Retailers may have taken a hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, with non-essential businesses closed around the world. Online shopping on the other hand has been a lifeline for consumers and non-essential retailers alike, resulting in an extraordinary increase in online sales for businesses. Brands can enjoy similar success by making themselves and their products more widely available to customers online, taking inspiration from the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model.

“One of the biggest challenges CPG brands face right now is reaching their customers without relying on big box retailers to do the heavy lifting of increasing visibility,” says Kate Richling, CMO at MediaMonks. “But the advantage for brands is that you know your customers best. You may not know their specific demographics, but you know their interests, needs, motivations. You know why they ultimately buy your product.”

This highlights another benefit that the DTC model offers to CPG brands: a true understanding of the customer. Not knowing what your customers are feeling at every stage of the customer decision journey can feel like a liability these days, when everyone has been affected by COVID-19 differently. By investing in robust digital ecosystems and personalization, brands can better balance product availability and mental availability, making themselves ready to anticipate and meet consumers’ needs throughout and beyond the pandemic.

Supercharge Transformation in Just Weeks

In a disruptive moment, consumers seek many things from brands: assurance, accessibility, value and more. Now, brands have a responsibility and an opportunity to transform and meet those needs. “There’s going to be a rolling wave of COVID-19’s effects and the different ways we live,” says MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar. “I think it’s a perfect time to think about how to authentically talk about your business post-pandemic. How do we reposition the brand?”

Going DTC may feel like a long, hefty initiative, but brands can make real moves in only a matter of weeks. In fact, speed over perfection should be the focus for brands as they rapidly shift to accommodate their audience’s new needs—in this case, product availability and a brand who really understands their concerns. And getting started with an ecommerce platform is actually easier than you might think: over at Forbes, MediaMonks Director of Business Growth & Platform Solutions Pablo Stefanini notes that you need only plug into one of the many ecommerce solutions available to get up to speed, followed by iterative testing and rigorous, yet turnkey reporting tools to improve from there.

Connect Ecommerce and Social Experiences

Embracing the DTC mindset isn’t just a matter of having an ecommerce platform set in place and calling it a day. In particular, consider how your brand engages through social media and how you can drive conversation toward conversion. The Forrester report “Lessons In Customer Acquisition: Learn From DTC Disruptors’ Consideration Strategies” notes that “Progressive Pioneers, who make up a disproportionate share of DTC shoppers, are more likely to rely on word of mouth or recommendations to find products online, more likely to say they frequently research products online before buying them online, and more likely to read what other people post about products or services at least daily.”

The finding suggests that building a holistic content strategy that accommodates users throughout the research phase by building social proof is a great way to support this behavior. Think, for example, about testimonials and tips for success written in the comments of a promoted post or the use of UGC shared via social media collected on an ecommerce page. UGC not only demonstrates the value that the brand is already providing to customers but serves as a great way to keep social content fresh and focused on the brand’s community, too.

Market research firm WARC writes that “[DTC brands] have a great product and service offering but beyond that use social media and great end-to-end customer experience to gain and maintain a connection with an increasingly devoted audience who evangelize and socialize the brand.” Likewise, consider the role that social plays in the overall brand experience, and how you can use this ecosystem in addition to your product to lend value to consumers during this time.

Anticipate Consumer Needs with First-Party Data

Many brands are finding now that they require first-party data to better understand the consumer throughout the customer decision journey. In the webinar “Next Wave: Respond & Thive,” hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s Group and Betaworks Studios, S4Capital Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell anticipated that brands will have to rethink their approach to build up data maturity. “Google and Apple nixing cookies will have huge implications in how clients use first-party data and use those signals to enrich the first-party data they have.”

DTC wield first-party data in a way that helps consumers feel heard—for example, when Quip asks new signups what type of product they would like to see the brand offer in addition to its toothbrushes. While brands might invest in the DTC model as a means to accommodate customers now, the benefits to building a strong personalization infrastructure will extend well into the future, transforming the brand’s understanding and engagement with its audience.

“If you have a DTC platform and are augmented with first-party data, that’s more robust,” says MediaMonks Founder Wesley ter Haar. “If you have the capability to reach out to people who love your service in a meaningful way with personalization, that’s more robust. Those with success will be those able to communicate with people and be more mindful where they are in the current situation.”

With that in mind, it’s important to note that robust personalization doesn’t necessarily equate to the need for more content and assets. Instead, effective personalization strategies aim to truly understand the customer by recognizing and responding to their unique circumstances. “DTCs are frequently cited as masters of personalization, but—while this may be a major component of subscription boxes such as Stitch Fix or BarkBox—it’s mostly absent from prospect emails,” according to the Forrester report mentioned above. “Out of 22 DTC brands’ initial emails we were able to review via email signup, not a single one featured any personalization beyond use of a first name, and only one DTC even used a first name. Later emails rarely reflected the brand’s awareness of activity on its digital experiences (a male shopper on a fashion DTC would still get emails about men’s and women’s fashions).” As brands transition to a DTC model, they must not diminish impact by limiting opportunities to personalize communication in smart ways.

