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D2C Marketing General

Creating an effective Branding Framework for your D2C brand

Samriddh Dasgupta is the Chief Marketing Officer at Heads Up for Tails. He is the perfect brand storyteller and multidimensional marketer helping digital brands grow exponentially by strengthening the brand.

Imagine a certain Mr. T is a father to two girls. He works with them, teaches them to be stronger, to become more independent and self-aware. Mr. T nurtures a garden and works hard to save the Earth, and he believes in sustainable living. What do you think of Mr. T? Would you be friends with him? How do you think Mr. T looks? Would you trust him?

How surprised would you be when you find out Mr. T is none other than Thanos from Avengers

The crux of an effective brand framework is telling your story in such a way that it resonates with people and makes them want to be a part of what you stand for. After all, if a villain in a comic series can still be portrayed in a positive light, imagine how the right storytelling can work wonders for your brand.

To create a brand story that truly stands out, it is important to find the brand voice. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a brand. A brand can be a person, a product or a service, people or a community, a company, or even a social impact.

  1. Brand as a person

Just like a human being has character traits, attitudes, virtues, and flaws, Samriddh points out that these same attributes can be applied to brands as well, where brands too have certain characteristics. 

  1. Brand as a product or service

Products and services are designed and invented with the objective of fulfilling a specific need or solving a certain problem. However, what is it about the brand that appeals to people on an emotional level? What attribute about the product or service makes it appealing? These are the questions that must be addressed.

  1. Brand as people or community

The brand in question is a reflection of the people who stand for it. Is your brand cool and trendy? Is it fun and witty? Is it one that reflects innovation and creativity? These aspects are important to understand what ‘tribe’ the brand represents.

  1. Brand as a company

The identity and the purpose of the company could be what defines the brand. Is the company focused on the environment? Is it futuristic? Is it quirky and innovative? Addressing how someone outside the organization perceives the organization is what will help to define the brand of the company.

  1. Brand as social impact

The impact that the brand makes on the society at large and how it benefits the greater community, as well as the people who are engaged in bringing about this positive change, are what needs to be clearly emphasized. 

Once the brand voice has been established, the next step is to build a story around it. Here’s how the brand story of Heads Up For Tails was crafted:

It is important to note here that the story needs to be architectured in such a way that it talks about the following:

  • The problem, necessity or gap that inspired the launch of your brand
  • The core objective of the brand – your core objective  
  • What your community or tribe can do
  • How your customers will benefit from the work of your brand
  • How does society benefit at large from it?
  • The emotion that induced the thought.

It is well known that human beings are excellent at articulating terrible experiences but do not know how to articulate good experiences. The choice of words varies wildly depending on the type of experience being explained. People generally tend to be highly descriptive with their words after a negative experience, but tend to choose blander and less descriptive words when explaining an enjoyable experience. 

A crucial aspect to consider while building your brand story is to use the very words that you want your customers to use to describe when talking about how they feel after using your product or availing of your service. 

Here is a model that is effective for building a thorough brand framework, which can aptly be referred to as the Four F’s:

Form: Does your brand offer a unique advantage in the form of your product? 

Function: Does your product boast of a specific function that no other brand offers?

Formulation: Is there a change in formulation that makes your product truly stand out? 

Feel: How will a user feel after using your product?

These 4 F’s are elementary in helping you craft your brand story that connects with your customers on a personal level.

The primary focus should be on making the brand stand out from the crowd. In a world where replication is easy and anyone can enter the market, your brand is your only anchor. 

An extremely crucial question to ask when building your brand story is: “will people miss you if you’re gone?” 

Want to learn more about how you can build your brand framework? Interested in telling your brand story in a way that makes people want to come back to you? 

Our expert Samriddh Dasgupta is the Chief Marketing Officer of Heads Up For Tails, and he brings to you his story, his 17+ experience, and his insights. A genius in building the most amazing brand stories and truly a savior to many of our cohort brands who took a step back to build their brand story, that shines and strikes the right emotional chords.

Click here to find out more about the program: https://www.xpert.chat/d2cmarketing.php

Categories
D2C Marketing

Building Blocks for Website Business

Parasar Sarma is the ex-VP-Growth at Wakefit. He is an amazing growth marketer who, with his level of knowledge and expertise, has been a key contributor to the success stories of many brands.

What is the first thing you want your customers to do when they come across your brand? Be it from paid ads or any other marketing strategy, as a D2C brand, your goal would always be to direct them to your website. 

But, is your website strong enough to hold that much traffic? Is it appealing enough to capture the attention of your audience till they reach the checkout page? Is it fast enough to guide them through before they change their mind?

According to a recent article, “47% of customers generally expect a maximum of 2 seconds for a website page to load.” This means that your website has to tick all the above boxes so as to convert your potential customers to lifelong buyers. 

Getting your customers to the website is a struggle but making them stay is what resembles the real challenge.

This week, we had the opportunity to listen to Mr. Parasar Sarma, ex- VP – Growth at Wakefit, who answered the above questions, put down ways and strategies on how D2C brands can scale their websites, share valuable insights about CRO and much more. 

Listed below are some of his many learnings from the session:

Key elements for website scale:

Though every website is unique in its own way, there are certain elements that are important for all. Now that you know the “WHY” of website scaling, let’s move forward to the “WHAT” part. 

What are the key elements that are a must-have for every website? How many have you already implemented and how many have you missed?

  1. Navigation & structure – It’s very crucial that when a new user lands on your website, with or without the context of your products, he gets a very distinct structure of navigation. As a D2C brand, if you have a set of categories and sub-categories, guiding your customer throughout their website journey is very beneficial. 
  1. Design – Nowadays, most of the products are discovered on mobile phones. 

