Direct to the customer has gained new clout now because of the ease that it provides for both sellers and buyers. In this revolution of cutting off the middlemen between purchases, many technologies are coming to the rescue.
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Direct to Consumer or D2C
Direct to the customer, also known as D2C, is an eCommerce strategy through which manufacturers can sell directly to their consumers or customer. Therefore, it reduces the traditional method of first going to the retailer and buying the product by giving you access to the customer directly. This process is kept online through direct-to-consumer, and CPG brands or manufacturers use an online platform to sell. This method has many benefits, such as more profits for the seller and less price for the consumers. In addition to this, since the manufacturer is in direct contact with his consumers, he can understand them better and further modify his services or products in a manner that the customers like, based on their feedback. However, to implement this, it is required that you build a proper strategy and work on it.
Benefits of D2C
There are many benefits of D2C for both parties, the seller and the buyer. The various benefits of D2C include:
- Increased control over brand and customer engagement: Due to the intervention of a retailer, the manufacturer eventually loses control over his brand. They cannot make a sale based on what they are standing for or get user responses directly. Therefore, even if the manufacturers try to advertise their product, the end presentation of the product can be done only by the retailers. However, with D2C, the manufacturers can now control their brand and influence the sale.
- More innovation possibilities: Since the sellers do not have any information about the consumers’ likes or how the retailers sell them, they do not know how they can innovate their products or bring in new products. However, with D2C, businesses can now gather feedback from their customers on their new products and get direct feedback which can help them modify their products or services following the customer need.
- Gain better profits: Since there is no middleman in the D2C process, sellers can get more hands-on profit on their gross sales. Since they can sell at the same price as that of retailers, they can end up with larger margins of profits than otherwise.
- More access to user data: Since the sellers will be in direct contact with each of their buyers, they will understand their customers better. They will also gain access to their demographic data, their preferences, and other such data, which will further help them curate something based on the niche of their audience.
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Top technologies helping D2C brands
Technologies have been a great aid for many D2C brands. They have helped their business grow and get as many benefits as possible to customer strategy.
Some technologies aimed at helping D2C brands include:
- Shiprocket: This is one of India’s largest e-commerce shipping brands, which provides a large platform for D2C owners to sell to their customers. It has about 20 courier partners, and its shipping is available across about 27000 pin codes within India and 220 pin codes across the world. It also provides a technology stack that can help sellers integrate their shopping websites on various platforms to ease their inventory, order management, and workflow management.
- Meesho: This startup is India’s first to get investment from Facebook and is one of the most trusted D2C sellers. It has become India’s first online distribution channel, which has provided individual sellers or small businesses with an opportunity to sell their products on all social networks.
- Facebook: As one of the biggest social media platforms, Facebook serves as a great medium for many small businesses and D2C businesses to advertise their product and communicate with their users to get sales. It has allowed them to access a new audience, suppliers, and other such contacts through this application. Through the platform itself, the business can advertise to its customers and grow its business significantly.
- WhatsApp: WhatsApp has essentially been a messaging service that Facebook now owns. However, WhatsApp has also released an application targeting D2C businesses and many other business types that allows sellers to communicate with their users. This application is known as WhatsApp Business and can help the sellers target their audience with ease because of the many people on the platform.
With eCommerce set to continue its incredible growth in the coming years, it is expected that the latest digital technology solutions will further evolve to strengthen direct-to-consumer business globally.