MILLER LITE

Miller Lite ran prospecting, retargeting and influencer campaigns on Instagram to reach beer lovers and increase sales of its apparel and lifestyle products, which resulted in a 65% increase in incremental sales of branded merchandise.

THE STORY
“Tastes great, less filling“

Introduced in 1975 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Miller Lite is a US pilsner-style light beer with only 96 calories. To brew what it refers to as “The Original Light Beer,” Miller Lite uses water, barley malt, yeast, hops, hop extract and corn syrup.

65%

increase in incremental sales of branded merchandise

87%

increase in purchase conversions

2.5X

increase in add-to-cart conversions

3.8X

increase in incremental view content conversions

To boost awareness of the branded products available in our merchandise shop, we tested a full-funnel Facebook and Instagram campaign strategy. Dynamic ads for broad audiences helped with prospecting and remarketing the always-available branded items for sale, and easily add new items from the product catalog. Including an influencer campaign helped to further drive brand love and feed the funnel.
ANNA JOHNSON, SR. MARKETING MANAGER, PRECISION MEDIA & DATA STRATEGY, MOLSON COORS BEVERAGE COMPANY
THE GOAL
Driving incremental merchandise sales

Miller Lite wanted to reach beer fans, encourage more people to visit its online merchandise shop and convert that website traffic into higher sales of its branded apparel and lifestyle products.

THE SOLUTION
Brewing up a new strategy

To create a new revenue stream, the beer company built a Miller Lite-branded merchandise shop on its website. The company then partnered with its media agency, Connect at Publicis Media, on its promotional strategy. The team decided to run campaigns focused on prospecting, remarketing and influencers.

The team used dynamic ads for broad audiences for both the prospecting and remarketing campaigns. The dynamic ads showed tailored content to people based on their expressed online interest in Miller Lite-branded merchandise or similar products. Miller Lite partnered with Shopify to upload an online product catalog to Facebook and Instagram, and the dynamic ads automatically pulled photos of relevant products such as branded sunglasses, hoodies, hats, jackets, shirts, drink coolers, cups and more.

The prospecting campaign targeted ads to US adults aged 21 and over, including to those with beer-related interests. For the retargeting campaign, the team re-engaged with people by showing ads to those who visited the shop but had not yet made a purchase.

For the influencer campaign, prominent lifestyle influencers shot and ran paid promotional branded content, packaged as video and photo ads, from their own Facebook and Instagram profiles. In these ads, the influencers wore Miller Lite-branded clothing or used seasonal branded products from the shop. The influencers showed their ads to US adults aged 25–45, including those with beer-related interests.

Ads in all campaigns included a Shop Now button that linked to the merchandise shop. Miller Lite and the influencers delivered the ads in feed and Stories on Instagram and Facebook, as well as Explore. The team used campaign budget optimization to automatically distribute the budget across the best-performing ad sets in real time.

Miller Lite determined the results of its April 29–July 21, 2021 campaign using a single-cell Facebook conversion lift study, which revealed:

  • 65% increase in incremental sales of Miller Lite branded merchandise

  • 87% increase in purchase conversions

  • 2.5X increase in add-to-cart conversions

  • 3.8X increase in incremental view content conversions