How Target Product Ads and Perpetua helped OWYN grow category share and drive 6x share of voice

OWYN (Only What You Need), was founded in 2016 by husband and wife duo Kathryn Moos and Jeff Mroz, and has grown to be the #1 plant-based ready-to-drink protein beverage in multi-channel markets within the US. With nearly 1/3 of Americans suffering from food intolerances or allergies, OWYN not only wants to bring clean ingredients, functional superiority, and uncompromised taste to their products, but ensure that they provide full transparency to allergen contaminants.

Launching first on direct-to-consumer and Amazon, OWYN has expanded to Target Ads via Perpetua and Criteo, to capture new customers and drive brand awareness within the protein shake category about quality, clean, and affordable plant-based alternatives.

With an effort to drive category share and increase their fair share index (milk-based proteins currently dominate approx. 14% of the category, with plant-based only occupying 1-2%), OWYN leverages Target's Product ads to heighten awareness through increased top of search placements and organic rank, while maintaining their high lifetime value (LTV).

Since launching on Target, OWYN has seen:

• 46% increase in sales

• 6x higher share of voice on Target vs Amazon for flagship category keywords

• Organic rank increase by 150%

• 47% lower CPC on Target vs Amazon for flagship category keywords

The Challenge

As a relatively new brand, OWYN is focused on finding ways to grow sales, capture new customers, and drive brand and category awareness among consumers that are market ready or already repeaters within the category. This comes down to a data oriented strategy and using analytics to drive actionable marketing initiatives that lead to high repeat purchasers and LTV.

"When you think about protein or nutrition, you think about a habitual routine as a part of day-to-day life, which allows us to build high lifetime value, repeat customers," says Mark Olivieri, President at OWYN. "As we roll out expansion to new eCommerce channels, we look for opportunities to capture these repeat purchasers and grow the category."

The Solution

For OWYN, a part of driving this awareness is working with their retail partners to heighten awareness for the category itself, bringing plant-based protein shakes next to the billion-dollar brands, helping drive new foot traffic and interested prospects into the category.

While capturing new, repeat purchasers helps grow OWYN's sales through Target.com, the addition of Target Ads is more than just a sales related effort. It shows category managers that they are able to successfully invest in Target Product Ads to build their category.

"We're willing to invest more in acquiring new customers by winning category keywords on Target because we've seen an incredible repeat purchase rate of +51% through this channel."

"With Perpetua and Criteo, we are able to easily measure the impact of our advertising spend on driving category awareness in retailers like Target."

Results

As a result of OWYN's early mover adoption of Target Ads, and their partnership with Perpetua and Criteo, they are able to win 33% top of search placements for high volume category keywords at a significantly lower CPC than on Amazon, helping to drive 6x higher share of voice within their category on Target.

Additionally, OWYN has seen a 46% increase in sales and improved their ROAS by 10%. OWYN's average click-through rate (CTR) has also more than doubled since launch, with high stock turnover leading to doubling in-store facings to help create additional backstock.

"The advantage of working with Perpetua and Criteo to power our Target Ads is having visibility across all of our marketplaces. We can leverage the results of our different search strategies to funnel insights into Target to continue to build our category awareness.

To get started or learn more about how Perpetua can help you scale your eCommerce business, contact us at hello@perpetua.io.