DTC736: What Is Answer Engine Optimization?

Good morning,

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:

🔍 You have an SEO strategy but how about AEO? We discuss the emerging importance of answer engine optimization for brand visibility in 2025.  
📹 Did you know 20% of ecommerce sales are driven by social commerce? Learn how social commerce is transforming the way brands interact with customers.
🔥 And… Can action words impact your CTR? Learn how adding action words to your call to action buttons can make an impact.

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Taboola, Trilogy Flavors, and Hairburst. 👋

🤔 Take The Guesswork Out—This 2025 Ad Creative Cheat Sheet Tells You What Works, And What Doesn’t

Ready to find out what really makes ads work in 2025?

Motion, the creative analytics and research platform used by brands like HexClad, Vuori, True Classic, and Jones Road Beauty, put in the research to answer the question on everyone’s mind: What really makes Meta ads work in 2025?

To find out exactly what you need to know, they:

• 💵 Analyzed $100M in ad spend.
• 📊 Surveyed 500+ DTC advertisers to quantify strategy shifts, technology changes, and creative priorities.
• 🧠 Interviewed 12 DTC leaders and creative experts to extract emerging insights, patterns, and challenges.

This explosive report delivers insights you can’t afford to miss, revealing the 7 most important ad creative trends for 2025, and so, so much more. 💥

💡 Three Important Answer Engine Optimization Tips

Optimizing your site for SEO will not be enough in 2025.

Marketers will also need to pay close attention to answer engine optimization best practices as users turn to AI tools for product discovery and to validate purchasing decisions.

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What is Answer Engine Optimization?

Answer Engine Optimization (also known as generative engine optimization) is an emerging strategy focused on optimizing content for AI search engines.

While SEO focuses on optimizing your website visibility in search engine result pages, AEO focuses on getting your website content to show up in AI-generated responses in SearchGPT and other platforms like Google’s AI Overviews.

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Why is this important?

AI Overviews now appear in almost half of Google searches and are beginning to cite their information sources so this is a big opportunity for brands to gain more visibility.

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Ways to optimize your ecommerce site for AEO:

• Have clear website content that answers queries in a conversational manner: This makes it easier for AI to understand and synthesize.
  
  👉 If you already have lots of customer reviews on your site, this can work in your favor.
  
  This is valuable user-generated content that AI systems can parse through and summarize pros and cons for potential buyers.

• Make your content credible. Include citations, stats, and quotes from experts to raise your content authority and follow Google’s E-E-A-T principles.
  
  👉 If you have a blog on your ecommerce site this is a great place to create long-form content about your industry or product.
  
  You can also include use cases on your product pages as well.
  
• Take advantage of HTML markup: Utilize heading tags, bullet points, bold fonts to make copy easy to scan.
  
  👉 In your FAQs, structure questions and answers using clear headers and concise wording.

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The takeaway?

Answer engine optimization should be a part of your marketing strategy if you want to increase your organic website traffic in 2025.

Those who use AI answer engines are looking for immediate answers so make sure your content addresses their queries clearly.

Getting a placement in AI Overviews can help immensely with brand visibility as this new feature takes up nearly half the screen space on both desktop and mobile devices.

⚒️ Get Clarity on Post-Click Google Ads Performance!

ICYMI Microsoft Clarity released an integration with Google Ads.

What it does: help advertisers see how paid traffic interacts with your site, potentially improving ROI on ad spend.

💡 This helps bridge the gap between ad spend and engagement metrics.

👀 Your Competitors Would Love For You to Miss This Report—But Here's Another Chance to Take a Look.

What if you had a cheat sheet telling you exactly how to make ads work in 2025?

Wish granted. 🪄

Motion’s new cutting-edge report, already downloaded by thousands of DTC brands and agencies, reveals the 7 most important ad creative trends for 2025 and oh, so much more.

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Download and discover:

➡️ Insights from the top minds in DTC and what trends they see making brands the most sales in 2025.
➡️ Easy formats to make it simple to scale your ad accounts.
➡️ Insights into AI ads, AI for creative generation, AI avatars, and pitfalls to avoid in this new territory.

The first DTC brands who apply these creative trends are going to capture the most attention. Read the report today, and catch their eye with new on-trend ads tomorrow. ✨

🎧 Integrating Social Commerce with Email Retention

In this episode of TWBERP, we chat with Jocelyn Kell, Pod Lead at Pilothouse about how social commerce is transforming the way DTC brands engage customers through platforms like Facebook and Instagram shops.

Jocelyn shares essential insights on using email marketing to maximize retention for customers acquired through social platforms, plus why email integrations need to be airtight to drive ROI.

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In this podcast, we cover:

• Why 20% of ecommerce sales are now driven by social commerce—and it’s still growing!
• How to connect Meta shops to Klaviyo for seamless email list-building: Jocelyn breaks down how to integrate platforms like Klaviyo with Meta Shops to ensure email leads are nurtured effectively.
• The importance of consistent offers across platforms to improve retention: Matching offers across social commerce and primary ecommerce sites is key to retaining customers and driving repeat purchases.

👉 You can listen to the full episode with Jordan and Jocelyn here.

🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE

Attack, capture, slay!

What do these words have in common?

They are all action words that persuade customers to click on your call to action buttons.

E.g. Capture More Leads sounds more compelling than Learn More.

💡 Use these in your A/B testing to see a lift in conversions.

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⚡ QUICK HITS

🤔 What ad trends are getting the most sales in 2025? Motion analyzed $100M in ad spend and surveyed 500+ DTC brands to give you the latest creative insights for ads that work. Grab your copy here. *