 As per an article, “57% of users say that they are most likely to not recommend a brand if its website is poorly designed on mobile.” 

Whenever you are creating your website, make sure it is both desktop and mobile optimized.

  1. SEO hygiene – SEO is an inevitable part of marketing that needs to start its course from the very beginning. It is a door to a sea of opportunities (in our case, customers) that needs its sweet little time to unlock. But when it finally does, the quality of customers that it will get you will be the best of the lot.
  1. Product story – What makes a customer trust you? How can you make your approach a bit personal so that it doesn’t seem like a sales pitch?

The answer to all these questions is your story. When you bare a piece of your heart to your customer, they feel connected with you. They start trusting your brand and push them to be your loyal buyers. A product story is one of the key anchors of website scaling.

  1. Upsell & Cross-sell – When you are buying traffic at a cost, you need to capitalize on every customer. For eg, when a customer is buying an X product, you need to show him that there is also a Y product available. 

They might not need it at the moment but the combo will be beneficial for them.

  1. Social proof – If you have built a new site or are not present in marketplaces, then it is important for you to have some kind of social proof. You need to publish the publications you are covered by, how does your social media community work, what does your old customers talk about, etc. 

 These are the basic things you need to have to get an outlook of increasing your conversions. 

Home & product page:

The home page is the first page your user sees when they land on your website. Always try to show all your offers and discounts on the home page. Customers are more likely to increase their stay with a list of offers in front of them.

The product pages consist of all your products and services. The key elements that every product page should have are:

  1. Feature image 
  2. Gallery/product photos 
  3. Product overview, title, price, features, CTA’s, customization (if any)
  4. Product description 
  5. Reviews 
  6. Upsell & cross-sell 
  7. Chat & click to call 

Key enablers for conversion improvisation: 

Your product is obviously the main lead of your brand, but there are many other factors that a customer considers when buying a product. It is very crucial that you understand all these factors to enhance your conversion and the customer’s experience. 

Some of the key enabling factors are:

  • Delivery timelines based on pin code search.
  • Building product or service-led benefits on the website – like 100 days free trials/custom order.
  • Personalization around product selection & usability.
  • Reviews/ Pricing/payment gateway flow in detail. 

Make sure you keep all these points in check while designing your next product page.

Improve live traffic conversion with or without any automation tool – 

You might have a lot of traffic coming in from paid ads on Google and Facebook but the conversion rates are too low compared to that.

So, how do you convert these window shoppers into real-time customers?

Some of the ways to improve these live traffic conversions are:

  1. Run surveys for product learnings from non-buyers without incentivization. 
  2. Run banners to increase on-page conversion – reviews, delivery, etc.
  3. Touchbase bounce traffic (non-buyers) through automated flows. – 
  4.  Notification/emails/SMS
  5. Personalization of content based on the previous visits. 

Reviews library on the website In-depth 

Reviews are the most critical lever to improve your conversion rate. The first thing a user does when coming across a product is check its reviews. They want to know from real people about their customers with your product. 

Present a list of the following elements on your website:

  1. Review library from Amazon, Flipkart, Google, etc.
  2. Neutral presentation of all reviews from 0 rating to 5-star rating. 
  3. Influence only stacking of reviews for videos & images as first.
  4. Notify new reviews for the SKU’s to the non-buyers. 
  5. Filters to the user in order to reach the right reviews.

Pricing/Payment Flows –

As a D2C brand, your primary focus will always be your website. You might list your products on various marketplaces but your end goal is to always drive substantial traffic to your website. 

One of the most important levers of any product is Price. One of the ways you can maintain and drive more traffic to your website is by keeping your price lower there as compared to Amazon and other places. 

Some of the tricks you can use are:

  1. Try to have the lowest pricing on the website comparing market places.
  2. Its imp to show multiple layers of pricing discount – MRP to special pricing.
  3. Multiple payment gateways health & success is the key – use aggregator layers to optimize. 
  4. New payment platforms/modes unlock a new set of user bases – BNPL etc.

We are so thankful to our expert for conducting such a valuable session. 

Want to be a part of such sessions in the future? Join our next cohort: https://www.xpert.chat/d2cmarketing.php

Categories
D2C Marketing

Demystifying User Growth for your D2C Website

Shalin Bhatt is the ex-Head of Growth at Zomato. He was a key player in scaling Zomato to being a profitable marketplace and now he is helping other founders to reach their goals faster.

When people think of business growth, they typically think of some of the many initiatives that they are taking and against those initiatives they are planning to scale their business. 

But what they often fail to realize is that growth has two aspects, one is of course the initiatives they are taking and the other is the business leakage that they are incurring today, which they are or are not aware of, or unable to fix. This leakage can be one of the factors holding them back to scale faster and farther. 

As you scale your business, identifying specific patterns that are leading to business decline or growth becomes a very powerful muscle.

As a Founder, if you want to have a clear understanding of your revenue model, you will have to understand every aspect of your business. As D2C brands, the first lever for growth that we think of is Marketing. But you know that you need to be involved equally in other aspects as well, like, product, logistics, customer service, etc.

Being a D2C Founder, it becomes super important for you to decode the “D2C Dictionary” to break down growth problems and speak the language so as to prevent leakage. Listed below are some of the important terms from the dictionary for every founder:

  1. Revenue = Orders * AOV: When your revenue falls, instead of quickly going to breaking down the different aspects of the order part, start thinking around the AOV. 

Try figuring out “is it because my low SKU products are selling more?” or “is my revenue model working all right?”, etc.

