Have you ever wondered about the impact of other sales channels on your own DTC offering. For example, aggregators like Booking.com or Hotels.com in travel or marketplaces like Amazon in retail?
Or conversely if they are generating a halo effect helped by greater distribution of your brand’s products and sales?
We often see a dynamic where one sales channel that previously had strong performance is now flat or shrinking YOY, whereas another is growing. This can be especially prevalent between DTC websites and Amazon. Consumer behaviour is anything but siloed across sales channels.
So is it possible that a channel like Amazon is “stealing” customers that would have previously come through your DTC?
That’s to say, do you know whether that Amazon growth is actually incremental? And crucially how can you quantify that effect to give you a more holistic view of performance?
The answer is through marketing mix modelling (MMM).
With one client we’ve identified a 10%+ “steal” by Amazon on DTC sales this year alone. And MMM works for pretty much any sector. We’ve also recently identified the positive incremental impact of comparison sites for one of our travel clients.
It might seem an obvious general point but our analysis across several clients appears to show that if a brand has low awareness but a strong product then the platforms can offer a significant leg up. However, if the brand is better known then it is more likely to suffer some form of cannibalisation.
If you’d like to understand how similar channel dynamics work for your brand get in touch.
