressions to more tangible ones that demonstrate true business growth, such as website visits, submission of quote requests, and sales. In addition, the tactic provides clear insights into the effectiveness of every campaign, while allowing for real-time optimization and scalability.
The vast majority of performance marketing campaigns are carried out online, with the top D2C marketing examples used to execute the strategy, including:
- D2C paid search: Paid campaigns are typically executed on popular search platforms such as Google and Bing, and allow brands to bid for prominent, sponsored placement high on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- PPC (pay-per-click) advertising: In PPC campaigns, advertisers pay a fee when users click through and visit their websites. Ad placements can appear on SERPs, on social media platforms, and as display advertising on websites.
- Social media ads: Advertisements on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest allow brands to target highly specific audiences based on their demographics, interests and behaviors.
- Affiliate marketing: Using this tactic, brands partner with individuals or other businesses to promote their products in exchange for a commission on each sale driven through the affiliates’ referrals.
- Email marketing: By sending targeted emails to audiences of consumers who have agreed to receive their messaging, brands can nurture leads, re-engage inactive customers, and promote new products or offers.
- Influencer marketing: Brands partner with individuals who have sizable online followings — “influencers” — in this type of campaign, which often uses performance-based metrics like click-through rates or sales to gauge success. The influencers are paid to promote partner brands’ products to their often highly loyal and trusting audiences of consumers.
Building a successful D2C brand with performance marketing
The best route to building a thriving D2C brand with performance marketing begins with employing a well-structured approach that leverages data, personalization, and continuous optimization. Here are a few of the key steps common to most successful, growth-geared D2C performance marketing campaigns:
Outline clear objectives
The foundation of any successful marketing strategy — performance marketing included — starts with defining clear objectives. After all, without well-defined goals, it’s impossible to measure a campaign’s success or optimize its elements effectively.
Keep these two key steps in mind:
- Focus on specific KPIs: Start by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your brand’s overall business goals. For D2C brands, KPIs typically revolve around customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer lifetime value (CLV). These metrics help you understand how much it costs to acquire a customer, how often they return, and how much money they spend with your brand over time.
- Define short-term vs. long-term goals: Be sure to set both short- and long-term objectives for your performance marketing campaigns. Short-term goals might focus on driving immediate sales or increasing website traffic for your brand. Long-term goals, on the other hand, often center around building brand loyalty, reducing churn and increasing CLV. Balancing short-term wins with long-term growth can help ensure your performance marketing strategy is both profitable and sustainable.
Leverage data and analytics
One of performance marketing’s biggest strengths is giving a brand the capacity to leverage real-time data and use it to drive decision-making. When seeking to grow your D2C brand with performance marketing, take the following steps that can help you harness the full power of data and analytics in your performance marketing campaigns:
- Gather customer insights: Use the results of your performance marketing campaigns to track and analyze your target customers’ behavior, purchasing patterns, and engagement. By understanding what motivates your audience to convert, you can refine your messaging, offers, and targeting to increase your likelihood of success.
- Employ the right tools: Google Analytics and similar platforms can provide detailed insights into your website’s performance and user behavior during performance marketing campaigns. For paid campaigns, tools like the Facebook Pixel can help you track customer interactions with your ads and website, while marketing automation tools like HubSpot or Klaviyo can help you gather data and effectively nurture leads.
Utilize segmentation and personalization
Another powerful aspect of performance marketing is the ability it gives brands to create highly targeted and personalized campaigns. By segmenting your audience and tailoring your messaging using the following tactics, you can significantly improve the relevance and effectiveness of your ads:
- Segment your audiences: Break down your audience members into different segments based on their demographics, interests, behaviors and/or purchasing history. This allows you to tailor your campaigns to specific groups, making your marketing more relevant and impactful to each segmented audience.
- Create personalized offers: Once you’ve segmented your audience, create personalized offers and ads that speak directly to the needs and preferences of each group. Personalized campaigns that show customers you understand their interests and buying habits tend to perform better, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
Test and optimize continuously
With continuous testing and optimization, your brand can maximize the impact of all of its performance marketing campaigns. Every campaign should be treated as an opportunity to learn and improve, and these tactics can help you achieve each of these goals:
- Perform A/B testing: Use A/B testing to experiment with different versions of your landing pages, ad creatives, copy, and offers. This powerful type of testing allows you to understand what resonates best with your audience members and refine your strategy accordingly. For example, you can test different headlines, images, and call-to-action buttons to see which variation drives the most conversions.
- Adjust budgets and strategies: Use real-time performance data to make informed adjustments to your marketing spend and other campaign strategies. If a certain ad or segment is underperforming, consider making tweaks to improve performance or allocating more budget to higher performing alternatives. Keeping your marketing approach flexible means you’ll always be able to optimize your campaigns for the best possible return on investment.
By defining clear objectives, leveraging data, segmenting audiences, and continuously optimizing your efforts, you can build a performance marketing strategy that drives meaningful growth for your D2C brand. This structured, data-driven approach can help you ensure that every campaign not only brings in results, but also helps your brand continually refine its strategy for long-term success.
