4 D2C strategies businesses can use to lead their industry

Updated on October 19, 2026: data reviewed and updated.

4 D2C strategies businesses can use to lead their industry

With a D2C marketing strategy, where you sell direct to consumers instead of going through distributors and retailers, you can build a solid online presence, form lasting relationships with your customers and even build a brand of your own.

Many big brands have made the leap into D2C marketing, and D2C has kept growing since 2021 and in the years that followed. The barriers to entry into the industry are fairly low for D2C startups. Even so, keep in mind that you will be competing with retail giants that have already built up a large following of customers.

That brings us to why a sensible ecommerce marketing strategy matters so much for a D2C business. Below are 4 D2C strategies you can start putting into practice today to grow your brand and win the attention of the potential customers you want to reach.

D2C strategy #1: Lead generation (and lead nurturing)

Inbound marketing techniques such as lead generation and lead nurturing are a very good way to bring in new prospects and new sales. D2C brands can put them to work to build a customer base in a steady, consistent way, and that customer base is what then lifts sales and keeps customers coming back.

Lead generation is the process of attracting visitors and converting them into leads. A lead is someone who has shown interest in your product or service. You can use many different lead generation tactics to get prospects to interact with the brand, such as a blog post, a job application, online content or even an in-person event.

Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel. It points your communication and marketing efforts at listening to what prospects actually need, and at giving them the information they need to trust the brand, all the way up to the moment they are ready to buy.

Generating leads is important. Nurturing them, though, is the bigger factor when the goal is to turn those leads into paying customers of your ecommerce store.

A few elements belong in any marketing strategy built around lead generation and lead nurturing:

A strong offer

This is the starting point, and an important one, because a strong offer is what draws in a large number of prospects in the first place. The offer can be a discount, a free sign-up reward, downloadable content and so on, or simply something of value that benefits the prospect.

A simple sign-up form

Make the sign-up process as easy and simple as possible. A simple form lets people register quickly and without effort. A long or complicated form that asks for too much information does the opposite and puts them off.

A plan for what happens after sign-up

Your work is not finished at the point where a prospect shows interest. Make sure you already have a plan ready for leads after they sign up, for example an additional offer or an exclusive discount code.

Test to get the best results

By now you have an idea of the methods you can use to generate and nurture leads for your ecommerce store. You may also be looking for a few tips on how to get the most ROI out of them, and that is where testing comes in.

One good example of an experiment worth trying comes from ella+mila, an eco-friendly beauty company that makes high-quality products without toxic chemicals.

The company reached a 55.4% conversion rate on abandoned carts on mobile and added roughly $744,000 in sales by using Justuno, a popup tool for websites.

D2C strategy #2: Email marketing

As part of a D2C ecommerce marketing strategy, bring in every user across all of your channels, and email in particular.

You can set up an email nurture sequence to build relationships with your customers at every stage and guide those contacts toward a purchase decision. Email marketing can be a very strong tool when it is set up properly. That is why you should focus on the elements that make an email marketing campaign succeed, such as:

A clean, up-to-date marketing list

Wrong email addresses and outdated information lead to a higher bounce rate, more unsubscribe requests and missed opportunities. A clean email list makes sure the marketing campaign is better targeted, reaches the recipients with real potential and cuts down the number of emails that never get delivered.

Data about your contacts

The more information you have about your contacts or leads, the easier it is to tailor your message and send targeted emails with information the recipient will find useful. Collecting and organizing the contact data you already have is a good way to keep your email campaigns relevant to the brand.

Strong visuals and design elements

A well-made, visually appealing design will always draw more attention. Make sure your emails are designed to catch the eye and pull recipients into reading further, and that they reinforce your brand image at the same time.

If you don’t have design skills, you can use a tool like Canva to build attractive emails from its many ready-made templates. If you would rather not design them yourself, you can hire a designer to help create the emails for your D2C email marketing campaigns.

Stay in touch consistently and often

Sharing interesting information, product updates or the latest marketing trends is a good way to maintain your contacts and keep your brand image in front of customers’ eyes.

