Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.” – Jonah Sachs
We, humans, are wired to be storytellers and to consume stories that influence decisions in our daily lives.
In this world of hyper-acceleration of digital commerce and emerging new and fancy formats of reaching out to customers, the key to being there is to be able to have the right story backing your brand.
Looking back at Marketing 101, a brand, in simple terms, is a distinctive name, an identity, or an amalgamation of positive qualities. The core of all these is that a brand is intangible yet an asset for a company.
It’s the image that the company goes out into the world with. In the ever-evolving world of technology, eCommerce is expanding across geographies to reach people belonging to various strata of society.
With the rapidly growing eCommerce market, it's a no-brainer response to ask, why do we focus on brand building?
The digital commerce industry depends on several performance metrics that might make it tempting to focus on only sales.
While the transactions are important to manage, what drives the sale is also to be managed—yes, the brand here!
Getting the Basics Right!
The competition in the world of eCommerce is on the rise, so businesses must take that leap forward to create sticky memories for their consumers to stay relevant for the long term.
This stickiness, once generated, has the potential to evolve into building more loyal customers for the brand. Though creating this brand is challenging, we cannot shy away from the opportunities galore.
Today, it’s not one touchpoint, but many. The brand needs to be where the customer is. Branding is to be looked at in terms of building a reputation for your brand.
Approaching Brand Building for Digital Commerce
Brand building has several dimensions, but here are some must-have elements to kick off the journey:
Audience: Why audience? It’s because knowing your target helps you develop the right messaging and storytelling for your brand.
Example: If your product deals with stationery for kids, you can weave a story about how your brand meets the needs of the kids.
Some questions one needs to answer are:
- Do you know who your audience is?
- Where is your audience shopping?
- What are the demographic segments of your audience?
- Are you clear about which products cater to which audience?
Awareness: Why awareness? If you can build awareness among the right audience, then your band becomes part of their regular habits and purchasing decisions.
Your customers start establishing recognition with your brand, making it easier for you to see more products or services that your brand has to offer. Some questions one needs to answer are:
- Do people recognize your brand?
- Where do you have a visual presence to create a space in the customers’ minds?
- What does one recall when they hear your band name?
- What are the usual associations your potential customers make when they hear your brand name?
Value: Why value?
If the customers see the value of your product as a solution to their existing pain points or as an alternative to their unfulfilled product needs, they will develop an affinity towards trying your product and eventually become loyal customers if they continue to receive the quality product as expected.
Some questions one needs to answer are:
- What do you have to offer your customers?
- Is this a unique product or service that you are selling to my customers?
- What is the differentiating factor for the product or service?
- What is the impact or the value you are creating for my customers through this business?
- Are you listening to the voice of the customer by taking their feedback as input into your growth strategy?
Experience: Why experience? There’s nothing as satisfying as a customer coming back to your brand or recognizing your band without any external encouragement.
What causes such perceptions or imagery to be built is the right experience while interacting with the brand, be it browsing the site frictionlessly, talking to a sales agent in the store, or conversing with a customer support team.
The core is how to be memorable in a positive way. Some questions one needs to answer are:
- Are you creating a memorable experience for my customers across all touchpoints?
- Are you leaving your customer with a sense of satisfaction and trust in the brand during every interaction?
- Are you acknowledging their feedback and comments on social media if your brand has a social media presence?
- Are you portraying the right values that your brand stands for?
- Is your customer going to "talk" about your brand to others?
Maintaining the Brand Image
eCommerce operates in various business models covering B2C (Business to Consumer), B2B (Business to Business), B2B2C (Business to Business to Consumer), DTC (Direct to Consumer), CTC (Customer to Customer), etc.
While building the brand is the first step, what follows next is to maintain the brand image. This is primarily driven by the business model.
For example, consider a DTC brand where the business directly interacts with consumers.
Here, it's essential to keep your brand strategy focused on real-time insights that could translate into traditional methods or newer formats like influencer marketing.
Another example is B2C. Consider a marketplace format where there are many players selling products.
As the umbrella brand name of this platform, the company needs to stay connected with its customers by sharing the true values of the business, potentially through the right services, personalized promotional messages, privileged shopping windows with special price points, and an easy experience on the eCommerce platform.
In a nutshell, to maintain the brand image, the thumb rule is consistency in your brand messaging, improvisation using customer insights, and relentless efforts towards always creating an impact for the customer.
Learning From the Leading Players
There are many brands that have climbed the ladder of success by creating their own space in the market. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital commerce, compelling many brands to upscale their online presence.
They faced challenges in building their online presence, but it’s a learning process that they go through. Some resorted to viral marketing formats to create buzz.
At the same time, many businesses began their online ventures, making going online first their strategy. Online business has immense potential if done the right way and by weaving the right story for the customers.
In Conclusion
A brand has a lot of elements, but the simplest way to describe it is the reputation your company builds over time.
Looking at eCommerce, the underlying goal is how to influence your customers way beyond just your transaction points so that their behavior towards choosing products on your website becomes a part of their lives and your brand remains unforgettable to them.
A brand is not built in a day; it’s a story that one must continue to deliver with consistency while remaining true to its own purpose and value.
If your brand sticks around, so do you! So, let’s get ready for branding!