Scott Cook, cofounder of software giant Intuit, once uttered an adage that’s stuck with me over the years:
A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is—it’s what customers tell each other it is.
That being said, of course, the stronger your brand, the more that customers will talk about it in the first place. Today we explore 7 strategies to create an eye-catching, head-turning eCommerce brand to delight your customers and entice your prospects.
1) Identify your target audience
Before you even build your eCommerce brand, you need to know who you’re building it for. What characterises the people you’re targeting? Where do they live, how old are they, and what are they interested in?
There are lots of ways to work out who to target:
- Conduct surveys
- Build a buyer persona
- Explore the habits and behaviours of any existing audience you have
- Analyse your competitors’ audiences
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you can:
- Create tailored campaigns for better conversions
- Generate relatable and personalised content
- Provide a bespoke UX
- Segment your customers for advanced ad targeting
And all the while, you’ll be continually refining your approach to targeting, too.
2) Understand that your brand is probably even more important than you realise
Your business can’t be unique. But your brand can.
What do I mean? Simple: every solution—every business—has an alternative. But not every brand has an alternative. Not if it’s authentic, innovative and distinctive enough.
Put it this way: if you just listed the benefits of your products or services, they probably wouldn’t jump off the page any more than your competitors’. But when taken in conjunction with a vibrant, eye-popping brand, those benefits become full-blown USPs—and that’s when you stand head and shoulders above the rest. The sooner you embrace this fact, the faster you can optimise your brand for your target audience, rather than fretting over how to make your business itself unique.
3) Never compromise on your customer service
89% of shoppers are more likely to purchase from your business again if they had a positive customer experience last time. So if you feel your customer service is lacking, you should address it, pronto.
To improve your customer service you should:
- Find out which platforms your customers and prospects favour
- Genuinely listen to and take on shoppers’ feedback
- Organise competitions to intrigue your prospects and reward your customers
- Reply when your business is tagged on social media
4) Hone your approach to content creation
Your content is the voice of your brand, so a strong content strategy ensures you continually attract and convert your prospects while nurturing and retaining your customers.
90% of businesses utilise content marketing to some extent. That’s not surprising when you know that it costs 62% less than traditional marketing, yet generates 3× as many leads.
A strong content strategy empowers you to:
- Establish brand awareness
- Generate traffic and leads
- Convert users
- Boost sales
- Enhance customer loyalty
- Increase engagement with your website
- Get known as a genuine and authentic brand
5) Leverage email marketing
Some say email marketing is dead. I disagree—marketers have just got lazy. Half the world’s population uses email. And email marketing covers every stage of your sales funnel. In other words, your customers’ and prospects’ inboxes are some of the most fertile grounds for marketing you could ask for.
A carefully curated email marketing strategy brings a myriad of benefits:
- Effectively generate leads
- Spend less than on other marketing channels
- Easily track performance metrics
- Prompt users to visit your store
- Shrewdly nurture your audience over the long term
- Gain exposure to a vast audience if you so wish
- See great results even if your prior experience in email marketing is negligible
6) Go hard at social media
Social media is the single most effective way to boost brand awareness, connect with your audience, and drive sales. As we just saw, email marketing offers low-hanging fruit marketing by virtue of the sheer number of email users—and likewise, half the world’s population is on social media, too.
With a great social media strategy you can:
- Enhance UX
- More effectively target your audience
- Increase engagement with your brand
- Drive conversions
- Expand your brand’s reach
7) Be loyal to your brand—and your customers will be loyal to you
Aside from the other business strategies you’re juggling to drive sales, traffic and conversions, it’s crucial to continually refine your brand: its aesthetic, its appeal, its messaging. Although on the flipside, be mindful of when certain elements of your brand are working just fine, and should be left alone to do their thing!
Find your target audience, and focus on nurturing them while cultivating a strong brand that entices even more prospects into your sales funnel. At my agency Pixated, our performance marketing experts encourage our clients to proudly get behind what they stand for: delivering real and tangible benefits to their customers.
And really that speaks to the most fundamental point of all: be loyal to your brand. It’s not as philosophical as it sounds—it just means you need to truly believe in what you do, which is reflected in how passionately you adhere to your brand. When customers and prospects alike see that you value what your business does and truly believe that it helps people, they can get behind it as well.
Bio: Arham Khan is a certified Google and Facebook Ads performance marketing specialist and agency founder, with extensive B2B and B2C experience. Pixated provides paid media and web design services to brands that want to increase their ROI from online channels. These services include paid social, SEM, and web design and development. To get in touch with Arham, visit pixated.agency, or email him at [email protected]. He’d love to hear from you!
