Direct-to-Consumer Marketing Made Easy: DTC Tips and Tactics for ECommerce Businesses
First Things First: What Is Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Marketing?
Traditionally, brands would sell products to third-party retailers at a steep discount because they were reliant on those retailers to promote and sell their products to consumers.
Thankfully, the online shopping boom has made the direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing model an increasingly popular choice amongst consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands.
DTC marketing consists of any and all tactics a brand uses to promote its products or services directly to customers. Breaking free of retailers and cutting out the middleman offers businesses several advantages while also allowing brands to build more meaningful relationships with their customers and offer an improved shopping experience.
Benefits of Direct-to-Consumer Marketing for ECommerce Brands
Greater Control
In a retail environment, brands have little control over how their products are presented and promoted. To make matters worse, there are countless other options from competing brands on the shelves just inches away.
DTC marketing brings the spotlight back to your brand. On your website, there are no competitor’s products for customers to compare yours to. All eyes are on your brand and you’re in the driver’s seat: you can talk about, showcase, distribute, and price your products in the way that’s best for your business’s bottom line.
Access To First-Party Data
Marketing is extremely data-driven (well, good marketing is). By selling your products directly to consumers instead of through retailers, you can gain a better understanding of the customer journey, access useful customer data, and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
First-party data points that may be available to eCommerce brands include:
Demographics
Contact Information
Purchase Information
Web Browsing History
Interests
Marketing and Content Preferences
Better Margins
In selling products directly to consumers, brands no longer need to share a slice of the metaphorical pie with retailers. This allows your brand to offer customers discounts while still making a larger profit – talk about a win-win!
Direct-to-Consumer Marketing Tips and Strategies
Build a Strong Brand Identity
Solid branding helps your company stand out amongst competitors. It also makes your brand easily recognizable to consumers while fostering customer loyalty.
Take the time to develop a unique brand identity that resonates with your target audience. Be sure to keep branding, such as logos, colors, voice, imagery, packaging, and positioning consistent across all platforms.
Know Your Target Audience
To best appeal to consumers, you have to get in their heads. Your buyer personas should include more than just demographic information – they should dive deeply into potential customers’ needs, wants, and behaviors. Investing the time upfront to thoroughly understand your target audience will help you in making other successful marketing decisions down the road.
Make it Personal
Personalization is a must for eCommerce brands. By offering targeted product recommendations and a customer experience tailored to your target audience, your brand can showcase how it's relevant to buyers’ needs and wants.
Diversify Your Marketing Strategy
You’ve probably heard the saying about not putting all of your eggs in one basket. This rings especially true in the world of direct-to-consumer marketing. A strategic, multi-channel approach is the key to achieving DTC success.
Social Media: Considering that it’s poised to generate over $250 billion in revenue by 2028, brands cannot afford to sleep on social media marketing. Social media allows your brand the opportunity to connect with and engage consumers in a highly visual way. Post a mix of educational and entertaining content to help foster feelings of trust and excitement in potential customers. Consider partnering with influencers in your space, showcasing UCG content, conducting polls to gain feedback from your target audience, and selling your products on targeted social media platforms to really gain a competitive edge.
SMS: People are glued to their smartphones almost 24/7, so it’s no surprise that SMS marketing is picking up steam. In fact, Klaviyo’s research shows that over 70% of people have made a purchase after receiving a text from a brand. Sending text messages to consumers at targeted points in the customer journey can help boost engagement, conversions, and (most importantly) revenue.
Ads: Paid ads can expand your brand’s reach and enable you to connect with people who are searching for solutions like yours. Consider it your foot in the door when it comes to generating leads and bringing traffic to your website.
Email: Year after year, email remains the most impactful marketing channel available to eCommerce DTC businesses. It allows for unparalleled levels of personalization throughout all stages of the customer journey. People sign up for your email list because they want to hear from your brand, and email lets you cater your messaging and content based on behavioral triggers, purchase history, and customer data. A combination of expertly executed email campaigns and automation emails can help brands maximize conversions, take advantage of cross-sell and upsell opportunities, build customer loyalty, and gain valuable customer feedback.
Offer Subscriptions
The rapidly growing subscription model makes it easy and convenient for customers to keep their favorite products stocked. Subscriptions also offer numerous benefits for DTC eCommerce brands, including increased customer lifetime value, predictable recurring revenue, and easier inventory management.
Embrace the Buy Now, Pay Later Model
Consumers want what they want, when they want it (even if they can’t always afford it). By offering customers the option to pay in installments over time, your brand can reduce cart abandonment and make your products more accessible to a larger portion of your target audience.
Conclusion
Direct-to-consumer marketing has incredible potential for CPG eCommerce businesses. However, to fully capitalize on the opportunity that the DTC model offers brands must create a strategic, personalized, and multi-channel marketing plan.
This can be a daunting, time-consuming task for many small and mid-sized businesses to accomplish alone. Thankfully, our team of eCommerce email and SMS marketing experts is here to take the strategy and execution off your plate, so that you can focus your resources on creating the best products and customer experience possible.
Book a free consultation with us today to discover how we can help you take your DTC brand to the next level.
