Branding Your eCommerce Business in 11 Steps

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

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The very first step.

Before you build your eCommerce brand, you must be clear about who you’d 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 their 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 as you

You can check out my post 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, delivering fresh orchids, offering 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 their mission on their 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. But you can for your Unique Selling Propositions or USPs.

Your 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 of attracting 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 will be unused, unworn, undamaged, 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 for, 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 also need to 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 while 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 the 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.

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. Document a 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 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, 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 it. 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 tell 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 who faces them always shines.

Embrace this eCommerce branding strategy to promote your online store in a legit way.

8. Emphasize on 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 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.

Here are some of the benefits of email marketing:

Costs lesser 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, 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 do some analysis and create personalized emails your audience can relate with. And then send those emails to the users.

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

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

You can use email marketing automation tools like HubSpot, Mautic, etc. for free to add a personal touch to your mails. 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?

Obviously 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 the 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:

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. Create a Catchy Tagline

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

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:

Walmart	Always low prices.
McDonald’s	I’m Lovin’ It.
KFC	Finger-lickin’ Good.
Subway	Eat Fresh.
Heinz	It has to be Heinz.
Red Bull	Red Bull gives you wings.
Google	Don’t be Evil.
Apple	Think different.

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

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

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 better user experience
Increase the engagement & conversion rate

Pro Tip: Be Consistent & Loyal With Your Brand

If you think creating a logo, tagline, and emails are 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 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 towards quality is the key to customer loyalty.

You can take Google as an example. It is the biggest search engine today because they kept improving the quality of their 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 the consistency in improvement, you also need to be loyal to your brand. This may sound philosophical but if you aren’t loyal with your brand, your customers won’t be loyal with 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.