In a world where smaller stores are competing directly with big brands with the power of eCommerce, it is extremely important to consider how you are perceived in your customer's minds.
If you want your business to thrive, you need to adopt effective eCommerce branding strategies that will make your brand stand out.
Table of Contents
- Why is it important to brand your eCommerce store?
- The Four V’s of Branding
- Visual Branding Using the Four V’s
- 8 eCommerce Branding Strategies for Retailers
- Takeaway
Why is it Important to Brand your eCommerce Store?
Branding your eCommerce store can help your business grow immensely. A strong brand means that your customers will pick you over your competition. A strong brand creates loyal customers and promises a long-term relationship with them.
Creating a brand identity for your eCommerce store is a necessity for your business to grow. In short, branding promises you sustainable growth of your business. Branding also builds trust among your customers and makes them visit your store again and again.
The Four V’s of Branding
The four V’s of branding – Vision, Values, Voice, and Variation, are the basis on which our eCommerce brand will be established. They provide the roadmap for creating a successful brand.
Vision
Every business owner has some sort of expectation from their business or brand. Vision is the major goal you have in mind for your brand or business. It is where you want to see your business in the future. The vision of your company provides a direction for you, you just need to define the objectives which will help in accomplishing your vision.
Values
The second V is your values. Values are what your business prioritizes and are the guiding principles of your business. Values are the behaviours that you want your business to have. As a business owner if you align your business's values with your personal values you will see an increase in your business's success and reputation.
Voice
Voice is the tone in which you communicate your message to your customers and target audience. It is how you want your brand to be perceived by your target audience. Your voice needs to be consistent throughout the whole shopping process of your customer.
It is another way of giving human traits to your brand. Your voice can make your brand sound either fun, friendly, helpful or sophisticated. You need to remember to stay authentic with your brand voice.
Variation
Variation is what sets you apart from other businesses. It could be either price or the quality of the products. You can find out your distinguishing factor by asking yourself, why a customer might buy a product from you rather than getting it from one of your competitors.
Knowing your variation can benefit you as it will help with the messages you are putting across all of your online marketing campaigns. You get a better idea about your customers’ preferences and what they will be attracted to.
Visual Branding using the Four V’s
Now that you are sure about the four V’s of your business, it’s time you start with your eCommerce store’s visual branding.
For your Combat Sports or Fitness Store, you can either have a bit more rugged and tough tone if your target audience is mainly men in their teens to late 60s. Keep in mind, don’t be too aggressive or you can sound unwelcoming to your customers.
Following are the visual elements that help in translating your voice and values into visual elements:
- Logo (the face of your brand)
- Colours and theme (the colours that will evoke emotional responses)
- Fonts (the typography of your online store)
8 eCommerce Branding Strategies for Retailers
- Identify Your Target Audience
- Jot Down Your Mission Statement and USP
- Establish Your Style
- Share Your Brand’s Story
- Write Down Your Content Strategy
- Engage The Community
- Prioritize Customer Service
- Be Consistent With Your Branding
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Knowing and focusing on the right target audience is the key to success for your business. Just having a product and displaying is not going to be beneficial for you unless you don’t showcase it to the right target audience. You need to understand who your target audience is, their location, and what their needs are.
By knowing your target audience you can create personalized or relatable content, create campaigns for better conversion rates, make investments that will give maximum profit and much more. These benefits show you why knowing your target audience is important for your eCommerce store and how it’ll help in branding your store.
Related Article: Tips On Providing Personalized Shopping Experience To Your Retail Customers
2. Jot Down Your Mission Statement and USP
Every brand has a mission statement and that mission statement shows what you want to achieve as a brand and what value you want to give to your customers. Sometimes members can remember your brand solely based on your mission statement.
Other than your mission statement your Unique Selling Preposition (USP) is necessary to differentiate your brand from your competitors. If we just talk about eCommerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Walmart there is a lot of competition on these platforms. So, having a USP can distinguish you and will benefit your business.
