Every brand big or small wants to get onto the online sales channel and sell directly to customers. While the objective is simple the way to achieve it has its own challenges. First things first.


What are the advantages of going direct to the customer?

- Connect with your customers directly and know your customer which is not possible in an online marketplace especially if the fulfillment is by the marketplace
- Get customer insights
- Your D2C ecommerce website functions like an experience store where customers can see the full product range. In a marketplace customers search by specific products
- Control over your brand and messaging
- Build a loyal customer base especially if the product category has high repeat purchase
- Returns can be lower as you can give a better user experience by way of product information.
- Your cost of customer acquisition will reduce over a period of time and you will have a better margin compared to what you may have to shell out in commissions to marketplaces and other costs.


What are the disadvantages of going direct to the customer?

- Cost of marketing to acquire customer can be high in the initial stage
- If you also have a traditional distribution model it can antagonize your partners
- You need a dedicated team either inhouse or outsourced to manage the complete D2C channel from marketing to fulfillment.
- Logistics may not be robust
- Scaling up challenges


Key things to be keep in mind while going the D2C way

- Keep price parity if you are also selling on marketplaces or other channels else you will end up cannibalizing orders on other platforms
- Give a strong value proposition for customers to buy directly either by way of loyalty points, warranties etc.
- Fulfillment is the key. Ensue you have a robust logistics system for delivering products on time including returns and refunds.
- Ensure you have a customer service cell to handle queries and complaint which are resolved quickly.
- Focus on your brand. Eventually the brand image helps sell.
- Build a great ecommerce website which reflects your brand ethos
- Keep optimizing the website to increase conversions.
- Look at data granularly be it google analytics or the ecommerce analytics , learn from the insights and optimize
- Your highest conversion will come from brand lead searches, put all your efforts to increase brand awareness.


Plan your D2C journey well and you will see the results. There are no shortcuts to achieve scale, you need to start small and scale up. Try your strong markets initially as marketing can get expensive when conversion does not happen while your marketing budgets keep burning.


Get the right partner who can hand hold your hand through the D2C journey from building the ecommerce portal, handling the brand to social media. Xebec specializes in D2C channel marketing having handled several brands from inception stage -Right from building the e-commerce platform to building the brand and performance marketing.