How Chobani Increased Web Traffic By +54% YoY

Key Takeaways

‍

Organic Social Tactic — Tailor Communication Strategy to Every Social Channel: Chobani is actively present on five major social media platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter ,and YouTube. The brand recently signalled its intention to tap into TikTok as they launched a branded hashtag challenge. Chobani follows a different communication strategy on each platform and invests in creating platform-specific content. The brand leverages Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to communicates its “make a difference” mission where they share Chobani’s social responsibility activities and behind-the-scenes footage. On Instagram and Pinterest Chobani double-downs on product-focused and engagement content. Chobani rarely cross-posts the same content between their channels, and tailors their content to each specific platform.‍

Organic Social Tactic — Educational Content: On Pinterest, Chobani posts educational content in the form of tips and tricks for their consumers. These “How-To” guides focus on consumer-based interests such as “how to pack for a weekend trip” or a “pro’s guide to snacking” in an infographic style. In addition, Chobani frequently posts vegan recipes on their Pinterest account as well as work out guides. Educational content gives your followers a reason to come back to your platform. ‍

Paid Ads Tactic – Campaign-Focused Approach: When it comes to running digital ads, Chobani deploys a very campaign-focused approach. Between 2019-2020, they ran five campaigns to support five different product lines. Chobani tailors creatives to one channel (ex. Hulu 15-second pre-rolls, YouTube 6-second bumper ads), and optimizes them for other platforms. Chobani spent twice as much advertising dollars to promote their products in 2020 than the previous year. Video ads, placed on YouTube and hulu.com account for 40% of the total ad spend in 2020.‍

Paid Ads Focus – Facebook & YouTube: Chobani is currently focusing their advertising efforts on Facebook and YouTube pre-roll ads. 33% of their 2020 advertising budget was allocated towards Facebook while 21% was allocated towards YouTube.‍

Organic Search – Invest in Elaborate Product Descriptions: 61% of Chobani’s organic search traffic comes from product-related searches. Chobani also strives to capture non-branded keywords traffic. The brand developed the vegan Recipes section on their website that currently attracts around 1.5% of search inbound traffic.

‍

Chobani’s digital ecosystem is designed to boost brand awareness, on both product and corporate responsibility levels, as well as facilitate purchases.

‍

Chobani has accumulated a sizable audience (1.9M) across five social media platforms – Facebook (1.5M), Instagram (178K), Pinterest (127K), Twitter, and YouTube.

‍

While Facebook has the largest Chobani’s audience (1.5M), the brand doesn’t communicate on this platform very often. When they do, they post about their charitable activities and collaborations with other brands.

‍

Instagram is Chobani’s most active social channel. Instagram posts are heavily product-focused and occasionally they post about the brand’s “make a difference” initiatives.

‍

Chobani leverages their Twitter account to spread the news about charity initiatives and frequently re-posts their CEO’s tweets on the same subject.

‍

Chobani creates Pinterest-friendly infographics about healthy living where they organically embeds their products.

‍

YouTube is the channel for Chobani to expand on such topics as corporate responsibility and social issues, as well as to share some behind-the-scenes footage of their company.

‍

Over the last two years (2019-2020) Chobani spent $8.9M on paid advertising: $2.9M in 2019 and twice as much ($6M) in 2020.

‍

Chobani has very campaign-focused digital ads strategy. There were five major product promo campaigns over the last two years.

‍

Early in 2019 Chobani launched a comprehensive campaign to support its “Less Sugar” yogurts. Video and banner ads were deployed on YouTube and social media platforms with the largest budget share (~$1M) going to Facebook.

‍

Between February – April 2020, Chobani ran a comprehensive campaign to support its Flip yogurt line. YouTube was the main advertising channel with a $1.4M* budget for this video campaign.

‍

At the same time, Chobani ran a series of 15 seconds ads on hulu.com (Disney+) to support non-dairy milk products. The same creatives were also optimized for social media ads.

‍

In Mid-April 2020, Chobani aired a Coffee Creamer awareness campaign on social media, leveraging animated videos and focusing on communicating “delicious taste.”

‍

Between September and November 2020, Chobani promoted their “Complete” product line with 6-second YouTube pre-rolls and Instagram ads.

‍

Display ads, combined with paid search, drive 13% of total Chobani’s desktop web traffic. Between 2019-2020 Chobani ran 1,110 variants of search ads, primarily targeting variations of branded keywords (63%).

‍

Chobani has seen a +54% YoY web traffic increase in 2020.

‍

The surge was driven by the mobile traffic, which doubled (+101%) in 2020. By the year end (Dec. ‘20) mobile visits made up 74% of total Chobani’s web traffic.

‍

Organic search and direct are the two main traffic channels. The share of organic search visits has been steadily increasing YoY, hitting 61% at the end of 2020.

‍

Organic search visits are mainly powered by branded keywords (75%), half of which are product-specific.

‍

61% of all search traffic lands on the product detail pages, followed by the homepage (25%).

‍

Chobani has very elaborate content sections, like Recipes and Impact, yet these areas don’t attract a significant volume of organic search traffic.