If it is not an AOV problem, then move to if or why you are getting fewer orders, if the coupons codes you are providing working properly, etc. 

  1. Orders = Users * Frequency: Understanding the bridge between two branches, namely, no.of users and the repeated purchases they have made is a key factor to getting a proper understanding of the orders.

Which of the branches are breaking and causing a dip in the numbers and how you can fix it, what are the other factors that are leading to the loss of frequency or acquiring new users, are some important questions to find answers to. 

For eg, top of funnel marketing can lead to a drop in users or new users. If you offer poor customer experience, delayed orders, etc, that may lead present customers to order less and less from you in the future, resulting in a decline of frequency. 

  1. Users = New + Retained: If you are noticing a drop in the number of customers, that might be an issue of the last month and not the present one. Figure out which section of the users are leading to the drop in your sales. 

    Is it the retained customers or new users?             

     When you can figure out the source, it becomes easier to set up a plan to rectify the issue. 

  1. Retained Users = Lifetime base * Retention: As a business, your rate of repeat customers should always increase. So, if your repeat users are the same for consecutively 2 months, that is an issue that you should look into first. 
  1. Orders = Traffic * Conversion: If 2500 people are visiting your website and 20% of them made it to the end and made a purchase, then 20% is your conversion rate. This is extremely helpful as it will help you figure out if the low conversion rate is a marketing issue or a product issue. 
  1. Traffic = Organic + Paid: Demystifying which part of the traffic, organic or paid, is getting you more customers would help you plan your next marketing strategy better. 
  1. Paid Traffic = Eyeballs * CTR: Paid traffic depends mainly on your ad budget and how many impressions can you buy with it. The no. of eyeballs you receive may be more or less the same but it is the CTR that will show how many people are actually making it to the website. 
  1. Eyeballs = Budget * CPM: Cost Per Impression basically depends on the channel you are advertising on. If it is Youtube, CPM would be higher and if it is a simple banner ad, it would be much lower. The budget is totally in your control. You can opt for getting half the no.of eyeballs with a particular budget and vice versa.
  1. CAC Payback = GM% * AOV: How to know that the CAC you are getting is good or bad? This can be understood basis the quality of your transactions which is a function of the no. of average orders and GM%. If you want a profitable cohort, say of 100 customers, you need to have at least 200 orders to leverage that. 

Growth FARM: 

In conclusion, whenever you are looking at your business, keep in mind these 4 tabs:

F- Frequency

A – Acquisition

R – Retention

M – Monetary Value

We were thrilled to have Mr. Shalin Bhatt, Ex-Growth Head at Zomato who shared such amazing pointers, walked the cohort through his journey at Zomato and helped them crack and understand their growth models.

Interested in being a part of these sessions?

Join our next cohort: 

Categories
D2C Marketing

Building your Amazon Flywheel

Arindam Paul is Founding Member and Head, Marketing & Strategy at Atomberg. He is an amazing marketer and an exponential player in the D2C game, helping fellow founders and marketers scale their business profitably.

When you launch a product, you want people to know about it. You want them to look for you, get to know your products, and make a purchase. 

But, you just created a website and most of your target audience are not even aware of it. So, where are all your customers? Where and how can they find you?

This is where Marketplaces come into play. A place where your buyers are ready to buy exactly what you are offering. Amazon is one of the biggest marketplaces with over 100 million registered users making it one of the hotspots for every D2C Founder. But with the huge customer base, also comes the pressure of heavy competition.

So, how to build your Amazon Flywheel to make your mark in this pool of unending opportunities?

We were lucky to have Mr. Arindam Paul, Founding Member and Head, Marketing & Strategy, Atomberg Technologies as our expert on “Building your Amazon Flywheel”. 

From sharing his journey at Atomberg & explaining the mechanics of Amazon to putting forth real niche thought starters for our members, he helped our cohort to set a clear idea about their future marketplace listings.

The Marketplace Flywheel

What is the starting point on the Marketplace Flywheel? No one is aware of your product when you first launch it. 

In that case, it is necessary to hold paid campaigns on social media platforms so as to spread awareness about the category and the brand. That will cause your audiences to visit the marketplaces and search for your product, thus leading to organic discovery. This will get you “Product Page Views”.

Once more people start visiting your product page, gradually your will start making Sales, thus reaching the second step of the flywheel. 

 From these sales, you build your Reviews and Ratings which is a key component for every business. Good reviews can give you an amazing hike in your sales whereas bad reviews can take it down significantly. 

As your listing history starts to get more pronounced, you start getting discovered organically on generic keywords as well. You will reach the stage where you will also start getting customers from Organic Discovery and not just the paid ads. This is when the Flywheel starts moving

Next comes your Brand. Now that people are starting to discover your product, it’s time to introduce them to your brand. On-platform advertisements like sponsored product ads & product listing ads on social platforms will increase your website traffic. Knowing your brand better now, they will come back to Amazon and search for it, which will again lead to more product page views, sales and reviews and ratings thus keeping the flywheel moving. 

As a result of this accelerating cycle, your dependence on ads keeps decreasing. You will start getting 60-70% of your conversions organically, reducing your expenditure on ads significantly. 

How to Increase Your Sales on Marketplace?

Sales = Traffic on Product Page * Conversion Rate

So, when you say your sales are reducing, it is either a traffic issue or a conversion issue. It is very important to first figure out the problem before starting to work on it. 

TIP: Start keeping a track of your traffic and conversion rates on a daily basis. It is a very straightforward but very powerful hack to understand the nature of the issue. 