Here are a few ways to improve your email marketing efforts:

• Send a monthly newsletter
• Send post-purchase emails after an upsell or a cross-sell
• Run discount and promotion campaigns. For big marketplace sale days, work out the break-even discount after marketplace fees before you lock in a voucher, using the spreadsheet in our 11.11 plan. If you also plan to run Shopee Ads or GMV Max for the sale, read how these e-commerce marketplace ads work before you set a budget.

These are just a few ideas to help you stay in regular contact with your email list and nurture leads at every stage of the sales funnel.

D2C strategy #3: Branded content marketing and influencers

Investing in branded content, meaning content built around the brand rather than a direct sales pitch, matters a great deal for consumer brands. When people shop online they can’t touch the product, so marketers need to find other ways to make sure consumers trust the brand and feel comfortable making a purchase decision.

Influencer marketing is another part of a successful D2C marketing strategy, and you can use it to build the brand. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the global influencer marketing industry was estimated at $32.55 billion in 2025, up from $24 billion in 2024 (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2025).

For a branded content strategy to work, keep these points in mind:

• Choose the right influencers and partners to work with
• Have an outreach plan ready for contacting these businesses or people
• Grow your business into one that people want to work with

A good example of a successful influencer marketing strategy is Old Navy’s partnership with Alex Rodriguez, the retired New York Yankees player. The 2018 campaign raised donations for Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA): for every $1 pair of socks sold in stores on Black Friday, Old Navy donated $1, and the brand reached its maximum donation of $1 million.

Start with micro or nano influencers

You don’t need to go looking for big-name influencers, but carrying out an influencer strategy will certainly help raise your brand’s credibility. If you start with micro or nano influencers, who have smaller followings but are highly relevant to their audience, you can also keep your budget lower while still extending the brand’s reach.

If you want to succeed with branded marketing and influencer marketing, make sure you invest properly in good-looking visuals, because the visuals are what represent your brand. Influencers will want to work with you if it looks like you have the eye to make them look good in return.

Tip: Combine your influencer strategy with user-generated content (UGC) to build credibility.

D2C strategy #4: SEO (search engine optimization)

If you are a D2C brand, you need to invest in a solid SEO strategy. It works much like planting a seed today so that later on you can reap rewards that are long-lasting and sustainable.

Most young D2C brands want to see results right away. But SEO is not a channel that delivers an immediate ROI. SEO is a long-term plan, and that long time horizon is exactly what lets you scale your growth. It takes time, and it is an investment. A few elements belong in any SEO strategy, especially if you want to make sure yours follows SEO best practices. Here are some suggestions to follow:

Do keyword research

Keyword research is one of the fundamental parts of a successful SEO campaign. Don’t put all your focus on just a handful of main keywords. Widen your research so you can pick up related phrases and use them to build topic clusters. These clusters will keep supporting your marketing and content strategy over time.

Prioritize product pages

When optimizing SEO for an ecommerce business, put your product pages first. They are among the most important pages you want prospects to land on, because they are where sales and conversions happen. When you roll out a D2C strategy, make sure your product pages speak directly to customers and are optimized for the best visibility possible.

Internal links and topic clusters

Search engines have changed their algorithms to favor topic clusters, where related pages are grouped around one subject and linked to each other. This should be part of both your content creation strategy and your SEO strategy.

Start a blog

Starting with one blog post a week is a good beginning. You can build up and expand gradually from there, once you have a solid strategy in place and a content calendar planned out in advance.

Invest in an SEO tool

Keyword research and SEO tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush give you the insights you need to optimize your content and marketing campaigns. You can also see what your competitors are ranking for. These tools usually come with plenty of useful help documentation to get you started.

Start with the simple optimizations

Elements such as the H1, the meta description and optimized ALT text for images are quick and easy wins when you do SEO. These are the tasks that should sit at the very top of your to-do list.

A D2C marketing strategy is a worthwhile investment

When it comes to attracting and keeping the customers you are aiming for in your D2C business, a strong enough D2C strategy can make all the difference.

Lead generation and lead nurturing, email marketing, influencer strategy and SEO give you plenty of ways to build the brand, reach potential customers and grow a loyal customer base. Each of these ideas sounds great in theory, though in practice putting all of them in place can get difficult.