The retail scenario has shifted: consumers are increasingly pushing for deeper meaningful connections with the brands they use. People want to buy what they love and do it directly, with no middlemen involved. 

In fact, according to a Youwe agency report, in 2022, 64 percent of digital consumers worldwide were already buying their branded goods directly from manufacturers regularly.

That’s around 1.7 billion people, an increase of 15 percentage points compared to 2019. With all this activity, if you’re a consumer goods manufacturer, then it’s worth considering a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) approach.

This trend clearly shows that a D2C approach is the right move forward into the e-commerce future. 

That’s why today, we would love to review why taking your business Direct-to-Consumers is the smartest choice for the future of your brand! And we will do so with the help of the Youwe agency ebook, A comprehensive guide to taking your business Direct-to-Consumer. 

Why go into D2C?

First, it is not like we are reinventing the wheel; D2C has been here for at least since 1990. So this is nothing new. And yet, it is booming again. Why?   

Our current omnichannel global retail landscape has turned D2C into a profit-generation option for many brands. And the option that comes paired with multiple benefits, besides the much-needed ‘money making’ aspect of it. 

And how much of a profit option, from the money perspective? Well, let's address that part first before we jump into talking about the benefits a D2C model can offer to any brand: 

According to Youwe ebook, in the UK alone, retail e-commerce sales - as a share of total retail trade - increased from 19.2 percent in 2019 to 28.9 percent in 2021. 

And the Netherlands, over the same time period, the shift was from 15.3 percent to 23.9 percent, a shift also felt in Germany, where 14.2 percent jumped into 21.9 percent, and in France, that went from 9.7 percent to 14.6 percent.

And this is happening due, precisely, to the combination of benefits that D2C provides to brands all over the world. Benefits we could surmise into four clear areas. 

1. Better relationships 

The customer is king. And nowadays, having an excellent customer experience is vital for any wishing to be a successful brand. And to achieve a high-quality customer experience, a personalized customer journey is of paragon importance. 

Now, this is something that any brand can do if it harnesses the power of purchasing, usage, and customer preferences data that will flow your way with D2C. 

2. Clearer communications 

A dialogue is always better between two. If you add extra voices, the complexity of the process increases exponentially. That’s why the D2C approach allows brands to communicate directly with their customers, reducing possible noise produced by others who might obscure your brand or affect how your customers perceive you. 

3. Faster time to market

This is where it all starts to get interesting. When you have the correct data, delivered through your shiny new D2C platform, you can react faster to market demand. Pick your most profitable demographic, gather feedback, and tailor your product and messaging to market demand. 

It’s easier to make faster, more accurate decisions with all the answers at your fingertips. And that makes you more agile than the competition, with more opportunities to modify your products to meet and exceed consumer expectations. You’re responding faster, anticipating market changes, and bringing new, relevant, targeted products to market before your competitors.

4. Bigger profits 

Overall, the capacity to sell directly online to your customer base is crucial nowadays. The Covid crisis proved that even in quarantine in our houses due to a massive global pandemic, we still shop. In fact… some would argue that people bought even more things during the Covid crisis than what they do on a regular basis. 

But, if your brand cannot sell directly to the consumers online, you will never tap into the massive e-commerce B2C current market. A market that is slowly evolving to become the main form of global commerce. 

Now add to this the fact that, by implementing a D2C approach, your brand removes the middlemen distributors. You can see how this is an increasingly popular option for brands worldwide who wish to increase their profitability. 

How can you develop a successful D2C strategy? 

Now that we know D2C is a fertile ground for brands to grow in, we need to answer the question: how do we do it? And in this department, we are happy to report that Youwe agency has a pretty straightforward and clear approach to help your brand successfully jump into D2C. 

What’s their secret strategy? A PIM. 

Why Product Information Management is the first step?

When planning a D2C strategy, or any digital transformation, there’s a crucial element that often gets overlooked. We’re talking about Product Information Management (PIM) and the systems that allow product data to be shared across a business. And this, as Youwe clearly indicates in their ebook A comprehensive guide to taking your business Direct-to-Consumer is one of the first vital steps you need to take to jump into D2C. 

