E-commerce MarketingTechnology

Why Brand Awareness is the Answer to a Critical Issue with D2C Businesses

By Shrishti Jain
May 27, 2022

More and more D2C brands are now beginning to focus on building known brands and increasing brand awareness for key audiences. However, the consumer's path to purchase is quite complex, requiring just the right amount of steering prospects from a target audience toward awareness, contemplation and ultimate decision-making. And while quick wins may work for the short term, they're not an ideal substitute for long-term strategies and eternal success. Read on to see how D2C brands can climb out of this issue and become a sustainable businesses for the future:

Identifying Industry Pain Points

E-commerce has evolved and grown to play a bigger role in customers' lives than ever before. With such an evident opportunity, competition is fierce, and so are the pain points in the E-commerce industry. With the current fast-paced nature of the Internet, the long hours and high cost consumed in content creation and purchasing act as major pain points in the growth of the transforming E-commerce industry. The outcome of the vast investment in performance marketing by D2C brands is not viable due to the oversaturated markets pushing up the costs of customer acquisition (CAC). In addition, fast-moving marketers striving for instant gratification continually overlook the importance of recognition, but it's actually a vital piece of getting into a consumer's consideration set.

Uncovering Brand Awareness

Your customers need to know about you if they will buy from you. When the competition gets fierce, that means it's time to really lean into building brand awareness. Therefore, brand awareness and visibility should be a top priority. These can be accomplished via various strategies, including social, organic search, media mentions, offline promotions, and more. Company leaders must understand the importance of allocating marketing budgets without expecting a Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) to sustain a thriving and well-known business. Planning for sustainable customer acquisitions in our hyper-connected world means returning to the basics and restructuring the digitally-native foundation on building awareness.

Building Prominent Digital Presence

Due to the increased social media usage, the brand-customer relationship is also evolving. In the eyes of the public, a brand's digital presence impacts its overall brand identity. Therefore, D2C firms should ensure their website is visually appealing, mobile-friendly, with high-quality images and all payment alternatives, including COD, as this improves their social media presence. D2C brands integrating digital presence encourage consumers to complete the entire purchasing experience without leaving their preferred app, assisting them in their brand discovery process. In addition, with the increasing adoption of influencer marketing, D2C brands can invest in the same as it builds trust among the target market and enhances the brand's visibility.

Making Way for D2C Brands

Building a strong CX requires a foundational shift in strategy, where digital advertising isn't always the silver bullet. Achieving reliable CX at every touchpoint involves marketers reaching out across channels. 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other form of advertising. So, running a referral program means unlocking sales potential without dropping a ton of money on ads; referral incentives need not be extravagant to work. Brand awareness campaigns aim to grab the target audience's attention and convey that your business provides value. Your audience must think of you first when they need your product/service. D2C businesses must heavily depend on 'inbound' marketing services and traffic for sales on their website as it's key to generating greater revenue, loyal consumers, referral traffic from links, and larger shares.

Amplifying D2C SEO

Consumers today have complete control over their purchase journey and decisions. This is why companies have the chance to offer flawless shopping experiences across all touchpoints by going D2C. In addition, modest maintenance efforts, high-quality content-oriented marketing, digital branding, and SEO services might very well deliver online visibility to a D2C business for months or even years. Since search algorithms employ meta tags to comprehend information, identify keywords, and set ranks, meta-data improvement is a critical SEO tactic for D2C marketing techniques. Additionally, content is an important aspect of D2C marketing since it is essential to every aspect of brand building and is one of the most significant SEO ranking variables.

What's Next?

The rising cost of acquiring customers is a signal that we're nearing saturation, and many brands will face the reality that digital strategies alone no longer pay off. The current state of E-commerce is forcing marketers to think about other ways to attract new customers and retain existing ones. They need to lower ever-increasing advertising costs and focus on generating brand awareness. The goal is to be a customer's first port of call when they need the product you sell — not catching them by chance through a paid advert. Brand awareness is the name of the game for D2C. If you know where prospects are looking and put your business in front of them consistently in a way that attracts and interests them, you will be in good shape!