With a dramatic societal shift to online shopping, ecommerce businesses today are thriving in the ability to sell their products on the internet.
However, a substantial increase in opportunity brings a significant increase in competition as well. Because of this, it’s imperative that ecommerce businesses set themselves apart with high quality customer service, products, competitive pricing, and streamlined processes- and this is just the beginning foundation.
To set your online business apart from the rest, reinforce your branding.
Why is branding important for eCommerce businesses?
Your brand image encompasses your entire business, from your logo, branding colors, all the way to your demographic. This is what makes your ecommerce business stand out from the rampant competition.
We’ve been hearing it for as long as we can remember-first impressions are everything; the initial impression you leave on consumers will determine the impact and influence of your brand. Without a proper measure of how people perceive your company, you are forced to depend on customers, vendors, and other third parties to define your business.
While ecommerce branding is especially important for setting a first impression, it encourages the sustainability of your company to withstand external impacts and establish your place in the marketplace.
How to build your eCommerce brand
You can find numerous online articles discussing their own methods of building their ecommerce business, however, our industry wide expertise provides us a better, more authentic platform to share our recommendations. Here are MCDA CCG’s methods to ensure a strong brand image.
1. Define your brand
If we ask you to pitch your branding in 3 sentences, can you do so? By this we mean, can you properly identify the visual components for your customers to associate your brand with? These elements should be allocated throughout your digital presence-your eCommerce site, ads, email signatures, and anywhere else your brand operated.
First, establish an easy to remember brand name, this can be related to your ecommerce business or something specific to your niche, or product. If you choose to opt for a brand name completely unrelated to your business, ensure that you keep it short, sweet, and sensible to plant it into the minds of your current or potential customers.
Next, it’s time to focus on your brand logo and color choices. Your brand name and logo will coincide with each other to serve as the epitome of your ecommerce business. Focus on the feeling you want your brand to generate in your customers-especially those who are newer.
Other branding elements critical to setting your brand apart from your competitors encompass some, but are not limited to, the following
- Typography
- Logo and name integration
- Logo consistency
- Logo Testing
- Brand Slogan
These are all things to focus on to establish your brand and its image, however, technical elements and lack of education in the rapidly evolving online environment can make this a challenge for most businesses. If you constantly find yourself lost in this new world, our team experts at MCDA CCG, INC., can help solidify your online business in the marketplace. With industry wide knowledge and customized service solutions for your ecommerce brand, we encourage you to reach out to us.
2. Identify your target audience
With the world at your fingertips, it may be slightly tempting to think that everyone is your customer-this is 100% incorrect. If you don’t accurately define your appropriate audience and market to them, it dramatically increases your chance of running into trouble by incidentally confusing those who visit your online sites.
Furthermore, defining your target audience helps frame the details of your brand. It’s important to remember to start small and within reason, and remember that you can always branch out your products and/or services once you’ve better established your brand.
3. Outline the value your brand offers
When you build a business, especially online, you must be able to differentiate your advantage above your competitors. Why should people buy from you instead of someone else?
Generally, newer ecommerce brands will provide discounted rates to their customers, while placing an emphasis on providing quick delivery at a lower price. Furthermore, you can offer an additional discount for referral customers to leverage the strength of referral marketing.
4. Define your visual elements
To build an online brand, you must be providing visuals. MCDA CCG’s CEO, Mike Rash states, “In this competitive online era, buyers prefer sites with visual or interactive content-as opposed to those which lack these common features.” Utilize images, pictures, and impressively designed graphics to appeal to those visiting your website and social media. In this case, it’s best to leave photo editing tasks to the professionals to save you the countless hours of editing them yourself.
5. Share Your story
People love stories-especially those that tug at their hearts or relate to them. It’s important to have a strong “why”, where company stories provide life and unique character to your business. This strengthens your ability to finalize sales, as customers feel more motivated to join a movement with a clear message.
6. Establish a presence on social media
We touched on this yesterday, because millions of people all over the globe are using social media. It’s a better time than ever to utilize social media platforms to establish your ecommerce brands. To read more about the importance of social media marketing, check out our last blog here
7. Build Trust
As with any form of a monetary purchase requires a varying-yet adequate-level of trust, you must ensure brand authenticity at each step of your ecommerce journey. A few examples of this include building authentic relationships, keeping consistent, being transparent, and engaging your audience. You never want to imply that you’re hiding something, if there is an issue in delayed delivery, openly communicate this with your consumers while emphasizing your availability if they have additional concerns
8. Get to know your customers
While branding is important, it certainly isn’t everything offered by your ecommerce business. To maintain your unique brand image, focus on your services and customer loyalty. Despite your greatest efforts, customers may receive bad products or faulty goods from time to time; and they will become impatient. From their order to their delivery, open the gates of communication with your customer to manage any feelings of frustration.
Don’t become too attached to your first ecommerce strategy, continue to study and focus on ways to improve to fine-tune customer experience. Remember, while it is your business, you want to be accepted and trusted by your customers. And if you can achieve that, especially with an online business, you’re more likely to thrive
And that’s our list! If you feel slightly overwhelmed don’t worry, anything new will almost usually feel complicated. However, if you don’t notice some gradual growth at the very least, you may be in slight trouble. As mentioned above, the space in the ecommerce world is crowded, and you want to ensure that you’re keeping up with your current competitors instead of current and future competition.
Some people may eventually find themselves beyond the point of frustration, where they’ve exhausted all efforts and don’t see proper return on their investment. If you’ve been feeling slightly discouraged, or to ultimately give up, it’s still not too late to readjust. This time, make sure that you do it with someone who can act as a reputable point of contact throughout the way.
Our team at MCDA CCG, INC., -headquartered in Placentia, Orange County, California, will gladly leverage our digital marketing expertise to point you in the direction of success. Don’t wait until you’re beyond the level of frustration, call us today!