Levers to Increase Traffic:

Organic

a) Rank on top in Generic Searches – This is one of the dream possibilities for any D2C Founder. It takes time but when you start appearing on top, it will grow your sales very significantly. 

b) Brand Searches ( Function of Off-Platform spends, repeats, WOM, etc) – When someone searches for a very specific product that exactly replicates what you are selling, it will bring very high-rated conversion traffic to your website. 

All the off-platform spending that you do will translate into “Brand Searches” for the platform. Tracking brand searches is very important because when it will start diminishing after a certain point in time, you won’t be able to scale profitably.

c) Get discovered on Category/Deal Pages 

Paid

a) Search Ads ( Generic, Competition) 

b) Display Ads ( Custom Intent, Product Display)

Levers to Improve Conversions:

  1. Listing Quality:
  • Hero Image – Whenever we are creating content, we make it on the desktop thus making it suitable only for website searches and not app searches. 

But it was noticed that 70-80% of the purchases from Amazon were made on apps. As the interface of the ads and the website are different, the most significant feature that you can add is images. Amazon showcases the lists of products in the form of scrollable images making it easy for customers to browse. 

  • SKU Name 
  • Other Images and Videos ( Most Important when purchase happens through the app)
  • A+ Content – This comprises the content you present to your customers. A customer would always be interested to know what are the benefits he will get from your product. 

      So, instead of focusing your piece on the technicalities of your product, including how it will help the customer. 

  • Bullets 
  • Question and Answers – Q/A gives you an insight into the customer’s thought process that will help you in understanding what are their issues and what do they want. Answering these questions is a very good way to stay in touch with your customers and let them know that you care about them. 
  1. Operations: 
  •  Fulfillment ( Has to be FBA/FBF) 
  • Regional Replication (This ensures time to delivery is minimum)
  1. Reviews and Ratings
  • Seller-Central Mails
  • Packaging Inserts
  • Product Seeding with Influencers and Reviewers ( Not very common yet)
  1. Deals and Discounts: Deals and Discounts are also an effective way to increase sales and acquire customers, but overdoing them is never a good idea! Overdoing discounts on the marketplace makes it the reference price and customers will refrain from purchasing from your website at a higher price.

Marketplaces to Focus On

There are so many marketplaces present for every category that it becomes difficult to pick the ones that will actually be profitable or fit for your industry. 2 Parameters you should consider while taking this decision are:

  1. Current share and future Outlook towards the category –  

How to do:

  • Talking to Category Managers – Customers prefer marketplaces where there are options. So, if a particular category in a marketplace has a very deep set of options, it is a good match.
  • Performance on generic searches on Google – Search for very generic terms on Google and check which marketplaces are bidding on them. If a marketplace is bidding on those keywords or ranking high on them, that means it has a strong focus on that category.
  • The current selection available in the marketplace
  1. Marketplace-TG Match with Product/Brand – This is a very important parameter to consider before listing your products. You need to understand if the marketplace you chose has the right kind of customers you are looking for. 

At some places, the prices may be too much for your target group but the other marketplaces might work wonders for you. 

Newer/Upcoming Marketplaces

  1. Relationship Driven – Newer marketplaces are generally relationship-driven, thus wanting to create a level of trust among its customers.
  1. Chance to be a first-mover – You can get to be a first-mover in these marketplaces and capture the market share faster.

Evaluate newer marketplaces on the only parameter, “ Can they generate incremental sales for the brand”?

Key Metrics to Track

Platform Wise

  • Sales Volume and Value
  • Returns
  • Marketshare
  • Ratings and Reviews( Volume as well as Quality)
  • Platform wise Ads Effectiveness ( Total ad spends in the platform/Total sales due to ads in the platform)
  • Percentage of Order from Platform Ads

Overall E-Commerce

Total digital spends( On+off platform)/Total e-commerce sales ( Hardest metric to track and improve).

We would like to thank our expert for this very insightful session! All the learnings and experiences that he shared with our cohort was very valuable. 

Want to be a part of his next session and many more like this?

Join our next cohort: 

https://www.xpert.chat/d2cmarketing.php

Categories
D2C Marketing

21 Immutable Laws of Digital Growth for D2C Brands

Prathamesh Dembla is the Head of Growth at Licious – Born to Meat. He is the best person to guide D2C Founders in their journey of growth and has been doing the same, helping many brands build their business.

Why do mothers pester their children to drink milk every day when they are young? Why do your seniors challenge you with new tasks every day? Why, as a Founder, do you push your brand to try new horizons and prepare them for every possible outcome? 

The answer to all the above questions will be one & the same: GROWTH.

Be it for your development or your brand’s, consistent growth has always been the key factor we strive towards. As Founders, our brand is like a child to us and their steady and speedy growth is what we want for them.

We had the privilege to have Mr. Prathamesh Dembla, Head of Growth at Licious – Born to meat, who walked our cohort through his journey at Licious, shared his insights about various revenue models and most importantly, put forward the 21 Key Principles Of Growth as listed below: 

  1. Organic is dead on Facebook (& Instagram soon): In your initial stages, organic returns may work wonders for your brand. But with time, organic growth has the tendency to reach a saturation point. As a Founder, investing too much time & focus on organic might not be a good idea.
  1. Video is the future: According to an article in Hootsuite, “People spend billion hours worth of time watching videos on Youtube every day”. Today, the whole content platform is shifting to videos and that should be enough motivation for you to start investing in videos. 
  1. Digital Marketing is driven by video: The main three types of content that we focus on are Text, Images, and Videos. On one hand, where texts content generally depends on the search terms of the audience and images get to showcase only half of our brand story, videos eliminate the pain points of both and get us the best possible results. 
  1. Influencer Marketing is useless (unless you are in Fashion or Cosmetics or operating at a 75% Gross Margin): Though Influencer Marketing has created quite a stir in the marketing world, it has been noticed time and again that it might not be as useful for most of the industries. 

