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    How to make your D2C brand stand out of competition

    Synopsis

    Opting for the D2C business model is a great leap for any brand, including yours. Regardless of the size, area of operation or the industry, a D2C approach can truly make a difference in defining success for your brand. Think about all the possibilities you're exposed to by removing the middlemen.

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    Reaching customers and selling directly to them surely has its advantages. But, is D2C really for you? And, if yes, then why do you need it?
    The advent of 4G, introduction of smartphones and nationwide internet penetration heralded a major change in the Indian retail ecosystem. The rise of ecommerce marketplaces and online shopping allowed brands to expand faster than ever. But, the global pandemic disrupted natural order, leading to innovation and bringing a new business model to the fore - direct-to-consumer (D2C).

    A new buzzword for today's marketers, D2C has helped in disrupting the brand-consumer relationship by means of easy and direct access to one another. The new-age brands are no longer relying solely on brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce marketplaces or any other intermediaries to reach out to their target audience. In fact, firms are redefining their marketing strategy by giving more impetus to their D2C communication.

    Brands that are not yet considering the D2C model run the risk of losing loyal customers whose behaviour and expectations have undergone a noticeable change. A Statista report suggests that 55% of buyers now prefer to shop directly with the brand as compared to multi-brand retailers. Another 50% prefer to visit brand websites for comprehensive product information.

    What Is D2C?

    As the name suggests, the direct-to-consumer (D2C) model refers to manufacturing and selling products directly to customers. Brands no longer need to be bothered about various middlemen involved before their product finally reaches the end customer. In a typical retail set up, the manufactured products of a brand go through a lengthy process -manufacturer/producer>wholesaler>distributor>retailer>consumer.

    Breaking away from the traditional retail model, the D2C approach quite literally cuts out the intermediaries or middlemen. By pivoting to the D2C model, brands can reach directly to the customer by setting up a digital presence and connecting with customers on multiple touchpoints, by going omnichannel. The aim of D2C selling is to provide the best customer buying experience across platforms and devices.

    Why Do You Need D2C?
    Reaching customers and selling directly to them surely has its advantages. But, is D2C really for you? And, if yes, then why do you need it? Let's try and answer that.

    Opting for the D2C business model is a great leap for any brand, including yours. Regardless of the size, area of operation or the industry, a D2C approach can truly make a difference in defining success for your brand. Think about all the possibilities you're exposed to by removing the middlemen. For starters, you can save big on the margins and, thereon, sell products at much lower costs to the end consumer. Secondly, by selling directly to consumers, you'll have better control over manufacturing, supply, distribution and fulfillment channels. And, most importantly, you can connect better with consumers by offering them a personalized omnichannel journey.

    Apart from selling directly on their brand website and mobile apps, one can also experiment with different distribution and fulfillment models to further optimize the overall costs. Going D2C has paid rich dividends for brands as well as startups looking to up the ante. Whether you operate in the fashion industry, looking to make a mark in the grooming sector or trying to grow your brand in the wellness ecosystem, D2C is such an impactful model that you just cannot overlook.

    How Your D2C Brand Can Stand Apart?
    Now that we've identified D2C as the most-preferred model, how do you make your D2C brand stand out from the competition? Here's a look at how you can give your D2C brand a competitive edge:

    Advanced E-Commerce Platform: For any D2C brand to function properly, let alone succeed and stand out, an advanced e-commerce platform is a necessity. Owing to an increase in the consumption of online products and services, brands need their e-commerce website or platform to be flexible for change, secure in facilitating payments, effective in personalization and seamless in integration.

    As the recent pandemic highlighted, you need to be ready for disruptive change. That's why firms need their e-commerce platforms to be flexible enough in making extensive and fast customizations like tweaking product prices, storefronts and site themes among others. Similarly, the ability of a brand to personalize content can elevate customer experience and increase conversions. An e-commerce platform must enable a D2C brand to implement vital personalization in the site content (in local languages), user's homepage feed (as per their location and interests), promotions (on wish-listed items) and other elements.

