by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan
Source: www.mediapost.com, May 2020
Thrive Market, Home Chef, Daily Harvest, Misfits Market, Veestro, New Age Beverages, and Suja Juice have shown the highest gains in direct-to-consumer in the food delivery sector. Social media, SEO, and well-timed paid search drove most of the traffic for D2C brands, according to data.
Two D2C companies — Thrive Market and Daily Harvest — saw an increase in paid-search traffic largely due to bidding on keywords like “grocery delivery,” “trader joe’s delivery,” “overnight oats” and “smoothie delivery.”
“While some of these brands have seen a large uptick in direct traffic as brand recognition increases, the majority of sites have seen significant upticks in traffic through paid and organic search,” said Jamie Drayton, SimilarWeb lead retail industry consultant. “As interest in products that cater to people stuck at home increases, the ability to capture traffic through organic search has grown.”
Some of those brands include Daily Harvest and Fringe Sport.
SimilarWeb’s Top 25 D2C Brands analyzed the IAB 250 Direct Brands to Watch, measuring the quarter-over-quarter performance to identify those with the highest growth across categories.
The analysis limits the results to sites with at least 10,000 monthly visits to ensure they have already gained traction with consumers.
Analysts estimate an average of 77% quarter-over-quarter growth rate for the 25 D2C brands analyzed.
SimilarWeb compared data from the beginning of 2020 to the 2019 holiday season. Most of the highest achievers come from the food category, but even some apparel brands made it into the top 25 list during the COVID-19 pandemic, as consumers largely cut back on spending in the category.
An average growth rate of 36% across these four apparel brands demonstrate that despite market trends, there is room for success.
CUUP, an underwear garment retailer, increased traffic in the first quarter of 2020 about 78% across direct advertising and marketing, 63% in social, and 44% in organic search. The rise in search signals brand recognition and interest in the brand. All top 10 organic searches include the keyword “cuup.”
FringeSport, seller of garage-ready gym equipment in the Hobbies/Lifestyle D2C category, focused its messaging on people stuck at home seeking new ways to work out. FringeSport positioned the company to meet that need, which drove up traffic to its site by 32% in April, compared with the prior month.
The top 10 D2C companies in SimilarWeb’s top 25 that experienced the highest traffic increases in the past two months include New Age Beverage, HelloMD, Nonda, Daily Harvest, Function of Beauty, Pet Plate,BioClarity, Care/of, Veesto and Public Goods.
