Why D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) is a must-have for your FMCG brand

Building a direct-to-consumer (D2C) business model is no longer the preserve of restaurants and upstart retail brands. Increasingly, FMCG brands are looking towards trends in online ordering and home delivery to keep up with consumer demand and stay relevant.

Of course, adding a new channel and model to a legacy business is never easy. But we think there are many reasons to consider it. Here’s why FMCG brands should consider D2C an essential part of their strategy.

To see the huge potential of D2C for FMCG brands, you just have to look at the success that Amazon, Apple, and Tesla have had in selling products directly to consumers and building lasting relationships that foster extraordinary loyalty.

7 reasons D2C is essential for FMCG brands

1. Own the customer experience

Relying on third-party retailers means competing with all the other brands and relying on others for your customer experience. When you go direct, you can add personalized touches and make the customer experience unique to your brand.

Essential elements like the ordering experience, customer service at the point of delivery, packaging, and after-sales service make a huge difference to customer loyalty and long-term trust in a brand. It’s time to take advantage of consumer trends in online ordering and delivery and give your customers an excellent experience that matches the quality of your products.

2. Give customers what they want: convenience

Customers are demanding convenience in every aspect of their lives. Meals can now be ordered and delivered straight to your door in half an hour, taxis are cheap and available via an app, and same-day delivery is becoming the standard in retail. 

Online ordering and home delivery are becoming the norm for shoppers. FMCG brands need to keep up with the times if they want to remain relevant. If your brand doesn’t take advantage of the consumer trend for delivery and more convenience, another brand will. 

3. Build a direct relationship with your customers

When you own a more significant part of the customer experience and deal directly with individuals, you can get higher value from your customer relationships and leverage it repeatedly. Big data is everything these days, and building a relationship with your customers means getting to know them, learning about their pain points, and learning about their buying habits.

This information can then be used to craft personalized marketing campaigns and offer the best possible service, helping you to foster lasting loyalty and continued growth into the future.

4. Explore new business models

The D2C model opens up new possibilities for selling products to customers. The subscription model is one of the biggest and brightest new innovations in retail. 

Companies like Dollar Shave Club sent shockwaves through the industry with viral advertising campaigns for their subscription shaving products. The products are delivered to the doorstep monthly, ensuring maximum convenience and regular revenue. Unilever subsequently acquired the brand for a reported $1 billion! It shows the potential power of new ways of reaching customers. 

Why not test a subscription model for a new product line? Or try out another D2C model like Amazon’s Prime service, which offers a range of benefits and free delivery. Tesla gets its customers to pay upfront for products that aren’t even in production yet! 

The possibilities are endless in the world of D2C. It’s up to you to get creative.

5. Improve new product development

You'll learn a lot as you explore this new terrain and get to know your customers directly. Use this newfound insight to develop new and innovative products that appeal to your ideal customers. 

• What is missing from their daily lives? 

• How do they like to order and pay for items? 

• Is it worth backing up the online experience with a storefront?

See how your customers want to interact with you and use that data to develop new models and more efficient ways of delivering products to them.

6. Increase margins

Given FMCG products’ high volume and tight margins, brands always look for ways to shave a few pennies off each order. 

Taking your products straight to the consumer means there’s one fewer middleman. This lets you be more generous with offers and pricing to entice customers into this new channel. 

7. Opportunity to leverage ERP for efficient scaling

Working through retailers, you are always limited by their footfall and the competition for limited shelf space. Delivering your products directly opens up huge scaling potential, with almost unlimited opportunities to reach customers in their homes. 

To achieve massive sales numbers, you need to run the most efficient operation possible. That means leveraging the latest technology for retail order management and delivery fulfillment efficiency. 

Connecting your existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Deliverect Retail offers you all the tools to supercharge your online order and delivery business. It aggregates orders from all the biggest delivery platforms and pulls them into one dashboard.

It also features game-changing catalog management systems that could save your staff hours of tedious labor. With Deliverect Retail, you can manage all your catalogsfrom one screen and push changes to every delivery platform you use. Given the thousands of products FMCG brands offer, this greatly boosts your productivity.

Get on board the D2C train before it’s too late

Start-ups, grocery stores, and convenience chains are embracing direct-to-consumer delivery. FMCG brands that don’t react and take the initiative will fall behind. 

As we’ve seen, the model’s advantages are numerous, and the latest delivery and ordering technology makes speedy scaling possible across the industry. 

Take advantage of advances in inventory management and delivery management and control your customer relationships with a D2C approach to FMCG retail.