11 Ways To Do Branding For eCommerce Business

“A brand isn’t what we tell customers. It’s what customers tell others.”

But the better you brand your business, the better feedback you’ll receive. Many individuals tend to equate with just the logo. Now, that is wrong! The brand is not just about the logo but it also includes elements such as the logo, tagline, color, product, and of course the eCommerce branding.

Hence, in this post, I’ll share some of the best online branding strategies for your eCommerce business. These strategies will help your brand look more authentic, professional, and legit.

So, let’s cut to the chase and discuss them.

Jump to your favorite tip using the index above.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The very first step.

Before you build your eCommerce brand, you must be clear about who you’ll be targeting. What sort of people would be interested in dealing with your brand?

Identifying the ideal audience can be puzzling at first. But once you find the right audience, things get too damn easy.

Finding your target audience will help you:

• Generate personalized and relatable content
• Create tailored campaigns for better conversions
• Provide a personalized user experience
• Perform customer segmentation easily
• Converge and improve your targeting approach
• Curtail your marketing budget
• Invest in the right direction

By looking at the benefits, you can understand why this is one of the most crucial eCommerce branding strategies.

Look how MailChimp clearly states who its target audience is:

You can use a few of these tips to find out your target audience:

• Create a buyer persona
• Analyze your existing audience and their data
• Conduct surveys at set time intervals
• Understand audience behavior with Google Analytics
• Analyze your competitor and their audience
• Explore Quora/Reddit groups offering similar solutions

You can check out this interesting poem on buyer’s persona to learn about finding target audiences in-depth.

2. Utter Your Mission Clearly

Every brand has a mission. A mission to design ridiculously aesthetic websites, deliver fresh orchids, offer on-demand home services, or something else. Your mission tells people what your brand is about. What you’re having for them.

So whatever your mission is, make sure to tell it to everyone. Because sometimes, people remember your brand just because of your mission.

I like how Brafton expresses its mission on its About page. Short, crisp, and concise.

This can be a great promotion strategy for your eCommerce brand since many businesses promote their mission heavily. So make sure to write your mission on your website and market it so people can understand what you do.

3. Outline The USPs Of Your Brand

In today’s competitive market, your business cannot be unique. Every solution has an alternative these days. And if we talk about eCommerce, there are already options like Walmart, Amazon, eBay, Bestbuy, etc. available.

So you cannot stand out from the crowd in this industry. Your  (Unique Selling Propositions) USP is what distinguishes you. Thus, it becomes necessary to outline the key benefits of your eCommerce brand to make it popular.

Just like Bombaytrooper highlights the USPs of their new product, Hoppers:

This eCommerce branding strategy has a strong potential to attract users. You can highlight the USPs of your culture, policies, products, or services to make your brand distinguishable.

4. Be Honest With Your Policies

I’ve got a story about this.

A few months back, I was browsing for a new messenger bag for myself. I literally looked at almost 1000 products but didn’t find a perfect one.

But, finally, I found one on a website that captivated me. I was really looking to purchase it but when I checked their return policies, I decided not to.

They mentioned that the product would be unused, unworn, undamaged, and unwashed. This was still bearable but then they mentioned, no refund will be provided for sold products. You can only exchange it for replacement or store credit.

So if I don’t like the product, I can’t get my money back.

Well, I didn’t get the product I was craving, but if you look at this case, there’s a positive side to it too. The positive side is that I didn’t risk my money. Since they cleared out their policies, I stepped back from purchasing that bag.

Similarly, you must make your return, refund, and exchange policies crystal clear. This way, only those users who agree with your policies pay. And even if someone pays accidentally, you won’t have to justify it.

Your eCommerce policies are also a kind of marketing. So make sure they’re clear, authentic, and don’t look shady.

Here’s an example from Cartflows:

I like their brief and succinct explanation of their refund policies. Anyone can go through this to understand their terms in a few minutes. Make sure to employ this eCommerce promotion strategy to fortify your branding.

