Online retail has expanded rapidly over the last two decades, going from obscurity to a multibillion-dollar sector. Millions of individuals all around the globe regularly make purchases from eCommerce retailers.
This means the eCommerce industry is a treasure box of opportunities. However, creating a successful brand identity is crucial for online stores to surpass the competition and generate sustainable revenue.
Branding establishes a unique and strong business identity for the product or service that a business offers. However, it’s more than just a beautiful, catchy company logo and involves many other elements that distinguish it from competitors.
Branding involves various tactics in promoting a brand, which include advertising, raising brand awareness over social media, customer service, and more. In addition to this, branding is a component of SEO optimization, which helps customers find a company/brand.
Why Store Branding Matters
Store branding is the method of creating a unique identity for your business. It involves constantly developing your store’s features, products, and services. Store branding matters because it helps customers understand the brand image and influences their opinion of the store’s product, value, services, and quality.
As branding helps customers to understand the business and its mission in a better way, they pay more attention to the business and prefer it over others. Strong branding will provide continuous satisfaction to regular consumers and draw the attention of new ones.
This article outlines several steps to develop strong branding for your online store.
7 Steps of a Successful Online Store Branding Strategy
Branding an online store is a method that uses various tools to create a brand image and promote it. It is also known as e-commerce or e-branding.
This could be done using a blog, a social website, or social media platforms. Let’s look at the seven ways that could help you step up your branding game.
Identify Your Target Market
When you talk about building a brand, it’s important to know who you are trying to reach and send a message to.
Finding the right target will help you in the following ways:
- Improves target approach
- Simplify content for your audience
- Helps analyze your competitors and their audience
- Helps to choose your design
Here are a few ways you can determine your target audience:
- Notice the type of people who are interested in your products. Segregate them by age, interests, and locality.
- Find out where the competition is putting their time and money by doing market research and analyzing industry trends for comparable items.
- Build “Personas,” or “Profiles,” of your ideal customers to learn more about their demographics, interests, and requirements.
- Identify the audience that is not your target.
Name Your Brand Fittingly
A great brand name is more than simply being cool and sounding nice. Just because you think it’s good does not make it right.
The fact that it says something about your business to the consumer base is what we need. Here are a few things that a good brand name possesses:
- It’s meaningful
- It’s distinctive
- It’s memorable
- It’s easy to spell, interpret, or say
- It’s legally available
- It can stay relevant with time
A lot of work is involved in creating a memorable brand name. A growing number of services are available to simplify the process for you. For example, you can get name suggestions from Shopify’s Business Name Generator, Wordoid, etc.
Develop a Brand Story
A brand story conveys the reason and motivation for starting a business. It encompasses the facts and emotions involved in building a business. The story expresses your drive to run a business that engages your targeted customers. Here are a few things that make up your brand story:
● Vision
Vision statements of a business include the goals and objectives of the mid-term and long-term growth of the business. It states the current and future goals, which helps motivate you and your employees to work better. Vision is also a future-oriented concept that helps create better strategies to expand the business.
● Mission/Goals
The mission is the purpose and intention of an ongoing business. It supports the vision of a business and drives the employees to reach certain goals. A mission statement states how to achieve the company’s vision. A strong mission of the company could be a good tool for marketing.
● Values
Values of the business stand for its ethics, philosophy, work pattern, and principles involved in running a business. A business without any values cannot have a smooth process and can’t keep the employees working towards the same goal in an organized way. Business values are an integral part of shaping a company’s culture and improving teamwork efficiency.
Outline Brand USPs
A unique selling proposition or USP is a specific benefit your business offers that makes you better or different from your competitors. Every company needs a USP product to connect with customers and make them believe why and what sets you apart. Your business’s USP does the following in the branding process:
- Adds brand value.
- Grabs attention to your company in the market.
- Develops an image for your brand.
For setting a USP for your brand, you must understand what competitors are providing and where they are lacking, in addition to what customers want. Your brand’s USP fills that gap and elevates your position in the market.
Establish Brand Voice
The company’s brand voice is your brand’s personality while communicating with the customers through marketing and branding. Your voice should be different and unique to stand out in the competitive market. It must run consistently as it reflects the company’s values and shows what you say and what you do.
The key to making a good brand voice is to make it relatable to the targeted audience. It could be motivational, friendly, or joyful.
Create a Visual Identity
A brand’s visual identity comprises of the logo, color palette, typography, and graphics. You can use these elements to convey your brand’s essence, who you are, and what you stand for.
● Logo
A logo is an effective way to portray your brand. You can use apps like Photoshop and Canva to create a logo. You can also hire a professional logo designer to do the work for you. This can be design studios or freelancers from platforms like Fiver and Upwork.
Your brand logo could be a design that represents the name of your brand, the initial(s) of the brand, or anything creative that stands out and conveys your brand message.
● Color palette
Color palette plays an important role while setting a logo and marketing your business, as it represents your brand. Use color psychology to choose shades that match your brand’s identity.
● Typography
Typography organizes typefaces and text for maximum readability, clarity, and aesthetic appeal. Choose fonts that go well with the visuals and are easy to read.
You should go for simple and easy fonts as they are easily remembered. Customers will likely forget the brand name if you go for complex typography.
● Graphics
Graphics have always played a big part in marketing, as seen by banners and media advertising; however, their significance has increased greatly due to the rise of social media.
A customer’s (or prospective customer’s) emotional connection to your brand may be strengthened via the strategic use of visuals. Catching up with the latest visual trends might be really good for branding your business.
Pick the best images representing your company ethos as a part of your strong branding game.
Create Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines are an instruction manual that includes rules and standards that project how your brand should be represented. It describes the overall look of the brand and ensures that your brand is communicating correctly internally. It also helps audiences to recognize your brand on all platforms distinctively.
Here are some elements included in forming brand guidelines:
- Trademarked logo
- Consistent brand color
- Consistent fonts
- Developing visual identity
- Typography
- A solid brand mission
- A clear brand vision
- Easily defined values
- A good brand story
Parting thoughts
Now you know that branding is not just about creating a remarkable logo and getting a catchy tagline. It involves strategy and techniques that keep your customers engaged and loyal to your brand.
Use this article as a guidebook while creating a branding strategy for your business to set yourself apart from your competitors.