For fashion and cosmetics, it might hit the target once in a while but it should not consume much of your brand’s capital and time. 

  1. Affiliates – Can be your Worst Enemy: Affiliates can be your friend or your enemy depending on how you pursue it. As a Founder or as a Marketer, you need to stay aware of 3 important red flags when working with them, namely:
  • If it is more than 10% of Marketing spends.
  • You are working with more than 5 Affiliates.
  • They claim to scale your brand faster than Google.

       If you noticed any of these red flags in your affiliate marketing strategy, think again.  

 6. Ideal mix of channels: When you are at an early stage of your product-market fit, around 70-80% of your returns will be organic with 20-30% from paid advertising. As you grow, the mix of both organic and paid will start to reach a midpoint with both of them generating around 40-50% returns.

7. Lookalike audiences work best on FB: For any D2C Founder, 2 types of audiences work typically well namely, Lookalikes and engaged shoppers. Engaged Shoppers are those who have made an online purchase in the past 7 days. 

Make sure to always target at least 1% of both these types of audiences in your Facebook Marketing Strategy.

8. Emailers are not dead – Newsletters come with 10%+ Open Rates:  Don’t stop investing in your emailers or start investing if you haven’t yet. Email Marketing is kind of that ignored kid in school that no one expects much from but does wonders when given the right opportunity. 

4 things to keep in mind when working with emailers are:

• Keep Testing subject lines

• Be Consistent – every Thursday / Saturday

• Keep replies open

• Founders should write to consumers

9. Don’t go for Big Creative Agencies for the Brand Story – best videos are created at less than Rs.1 Lakh/video: No one knows your brand better than you, so no one else can tell its story better than you. Instead of paying agencies huge chunks of your capital, make 4-5 small videos in-house and some of them are bound to get you amazing results.

10. Vernacular Communication matters when your core audience is in AP, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala: Only and only invest in vernacular communication if your core audience lies in any of the mentioned states. You will notice the following upgrades in your returns soon enough:

• View Rates – at least 2X – 3X

• CTR – at least 2X

• CAC – less by 30% +

• Local Influencer is a must

11. Get your Ad Accounts – Google, Facebook Whitelisted for key features: There are some of the key features you should get whitelisted in your Ad Accounts to get better returns, namely:

• Running Video Only App Campaigns on YouTube

• 20 seconders Non-Skippable

• Performance Max Campaigns

• Instagram Shop integration

• Image Extensions in Search Ads

12. Videos in Digital Brand Marketing: You read how important videos are but how exactly are you going to execute it? Follow the steps below for a detailed view of how you can apply video marketing in your strategy:

• Lead with 20 seconder Non-Skippables, Build Recall with 6 

seconders

• Add the Google Play store link / Website Link

• 20 seconders – 3-5 frequency, and 6 seconders – 3 to 5 

frequency

• CPUR (TV) more than 15 times CPUR (Digital)

13. Beyond 20 sec, Video Length does not matter: Try to convey most of your brand story in the first 20 seconds of the video. As the 20 seconds will be non-skippable, it will be your greatest weapon to get your story conveyed to your target audience.

14. Branding Impact Analysis: If you are planning to run a campaign specifically on Branding, there are 6 metrics you can use to measure its success:

• First-click attributed ROI

• Spike in Brand Search Volume

• E-Commerce conversion rate of new users

• Spike in CTRs for Non-Brand Searches (Brand Recall)

• Control Experiments Analyses

• Reduction in Avg. Sales Cycle duration

15. Check out DCO (Dynamic Creative Optimizations) + 25% higher CTRs: DCO offers personalized ads to its viewers based on their interests, behavioral aspects, etc. It has worked very well for Licious and it is an area you as a D2C brand should definitely explore. 

16. Traffic is expensive, Conversion has a higher ROI: Instead of focusing on bringing more traffic to your website, work on converting the ones that have already walked to your door. Keep checking the following metrics to get a better understanding of your conversions:

• Click to Sessions

• Sessions to Check-out

• Check-out to Order

• Time spent

• Conversion Rate

17. Keep track of the Facebook Quality Score: Facebook takes anonymous feedback from your customers’ basis which gives you a quality score. If your score goes below 2, then your ads will come under penalty and your CPMs will increase. Keeping track of those is a must to make sure you don’t fall below the minimum score.

18. Invest in SEO from day 1: Start investing in SEO from the start. It will not get you the results from day one but the day it will, the ROI will be so good that you will get most of your organic business from there. 

19. Use of Dynamic Ads on Facebook: If you are from Retail/eCommerce, Travel, Real Estate, or Automotive, do make use of Dynamic ads on Facebook. It has a very Integrated Approach and provides better solutions for your brands.

20. Audience Creation for Website Users: You can create “Audience Cohorts” on Facebook for people who have visited your website, added products to the cart or viewed your products in the last 30 days. This will help you in retargeting that audience. 

Make sure your Google Analytics and your Adwords are directly in link and the events are passing through correctly because as much data you are providing them, it’s moving to automation. As you provide more information, your CPC should come down by 20-30%

21. Key Metrics to Check: After executing all the above learnings, what are the metrics to check how well they are working for your brand?

Listed below are some of the key metrics you should check:

• Click to Session to Goal Completion – Across Source / Medium

• Checkout to Order Ratio

• GA to CRM Transactions

• FB Ads – New To Retargeting Sessions

• New to Repeat Customers

• Conversion per impression

• Search Impression Share

• Account Base Selling Top of Page %

Our expert shared all these learnings and much more with our cohort members, guiding them to the right path in their growth journey. Leading the growth team of Licious for quite some time now, he has been a true sport and helped many of our cohort members with their growth models.