5. Don’t Compromise With Customer Service

Customer service is a considerable factor for 90% of Americans when deciding whether to do business with a brand. And this is a thumb rule for every brand. You can’t survive much if your customers aren’t happy.

And if you want to please your customers so they visit your online store again and remain loyal to your brand, just offer them a delightful service.

To improve your customer service you should:

• Organize contests to reward users
• Be a good and active listener
• Engage with customers on their preferred platforms
• Reply when you’re tagged on social media
• Train your staff
• Better your tone of interaction
• Ask for feedback gently

A brand is like a tree with customers as roots. To make a brand thrive, it’s important to keep improving customer service in your eCommerce stores.

Look at this cool example from Spotify:

pic.twitter.com/uqyRhouOGu

— ✧ (@northstardoll) May 13, 2021

It may not look like a big effort but still reminds us that they’re there.

Among all eCommerce branding strategies, this one we can say is the most powerful. So you must take this seriously and focus on providing a delightful customer experience.

6. Write Down The Content Strategy

Okay, so here’s my favorite tip.

Content is your brand’s voice. If your content is not convincing enough, you’ll struggle at many points in marketing your eCommerce brand. But having a strong content strategy at the core will help you attract, convert, nurture, and retain customers.

Reports say, 90% of organizations use content marketing. On top of that, it costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates 3x more leads.

If you’re still in a dilemma wondering how to enhance your eCommerce branding with content, the following benefits may provoke you to focus more on it. A documented content strategy helps you:

• Increase customer loyalty
• Improve engagement on your website
• Establishes brand awareness
• Generate traffic and leads
• Positively impact your sales
• Convert users smoothly
• Portrays you as a genuine and authentic brand

Whether it’s your social media posts, emails, landing pages, or infographics, everything needs content. I should rather say, your eCommerce branding strategies are incomplete without content.

A wonderful example of content marketing I found on Sendlane’s homepage:

By reading the headline on their page, you get a clear picture of the brand’s doings. So to enhance your eCommerce branding, try to create original and memorable content.

7. Share Your Brand Story

Stories are intriguing.

By telling your brand’s story, you can form an emotional bond with your customers. Stories can tell customers about your success and failures so they can relate to them. So do not hesitate to share your brand’s story to let people know about your journey.

I like how HubSpot shares its story and tells how it started:

A story can make users empathize with your brand. A story is just a way to tell people that obstacles come in everyone’s path but those who face them always shine. Embrace this eCommerce branding strategy to promote your online store in a legit way.

Don’t forget that video is one of the best mediums to share stories. You can create a video that fully captures the essence of your brand story with the proper video editing software. This will help customers make an emotional connection with your brand and stay loyal to your business.

8. Emphasize Email Marketing

Email marketing is dead. Ohh that’s a lie.

Statista says, there were 3.9 Billion email users across the globe in 2019. And this number is set to grow up to 4.3 Billion by 2023. That means every second person in the world uses email marketing.

Email marketing covers every stage of your sales funnel. From top-of-the-funnel to the bottom, you can do everything through email marketing from engaging users to retaining them. Hence, email marketing can play a vital role in your eCommerce branding.

You can also use Omnisend to send messages and emails that sell. Merchants get the chance to utilize templates that are 100% customizable so you can give your customers an on-brand, personalized experience.

Here are some of the benefits of email marketing:

• Costs less than other marketing channels
• Effective for generating leads
• Offers amazing return on investment
• Easy in performance tracking
• Nurtures audience better
• Gives exposure to a wider audience
• Doesn’t require pro skills to begin
• Prompts users to revisit your store

Another important thing is don’t assume that email marketing is for large businesses. Any size of business can take advantage of email marketing. All you need is to analyze and create personalized emails your audience can relate with. And then send those emails to the users.

For example, I love how Grammarly crafts its emails for its users:

Though Grammarly sometimes annoys me with its suggestions, its emails are incredible.

You can use email marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Mautic, etc. for free to add a personal touch to your emails. Once your requirements increase, you can invest in a paid version.

