D2C Strategies Can Take Your TV Media From Zero to Hero
Everybody thinks that just having an idea or just having a good product is enough to build a successful brand. The reality is the opposite.
There are plenty of good products and good ideas out there, but most companies fail because they can’t find their best marketing mix and/or they might have used the wrong source of truth (lack of good analytics) to guide their journey. Finally, some brands fail to provide an exceptional customer experience.
If you could solve these challenges, then you would never have a scaling issue. But is it really that easy? The answer is yes — and no. There are other components — like the current media environment.
I’ve heard, many times, "That channel doesn’t work," or "We tried that, and it doesn’t work for us." Really, though, everything could have worked — at the right time, with the right intensity, and, of course, the right service providers.
So, let’s talk about the media environment. Media changes and adapts frequently. Just during the past decade, consumers who were once reliably in front of their TVs started getting distracted by social media. Eyeballs also migrated gradually from TV to other devices like smartphones and tablets.
Then, later in the 2010s, we started to see the rise of streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and others. COVID accelerated this cut-the-cord phenomena and streaming platforms continued to gain momentum, adding to fragmentation. And now, performance marketers are facing the "cookie apocalypse," directly impacting their analytics and acquisition.
These are just a few of the aspects a brand must consider when building a marketing mix. But I must say, a good operator would know how to navigate those changes and get the best out of the current environment.
Still, there are other challenges I call "external factors" that can affect your media performance: weather, the economy, politics, big sporting events, major world events, news announcements, and more. All can disrupt your plans and make the audience even more distracted.
No matter the challenges, one of the main secrets of building a successful direct-to-consumer (D2C) campaign is to find the right media that will get you the lowest customer acquisition cost (CAC) in each channel and to invest the correct amount of dollars in those channels while partnering with the right service providers.
Many companies focus only on e-commerce and advertise on one or two main channels: think Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon. That strategy gets you only so far. Your company won’t really become omnichannel if you don’t unlock the potential of each channel at the precise best time.
What does omnichannel mean, though? It means using every channel that your company needs at their best efficiency level allowing the potential customer to find you across a variety of places at the same time. It feels or looks like you are everywhere when you are not.
Combining of all the above to create a successful campaign is more than just science, though. It’s also an art. That’s why I developed the D2C Engine, a system that keeps evolving and adjusting to all these variables and more.
The job: calibrating the engine to keep it working smoothly.
But while your brand is perfecting the art of acquiring clients at the most efficient cost, you can’t forget another crucial KPI you should be measuring: lifetime value (LTV). The LTV of your customer is what confirms how good your customer’s experience is. The main source of truth for many successful D2C campaigns is the ratio between LTV and CAC.
How can a D2C marketer optimize LTV beyond a good customer experience? There are many efficiencies that can help improve the back end of a campaign, from the customer journey as a whole to the specific parts of the journey or specific parts within each channel. That’s another big engine that needs to be dissected and re-calibrated, and a discussion for another time.
Many years ago, I went to a dinner, and I loved the main entrée. I asked our host what the main ingredients were in the dish. I got a generic description, and during the next few weeks, I tried to replicate the plate at home.
Of course, I never got close to the original. This helped me understand an important lesson: the quantity of each ingredient is as important as the ingredients themselves and, of course, the chef is a component all its own.
It’s the same for marketing: if I give you the ingredients of a successful D2C campaign, you still need to add the correct mix and you still need the correct operator (chef). I believe there is also a bit of a magic component. Some people call it passion or extra care. Others call it a touch of genius. It’s a bit of everything above — plus a lot of common sense.
Nick Pietropinto is president and CEO of Double Diamond VIP, a D2C consulting company. He can be reached via email at nick@doublediamondvip.com. Connect with us: www.doublediamondvip.com/contact
Original Article: https://www.resultsmagazine-digital.com/results/library/item/march_2023/4084924/
