Having a strong brand or brand presence is crucial to having a successful eCommerce business. But what is the best ways to build your online brand? Here are seven techniques that your company can use to strengthen your brand.
Communicate Your Brand’s Value
Prospects are on the hunt for clues as to whether or not they can consider shopping from your brand. They look for some type of value or perspective that they agree with. Value doesn’t just shave to do with the products themselves or even the product price but instead encompasses all areas of your business like customer service, innovation and employees. You can also build your brand by supporting a specific cause.
Nutraceutical has a great example of explaining their brand’s value on their about us page:
Stay Consistent
Customers should be able to recognize your brand immediately. Between the copy, design, images and videos, every element your company uses should match your brand’s value, tone and aesthetic. That’s why tools such as a company brand guide are so important. So your team know the rules of the road as it were.
Establish a Social Media Presence
Social media isn’t for every brand, but it can help strengthen your brand’s credibility and awareness. Right now there are 3.6 billion social media users. Having a social media presence will also help you build a community of followers and supporters who can refer others to your business.
The Fawn Shoppe has a successful social media presence that not only has a large following but stays true and consistent to who they are as a brand:
Know Your Audience
A successful business relies on converting your potential customers in your target audience. To do this, you must know what your customers need or are looking for. Once you know what they need or want, you can craft your business strategies and mission statement in the most effective way.
Know Your Marketplace
Just like how you should know your audience, you should also know your marketplace. A marketplace is the area where commercial dealings occur. Since the internet is a wide, vast area, you need to find your market niche — clothing, sports, medical, etc — and advertise there. While you are researching your audience, you need to research your competitors as well. As we mentioned about, through research, you will discover things about your customers like demographics, geological location and other characteristics. While researching your competition, you will understand how they do business like how they treat customers, prices and brand design. Once you know this information about your competitors, you will want to have the same or better standard than them.
Highlight the Best You Have
This is where you display why your customers need your product and how it will benefit them. Here you answer product, price, promotion and place.
Product
Whether you sell clothing, kitchenware, sports equipment or anything else, you must have a clear vision of what your product or service is and why it is unique from others. This is where you let customers know all the best attributes of your products, how it will make their lives better and why it is different from anything else they have bought. You will focus on products heavily on your product pages and social media through copy, videos and images.
Price
While determining the price of an item is more for internal knowledge, it is important to understand it to strengthen your brand. Price decisions must include how your price will impact supply, profit margins, demand and market strategies. Also, think about price elasticity of demand, the responsiveness of customers when a product’s cost changes, because it does affect the next two p’s.
Promotion
Once you have your product and price picked, it is time to think of the promotions that revolve around it. Promotion does not always mean a discount or offer, but it also means how you plan on showcasing a product whether it be in a lookbook, advertisement or collection.You will want to promote on your website, social media, emails and any other marketing materials you decide to use.
Place
Now that you have the product, price and promotion, it’s time to place the product somewhere. For your company, you will place your products on your website, emails, advertising and social media if you use it. By placing the product in multiple places, you have more chances of converting existing and prospective customers. Not all users will make a purchase, but the engagements and impressions will help your brand tremendously.
Learning Express Toys and Gifts lays out a great example of the four p’s by highlighting its top toys and best sellers under the trending tab:
Continue to Promote
Quality products will only get you so far. Promoting your business on an ongoing, consistent basis will strengthen your brand’s presence overall. Show who your brand is, what you sell and why, plus any other relevant information through social media, emails, events and offers or discounts. Be your company’s brand ambassador.
Continue to Promote Know Your Marketplace
Research not only your customers but competitors as well. Through research you will discover things about your customers like their demographics, geological location and other characteristics. Researching your competitors allows you to know how they do business: ie: how they treat customers, pricing strategy and brand design. Knowing these can help inform your efforts to create a strong, reliable business.
Conclusion
If you strengthen your brand, your company will flourish for many years to come. There are many more ways to create a stronger brand presence, and a knowledgeable marketing firm can help you achieve it. For ways on how InteractOne can help your company, contact us today.