9. Create a Captivating Logo & Name

I know this is the very first step but I’ve added them at last since it is quite generic. So what comes to your mind when you hear Starbucks?

Coffee. But what else? It’s their logo.

That round picture with a mysterious siren on it with a green and white color combo. Today, Starbucks is recognized by its logo.

An attractive logo can leave a powerful impact on your customers. If they remember your logo, they’ll remember your brand.

Here are some examples of popular brand logos you can recognize while sleeping:

Things to consider while building a logo:

• Be unique and classy
• Use an enticing color palette
• Focus on the size
• It should be inspirational
• Use a readable font
• It should be easy to memorize & recognize

There are many platforms out there you can use to create a logo. I have listed some of them below:

• Squarespace
• Design Hill
• Shopify
• Canva

Choose the platform that best suits your online business type and fulfills your objectives. A good logo can enhance your eCommerce branding and portray you as an authentic brand. This leads people to trust you and trust is all you need to thrive.

10. Build a Catchy Tagline

So you’ve got your logo. Now let’s give your brand a tagline.

“A Tagline Is Your Objective In One Line.”

Like a logo, a tagline is another way to remember your brand.

A tagline is a combination of a few impactful and memorable words to form a phrase. Taglines can be used for advertising purposes. The primary objective of a tagline is to tell people what your brand is about.

A few things to remember while making a tagline:

• It should be memorable, catchy, and concise
• Appealing to the audience
• Honestly depicts your brand

The following examples will give you a better idea:

You can try these tools used to create taglines for your brand:

You can try these tools used to create taglines for your brand:

• Shopify Free Slogan Maker
• Design Hill Slogan Maker
• Oberlo Free Slogan Maker

Through your tagline, your customers can remember you throughout their lives. Therefore, create an amazing tagline to enhance your eCommerce branding.

11. Befriend Social Media

Social media is the most simple yet effective method to enhance your brand presence. Nowadays, every other business uses social media to either market themselves, connect with the audience or drive traffic. And if you get a chance to promote your brand against half of the world’s population, why wouldn’t you use it?

According to Statista, there will be 4.4 Billion people using social media by 2025.

Using social media, you can:

• Increase the outreach of your brand
• Enhance brand awareness
• Target your audience
• Offer a better user experience
• Increase the engagement & conversion rate

Look how GoPro employs Twitter to connect and reply to their customers’ issues:

@GoPro please email me the ups tracking, I understand you can’t tell me but this is ridiculous

— Blake Johnson (@BlakeJohnsonR) May 20, 2021

Optinmonster has written this comprehensive post on the best social media platforms for business. You can go through it to learn what platform will work better for your eCommerce branding strategy.

Pro Tip: Be Consistent & Loyal With Your Brand

If you think creating a logo, tagline, and emails is all your business needs. Then you are mistaken. These all are the initial points that any business requires. But the most crucial thing for a successful eCommerce business is to maintain consistency and loyalty towards it.

To keep your business growing, it’s important to consistently improve the quality of your products or services. Maintaining consistency toward quality is the key to customer loyalty. You can take Google as an example. It is the biggest search engine today because it kept improving the quality of its product. People don’t stick to the same thing forever now. If you don’t update, they’ll choose something else over you.

Along with consistency in improvement, you also need to be loyal to your brand. This may sound philosophical but if you aren’t loyal to your brand, your customers won’t be loyal to you.

So make sure you don’t take your customers only as a source of income. Treat them like your family, take care of them, keep them happy, serve them what they need, and they’ll be loyal to you forever.

Personal Branding: The Nooks and Crannies

Now that you are aware of all the enticing and effective branding strategies we can move on to a new aspect of branding. Personal branding is an important part of business today.

Everything is so fast-paced, that it feels refreshing to see a familiar face. This comes as no surprise because consumers often look for trust from a known face.

Large companies often depend on the corporate image whereas small businesses might make or highlight a particular individual as the “face” of it the company. This is where this concept comes in!

