D2C Marketing: What Is It & How Do You Get Started?

Whether you’re selling a product or service, knowing how to market your brand effectively is what’s going to make or break your business. You could have the best product in the world, but if you don’t know how to convey that to your target audience, you’re not going to make sales, or grow your brand.

So, how does D2C marketing fit in with your business, and can creating a D2C marketing strategy work well for your brand? Let’s take a closer look at how this form of marketing can prove valuable.

What is D2C Marketing?

D2C stands for direct-to-consumer. If you’re a D2C brand, you manufacture products and sell them directly to customers, cutting out any middle-man. This is different from B2C or business-to-consumer. A business to consumer brand usually involves a retailer selling their goods for them.

Some good examples of D2C brands include Glossier, Gymshark, Dollar Shave Club, Casper, and Cards Against Humanity.

Direct-to-consumer marketing has been around for decades. From the likes of mail order to brands like Avon. Essentially, what makes D2C stand out from brands you’d find in your local mall, is that they have full control over their entire process, from making a successful product and building a loyal customer base, to shipping their items and attracting new customers via marketing.

In the majority of cases, a customer doesn’t need to go to a physical store to purchase from a D2C brand. Many D2C businesses start their online presence with an online store as this gives them a way to sell their products directly to customers.

E-commerce is a relatively affordable way to launch a new brand, and with 8 in 10 Americans now shopping online, it makes sense for brands to develop an online sales channel.

Will A D2C Marketing Strategy Work For My Brand?

So, will a marketing D2C strategy work for your business? Before you create a strategy, it’s important to consider the benefits and drawbacks of pursuing D2C marketing:

The benefits of D2C marketing:

• Build a strong relationship with customers – D2C marketing provides the opportunity to interact directly with your target audience. You can listen to their feedback and implement necessary changes to improve your brand, enhance trust, build customer loyalty, and much more.
• Gain more control over your business – you can control your brand messaging, target a specific audience, build your reputation, and improve customer service.
• Direct access to customer data – D2C marketing gives you access to customer data, including their location, purchasing preferences, and social media profiles. This means you can gain a clear overview of buyer behavior to aid conversions, as well as creating a personalized experience through email and more.
• More innovation – you can try out new products on a smaller scale to see how your target audience responds to them before scaling. You can also gain feedback along the way to develop a product that your ideal customer wants, and needs!

The drawbacks of D2C marketing:

• Can be more difficult to convert – many D2C brands offer free trials or low costs to attain customers when starting out. While this can prove fruitful to start with, some customers end up canceling their trials once payment is due.
• Need expertise in several areas – D2C brands require knowledge in several areas, from customer service and production to marketing and web development.
• Difficulties in the supply chain – when you’re making your own products you could run into stock issues.

The good news is that despite a few drawbacks, it’s actually relatively easy to get started with D2C marketing. Want to know how? Let’s look at a few different types of strategies.

How to Start A D2C Companies Marketing Campaign

There are several D2C marketing strategies you can use to get started.

Influencer marketing

What is influencer marketing, you may wonder? This is a form of social media marketing which uses content created with or by popular social users.

There is a good reason why many brands utilize influencer marketing – they’re making around $5.20 for every dollar spent on this type of advertising. Not only that, but 49% of consumers depend on influencers for their recommendations.

You don’t need to work with hugely popular influencers either. Micro-influencers (those with between 10,000 to 100,000 followers) and nano-influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers) could potentially have a better impact for your brand.

Micro-influencers can have over 40% higher engagement rate than influencers with more followers, while nano-influencers can also boost consumer engagement.

So, what type of content can you create with influencer marketing? Let’s delve deeper.

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UGC

UGC, or user-generated content, is any kind of content created solely by users on online platforms. This content can include images, text, audio and video, and you can use it on your website, social channels, ads, and more.

One great aspect of UGC is that it promotes authenticity. In fact, people are 2.4X more likely to determine UGC as authentic than content created by a brand. Additionally, it also enhances trust and showcases brand loyalty.

Beauty brand Glossier regularly share UGC on their social channels from customers of their brand:

If you’re a new brand, or you’re searching for ways to build a content library, working with influencers is a great way to gain more content.

You don’t have to work with creators in return for a monetary fee. Many creators, in particular those considered micro or nano-influencers are more likely to provide content in exchange for a product/gift.

Gifting your product to an influencer makes great sense as they’ll be able to provide you with a range of content, including testing videos, unboxing, product review, giveaway/contest, and much more.

For instance, here is an image and video of art supplies from a brand gifted to an influencer:

Whether you’re looking for images, video, or text, you can acquire high quality user-generated content to publish on your website, social media platforms, or elsewhere.

Branded content

Branded content is produced and funded/endorsed by the owner of a brand. Facebook defines branded content as content which is produced by paid sponsorships between a brand and creator.

Branded content can include:

• Storytelling
• Emotional appeal
• Conversations around the brand
• Multiple formats for differing channels

Branded content is ideal for Instagram as influencers have high engagement rates with their audience, and you can target a specific audience to convert more effectively.

Kitchenware brand Jean-Patrique were able to gain a 2.3X return on their advertising spend after creating over 100 paid ads with content from Insense creators.

Insense is a powerful platform for finding and working with creators. Discover over 15000 personally vetted creators to acquire content, optimize it, and amplify it with paid ads. Insense works directly with Facebook Ads Manager so you can run creator posts as targeted ads.

Want to work on a specific project with a creator? Simply create a detailed brief – we’ll review it to provide expert input. The brief is then sent to creators who can apply to work with your brand.

Instead of spending hours searching for the perfect creators to work with, you can save time, and search for highly experienced creators, by using Insense.

Get Started With D2C Marketing for Paid Social Ads Today

Now you know more about D2C marketing, and have seen examples of highly effective D2C marketing campaigns, why don’t you get started today. Insense makes it super easy to find influencers for your social ads and online marketing. Whether you want to create a Facebook ad or UGC content for your brand, getting started couldn’t be easier.

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