How Liquid I.V. Grew Its Web Traffic By 3.7X in 2020

Key Takeaways

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Social Media — Leverage Unique Features of Each Platform: Liquid I.V. deploys distinct communication strategies for each social media channel. The brand effectively leverages unique features of each platform to grow its following and maximize  engagement:

• On Instagram Liquid I.V. frequently collaborates with influencers to raise brand awareness and runs product giveaways.
• On Facebook, the company maintains up-to-date Shop and Special Offer sections as well as shares the links to their website in the feed posts.
• In the summer of 2020, Liquid I.V. aired a YouTube-exclusive mini-series “Our Journey to Changing the World”, which gained over 600K views and helped to grow the YouTube channel by 595% in one year.
• The brand ventured into TikTok in late 2019 and has been creating videos with the efforts of the company’s own office team. Liquid I.V.’s TikTok is an example of how a brand can leverage social media channels to show another dimension of the brand story—people behind the company—and drive authenticity and empathy.
  

These efforts resulted in double-digit growth across all of its social media channels.

Paid Ads — Run Conversion-Focused Ads: When it comes to running digital ads, Liquid I.V. is highly focused on the returns on the invested dollars. The brand often leverages discount promo codes and limited-time offers in their social media ads to trigger purchases. Liquid I.V. invests most of its digital advertising budget in Facebook Ads (55%). In 2020, the company added the Instagram platform into the advertising channel mix and invested $1.3M in this platform alone. ‍

Organic Content — Optimize Website for Sales: While Liquid I.V. spends generously to drive traffic to their e-commerce website, the brand doesn’t seem to invest much into search optimization of their e-commerce platform. Liquid I.V. doesn’t maintain a current Blog section, instead, the company has an evergreen “Science” page that attracts less than 1% of all inbound search traffic. 72% of all inbound search visits land on the homepage.

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Liquid I.V.’s digital ecosystem is designed to boost both online and offline sales. The brand runs digital ads that drive consumers to the company’s e-comm website as well as inform customers which retailers carry the brand's products. Liquid I.V. has been actively growing its social following as well as increasing social media advertising budgets — both contributed to increased social traffic to the website.

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Liquid I.V. actively engages their 300K social media community and deploys different communication strategies for each of their social channels.

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Organic Social

In 2020 Liquid I.V. saw double-digit growth across its social media channels—YouTube alone grew by 593%.

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Liquid I.V. often collaborates with Instagram influencers and strives to grow its own loyal bloggers. The company launched a brand ambassador program that invites qualified followers to partner with Liquid I.V.

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Liquid I.V. runs giveaways almost every week. Each contest on average adds 586 new followers to Liquid I.V.’s Instagram account.

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Collaborations with creators result in lots of user-generated content, which Liquid I.V. repurposes on its page. The brand also encourages its audience to adhere to a healthy lifestyle with motivational quotes, which generate higher than page average engagement.

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Liquid I.V. maximizes Facebook’s features, such as the ability to create a shop and add promo offers to the page.

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The brand tailors content specifically for Facebook and runs platform-exclusive giveaways. Liquid I.V. frequently shares the links to their blog to educate their audience and drive traffic to the website.

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Liquid I.V. is not very active on Twitter. The brand doesn’t often start conversations, however, they find ways to engage in relevant threads.

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The brand ventured into TikTok at the end of 2019 and has been creating humorous videos of their office lifestyle with an infrequent posting schedule.

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In July 2020, Liquid I.V. launched a YouTube-exclusive video series “Our Journey to Changing the World,” which generated over 600K views and contributed to 595% channel growth.

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Paid Ads

In 2020 Liquid I.V. spent $8.7M on digital ads which is +885% more than the previous year ($768K).

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Facebook remained Liquid I.V.’s main advertising channel. In 2020, Liquid I.V. added Instagram to their advertising channels mix and invested $2M in this platform alone. 

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Liquid I.V. invested in conversion-oriented ad campaigns through the sharing of promo-codes in their ads and aimed to bring a sense of urgency with limited-time offers.

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Liquid I.V. had 1,122 variants of the search ads running in 2020. Text ads targeted a mix of branded and hydration-related keywords and aimed to increase the click-through rate by offering discounts in the titles.

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At the same time, Liquid I.V. ran product search ads that targeted various problems the product could help with, such as insomnia and hangovers.

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Organic Content

In 2020, traffic to Liquid I.V.’s website grew by 3.7x times, compared to 2019.

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Organic search has seen the highest YoY increase (+1,014%) and direct (+297%) remained the second-largest traffic contributor.

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Most people (68%) who landed on the Liquid I.V. website came from branded search.

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77% of all inbound search traffic landed on the homepage. Product section “Shop” accounted for 10% of search traffic.

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Direct traffic spiked in July 2020 (+177% vs June 2020), which coincided with the launch of “Our Journey to Changing the World” mini-series on YouTube and a new product release.

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