3. Establish your style
Shoppers don’t stay loyal to your brand just because they like the quality of your products. They want more than just the product quality, they look for the experience your brand gives them. Now how do you provide your customer with experience through your eCommerce store? Simple, through your distinct style and online persona.
In short, your style which includes your logo, colours, writing style, typography, and easy navigation on your website or eCommerce store will impact the customer experience online. It’s a great way to make your customers come back to your brand.
4. Share your brand's story
A brand story can include the history of a brand and how it started or what was the point or event from where the brand started. Your brand story shouldn’t sound like another chapter in a history book, it should spark some sort of feelings within your target audience that they can either relate to or can connect with.
You can even make your customers the heroes of your story and showcase how they were the reason for starting it all. This sort of story becomes much more attention gripping and will strongly resonate with your customers.
You can share your brand’s story on your about us page and share details about the origin of your brand and continue it till today’s present date. You can make a video with the founder telling the story of your brand this will make your story more compelling.
Related Article: Scope Of Big Data Utilization In Fitness Retail Stores
5. Write Down Your Content Strategy
Content is a major factor that will either make your brand or break it. Content marketing in eCommerce plays an important part in growing your relationship with your customers as it is how you communicate. You need to create a diverse content plan be it a podcast, video, infographics or comparison content that you are providing.
The best way of creating a content strategy is to understand what the pain points of your customers are. Once you know the pain points you can create content that addresses them and it can be in a format or platform that they prefer. This is very beneficial as it brings more targeted traffic to your online store.
6. Engage the Community
Customers keep an eye on brands and how much are they giving back to the community. When a brand engages in activities that help the community, customers can connect with them more as it is seen as giving back to the world and making it a better place.
You can donate a portion of your profits to the community by giving to charities. Your customers will believe that their purchase is supporting a good cause. Displaying the number of products you have donated or the amount of money you have given to charities is a great way of attracting and retaining your customers.
7. Prioritize Customer Service
Once you have a customer base you need to prioritize your customers and whether they are happy and satisfied with your brand or not. If your customers are not satisfied with your services and products, your brand can’t survive in the industry. Giving your customers the best service will make them frequent visitors and loyal customers.
Following are a few ways you can improve your customer service:
- Organize contests and reward participants
- Actively listen to your customers’ feedback online
- Engage with customers online
- Reply to posts in which you are tagged on social media
- Improve your online tone of interaction
Among all the other branding strategies it’s safe to say that prioritizing customer service is the most powerful one. If you want your brand to be successful then you need to keep your customers happy and satisfied, and for that, you need to provide a delightful customer experience to them.
Related Article: Why Mobile Applications Are Essential For Fitness Retailers?
8. Be Consistent With Your Branding
The last and most important branding strategy is to be consistent with whatever you are doing. Your brand identity, values, and other elements help in distinguishing your brand from your competitors, so it is necessary that all of your efforts are consistent.
You need to give exposure to your brand for creating brand awareness. You need to have an optimal level of brand awareness and for that, you need to be consistent with your brand's exposure. If you are inconsistent, it’ll become harder to build brand awareness.
You need to review, reflect, and refine your vision, values, strategies, and online marketing for your sports shop. With time your audience may evolve and change some of their preferences according to the latest trends, for that you need to make sure you are updating your strategies as well.
You need to take feedback from your customers seriously and be aware of the industry trends and what your competitors are doing online. You need to constantly investigate whether your customers are getting the best experience and services or not.
Takeaway
Branding your eCommerce store has become vital for your business's success. The branding strategies discussed before will surely bring in more customers, increase your revenue and help in gaining popularity of your eCommerce store.
Your brand style, giving back to the community, quality, and consistency matters to modern customers. Customers look for brands that are making an impact and who stand for something. These strategies are what will make your brand great in the eyes of your customers.