Click here to join our next cohort for many such learnings:

https://www.xpert.chat/d2cmarketing.php

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D2C Marketing General

Xpert D2C Fellowship

Xpert was born out of need, survived because of its value, and only grows with more and more promising brands entrusting us.

So in the last 1 year, we had spoken to over 700+ brands. We knew their challenges. We wanted to help.

With the advent of the pandemic, we saw dreams proper into beautiful brands that people loved. While some survived and are struggling, some gave in to defeat pretty early. We wanted to be there to help these brands not only survive but grow exponentially. 

However good our intentions were, we could not champion this need alone. We could not solve it immediately. We had help. The D2C fraternity experts, investors, and partners came forward to help us in this mission of helping D2C brands scale with the best of expertise.

Not being cliche, but like Rome, we too were not built in a day.  It took many failures and experiments and most importantly the right aid from these folks to be where we are today. Here’s what we made together:

First-ever D2C school with marketing experts from top 25+ brands from the country, 150 promising brands as students each quarter,  a 5-star rated shark tank event, an amazing D2C community and most importantly a place wherein D2C brands shared their challenges and joys unfiltered with us. Yes, it was worth all the pain and would have been impossible with support.

We want to champion brands that we believe in the same way these D2C experts did for us, to keep this chain of gratitude going.

As much as we need money to keep the Xpert program running. It could not or never be the end goal. We grow when our brands grow.

Therefore we introduced the Xpert D2C Fellowship program.

Wherein we offer a flat upto Rs 10,000 scholarship to 8 chosen brands, who might have an apprehension to join our D2C growth squad because of the fees.

Eligibility:

  • The brand must be less than 2 yrs old.
  • Should have less than 5 employees.

We do not want our fees to wallow away promising brands. We are confident that we have the understanding, ecosystem, and expertise to help D2C brands make that big leap. We wish to help brands today so that we could be proud of their success later.

We hope this fellowship encourages more and more D2C founders to make the extra mile ahead rather than giving up. You can and the entire Xpert fraternity is here to help you through.

Application for Scholarship:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeR6kaSBl-QNRJrh5KVe9AJUj_vZGSc_2obnX1JZ1aOHdJNRw/viewform

Categories
D2C Marketing

The organic way to grow your D2C brand.

You must have heard of Bewakoof.com , right?

Launched by IITians Prabhkiran Singh and Siddharth Munot, Bewakoof’s quirky, funny, out-of-the-box Tshirt, phone covers etc.  with messaging inspired by regional Indian language references saw it establishing an instant connect with the young India.

If anything, its organic following of 5.7 million fans across Facebook and Instagram that it enjoys today is a direct indication of the popularity that the brand enjoys with its target audience.

Bewakoof is aiming to increase its total subscribers, which is currently reported to be 150,000, to 1 million in the next 2 years. Furthermore, it is also looking to achieve sales worth Rs 2,000 crores in the next 4 years.

What is the secret to this growth?!

Their website attracts a huge traffic -around 2.5 million a month- and  around 37 percent  of that comes from direct traffic of the brand and the rest( the majority)  is organic !

What do we mean by this organic traffic?

 It is basically the  number of visitors coming from search engine results (as opposed to a paid source of traffic).

What does this coveted  organic traffic mean for your brand? I mean why bother about it?

If anyone tries to tell you building organic traffic is easy, don’t listen to them. With that being said, it’s also the greatest investment of time and effort you can make.

Basketball Wives Growth GIF by VH1

In the days of Facebook promoted posts and Google AdWords, the instant gratification of shelling out a few bucks for immediate traffic is highly appealing. But it’s not sustainable. You’ll get traffic now, but what happens when you stop paying? Will your content ever be found again?

Organic traffic means the content you put on your website today will drive traffic tomorrow, next month, next year, and probably even several years from now. That’s why it’s worth the effort.

The most obvious benefit of organic search traffic is a cost advantage. Pay-per-click ads are guaranteed to put your company’s links in front of potential site visitors. But over time, the amount of cash you’ll spend on click-throughs can add up. Once you have implemented sound SEO principles, the cost-per-click for organic search traffic is zero, giving your company an edge over competitors who are trapped in a pay-per-click universe.

Organic traffic is also important because it is targeted. Users visiting your website from a search engine’s organic results have a very specific intent and if you can provide them with a solution or answer to their question, they are more likely to convert.

But how do we make organic traffic work for your brand?

Here are a few things to keep in mind-

  1. Build Epic Cornerstone Content
Grow Black Lives Matter GIF by Shalita Grant

When we say quality content, we aren’t talking hastily-written, 100-word blog posts, either. Instead, we’re talking go-to, epic content that stands head and shoulders above your competition.

  1. Scope Out the Competition

Epic content is epic for a reason: it’s the best of the best of the best! But you won’t be able to create the go-to resource for your topic if you aren’t able to answer the following questions:

  • What resources already exist?
  • What do they cover?
  • And most importantly, can you create something better?

The easiest way to answer these questions is to scope out the competition. 

social media followers GIF by The Orchard Films
  1. Use the power of social media-

If you’re relying solely on search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to help you boost organic traffic, you’re missing out on other valuable methods that will help you drive more traffic. Social media marketing provides another great opportunity to drive users to your site by linking to blog posts or article pages.

Bewakoof and many other D2C brands are using the power of organic traffic to scale .

Improving your organic traffic to acquire customers doesn’t have to be A Challenge.

