Why You Should Prioritize Direct-to-Consumer Strategies

I recently caught up with Rekha Brar, a successful small retail business owner who created Blossom Box and launched a second online store, Gilded Halo, during the pandemic. Its jewelry stores have recorded a sales rate of almost 90% and its overall growth is close to 50%, year after year. She focused on a direct-to-consumer model that accounts for 75% of total sales. We discussed several reasons why his strategy sells.

Related: 4 Key Strategies Small Retailers Need for a Healthy Business

Maintain marketing budgets

When small retailers start their businesses, a lot of capital is set aside for product development, hiring employees, freelancers, and more. But little attention is paid to ensuring that a budget is also set aside to manage your marketing. A tip for smaller brands, which are already generating revenue, is to establish a percentage that you plan to reinvest to spread the word. Be sure to choose a percentage that doesn’t neuter your business and prevent you from making other decisions about other vital expenses.

Rekha invests between 5% and 7% of its income in the marketing budget, as it is a great way to attract attention and grow your business independently of large retailers.

Channel Surfing

Rekha understands where its customers spend most of their time online and allocates its marketing budget to target them on these channels. Small retailers should also allow themselves enough time to complete three tests on the selected channels. The first test can take place between the first 30 and the last 90 days from the launch date of the advertising campaign. When you test over a longer period of time, you benefit from collecting historical data to continue making conscious decisions about performance against specific channels. You can also adjust your marketing spend based on overall performance.

Stay on top of customers

Rekha reads her comments online and makes adjustments where necessary. Customers are delighted to know that their feedback has created value for the brand, improved their business practices and increased customer satisfaction. This process is also a great way to find gaps in your business and where you are not meeting your customer needs. Reading their comments allows you to react accordingly and improve your practices. Early in Amazon’s launch, Jeff Bezos incorporated user feedback into his business practices and still reviews customer emails to this day.

Related: Saviors of Clothing Manufacturing

Expand your style collections

Rekha has formed partnerships with discount retailers to move unsold units to their stores at a reduced price. This reduced price does not mean that it is not profitable, it simply means that she is not at the upper index where she should have preferred to sell her units. The benefit of expanding your style collection is that you eliminate designs that don’t work and allow customers to wait on a list for out-of-stock and in-demand items. This process also helps you determine your “best sellers” and “slow sellers”, but be sure to consider any seasonality factors that can affect your product’s performance.

Find a search solution

The final step is to invest in improving your search engine marketing and search engine optimization strategy. SEM is your search engine optimization, allowing search engines to list your website. The more your site is optimized for keywords, the greater the chance that your rankings will improve. You pay for specific keywords and your ads will appear when those terms are on the engines. If the campaign meets specific criteria, your ads will appear for those keywords. If you don’t know how to set up your meta tags, invest in the right tech tools like SEOMoz or SEO Yoast to improve your meta tags and help you monitor the growth of your keyword search rankings. A well-optimized site will increase search engine rankings and organic search traffic to your e-commerce site. It also means customers interested in your products and services can find you faster.

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