With businesses competing at a global level, the e-commerce arena is as fierce as ever. Products can gain immense popularity in a short time, and new brands can quickly enter a competitive market. With unlimited options to choose from, brand loyalty continues to weaken as consumers easily switch from one brand to another.
Given the challenges today, it’s more important than ever for an e-commerce business to build a strong brand.
Since your brand has different aspects, there’s no one sure-shot way that can help you revamp it. Your branding strategy should consider all these aspects to ensure you’re not missing out on a crucial perspective.
So, how exactly can a business create a brand that has a lasting impression on its target audience? Well, here are six that take your e-commerce brand to the next level:
Set your brand’s style
Your brand’s style doesn’t just need to keep up with trends, but it should also be representative of your purpose and the experience you want to provide consumers.
Consumers are looking for authentic brands. For instance, if you’re creating products for professionals, you should ideally choose a sophisticated style and incorporate minimalist color schemes that represent that.
Your brand style commonly includes the fonts and color schemes and should be used to make your CTAs more prominent, make browsing easier, and direct your customers through your website.
Businesses usually have set design guidelines that list down details of the font, color palette, and iconography.
Build a relationship with your customers
While building a strong relationship with customers is vital for any brand, it’s even more critical for e-commerce businesses. Since consumers can’t visit your store and interact with you in person, you need to ensure they know they’re able to trust you with your hard-earned money.
For starters, e-commerce business should aim to create industry-specific content that’s published on their blogs and social media profiles.
You should also engage in conversation with your target audience on your social media profiles, as well as, forums on Quora, LinkedIn, and Reddit. On such forums, you can subtly mention your company’s products, create awareness, and build a conversation around them.
Additionally, identify who the influencers in your niche and build a relationship with them. These figures play a massive role in expanding your audience by promoting your content on their own profiles and posting reviews.
To maintain a relationship with your customers, you need to reach out to them from time to time. Emailing your audience is an excellent way to do that so, whatever content you create should be shared with your audience. To keep your audience updated, you should find your prospects’ email addresses and email them.
Don’t compromise on product quality
Many eCommerce businesses sometimes try to target multiple target audiences. While it’s good to expand your audience, many companies end up compromising on the quality in such situations.
E-commerce businesses should ideally aim to focus on a narrow range of products and master their quality before expanding their product base. In fact, lately, companies who specialize in one product are actually gaining more popularity than those with an extensive product range.
Hence, you should aim to narrow your focus and pay attention to the quality and image of your product. Once you’ve built a loyal customer base and perfected the quality of your range, you can focus on your expansion efforts.
Create and promote visual content
Visual content is the most vital form of content today. There’s a 65 percent chance that information paired with a relevant image will be remembered three days later. Additionally, according to 32 percent of marketers, visual images are one of the most vital kinds of content for their businesses.
Given its importance, e-commerce businesses should aim to create and promote as much visual content as possible.
One of the easiest ways to create visual content is through product photography. These images not only make your products more attractive to your target audience, but they also give the audience a chance to know what your products look like. While making drastic edits is never a good idea, you should ideally use a product image retouching service to refine your product photos and make them look more attractive.
Where video content is concerned, there are many ideas you can explore. For starters, create product demo videos and other informational videos that guide consumers through the process. Additionally, you should also showcase your brand and highlight the team behind it.
Speak your audience’s language
Your e-commerce brand will only appeal to your customers if they understand you. The more your audience can relate to your messaging, then more likely they’ll want to engage in business with you.
To determine the language that would click most with your audience, you should first analyze your buyer persona and learn your audience’s demographics and style they prefer to use. Additionally, you should also monitor your closest competitors and see what kind of language they use in their messaging. Lastly, go through product reviews left on your site, as well as other similar products, to determine the language customers use the most.
Once you’ve figured out your target audience’s language, incorporate it into your website copy and marketing campaigns. By establishing a voice, you’ll be adopting a more cohesive approach that customers can feel connected to.
Give back to society
Customers appreciate brands that stand by causes and have their values set. While your target audience is aiming to benefit from you, it also helps if you’re part of something bigger.
There are many charitable causes that brands can associate themselves with, including climate change and cancer awareness campaigns.
Giving back to society will push your audience to become advocates of your brand and encourage them to create engage in these campaigns with you. You can team up with a charity and release a product line with all proceeds going to that charity. For a long-term plan, make changes, so a certain percentage of the sales go into donations.
Conclusion
Your e-commerce brand is more than just your name and your logo. It’s the best way for you to build a relationship with your customers. With an excellent branding strategy, you can become the go-to brand for your customers and build loyalty.
What other ways can an e-commerce business build a strong brand? Let us know in the comments below!