D2C (Direct to Consumer) companies offer their products directly to their customers without any intervention by the suppliers and distributors. LensKart, Mamaearth, Wow Skin Science, and Sugar are some of the top D2C brands in India.
Customers’ buying behavior changed drastically during the pandemic as they heavily focussed on online shopping. This led to the emergence of many Direct to Consumers brands across the globe.
Therefore, the competition among online brands offering Direct to Consumers products has become even more intense. D2C businesses have started spending heavily on SEO and marketing strategies to survive this cutthroat competition.
This article will teach us some of the best ways direct-to-consumer brands can drive organic website traffic.
Top 5 Ways to Increase Organic Traffic
To increase organic traffic, D2C companies must enhance their online presence. For that, they need to be more active on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They should also improve their content strategies to attract more eyeballs, making them check their websites.
Here are the top 5 ways that Direct to Consumer companies can include in their organic growth strategy:
Influencer Marketing Strategies
Influencer marketing is the best way to bring customers organically to a website. D2C companies can collaborate with influential creators who post informative content on their blogs, websites, social media accounts, and YouTube channels.
While talking about the latest topics and issues faced by the customers, the influencers can highlight some products of the D2C companies without sounding like their advertisers. This would influence the consumers to check their websites and apps and ultimately organically direct more visitors to their e-commerce portals.
To implement an intelligent influencer growth strategy, companies can focus on promoting their products and brands through micro-influencers.
Micro-influencers are those influencers who have a small following but have the right audience your business needs. Also, as working with micro-influencers on a limited budget is possible, brands can quickly tie up with multiple influencers and extend their organic reach.
D2C companies can ask these influencers to highlight their products/services or brands through Instagram posts, reels, podcasts, YouTube vlogs, and blogs.
Apart from creating relevant content for their audience and being passive promoters of their brands, micro-influencers can post the D2C website links through the comments and feedback sections of their channels and blogs.
Though influencer marketing strategies are beneficial for D2C companies, they can only be implemented with the support of an influencer marketing platform.
Businesses must find influencer marketing platforms that have an extensive database of influencers. Searching influencers through several filters and categories should be seamless on this platform. Besides finding influencers, the platform must be efficient enough to manage campaigns and monitor performance.
Influencer marketing platforms that offer end-to-end campaign performance measuring and reporting tools are available these days. The influencer marketing reports provide details about the highest-performing posts.
These reports also offer insights into the individual performance of each influencer that is necessary to evaluate their success when D2C companies collaborate with multiple influencers simultaneously. The details from the performance measuring and reporting tools can be utilized to decide the influencers that a company should be collaborating with for their future campaigns.
It is easy to find the best influencers per the niche audience through the influencer search wizard. By providing the engagement rate and the influencer score of the influencers, these platforms enable D2C companies to find the best influencers per their budget and marketing requirements. D2C companies may also use these platforms to create compelling brand content through influencers.
Making the website and blogs rank
The website is the true face of any D2C brand. It should be responsive and sleek enough to impress visitors. However, all the efforts will only be successful if the website is discoverable.
D2C companies can start by optimizing their meta descriptions, SEO titles, headings, etc. Also, including relevant keywords in these aspects can improve the website rankings.
Moreover, each direct-to-consumer product page should be optimized to provide a smooth experience to consumers. It would generate better conversion and help the brands rank higher on search engine result pages.
Complete keyword research can also help brands identify the needs and expectations of their audience. Trending and relevant keywords can be found using tools like SEMrush, Google Trends, and many more.
Making the blogs rank on the search engine is one way of bringing the audience to the website. Therefore, every D2C brand that wants to snowball should include a blog section on its website. Quality articles and blogs should be posted in this section.
These articles could be about the brand’s USP, products and services, and features that make these products better than their competitors’ offerings. While the focus must be on quality, the writers should include primary, secondary, and tertiary keywords semantically in their blogs and articles. This would help the blogs rank higher on search engine pages.
Using backlinks
If the D2C companies need more time to update their blogs section, they can also use guest bloggers to drive organic traffic to their sites. The guest bloggers can either promote the products or service pages through self-written blogs or use the articles and blogs that the companies provide them.
In either case, the blogs will have backlinks connecting to their landing page, homepage, or products. Many content creators write useful blogs and articles on products/services related to a D2C business. Nowadays, finding such creators and striking business deals with them is possible through an influencer marketing platform.
Utilizing email marketing
The D2C companies looking for a quicker conversion rate can use email marketing tactics. It is because it helps them land directly inside the message box of the consumers and helps them reach out to thousands of customers at a time. Also, it is not mandatory that direct-to-consumer brands only use emails for promotional campaigns and updates. They can also email updates on sales, offers, new products, and complimentary stuff.
The D2C companies can also email details about the latest blogs, social media posts, and videos. It will ensure that the customers return to their website and find more about the services/products that they find interesting.
Many brands also send newsletters to their customers through emails. These newsletters can only sometimes speak on products and services but can also provide the information their customers would like.
For example, the customers of Apple are always interested in their latest offerings and internal news of the organization. Apple sends out regular news feeds through newsletters and promotional emails to keep them interested.
Apart from providing relevant information and reporting to the audience, Apple encourages them to visit its website. Such indirect promotional strategies can help D2C companies maintain consumer engagement and interest levels.
Brands can integrate email pop-ups and push mail in their websites and apps to build their email list. Many brands also use it to enhance their list of subscribers. D2C brands can also use these to promote their products or to inform visitors about their latest deals, campaigns, and discounts.
E-buying through social media
The days when customers preferred to buy only through a few e-commerce portals are gone. Nowadays, numerous people prefer to buy a product or service while talking with friends or reading posts. Due to this, many D2C businesses have started updating their products/services directly through social media channels.
For example, Instagram is a happening place for brands related to beauty, fashion, and apparel. While posting updates on new products or discounts, the brand can include product tags so customers buy them directly. It reduces the time they usually would have spent searching for a product online. Also, it facilitates a quicker conversion rate and helps D2C brands make the most of their online presence.
Social media can also attract new customers and maintain relationships with existing ones. It has been observed that brands who respond to their customers’ messages quickly likely generate higher website traffic. Posting engaging content through social media and enhancing the engagement rate would push the customers to their websites and apps.
Sometimes, it is also better to offer customers services through social media and direct them to the website using a contact page and FAQ sections.
Conclusion
Starting a D2C company is one thing, and making it rank on search engines is another. However, through relentless SEO strategies and other organic ways of bringing traffic, it is possible to keep the audiences interested in the D2C products/services.
Besides traditional marketing, brands must also focus on influencer marketing platforms to generate valuable content and improve the value of their offerings. Therefore, the business content plan should include novel methods like influencer marketing and social media buying to enhance and maintain a competitive edge in the D2C market.