There is of course much more to decode when it comes to organic traffic growth and D2C marketing.

Which is why we have gotten top experts from leading D2C brands – mamaearth,wakefit,man matters and so on – to help you scale at your org!

Apply to be on the waitlist for our next D2C marketing cohort and leverage their insights for boosting your career! 

Categories
D2C Marketing

Perfecting Branding at your D2C Company.

When we meet someone in real life, we ask for their name and ask questions to get to know them better. We listen to their anecdotes, ideas, opinions, and beliefs. We try to unearth their story, and to tell our own.The end goal is to connect. 

In D2C marketing and business, the rules don’t really change. Telling your story is a critical part of building your brand. It helps to shape how people view you and enables consumers to begin forging a connection with you and your company. Do it right, and you’ll put building blocks in place that allow you to develop a thriving brand with an equally thriving future, one that people buy from simply because they love what you do, what you stand for, and the stories you share.

Starting with the basics-

A great brand name is not just something that looks cool on your business card or is fun to say. And it isn’t great because you like it. It’s great because it communicates something to customers.

As branding pro Marty Neuemier says in The Brand Gap, “The need for good brand names originates with customers, and customers will always want convenient ways of identifying, remembering, discussing, and comparing brands. The right name can be a brand’s most valuable asset, driving differentiation and speeding acceptance.”

But choosing the right brand name can be exhausting, infuriating, and thrilling. The D2C Giant Warby Parker’s Cofounder Neil Blumenthal says it took his team six months and 2,000+ options to find the perfect name.

Fist Pump Success GIF

To set your brand up for long-term success, you need the right brand name. 

Follow our simple guide to find yours quickly and easily.While there is no magic formula, there are common traits that make a brand name easier for you to use and easier for other people to remember. 

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind according to experts who have been there, done that –

  1. It should be easy to pronounce,identify and memorize
  • Like Snackible- it’s crisp and catchy !
  1. It should give an idea about the product’s benefits and qualities.
  1. Ensure domain name for the same is available.
  1. It should suggest product/service category.

Nike. Coca Cola. Levis. Disney. AirBnB.

These brand names alone conjure vivid images of who they are and what they stand for—and these brands all have incredibly passionate audiences to boot.

That’s in part because each of these companies has a genuine brand story. A brand story conveys the history, purpose, and values of a business in a narrative that resonates with consumers and makes audiences feel emotionally connected.

John Stamos Wtf GIF by Lifetime

So,naming your brand is just the tip of the iceberg .

Lets stick to the D2C Giant- Warby Parker

The Warby Parker catalog may only include two main categories – eyeglasses and sunglasses – but they’ve become an ecommerce success in the nine years since they debuted because of the stories they tell.

Their self-proclaimed lofty objective? “To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses.” That’s practically a story unto itself. And they share plenty of other stories that lay bare exactly how they’re doing it.

Mother Earth World GIF by eyedesyn

Their “How Warby Parker glasses are made” page offers a behind-the-scenes peek at a pair of glasses from design through manufacturing, including background on supplies and suppliers.

The main material? Plant-based cellulose acetate.

The personal touch? Every pair is assembled and polished by hand.

A socially-conscious business? For every pair of Warby Parker glasses sold, they give a pair to someone in need via charitable partners around the globe. To date, they’ve given away more than 5 million pairs.

That’s a story we can all feel good about supporting.

It’s no secret that consumers are looking online for many of their shopping needs. With the click of a mouse, anyone can have a car delivered straight to their home, groceries stocked in their refrigerator shelves, and more. Direct-to-consumer brands are continuing to innovate and evolve to attract and retain loyal customers. Despite the latest trends, one thing remains true: brand storytelling is a constant part of the D2C marketing evolution.

Marketers are aware of the power of branding and storytelling; however, they’re still grasping at straws when it comes to it. 

That’s why at Xpert we have got India’s top growth experts from leading companies to help you learn and decode growth strategies for your D2C brand!

Apply to be on the waitlist for our next D2C Marketing Bootcamp and get to learn from leading experts from successful D2C brands like MyGlamm,WakeFit and so on!

Categories
D2C Marketing

THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP FOR STARTING YOUR D2C JOURNEY!

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP FOR STARTING YOUR D2C JOURNEY?

FINDING THE RIGHT PRODUCT AND NICHE!

Episode 1 Mind Blown GIF by The Office

This is the very first and, quite obviously, the most important step when starting out on your D2C journey.

No matter how long you’ve been an entrepreneur, launching a business has never been more difficult. Here’s a quick look at the 2020 online landscape:

  • Competition is fierce,
  • Product markets are saturated, and
  • Consumers are demanding convenience more than ever before.

That is where the D2C business model comes to the rescue and helps make the most of this.

 But before you begin to brainstorm the design and experience of your D2C brand, or even your company’s name, you’ll need to choose what products to sell and create your own niche!

This is definitely not the hardest thing to check off on your to-do list compared to the others. One of the bigger lessons the Internet has taught us is that a ‘niche’ is a lot bigger than anyone ever thought.

Heard of the Bombay Shaving Company ?

Selling a shaving kit to men for Rs.3000 was unheard of until the Bombay Shaving Company, a D2C startup, disrupted the market.

They definitely got the finding your niche bit right. The company specializes in men’s grooming, personal care, shaving, beard grooming, skincare, and handmade soaps and mainly cater to men. This D2C startup took a seemingly everyday product and a mundane ritual like shaving and transformed it into a niche that is unique!

But it’s okay if you don’t hit the product jackpot right away. The beauty of D2C is that you can go wrong a few times and experiment till you finally land on your product, target audience, marketing strategy and so on !

