No matter what type of product you intend on selling online and whether or not that product is something you created yourself, it is always crucial that you have a strong brand in order to encourage sales.
The aim is not only to get people to want to buy a particular product but also to get them to want to buy that product from you. Why would they come to your site to buy their fitness clothing when they can buy the exact same thing from Amazon? How do you build the trust and familiarity that makes people want to buy from you?
What is a Brand?
It starts by understanding precisely what a brand is – and what it is not. A brand is much more than just a logo and a company name. Instead, your brand is the mission statement that holds your company together and drives you forward. It is the answer to the question:
‘Why do you do what you do?’
This is what a lot of businesses completely misunderstand and that in turn is what prevents them from fulfilling their full potential. If the only objective of your brand is to sell products, then it will be uninspiring and uninteresting and no one will have any particular affiliation with you or interest in buying from you over another seller.
We’ve all been to sites like that: they’re bland, plain and completely devoid of passion.
But now think of the brands that you actually love. They will have a driving motivation behind them and an ethos that you agree with.
Perhaps you like an organic food brand that seems to really care about improving the health of its customers and avoiding anything that will damage their health. Perhaps they want to make the world a cleaner and more eco‐friendly place.
And that makes you want to shop with them. It makes you excited to try out their product recommendations.
Perhaps the brand you love is a weight training brand that’s all about pushing yourself harder and that’s all about grit and determination. If that speaks to you, then you’ll want to wear that logo!
Communicating Your Brand
But it’s one thing to have a real mission statement and passion behind your brand – it’s another thing entirely to communicate that with your audience and to get them to believe you.
So how do you go about doing this and making sure that people really understand what you’re all about?
A good start is to have a logo and a company name that perfectly explains who you are and what you do. This should be designed specifically for a particular target audience. That is to say that you should never try to cater to everyone but rather to cater strongly to a particular person.
The aim is that if someone sees just one of your products or blog posts, combined with your company name and your logo… that alone should be enough to tell them that they’ll love your brand and will want to follow it!