Increasing D2C sales with performance marketing
For D2C brands looking to drive consistent sales growth with performance marketing, a number of key practices have been proven to deliver success across various digital channels. To increase your brand’s sales numbers using this tactic, consider implementing these powerful and actionable strategies:
Optimize your paid search and social media campaigns
Paid search and social media advertising are two of the most effective channels for driving sales in the D2C space. Optimizing these campaigns with the following tactics can significantly increase traffic, conversions and overall revenues:
- Employ best practices for Google Ads, Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads: On Google Ads, focus your bidding on relevant keywords that signify high-level purchase intent among consumers (e.g., “where buy [product name]” or “best [product name]”), and make use of ad extensions (such as site links and callouts) to improve your visibility and click-through rates. With Facebook and Instagram ads, ensure your creative assets (images, videos and copy) are visually appealing and align with your brand’s tone. Also, leverage precise audience targeting options to reach the right consumers based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics. Further, consider using carousel ads or video ads to more effectively showcase your brand’s products and their features.
- Employ dynamic retargeting to follow up with cart abandoners and past visitors: Dynamic retargeting allows you to serve personalized ads to users who have already visited your site or who added items to their cart but didn’t complete a purchase. Highly effective for recovering lost sales, these ads can display the exact products the user interacted with, encouraging them to return and complete their purchase journeys.
- Target lookalike audiences based on high-value customer profiles: Use the data from your best-performing customers to create lookalike audiences on platforms like Facebook and Google. These lookalike audiences will include consumers who share similar traits with your brand’s highest-value customers, allowing you to expand your reach to new and highly relevant potential buyers.
Tap into email marketing for high ROI
Email marketing remains one of the highest-ROI strategies for brands of all kinds, including D2C brands. And implementing these tactics can make your brand’s email campaigns even more effective:
- Implement personalized email funnels: Develop automated email campaigns for various stages of the customer journey, including:
– Abandoned cart emails: Send a series of emails to remind customers about the products they’ve left in their carts, possibly offering discounts or incentives to complete the purchase.
– Post-purchase upsells: After a customer completes a purchase, send follow-up emails with recommendations for complementary products or including promotional offers to encourage their next purchase.
– Win-back campaigns: Use this email tactic to re-engage lapsed customers with personalized offers or exclusive promotions to bring them back to your brand.
- Use automation for lead nurturing and re-engagement: Email automation tools like Klaviyo or Mailchimp allow your brand to set up targeted email sequences that nurture leads over time, send timely product updates and trigger re-engagement emails for inactive customers. Automation reduces your staff’s workload and helps ensure that your customers receive timely and relevant messages, maximizing the chances of conversion.
Utilize affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing allows your D2C brand to leverage third-party partners — such as influencers, content creators and bloggers — to promote your products on a performance-based payout model. This is an excellent strategy for expanding your brand’s reach while paying only for actual sales generated. To implement a successful affiliate marketing program, some of the key steps to take include:
- Partnering with the right influencers and content creators: Identify affiliates who align with your brand values and have an audience that matches your target market. Influencers and bloggers can promote your products through social media posts, blog articles or video content, helping drive traffic and sales directly to your website.
- Tracking and optimizing affiliate sales: Use affiliate tracking tools like ShareASale or Impact to monitor which partners are driving the most sales and to optimize payouts accordingly. Regularly evaluate affiliate performance, adjusting commissions or incentives to ensure the highest ROI.
Maximize conversions with landing pages
Landing pages play a critical role in converting traffic from your brand’s performance marketing campaigns. And once built, optimizing these pages for conversions with steps such as these can significantly increase your sales:
- Prioritize mobile-optimized, fast-loading landing pages: Many customers will view your D2C brand’s landing pages on mobile devices, so it’s important that your pages are responsive, load quickly and offer a seamless user experience. A slow or poorly designed landing page can lead to high bounce rates and lost sales.
- Implement strategies to align your landing pages with ad messaging: Take steps to ensure that the messaging and offers on your brand’s landing pages match the ads or emails that led visitors to them. Consistency in messaging will help you build trust and reassure visitors that they’ve landed in the right place. Additionally, employ strong calls to action (CTAs) and a clear, distraction-free design to more effectively guide users toward conversion.
By optimizing efforts in critical areas such as paid ads, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and landing pages, your D2C brand can maximize its performance marketing efforts — helping you attract new customers, recover lost opportunities, drive added sales, and boost long-term revenues.
Put performance marketing to work for your brand — with Brandon
Ready to tap into the power of performance marketing to boost your D2C brand’s exposure and sales? Working with ad agencies that specialize in e-commerce can help you get the most out of your brand’s performance marketing efforts — the performance marketing pros at Brandon have been helping D2C brands get results in categories ranging from consumer packaged goods and telecommunications to outdoors, travel/tourism, lifestyle apparel, legal, telecommunications and many others.
Further, Brandon’s fully integrated marketing firm can cover the entire spectrum of your D2C brand’s marketing needs, from SEO, social media, and email marketing to e-commerce, digital marketing, media, creative, analytics, public relations, brand strategy, web design, and much more. To get started with help ranging from a simple website analysis to a comprehensive strategy tailored to boost the performance of all your marketing campaigns, contact us today.