And the beauty of the Internet is there’s a niche market for everything, and if you can focus on it, you can build a sustainable and viable business of it.

So how can we approach this crucial decision that every entrepreneur has to make?

  1. Identify or create a product that solves a very specific problem. 

Wakefit is a great example. This D2C startup offers premium mattresses at affordable prices to solve all your sleep issues.

When the founder ,Ankit Garg, experienced the journey of buying a mattress through the traditional business model, he realized that there was no innovation in the product that was being sold; it was highly overpriced and the sales representatives of retail stores had no knowledge of the science of sleep. This sparked the drive to change the way Indians accessed sleep products in the country.

The Daily Show Lol GIF by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

And now they are on track to clock a revenue of Rs 410 crore in FY21!

  1. Fall back on what you are passionate about or have enough knowledge about.

Tip- You can even look at the products you have bought as a consumer in the last 6 months.

This is what happened for Mamaearth, yet another huge D2C success story.When Ghazal Alagh and Varun Alagh, the founders, were expecting their baby, they wanted to ensure that they could do everything to keep their baby safe. Like any other caring parent, the two browsed the internet, searching for do’s and don’ts for the little one and also what products they can buy to pamper their bundle of joy.

But they were shocked to see the results. Not a single product was available in the market that matched the safety standards – driving the duo to create a brand by a parent for a parent: Mamaearth.

  1. Hop on trends, viral product categories and figure out a differentiator in your idea. 

Like mCaffeine- India’s first hair and skin care brand with caffeine-infused products.The founder says that the reason they chose personal care was that there weren’t many new age brands for younger consumers today. And now they are eyeing Rs. 700 Cr in revenue in FY2024!

MCaffeine opts for simplest and basic influencer marketing strategy to  promote new product range

Also think about why should a consumer purchase your product over your competitors ?

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind –

1.Finding a product that solves a problem is not the only hurdle to cross , you also have to make it either exciting or affordable.

2. Add a feature to it that your competitors lack.

3. You can simplify choice –  lower selection may seem counterintuitive but for the initial launch narrow down on the 1-5 key product offerings  & focus on launching that.
It will help you save on manufacturing costs as well as optimize marketing and get focused about your USP to consumers !

Found this interesting?

Then apply to be on the waitlist for our next D2C Marketing Bootcamp and get to learn from leading growth experts at successful D2C brands like MamaEarth, MyGlamm,WakeFit and so on!

Categories
D2C Marketing

Man Matters – India’s first Digital Health Clinic for Men

Man Matters – India’s first Digital Health Clinic for Men

Who do you go to, to talk about your wellness problems? 

Who does a man go to when he starts losing hair?

Losing sleep? Losing confidence?

dog day afternoon sigh GIF

When the men behind Man Matters asked themselves these questions, they found no answer.

And neither did millions of other men. 

This seemed quite unacceptable. Men rarely speak about their health and learn to live with their issues instead of dealing with them. It’s not that they don’t care. But talking about personal health, wellness can be difficult and often embarrassing for many still. And the people at ManMatters get that!

This epiphany led to the creation of a Mumbai based wellness platform for men that has been changing the way men approach health and their own holistic wellness!

& then Man Matters Was Created…

Man Matters - Home | Facebook

The founders took ‘matters’ into their own hands; and created a place for all matters of man. Hair, skin, weight, sleep, sex and much more. A wellness platform focused on men. If it matters to man or it’s matters of man, it matters to this up and coming D2C brand. 

So what is this wellness platform all about ?!

A DOCTOR LED TELEHEALTH PLATFORM FOR MEN?

Now,that’s something India has never heard of!

They boast of a premium set of products for each and every problem  under the sun which a man can face ,which are all certified under their respective industries.

But…

The team realized that to make the science behind wellness more accessible to all, they had to have the experts to guide them on this journey. And a genius move was that they joined hands with a set of medical experts and doctors who were passionate about changing male health habits and cared deeply about their craft.

This is the most unique feature that man matters offers – they have expert doctors on board to guide and fix your problems

These doctors provide free consultations to ensure that the products that your purchase off man matters are right for you .

Hair Matters by Man Matters - Home | Facebook

What’s more, the brand also follows up with you over time to check in on your progress monthly and doctors continue to give advice and guide you on what’s the best way to achieve and keep improving on your wellness goals!

Quality has turned into an obsession for this brand.While there are companies that may have the same ingredients, the quality of ingredients can be vastly different. Man Matters sources their ingredients from the regions where they are known to be highly efficacious, which in turn results in the products giving you better results.

The team behind Man Matters consists of consumers of personal care and supplements themselves, and hence they are super particular about the safety and quality of the products they consume and produce. 

With regimen focussed products , Man Matters also believes that solving problems like hair loss or quality of sleep is often not a one product solution but a holistic one. Thus they provide regimens to follow which ensure that the body and mind are getting targeted as a whole.

Right from the premium ,regimen based products delivered to your doorstep to specialised doctors available for problems which men might have otherwise felt uncomfortable to discuss, this startup has mastered the art of customer retention to the T !

MAN MATTERS Products Have Got You Covered With All Men Issues - dealivana  blog

So it makes sense why we have Marmik Mankodi, AVP Marketing @ Man Matters as a part of our D2C marketing Bootcamp!

Apply to be on the waitlist for our next cohort and learn to identify key growth levers, driving repeats & cross-ordering, Identifying payback periods & customer lifetime value…

Also explore building a purchase experience optimized for discovery & trust building for your D2C brand.Leverage insights and experience of industry experts from top companies and understand  how you too can scale delivery, manage returns & logistics successfully to drive customer delight.