How Cutting Out The Middle-Man Can Center Brands And Customers Simultaneously

DTC stands for direct to consumer, meaning products sold directly from the retailer to consumer in a single transaction. In a traditional retail landscape, manufacturers are pretty limited in the ways they can reach consumers.  But now there are so many tools available to get in front of new customers via various channels for marketing including social, retargeting, SEO, and online shopping. 

In the consumer marketing space, there are a ton of new avenues to reach clients.  Here are a few ways companies selling directly to patrons can see success.

Branding and Identity

Of course, the first one on the list is our bread and butter at CultureCraft. The thing about marketing products in the internet age is that there a huge number of channels retailers can use to reach their customers. The option anxiety that comes with the decision-making of setting a budget and picking the channels in which to market can largely be subsided when you put who you are and what separates you from your competitors at the forefront of the conversation.  

Additionally, it’s more important than ever for brands to have a strong and consistent identity that aligns their messaging across platforms. Some would say that there isn’t a receipt for this kind of work because brand awareness and loyalty do not always create a tangible paper trail, however, you just have to be looking for it. Modern marketing requires multiple touches across many mediums, digitally and analog alike, and if the brand is not on par with the product you’ve already left money on the table.

Social Media and Analytics

Social media is the most powerful tool retailers can use today, and there are a number of different ways you can use it. Here are a few:

• Brand activation

• New campaigns (for new product releases)

• Continuing brand messaging and awareness

• Connecting with clients (as a means to validate the brand or product)

In the age of COVID-19, there is no better way to get your brand to the masses than through social.

Social media is also one of the largest data influencers for your campaigns and overall brand strategy. By gathering data on who is interacting with your brand online you learn about your customers and modify who your Minimum Viable Audience is to increase messaging and content focused on those people. By analyzing a social following, you can learn about your audience’s demographics, likes and interests, behaviors, social media activity with competitors, and more.

You can also use social as an extension of your means to connect with prospects by using social channels as a customer service touchpoint.  By responding quickly to feedback on social channels the brand can become a humanized connection which should instill a sense of brand authenticity. And again, by reviewing the analytics of those communications you can derive all sorts of data points to capitalize on, such as what products consumers want more of, how issues arose for previous clients, and alignment across the marketing ecosystem with consistent messaging.

And then there’s the option of using social media to sell products directly. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all allow companies to sell directly from their platforms, and more social channels are likely to get in on the action. Even if your product happens to be a service, consider social channels as a means to amplify your brand’s awareness and third-party validation.

Email, Newsletters, and Campaign

Not everybody can afford to pay a social media influencer to shill their products and a very wide demographic of users. Candidly, it’s also becoming less effective as more stringent rules around influencers having to note when they are selling a product vs. giving opinion about some service or product without being paid.

What everyone can do is create branded content that tells the brand’s story. Whether it’s one of uplift or one that hones in on a universal problem, the one medium everyone still connects to is email. While the intricacies of list management and segmentation typically require a trained digital marketer, the organic opportunity to build a list in a cheap service like Mailchimp to develop your voice and reach will lay the foundation for larger deployments of content like newsletters and multi-channel campaigns across your various platforms. 

When your following is large enough, you can dig into the details of the people on your list and begin to segment further.  In doing so you can create points of interest that align with a unique subset, enabling you to further raise your percentage of buyers by giving them more of exactly what they want.

Wrapping Up

Most of these tactics are ones that evolved from the dot-com boom, where a refresh of a webstore or website meant increased click-throughs. DTC managed to bring some of the branding and voice back into marketing game-changing products by making sure that their offering could stand above the marketing initiatives of big box brands, sometimes specifically because of their story.  

Brands we take major notes in the space from include Warby Parker, Allbirds, Bombas, and a slew of other brands who have worked with one common point of interest, an agency that truly understood how to develop a brand that could speak directly to the masses through many non-traditional methods and centered value over hype. (We see you Red Antler 🙌)

Want to learn more about marketing in the DTC space? Contact CultureCraft to set up an appointment and learn how we can take your product or service with strategic brand-focused content.