Negosentro| 6 Steps to Successfully Branding Your eCommerce Startup |The eCommerce industry has been on a steady rise over the last decade. The global pandemic we are currently facing, however, completely changed the rules of the game. With online platforms being the only fully functional trading channel at the moment, more parties are trying to tap in and carve themselves a part of this lucrative cake. And with so many new faces joining the game, developing a recognizable and influential brand through a design studio San Francisco has grown from novelty to absolute necessity.
So, let us take a look at a couple of steps that will help your new business rise from anonymity and become a household name.
Find your brand’s personality
A brand can be broadly described as your company’s personality and much like human personality, it can be expressed in multiple ways. Finding this personality you can later successfully brand and market is not easy, but it is, nevertheless, necessary. So, try summing up who you are, and what are you doing best, what sets you apart from similar businesses, etc. When you have all these things on the paper, you will be able to single out keywords like speed, accessibility, convenience, and similar, which will serve as a foundation for future branding efforts.
Develop an appealing identity
Now that you have the important building blocks we have mentioned above, it is time to develop these ideas into tangible marketing assets. The things you need to address are as follows.
- Logo – This story is far more complicated but your logo needs to be simple, effective, and, most importantly, easily identifiable. Consult an experienced graphic designer for this task.
- Branding guide – This short guide should clearly define typography, color palette, and overall visual style of your company to be used by other designers and in other instances.
- Unique selling proposition (USP) – USP will broadly define how your company will communicate with clients, represent the products, etc. USP should be integrated into your brand identity from the get-go.
Choose a lucrative niche
Since you are setting off into the world of eCommerce, we can safely assume that you already have a good idea of the industry you want to tap into. However, we advise that you avoid going head to head with industry leaders and choose yourself a smaller, narrow niche. For instance, if you want to set up your company as a B2B O&G supplier, you can offer a highly-specialized group of quality oilfield equipment to a selected group of clients. What you get with this move is lowered market research and marketing costs and an opportunity to sharpen the brand identity even further.
Create an engaging brand story
We have already touched upon this topic when we talked about identifying your brand’s personality. Now that you have a clearer idea about your target audience, it is time to use this personality to develop the narrative of your company. Just take a look at some of the most popular brands out there – Tesla, Apple, Coca-Cola, Google… They are not only selling their products – they are selling a perspective of the world, values, and unique lifestyle. Your company can greatly benefit if you manage to develop a narrative like this. You want your clients to be able to say “I am using X because I support Y.”
Engage your customers on social media
Social media platforms are probably the most important channel you are going to use for marketing and staying in touch with your customers. Your job here will be to develop a content strategy adapted for the specific platforms. Still, visual and narrative consistency between the platforms is prescribed. Also, you should focus your efforts on the channels that truly matter, and, for the time being, avoid going too broad. Doing short research to see where your competitors are the most active will give you a pretty good idea where you should focus the efforts.
Content, content, content…
You know the rules of the game – in terms of modern marketing, content is the king. But, how does this strategy ties in into your overall eCommerce branding goals? Well, for a start, things like infographics, guides, reviews, and similar pieces are a great way to establish your brand as an influential voice within the industry. The other perk we can mention is that you will turn your website from a place where people come to trade to a user-friendly platform ready to help and inform without asking anything in return.
So, there you have it – six steps for successfully branding your new eCommerce business. We intentionally left out most of the technical aspects of building a platform of this sort. Here, we focused on what makes one an appealing and holistic brand. Believe us, things like these transcend technical details like payment methods. People are inherently emotional beings – if you sell them your story, you will be able to sell them anything.
Image Source
