Where are you in the D2C matrix?
It’s useful to think about any D2C strategy in terms of two variables: the degree of control you have over how your brand is experienced and the degree of access you have to data insights about how consumers are engaging with your offer.
If a consumer is encountering your product on a website or phone app you own, for example, you have total control over the experience and can capture all the data generated by that interaction (to the extent that the consumer gives permission).
If the interaction is taking place in a marketplace owned by another organization, your ability to control the experience and gather data will be limited, depending on the rules of engagement with the platform.
You can plot any number of consumer engagement activities on the experience/insight matrix, from pop-up stores and livestreaming to social selling, on your own websites and a variety of branded presences on third-party platforms.
Depending on the geographic region, we believe these can all come under the broadest definition of D2C, but they each require very different strategies, capabilities and technologies to make them work.
Organizations with a D2C mindset think about the role that D2C, in all its forms, can play in helping the organization as a whole create value for all its stakeholders. They then balance D2C imperatives against the needs of the rest of the business and create the operating models needed to support them.
Those that approach D2C as a channel find all of this much harder because their perspective is so narrow.