David’s Bridal (DBI) is the anchor in the bridal market, with high brand awareness and a strong brick and mortar presence nationwide. However, in the wake of business challenges in Q4 of 2018In order to maintain relevance with their target customer, the brand aimed to maintain their marketshare by changeing the way their audience viewed them through digital video storytelling. This involved incorporating a more full-funnel strategy in media with content focused on their strength in variety, appealing to brides regardless of style, size, ethnicity, etc. In doing so, they were able to highlight their strengths as a brand, step into speaking more to the millennial bride, and work toward shifting consideration of those who saw may not have considered David’s Bridal before. as “outdated”.
With this goal in mind, the DBI team worked alongside their agency partner, January Digital (JD) to execute a digital marketing campaign that would quickly change sentiment and ultimately drive conversions for their business.
Historically more focused in the DR space but hungry to tap further into mid and top of funnel initiatives, January Digital looked to YouTube as a platform to expand the life of a David’s Bridal television commercial to spread this message. By doing so, they could efficiently reach more potential brides in a targeted fashion, start to shift consideration of those users with an emotional story, and connect the top/middle/bottom of funnel through audiences in paid search campaigns.
Goal 1 - Shift Change Perception
Campaign Type: TrueView In Stream to introduce the new messaging to our vast audience group.
Strategy: We ran a standard ad format to affinity and in-market audiences, who we knew would be likely to engage. This enabled us to learn who our message was resonating most with. For example, Beauty Mavens and Aspiring Chefs had particularly high view through rates.
Overall, we saw a 42% View Rate, outperforming the industry benchmark of 25% - due in part to the healthy mix of audience types also gained insight into the affinity audiences who hadn’t necessarily been exposed to DBI previously, and we could control their perception from the onset with our new messaging.
Goal 2 - Increase Consideration
Campaign Type: Bumper Ads to reinforce our message by retargeting those who had already viewed the In-Stream ads.
Strategy: We zero-ed in on our highly engaged audience types (mentioned above) and delivered content in 6 second bumper ads that was effective enough to get the message across impactfully. The purpose was to drive customers to the site through accompanying banner ads, and this helped narrow the target to those engaged enough with the brand to visit the site after seeing the ads a second time.
Although content was limited, our team provided recommendations as to what portions should be used for these shorter ads. Even though our original audience target was very wide, we still saw significant consideration in retargeted users through an increased conversion rate from 1% - 2%, and an increased CTR from 2% to 6%!
Goal 3 - Drive Sales
Campaign Type: True View for Action to drive in-store appointments
Strategy: Since most of DBI’s purchases happen in store, this tactic was mainly used to encourage appointment bookings by targeting In-Market and Custom Intent (i.e. Competitive Conquesting) audiences
Although the key measures of success in the overall YouTube campaign were not last-click focused and audience targets typically further from purchase, we still saw significant reach (video views) that ultimately led to appointment bookings. Additionally, the campaigns resulted in 7.5K store visits in one month. Given that 90% of DBI’s conversions happen in store, this was impactful to the overall business and showcased the power of balancing campaigns with unique and important objectives (video views and conversion).
Once we had acquired sufficient data and insight from our YouTube campaigns, we aimed at connecting this mid/top of funnel initiative with our bottom funnel paid search campaigns through audiences. By creating an audience of those who viewed our In-Stream videos, we were able to place greater search auction bid values on those who had already been exposed to the video ads. We could then follow our new users through their purchase journey and place greater value on them as they neared the purchase point. Ultimately, this allowed us to capitalize on more qualified audiences, message the user regardless of where they were in their purchase process, and inform their experience with the brand across multiple touchpoints.
Through the use of the different YouTube capabilities, we were able to increase in-store purchase growth by 7.5K store visits in one month. Given that 90% of DBI’s conversions happen in-store, this had a huge impact on business.
The YouTube campaign outperformed industry benchmarks: