When the digital direct-to-consumer retail model came up, it disrupted the entire traditional brick & mortar, business model. The direct-to-consumer retail brands were establishing themselves as strong competitors across all industries. However, with the recent pandemic, these brands have had their own set of challenges. One of these challenges is steep competition as every business is seeking digital transformation and presence in the online realm to deal with the loss of direct access to their clientele. Consumer spending has also taken a hit. To keep their business running under such circumstances, these brands have to do what they do best – marketing on social media. Marketing for direct-to-consumer brands, however, also has to focus on the key factor of building strong customer relationships.
Why is Social Media Important for Direct-to-Consumer Brands?
For any brand trying to reach consumers directly, social media is an obvious platform. Statista reports that about 59% of Americans reach out to a brand on social media between 1-3 times each day.
And what’s a better way to foster relationships? Your brand’s presence needs to be felt on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. These platforms help you build a two-way conversation with your audience. This in turn:
- Helps your audience trust your brand
- It helps you know your audience
- It helps you monitor your customer’s feedback/needs
- Discover market opportunities
- Receive consumer insights to inform your marketing strategy
Social Media Marketing for Direct-to-Consumer Brands
Opting for social media marketing seems like a no-brainer for any DTC brand. 61% of all DTC brands rely on social media as their top acquisition channel. The immense reach, its automation, ability to personalize, variable price models available make it the perfect branding tool. But with more and more players coming into the market, it takes something extra to turn the first-party data into actionable insights.
Identify Customer Pain-Points
- Creating a massive brand like Disney or Coca-Cola takes ages. However, with the upcoming direct-to-consumer brands, things could be a little different. People are responding well to genuine content. They are shifting to brands providing authentic solutions to their problems.
- Perfect examples of this being Netflix coming up with Netflix Socks which received a lot of positive feedback and attention. Identifying customer pain-points and inspiring authenticity while addressing an issue can be your brand’s unique selling point.
- Identifying consumer pain points does not require going through elaborate market research processes. Social media intelligence tools like Auris monitor online content to help you with automated market research insights.
Nourish Stronger Relationships with Customers
- More than 86% of companies use user-generated content in their marketing strategy. This helps to leverage your brand image and helps potential customers relate to your brand.
- However, reaching a level of relationship with your customers where they would vouch for your brand online requires your effort. Apart from providing a strong product/service, focus on the emotions around the product which makes it more desirable.
- Eventually, engage with your customers to make them feel valued. Track industry trends and develop content around them to receive more genuine engagement.
Personalize your Messaging
- We mentioned more and more brands are using user-generated content (UGC) for marketing. One of the major reasons for this being that UGC makes potential customers relate to the content. It feels personal.
- Personalized messages always work better. It can be a marketing email or a little, stylized hand-written note you send with a package to your customers. A perfect example is Roth Martin’s (CEO and founder of Rothy’s) handwritten message to their Facebook fanbase. Its emotional appeal made for a winning strategy.
Social media marketing and making your customers feel valued isn’t as difficult as it may seem sometimes. Especially now, when there are social media intelligence tools to automate most of the tasks for you. Social listening tools tell you everything. These tools help you with segmentation based on demographics. It helps you with content that’s trending. And allows you to improve while tracking and analyzing your reputation online in real-time.