Ideal Business Strategy for D2C business

Ideal Customer Acquisition Strategy for an Online Business 

Today a lot of direct to consumers (D2C) businesses are emerging as online sales are increasing. It is projected that ecommerce sales will increase by 16% in the USA in 2022.[1]  Work from home has given this industry a huge increase and offline retailers have also started seeing the benefits of moving online. Due to this clustered market, emerging brands and small startups are seeing a lot of challenges. In this article, we will discuss the ideal customer acquisition business strategy for a D2C business that can tackle these challenges.

Leverage the Power of Influencer Marketing 

Influencer Marketing is being used extensively with a lot of D2C brands. This is a great way to acquire customers, make people aware of your brand and build credibility. With increasing competition in the market, consumers are most likely to purchase products from brands that they trust or know. Influencer Marketing is one of the most effective tried and tested customer acquisition strategies to beat such brands. An influencer strategy which has aspirational influencers to micro influencers would see the highest benefit. The metrics Influencer Marketing would Impact is  

  1. Website Traffic 
  1. Website Sales 
  1. Increase in Brand Searches on Search Engines like Google 
  1. Increase in Brand Searches on Ecommerce Platforms like Amazon 

Read More about the Ideal Influencer Strategy here 

Opt -Ins on the Website 

Once the user starts a session on your website, they will either convert or drop off after some browsing. Conversion rates usually differ from 3% to 7% based on the industry and pricing, hence it is important to capture the remaining 90%+ audience in some manner. Having website opt-ins would be the most cost-effective way to capture your leads. Opt-ins can be for mailers, push notifications or mobile numbers. The best way to make the most out of these leads is to incentivise your opt-in form by either giving a discount or a free book. 

The leads can then be remarketed using marketing tools and converted at a later date. The lead data can also be pumped in your ads panel for remarketing ads. These users would give you a lower cost per order compared to newly acquired customers.

Remarketing Campaigns To Acquire Customers 

Remarketing campaigns are a great way to target the same traffic you have received on the website but not converted as leads or customers. Using the same Influencer’s video clip in Facebook and Instagram ad placements and Google Video Ads would give a higher CTR (Click-through-rate) and a lower CPC (Cost-per-result). For users who were even further down the funnel, like at cart or at checkout, showing them more relevant information like a limited time discount code would work better in driving a better CPO (Cost-per-order). 

Facebook & Google Acquisition Campaigns 

Acquisition campaigns are very important to pump juices into the middle and bottom funnel campaigns. While influencer marketing is one way to acquire customers, the influencer’s reach is limited to their audience on the portals, be it YouTube or Instagram. Hence, using the same Influencer’s creatives, a brand can expand their reach using Google and Facebook ads. The target for these ads can be similar to the target audience of the Influencer, who are most likely to follow the influencer. Here it is important to use the influencer’s creative to and not any model’s as it would build more credibility for the brand. 

Presence on Ecommerce & Google 

Apart from the direct sales and traffic that a brand would see once the Influencer’s deliverable is published, they would also see a lot of indirect impact on their metrics which would source it back to searches on a search engine or ecommerce portal. Hence brands must ensure that they are easily discoverable on these portals and all relevant ad spaces for their brand name are being captured by them. These ad spaces are the first few slots on Google Shopping ads, the first slot of search ads and if possible, the Google My Business spot as well for Google search engine. For Amazon, it is important to capture the brand ads space along with the first two sponsored product slots.  

Know when to Step up your game 

The aforementioned strategy is one of the most tried and tested by many brands including Honey, OnePlus, Skillshare, Audible, Blue Apron, etc. However, influencer marketing is still restricted to certain age groups and audiences. Hence, as soon as a brand starts seeing diminishing returns, it is time for the brand to step up and collaborate with someone with higher reach then YouTube or Instagram influencers, popular sports players, well known personalities, singers, actors, etcetera could be taken as the brand ambassador. 

Let me know if you have any other strategies which you have tried and have worked for you. Read more about the pros and cons of Influencer Marketing here