    When it comes to online payments, safeguarding the privacy and security of customer information remains critical for building trust and confidence with consumers. To put things in perspective, an advanced e-commerce platform can significantly increase scalability, improve site speed, reduce costs and ensure privacy and security on your site.

    Make User-Friendly Apps: Since mobile has now become a mainstream shopping channel for buyers, it offers a big opportunity for brands to increase sales and extend their customer base. But, to truly harness the power of mobile apps, D2C brands need to make the apps user-friendly. There are numerous ways to make your app user-friendly and all of them aim at enhancing customers' buying journey.

    Many brands can lure customers in but struggle to keep them on their mobile apps. The lengthy process of signing up for an app is the prime reason why potential customers run away. Using one-click functionality, like allowing users to sign in or register with their existing email ids, social login etc. expedites the process of mobile registration. Similarly, when making a payment, the buyer journey can be accelerated by adding mobile wallets and UPI for instant payments.

    To negate the problems of abandoned transactions, brands can also synchronize their mobile apps with multiple devices in a bid to enable consumers in finishing a purchase as per their choice of device and convenience. Also, the addition of social sharing buttons on the mobile app allows customers to spread the word about your products or services which can help in widening the reach and accessibility of your business.

    Using Behavioral Consumer Data: When it comes to growth, nothing seems more impactful than a brand's efficiency in collecting, analyzing and, thereon, using behavioral consumer data to its advantage. By connecting your D2C site with social media pages, heat-maps tools, Google Analytics, Google Ads and CRM among others, you can successfully track and capture visitor behavior data. Web cookies can help you track buyers’ activities on your D2C e-commerce site. By identifying the buyers' site usage like pages they visit, products they wishlist, searches they perform etc., a brand can provide a personalized shopping experience to the buyers during their visits. Once the data is gathered, a brand can filter it before eventually using it for predicting consumer behavior. By making use of such priceless data, you can personalize advertising and email marketing campaigns, heighten customer interaction, improve customer relations and, thereon, generate more sales and revenue.

    Turn Product Pages Into Sales Magnet: With persuasive product pages, you can highlight your product value on various channels. This will eventually convince the customers to add the item to the cart and checkout immediately. Posting high-quality images and videos as well as genuine reviews and ratings, ensuring transparency in price and delivery, and writing persuasive product descriptions, are some ways through which you can build appealing product pages and increase the add-to-cart rate. In fact, create product design and features in a manner that they address customers’ pain points and you will eventually see your sales skyrocketing!

    Reduce Friction In Checkout Process: No matter how user-friendly and appealing your product page is, if the checkout process on your website is not streamlined, you have a major problem. Your D2C brand should have a seamless checkout process so that the cart abandonment rates are reduced and sales are uplifted. Embedding security on checkout pages, reducing form fields, and offering multiple payment options are all ways to reduce cart abandonment rates. Adding to it, highlighting benefits such as free shipping and easy returns, along with providing live chat support will help ensure greater conversions by offering high-end user experiences. The more seamless the checkout process is and the more eased out is the buying experience; higher will be your sales.

    Way Forward
    The D2C model has made significant strides in the last few years and the global pandemic only accelerated its widespread adoption. For once, brands started to realize that technology was not too difficult to implement and integrate, and that enabling online channels didn't really jeopardize their indirect sales when using the right strategy.

    The noticeable success of D2C brands with rapid astronomical growth, in the recent past, is a testimony that the unique model is here to stay. However, the growing competition, need for extreme personalizations, rapidly changing customer preferences and matching the customers' expectations can be quite challenging for D2C brands.

    Thus, going forward, brands will need consistent innovations in a bid to find and implement the right technology solutions to stay relevant and stand apart in the ever-competitive market.

    (The writer is founder & CEO, StoreHippo)



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    Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.

    Subscribe to The Economic Times Prime and read the ET ePaper online.

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