iWorld
Building your brand: Leveraging social media for D2C success
Mumbai: In the fast-paced digital age of 2024, where attention spans are shrinking, social media has become the battleground for Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands aiming to capture consumer attention and drive sales. With 4.89 billion global social media users, the competition is fierce, and D2C success hinges on strategic leveraging of these platforms.
The Power of social media in e-commerce
Over 80 per cent of internet users turn to social media to discover new brands and make informed purchase decisions. D2C brand marketers recognize the importance of social media in enhancing brand awareness and driving sales. However, standing out requires a nuanced understanding of customers, effective communication strategies, and consistent content.
Reasons to build social media content
Nearly half of the world’s population is active on social media, presenting an enormous opportunity for ecommerce brands. Leveraging social media offers several compelling advantages:
Opportunity to build Brand Narrative: You have complete control over the building the consistent brand narrative. The content commerce is so evolved that one can educate, differentiate, and build customer engagement powerfully.
Word of Mouth and Brand Awareness: Positive customer experiences shared on social media generate word-of-mouth marketing, enhancing brand awareness.
Drive Traffic to Your Store: social media serves as a powerful tool to drive both new and repeat traffic to ecommerce websites, contributing to 31% of referral traffic.
Capture Audience Preferences: Social media provides a direct channel to understand and capture customer preferences, allowing brands to tailor their offerings accordingly.
Strategies for social media success
To make the most of social media for your D2C brand, a strategic approach is essential:
Create, Curate, and Share Engaging Content: Diversify content by creating original material and curating from popular handles. Engaging content fosters a strong connection with followers.
Make Relatable Content: The content should be relatable to your target group. PERIOD. Else, the effort goes vain.
Make Your Social Media Feed Shoppable: Leverage features on platforms like Facebook and Instagram to make your feed shoppable, providing a seamless shopping experience for customers.
Explore Beyond Conventional Channels: Identify niche audiences on less-explored social media platforms like Quora, Reddit, and YouTube. Each platform serves a unique purpose and can contribute to a comprehensive social media strategy.
Optimize Social Media Posts: Adhere to best practices for posting content, including the use of engaging imagery, hashtags for discoverability, prompt responses to customer queries, and maintaining a consistent brand voice.
Build a Community of Raving Fans: Treat social media followers as a community, fostering two-way communication. Building a close-knit community enhances brand loyalty and customer engagement.
Embrace Moment Marketing: Capitalize on trending events through moment marketing to deliver relevant and timely interactions, capturing the fleeting attention of the modern consumer.
The ever-changing social media landscape
The rules of social media marketing are written in pencil, not ink. What works today may not work tomorrow, emphasizing the need for adaptability. With intense competition for consumer attention, understanding audience dynamics, preferences, and providing a unique brand experience are paramount.
To conclude
Social Media is the only channel where one can build the brand narrative & ethos consistently without spending dollars. Don’t see it as a platform to talk about your products or services, see it as opportunity to talk about problems and solutions that your brand is solving.
The following article is attributed to CurryIt co-founder Nischal Kandula.
Gaming
MTG gaming chief Benninghoff joins NODWIN board as esports firm primes for IPO
The Gurugram-based esports firm is pursuing a public listing, has returned to profitability and is growing revenues by 42 per cent
GURUGRAM: NODWIN Gaming is moving fast. The Gurugram-based gaming and esports company has launched a pre-IPO fundraising round, appointed UBS as lead adviser for both the round and a subsequent public listing, and landed a heavyweight board director, all in one go.
The new board member is Arnd Benninghoff, executive vice president of gaming at Stockholm-listed Modern Times Group (MTG), who has overseen the group’s strategic investments and portfolio growth since 2014. He is no stranger to building things: Benninghoff has founded and built fifteen companies, served as chief digital officer at ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, managing director of SevenVentures, and chief executive of Holtzbrinck eLAB. He began his career as a journalist at Deutsche Presse Agentur and various TV networks, holds a Diplom-Kaufmann in business and administration from the University of Münster, and previously sat on the board of Edgeware AB.
The numbers back the ambition
NODWIN is not pitching a story without substance. The company has returned to EBITDA profitability and posted a 42 per cent year-on-year revenue surge, reaching $58.5m in the first nine months of FY2026. The pre-IPO round will combine a primary issuance to fund global expansion through organic growth and acquisitions, alongside a secondary sale to give existing shareholders some liquidity.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, said Benninghoff understands “the entire lifecycle of the gaming and media ecosystem, from the boots-on-the-ground reality of building startups to the strategic complexity of managing multi-billion dollar global portfolios.”
Benninghoff, for his part, said the company “sits at the intersection of sports, entertainment, and technology, making it one of the most exciting players in the global gaming landscape today.”
A portfolio built for the global south
Founded in 2014 by Rathee and Gautam Virk, NODWIN has quietly assembled one of the more compelling esports portfolios outside the Western hemisphere. Its properties include DreamHack India and Comic Con India, and it recently acquired StarLadder, the Ukraine-based tournament organiser behind premier events in CS:GO and Dota 2. The company also serves as a long-term strategic marketing partner for the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), the world’s most prominent fighting game tournament, helping push it into new geographies.
Its geographic focus spans South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Backers include Nazara Technologies, KRAFTON, Sony Group Corporation, JetSynthesys, and the founders’ investment vehicle Good Game Investments.
What comes next
With UBS running the books, a board freshly reinforced with European media and gaming expertise, and revenue heading in the right direction, NODWIN is laying the groundwork deliberately. The esports industry has burned investors before with big promises and thin margins. NODWIN’s return to profitability, combined with a real portfolio of owned intellectual properties across gaming, music and youth culture, gives it a more credible runway than most. The IPO clock is now ticking.
