How are Audience Insights benefiting D2C Growth in India?

In the D2C ecosystem, the customer is at the center of your business. Your customers want to be  known as unique individuals instead of a nameless count in a broad market segment. As a result,  they are leaping away from the days of product suggestions based on elementary profiling. 

The customers now presume you to know them well beyond the basic demographic information.  They want you to understand their purchase behavior, affinity, payment preferences, and device  choices and want personalized offerings that cater to their needs and preferences. They love  offers and like being pampered. 

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D2C businesses need solutions based on relevant customer data that serve actionable insights  to offer such tailored experiences. Having carried out impactful campaigns for hundreds of D2C  brands, Paytm Ads lists how to use audience insights to connect with the target consumers  successfully. 

Knowing who your audience is to target them effectively. 

It is vital to learn who your real audience is. Leveraging deterministic audience insights based on  first-party data can give D2C businesses a 360-degree view of their customers and throw light on  who should be their target audience. With insights on past and present purchases, transactional  insights, affinity, devices used, and content consumed, above the basic contact information,  demography, and location, D2C businesses can proactively engage, convert, and re-sell to their  audience. Once they can demystify their audiences, companies can begin to adapt their marketing  approach to the needs and behavior of their audiences. 

Meet your audience where they are. 

In an omnichannel discovery landscape, brands must be present where their customers are. A  synchronized approach which is an intersection of the right audiences on the most appropriate  channels, is an effective way to grab attention. 

Several D2C brands have partnered with Paytm to drive relevant users their way and transact on  their websites. It was done by mapping audience affinity towards personal care, health, and  wellness brands, apart from other behavioral signals, by identifying their online and offline  transactions within the Paytm app and related ecosystems. On identification of the target  audiences, brands were made visible to these audiences at crucial intersections during their  transaction journey on Paytm. 

Paytm Ads believes that distribution is an essential cog for a D2C brand. Earlier CPG brands  used to rely heavily on offline retail stores for customer purchases, some of whom have migrated  online. On the other hand, today’s D2C brands rely heavily on commerce marketplaces for sale  but, in the process, are limiting their avenues to sell, given the penetration of e-commerce in these  categories. Using Paytm’s advertising solutions, D2C brands can successfully build their direct 

to-customer connections on their website and offline stores, where a significant chunk of India’s  retail transactions happen.  

Offers, Sampling, Trials - D2C customers love these!  

India is known to be a price-conscious and value-seeking market. But, very few brands also know  that today’s India has a strong desire to stand out, to experiment, and willingness to pay the price.  But why should they trust a new brand on the corner?  

Offers and Sampling are an excellent way to capitalize on the age-old insight of value-conscious  customers who don’t want to take risks unless convinced while also riding on the newfound desire  to stand out.  

Some of our large advertisers have capitalized on this emotion very well. For example, Paytm  Scratchcards is a much-loved product by our consumers and brand partners. It rewards its users  with curated offers from brands that want to target the customer. These scratchcards direct the  users to the brand’s website, where the request can be applied, and the user receives the product  directly at their doorstep. For example, The Good Glamm Group partnered with Paytm Ads to  drive conversion and sampling for their sub-brand My Glamm. Paytm Ads created properties  across the user journey to engage and convert them to My Glamm customers. The targeted  audiences were given a My Glamm scratch card upon completing the transaction on Paytm. This  created an impulse to avail of the offer and made a purchase. The users were then directed to  the My Glamm website to choose products with similar value. It also helped the brand to showcase  other products from the website to add to the cart. As a result, the campaign saw an increase in  the average order value and helped obtain a high investment return. The brand was also featured  in the Deals and Hot Deals section to encourage quick purchases and retarget the users who  have previously engaged with the brand. 

Did we mention first-party data somewhere? 

D2C brands can build their first-party database instead of relying on commerce marketplaces. As  a result, customers start seeing this as a destination to purchase from the brand. In addition,  through custom offers, the brand can acquire new users and offer discounts for its loyal users  who love the first sample. 

Using such comprehensive and accurate audience insights to run campaigns enables brands to  put the right motivators in front of their customers. 

Driving Brand recall and Performance with Branding 

Audience insights combined with comprehensive ad solutions can help create versatile marketing  campaigns. For example, to build a full-funnel campaign, brands can leverage insights based on  affinity and transaction signals of users transacting on similar or complementary products and  follow through inclusion or exclusion of cohorts based on the campaign objective and  performance.  

With Paytm Audience insights, D2C brands can create custom audience cohorts to engage with  users who are most likely to be interested in their products and brands. For example, Licious, a  meat and seafood brand, partnered with Paytm to reach new customers and drive orders on their  app. Paytm Ads created a custom user cohort based on transactional insights of users showing  a high affinity for meat purchases, online and offline. To ensure high performance in acquiring  new customers, Paytm excluded existing Licious customers. Users who have already used Paytm  to transact on the Licious app were omitted from targeting to help reduce the wastage of the new  user campaign budgets. It helped to spread awareness to new customers and engage them by  incentivizing them with an attractive offer. The offer created an impulse to visit Licious App and  complete the transaction. 

Thus, D2C brands can interact directly with customers and have complete access to the  experience chain. As a result, marketers can easily create personalized and customizable user  customer experiences. Such insights-driven advertising solutions can help brands generate  marketing campaigns that drive engagement and convert customers.