Now, what exactly is a PIM? Well, to explain this, we need to refer to the way brand usually hand their data. Probably, your product data is contained within your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or master data management (MDM) system. 

You could also refer to it in Excel spreadsheets, sales documentation, InDesign files, and individual product specification sheets. The role of Product Information Management. If data is exchanged frequently between your systems, with no proper tracking, things can get out of control.

Data entry errors often arise as a manufacturer potentially manages thousands of SKUs. Incorrect or incomplete data can be sent across selling channels and platforms, confusing your audiences, delaying your time-to-market, and impacting profitability.

Data becomes inconsistent and unpredictable when you don’t have a single source of truth, and nobody holds a definitive version of all your product information. 

Duplication, disjointed modifications, and data disarray become inevitable. With D2C and your closer connection to consumers, the problems can be amplified. Your IT landscape needs to be set up correctly, and all your systems must be connected. That’s why you need a PIM.

But keep in mind a PIM is one of many things you need to develop a successful D2C approach. 

While pursuing this, your brand will surely have to tackle issues like gaining a competitive advantage in the e-commerce global and regional marketplaces, balancing wholesale and D2C, facing the dilemma of D2C expansion as a possible competition to your wholesaling and reacting accordingly to the customers accelerating demand in the sometimes complex D2C markets. 

So, it is indeed a handful of things that you must muster. But the good news is that precisely to topple that complexity and offer a cohesive step-by-step guide into D2C, Youwe has created this fantastic ebook to provide you with all the on-spot insights.  

Read everything here in a

🔥Comprehensive Guide to D2C by Youwe!🔥

The post Why Taking your business Direct-to-Consumer is the smart choice! appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.

Practicology 

Offering personalised products and attracting the customer with value-adding services like auto-replenishment or subscription is what positions the best sites as experts in their product categories.

Results

Practicology designed the scoring for the report so that they could identify how well brands tackle the challenge of attracting customers to purchase from their website directly instead of from a retailer or marketplace (such as Amazon). The first place is shared by Nike and Nespresso, who both have a very clear direct-to-consumer strategy.

The following table provides an overview of the top 15 brands, which are mostly categorised in the footwear or skin care industry.

Other findings

The report features key benchmarks for brands who are either trying to launch a D2C website for the first time or trying to improve their performance. For example, of the 100 brands in question, 72% combines their brand- and e-commerce site rather than confusing customers with a transactional and non-transactional site.

In order to help consumers in making a purchase decision, 75% provide products with a detailed description. For the same effect, more than half of the brands shows good quality reviews and product ratings on their website.  Less than one-third of the e-commerce brands offer free delivery as standard, while 59% only offers free delivery when the customer spends a certain amount of money on their order.

To attract customers to the brands’ own website instead of another retailer, 32% offers exclusive products in their webshop that cannot be purchased anywhere else. A quarter of the brands offer product bundles that can only be exclusively bought online from the brand.

Allowing the customer to personalise a product increases attraction as well. 17% of the brands use this strategy, such as Nike with its ‘Nike By You’ design tool or online jewellery stores allowing customers to engrave products.

29% of brands (mostly beauty brands) offer free samples that a customer is able to choose from a selection when they make a purchase. However, in order to build long-term relationships, 17% offers an auto-replenishment or subscription service.

Video instructions and guides are offered by approximately 58.5% to help customers with their purchase and in the right choice of products.

The researched brands are operating in the following product categories: Accessories, Alcohol, Consumer Electronics, Food & Drink, Beauty & Healthcare, Luggage, Petcare, Supplements, Swimwear and Toys. For this report, the usability, e-commerce proposition and product information of each brand were reviewed.

Particular attention was paid to three areas where brands can add value through product, services and content.  

The post Nike and Nespresso at top 100 of direct-to-consumer online ranking appeared first on Cross-Border Magazine.