Co-Founder, Rachel Clarke, discusses the optimum approach to DTC and shares the frameworks that Strat House use.

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Connectedness in DTC through object thinking

A well-documented impact of Covid has been the jolt-in-the-arm it gave to DTC. Our client adidas had been selling direct for years but 2020 massively accelerated that programme: initiatives they previously assumed might take years were delivered in months, because they had to be. Interestingly many of our other clients moved into DTC rapidly as a way to drive equity.

Regardless of the ultimate DTC objective, our clients are very aware that journey-planning is critical and we get many questions about the optimum approach; is it best to use the Buyers’ Journey or the Shopping Cycle?

In our view, to create the best experience you need to use both – leveraging the combination to shape your thinking about internal and external approaches. Because the hardest obstacle you will need to overcome is that your thinking (and organisation) has probably been split between marketing to consumers and selling and distributing to retailers.

This article shares the frameworks I work with, and how I tie the two together. So let’s get to those models (…I’m a Strategist, it’s expected :-)).

What’s in a Journey

Let’s start with some assumptions that need to be considered:

• You have a product someone will want to buy directly; special editions, special packs, interesting product mixes …offerings that cannot be bought from their usual retailer
• You have a fulfilment model and can get goods into the delivery network.

The Buyer’s Journey

There’s nothing special here – it’s the classic Purchase Consideration Journey. The names may vary but they cover the same principles. You start with consumer needs, thinking about what triggers their interaction with your products and communications, and what could act as a barrier to their engagement

Everything here needs to be from the consumer point of view – what are they looking for and therefore how can you help them get that?

But when setting up or expanding your DTC operations we find it’s helpful to combine this Journey with the Shopping Cycle to synergise thinking across your organisation. Because when your teams have previously been split between serving consumers or serving retailers having to combine this thinking can be challenging.

The Shopping Cycle

The Shopping Cycle tackles the journey from the supplier POV. It focuses on what needs to happen internally to connect with the consumers. It’s a cycle because it can be treated as a flywheel –  removing friction in the system speeds it up and makes it easier to optimise.

At first glance, you may think there is little difference in the HOW section between the Buyer’s Journey and Shopping Cycle: you’re looking at the same set of touchpoints. Totally true. But that’s not the point. When looking at this cycle, the emphasis is on how you, as a company can remove friction both internally and externally:

• How can you do better in managing this cycle?
• How can you do better at connecting the product and comms experiences

A classic example we have found again and again is the disconnect between marketing and service emails. Both have an impact on customer return and retention. but they are usually managed completely differently by different teams …when from the consumer POV, they’re all from the same company.

By treating both marketing and service emails as part of the ‘Retain’ activity in the DTC cycle you can start to put in place ways to connect the two.

So how do they come together?

DTC is constantly evolving of course, so perhaps we’ll change this approach. But currently we’ve lifted a technique I learned when working in process engineering: in which we consider each element as a process object: an object that needs to take into account external and internal needs.

Going back to example of the service vs marketing email, both need to be aligned in what they say and promise. For example, you don’t promote delivery benefits you can’t deliver… and why shouldn’t service emails try and upsell occasionally? 

Our role in all of this has been to help our clients with the framework thinking and how to connect across the external and internal elements. Using these two models, and tying them together, allows prioritisation across the whole model. We’ve found it a useful way to remove potential conflicts between marketing and distribution in DTC but to be honest we hope it’s also heralding the start of a far more holistic approach to comms across the consumer journey.