The term ‘Personal Branding” is not limited. People from different spheres can make the most out of it as it relies upon talent. We have made a well-researched list of excellent examples of well-defined personal brands to inspire your own.

1. Neil Patel

Neil Patel is a marketing wizard. If you are someone who closely works with Digital Marketing and the concepts that revolve around it, you very well know who he is.

This genius has not only founded but also co-founded multiple companies that provide services to online marketers and aid to companies needing marketing assistance. These include KISSmetrics (an analytics platform that tracks who visits your website), Crazy Egg (an analytics software that allows website owners to see what visitors are doing when they visit your site), and Hello Bar (a service that helps you collect email addresses from your website).

Other than this Neil Patel is the king of blogging. He has a separate website that is dedicated to these informative blogs. Here he brilliantly covers vast topics like SEO and Different concepts of Marketing.

This go-to Call to Action is — “ “Yes, I want Neil to teach me how to grow my business.”

2. Le Bron

He is a huge name in the sports industry. LeBron James is one of the world’s most successful basketball players and athletes. People also refer to him as “King James”. And he is no doubt living up to the name. He is known for being a positive role model and an inspiration. His story began in Akron, Ohio, where he grew up. He and the “Fab Five” lead  St. Vincent-St. Mary High School to three state titles and he picked up a collection of awards along the way.

Today, he’s a phenom on and off the court. On the court, he’s officially eclipsed Michael Jordan as one of the top scorers in the NBA. Off the court, his brand is growing every single day. He’s into media and retail. He  also created “I Promise School”, which is a free public elementary school in Akron)his hometown). His brand is not only large but equally strategic. He’s also been a leading face behind highly successful ads, like Nike’s “Training Day (Strive for Greatness)”, a glimpse at a day in the life of James as he meets fans camped out at the gate of his residence.

James is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and shares an authentic side of his life. He is amongst the people who show their true, unapologetic life. It also covers what he’s working on, his family, and of course BASKETBALL.

3. Leonardo DiCaprio

I would like to apologize to the readers because I might be a bit biased toward this particular individual. I mean who will not be biased here? We are talking about the LEONARDO DICAPRIO!!!

His rise in the entertainment industry has been swift and impressive. He has left this mark on this world by featuring in 27 feature films and being nominated for 206 awards.

He has not only been a shining star of the film industry but also a star and guiding light for many individuals when in 1998 he started his foundation called “the Leonardo DiCaprio”.

The goal of this foundation is to restore balance to threatened ecosystems, ensuring the long-term health and well-being of all Earth’s inhabitants.

DiCaprio’s status has advanced over the years. You’ll be surprised to know that his rise is partly due to his acting career, but also due to his philanthropy, making his brand much more impactful. He uses social media o share his work, and for direct access to the world.

4. Seth Godin

How can we forget about Seth Godin when we are talking about personal branding? We can consider him to be amongst the few individuals who started this trend. The pioneers of Personal Branding.

He is known to be the “Marketing Guru”. From writing bestsellers to successfully running his popular newsletter. He has done it all. Godin has written 19 bestselling books including Purple Cow and This Is Marketing, founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne, has graced the TED stage three times, and has become arguably the internet’s most famous blogger.

To conclude this segment we can say — “Personal Branding is about Marketing the product, that is YOU!”

What’s Your Branding Strategy?

So that was all on how to brand your eCommerce business. For those of you who didn’t scrutinize the post, here’s a summary so you don’t miss the gist of this blog.

Simple online branding methods for your eCommerce business:

• Find and focus on your target audience
• Clearly express your brand’s mission
• Tell people about the benefits of choosing your brand
• Never promise you can’t deliver in your policies.
• Always keep customer service on top
• Prepare a robust content strategy
• Let the world know your brand story
• Do not overlook email marketing
• Design a captivating logo and tagline
• Employ social media for promotion
• Stay loyal and improve consistently

So those were some of the eCommerce branding strategies. Which one was your favorite? Or how do you promote your brand? I’m curious to know. Do share them in the comment