We’ve long championed for brands to take a DTC-inspired approach to better know their customers. But now, when many retailers struggle to meet supply with demand, the model has become an imperative for businesses to remain connected to the consumer. Through a DTC offering that wields data to provide audiences with the information and solutions they need, brands may not only weather the storm through the COVID-19 pandemic but build loyalty and brand love into the future.

The DTC model is just one way to achieve customer obsession.

Consumer buying habits have significantly shifted to digital over recent months. Ecommerce giant Amazon, achieved record growth in Q1 2020, seeing its largest increase ever in revenue for its online stores, with 24.3% growth in online store revenue alone. Now is the time for brands to change their consumer approach by building digital marketplace strategies that recognize and meet consumer needs across the entire customer decision journey, not just when they visit a marketplace to make a purchase.

One need only look at the rise in online grocery shopping to understand the increasing importance of ecommerce today: online grocery penetration is expected to meet (or exceed) 10% in the US, beating previous industry forecasts. While buying a mattress online may have felt strange and novel five years ago, today’s consumers don’t bat an eye by turning to digital marketplaces to discover, research and ultimately purchase products of all types.

Digital Marketplaces Double as Important Media Channels

This shift in user behavior has elevated the role online marketplaces as media channels that are important to telling the brand story to shoppers. “By serving ads to their customers at relevant moments, digital business professionals and commerce companies deliver a superior customer experience while also cultivating a rapidly growing new revenue stream with healthy margins,” writes Forrester VP, Principal Analyst Sucharita Kodali in the Forrester report, “Retailers: You’re The Next Media Moguls.”

One reason why advertising is so effective on these channels is because consumers are already in the shopping mindset when visiting a digital marketplace. “Mercado Libre has millions of users and visits each day, among different advertising formats,” says Pablo Tajer, Creative Director at MediaMonks Buenos Aires, discussing the most popular ecommerce giants in LatAm. “People that see these ads are already in shopping mode, which makes it much more powerful than seeing it on another channel where you’re not thinking about buying anything.” By connecting technology and creative, brands can lend greater value to an audience that is more receptive to learning about products and their features.

Identify Brand Opportunities Across the Full Digital Retail Ecosystem

Tajer leads our newly announced BrandLab partnership with Mercado Libre Publicidad. BrandLab serves as a team that highlights advertising opportunities for the biggest brands on the platform. Previously, Tajer fulfilled a similar role within Facebook’s Creative Shop. After receiving a brief from a brand, the BrandLab team helps build bespoke creative ideas that fit Mercado Libre’s formats and ecosystem, fulfilling a real need for brands that strive to differentiate and stand out in the user experience.

“The cool part is that we have an opportunity to create an idea that goes throughout the whole customer journey across Mercado Libre’s ecosystem,” says Tajer. “It can start with the branding on a product description page, then move to the payment step with the platform’s digital wallet (MercadoPago), and finally when you get the product itself through Mercado Libre’s shipping service.”

In this respect, to succeed in digital marketplaces brands must look beyond simply converting at a point of sale. Global ecommerce giants like Amazon in the US, Mercado Libre in LatAm or Alibaba in China are more than just marketplaces; they provide total ecosystems that include digital payment systems and delivery logistics networks. By managing each step of the customer journey—from awareness to purchase or even receiving the package itself—these ecommerce platforms offer several opportunities for brands to engage with their customers.

Inject the Brand Story into Your Ecommerce Efforts

The opportunity to embrace the total brand experience on ecommerce highlights a common misstep for brands selling and advertising on online marketplaces: the brand story is often missing from the equation. “It’s a platform that people view as purely performance based,” says Tajer. “It’s not just about performance, but also branding. Between searching for products and comparing which is better than another, there’s a lot more happening on an ecommerce platform than just clicking ‘buy.’”

For many consumers, a digital marketplaces is often the first place they visit for product searches. As important spaces for product discovery, it’s important that marketers don’t assume consumers are visiting with a specific product already in mid—or are even aware of the brand before seeing its product listed. This highlights a need for brands to view ecommerce as an important space to build brand love and awareness through impactful creative storytelling. “We want to be a lighthouse that shows brands and their partners the way.” says Tajer, “Together, we can grow stronger, platform-specific campaigns that drive consumer value.”

Support your audiences across the creative experience journey.