Five ways DTC brands can adapt to uncharted territory
By Shimona Mehta, Shopify EMEA Managing Director
Times are changing. No company is safe now. Even the most satisfied customers can take their custom elsewhere.
The market is never ‘cornered.’’ It is fluid and dynamic. In these challenging circumstances, businesses must respond with creativity and adaptability – like true entrepreneurs.
During lockdown, direct to consumer (DTC) business models were successful in giving end users access to products and services directly over the internet, cutting out the middleman and making the buyer-seller relationship more affordable.
Three fifths of us bought from at least one DTC brand in 2021 alone.
But even the most successful DTC models cannot afford to stay still if they are to retain their increasingly discerning customers.
As we come out of lockdown and adjust to today’s economic turbulence, it is essential that retailers innovate to deepen connection with their customers, no matter where they spend their time.
Here are five ways DTC retail brands can transform their approach to grow in this new era of commerce.
Think longer term, think C2C
For brands to ride out the looming recession, the answer is to think longer term, and create a total experience for customers that engages them locally, and globally, online and off.
It’s a business model we’ve taken to calling Connect To Consumer (C2C), which shifts the focus from the online, transactional relationship of DTC to something more meaningful and longer term, engaging with potential customers wherever they are.
If DTC is one pathway, C2C is many; as the line between content and transacting, between shopping and entertainment blurs, it is the customer to customer experience that will lead the way to exciting new markets.
And that experience should be a relationship that creates advocates and keeps shoppers coming back again and again, wherever they are.
Start selling multi-surface
From an online store or an app to social networks and a physical presence on the high street, you must be able to to interact with, and sell to your customers across every surface.
You’ve likely heard the phrase ‘omnichannel retail’, but this concept doesn’t acknowledge all the different retail experiences within that.
For instance, you can sell direct to consumers online not just through your website, but directly through social media platforms like TikTok.
A bricks and mortar store, meanwhile,might not just act as a shop, but a showroom to consumers who later order online, or vice versa.
In the case of DTC sportswear giant Gymshark, it’s recently taken the form of a London barbershop with mental health trained barbers, aimed at starting a conversation and creating a community, not just selling.
Having a one point of sale platform will tie all these touchpoints together will make multi-surface selling easier, more bespoke, and more efficient.
Earn your community, rather than pay for customers
Social digital ads are getting increasingly expensive, with costs increasing across the major platforms including Meta, Google, Amazon and TikTok.
For example, there have been reports that Meta’s cost per thousand has increased by 61% year-on-year, in part due to Apple’s iPhone software now making it easy to stop any app from tracking you.
Consider investing time and resource instead in community building. This means creating content interesting enough to sell itself, from editorial to YouTube streams.
Build up an audience and in time you can sell products directly within your own feeds - something UK startups, like mushroom growers GroCycle are already forging ahead with on their YouTube channel, for example.
That’s hard, but worth it. Be the DTC brand starting a conversation, not just closing a purchase, and focus above all else not just on your first party data, but the data your customers willingly give you – nobody can block that.
Make shopping experiences bespoke
To create a personalised relationship with your customers, you need to address their interests and talk to them on their platforms.
Events and rewards held at your physical store are a great starting point, but you can apply the same approach to online shoppers too to really increase their scope.
One way to do this is to offer personalised digital interactions using new Web3 technologies. Take NFTs; price volatility aside, non fungible tokens are a way for people to express their identity online.
By taking that knowledge (of what NFTs a shopper publicly owns), you can provide exclusive, token gated shopping experiences based on their NFTs and interests and engage a younger customer base in a novel way.
Widen your audience reach
Customers will always value what’s authentic, what’s local and what’s unique to you.
Embrace and propagate these values through your online marketing or physical presentation. But do not feel limited by your locality. On the contrary, hyper local and global now very much exist on the same plane.
With the right partners, there’s no reason a craft store in a rural village in Yorkshire can’t find and ship to customers on the other side of the planet.
Be yourself but think global as you export your products, services and rewards – both on and offline.
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