DIGITAL MARKETING SERIES

From Conversation to Conversion: Brand Building

CHANNELADVISOR WHITE PAPER

From Conversation to Conversion: Brand Building 2

The goal of every online retailer is to maximise ROI and sell more products. But in today’s increasingly diverse and fragmented digital marketing landscape, it can be a challenge to simply stand out from the clutter and noise. With more consumers, more channels and more competition than ever before, how you position your company may be the difference between booming success and utter failure.

It’s no secret that, when used correctly, digital marketing is an extremely powerful tool for retailers. But digital marketing should be a carefully thought-out process and not a quick fix. And in this three-part digital marketing white paper series, we’re covering it all, from conversation to conversion:

• Part 1: Get your webstore in order and strengthen your overall e-commerce foundation with SEO.

• Part 2: Find out best practices for building brand awareness and developing your social voice.

• Part 3: Determine which advertising channels are best for you and how to squeeze every bit of ROI out of your campaign.

Here, in Part 2 of the series, we’ll dive into brand building. Now that you’ve established and strengthened the foundation of your e-commerce business, you’re ready to take the next steps in this process. We’ll outline why you should concentrate on building your brand, what it takes to stand out from the crowd and how to ensure that your voice is audible among the growing clatter of today’s social media channels.

BUILDING YOUR BRAND

The Basics

Most retailers can quickly rattle off the names of major corporations with well established brands. Apple...Disney...McDonald’s. These are brand names known worldwide for what they represent to consumers. But when it comes to their own branding, many retailers choose to ignore it or simply hope that it will grow on its own over time. That’s because there are a lot of unknowns about what goes into branding. A brand is not simply a logo or a catchy slogan. It’s also not something that can simply be bought through advertising. Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, has said that “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is; it’s what the consumers tell each other it is.” And that’s especially true in today’s world, where consumers routinely go online and share their opinions, reviews and experiences. But how can you build and maintain something that other people have so much control over?

Before you can answer that, you have to first understand what branding is. At its simplest, branding is that unique feeling or image that a person gets when they think about your company.

The Smash Test

Back in 1915, one of the world’s most recognisable brands, Coca-Cola, asked a designer from Indiana to redesign its bottle. Specifically, the company wanted a bottle design that consumers could still recognise as a Coke bottle, even after it had been smashed into a hundred pieces. It’s safe to say that the designer succeeded. A century later, the same design is still in use and is as familiar as ever.

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Many brand marketers still use Coke’s unique design challenge as a guide for their own brands. If you removed your logo from your website, products, or even stationery, what’s left? Would your consumers still relate those items to your brand? To begin, examine the following brand factors to see if they convey a consistent look and feel:

• Packaging

• Site copy

• Company colours

• Site design/layout

• Navigation buttons

• Corporate logo

• Font and spacing

• 404 site error messaging

Even the way your employees speak about your company in public or how they answer the phone play a part in creating a recognisable brand. Your brand should not only be instantly identifiable, but it also has to be consistent.

Why Is a Brand Important?

Your brand is a powerful business tool. It has the power to influence people. With the right brand, people will go out of their way to buy from you, even if your competitors are easier to find and charge less money. These consumers are your brand ambassadors. Not only do they tell their friends and family about you, but they’re also emphatic about your company and what it represents. It’s part of their lifestyle. It’s the reason that Ben & Jerry’s is able to charge more for a carton of ice cream when less expensive brands are sitting next to them on the shelf. People are in love with what that brand stands for. They identify with it and want to be a part of the brand experience.

We know what you’re thinking. Both Coca-Cola and Ben & Jerry’s are long-standing global brands that have millions of pounds to invest in maintaining their brands. But even small niche businesses can own a unique brand. These brands will simply resonate with a smaller customer base. Remember, these mega brands were once small businesses. They grew into what they are today by building and delivering an exceptional brand experience.

Components of a Brand

To help you understand what goes into making a great brand, think of how a young child views his favourite blanket. It’s the only one of its kind. Nothing else can take its place. It’s familiar. It’s soft and warm and cosy. The blanket comforts him when he’s sad. It’s always there for him. It even protects him from the monsters under his bed.

An easy question to ask is, do your customers see your brand in this way? While it may be unfair to try to compare a website that sells fashion accessories or auto parts with a child’s single most important possession, it should give you a good idea of what to keep in mind when building your brand. • Uniqueness: Your brand experience should be distinct and unlike that of your competitors. What separates your company

from others in the industry? What service or experience do you provide that drives consumers to choose your brand over other brands?

• Consistency: Is your brand recognisable across all your properties? Consumers should be able to identify your brand in even the smallest elements of your site and marketing materials.

• Value: Besides generating revenue for you, what value does your company provide? Do you deliver a service that makes the lives of your customers easier or more pleasurable? Is your brand trusted? Do customers feel good about doing business with you?

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• Social responsibility: What does your company do to improve society? Customers feel better about doing business with a company that gives back to the community.

• Principle: Is your company steered by a single guiding principle by which everyone associated with your company operates? Do you and your employees practice what your brand preaches? You need a mantra to keep your brand on track. You should be able to state what your guiding principle is quickly and clearly.

How to Get Started

With all the components that go into a brand, you can see how there’s no easy fix to establishing your identity. Every situation is completely unique. The challenges and pains you experience will even differ from those of your biggest competitors. And the way you approach your strategy should be unique as well. To help you get started, here are a few basic steps that you can take:

• Know your audience. A brand doesn’t exist without an audience. You won’t be successful if you can’t define and understand who your audience is and what drives them. You must get this step right before you can begin to craft a brand.

• Create a vision. Once you know the audience, how are you going to align with them? How do you want to be seen? What’s unique about what you do that will make your audience choose you over your competitors? What’s going to be your guiding principle for you and your employees?

• Assess yourself. Next, it’s time to take stock and identify your brand strengths and weaknesses. Which brand components do you have already? Which ones do you need to improve to get you where you want to be? You already have access to a tonne of data that will identify these components. Ask customer service what they’re hearing. What are people on social media saying about you? Are they saying anything at all? What are your employees saying in their surveys? Also, where do you stand in the market against your competitors? How are they different from you? All of this information will steer you in the right direction. In fact, it may surprise you. You may be trying to make your brand say one thing, while your audience is interpreting it in a completely different way.

• Prioritise. Now that you’ve reviewed all this data, it’s time to prioritise the hurdles and define how you’ll remove them. It’s important to be realistic when developing these solutions. Always keep factors like budget and timing in mind.

• Allocate resources. Commit yourself to allocating the appropriate resources and people to achieve your new positioning. Unfortunately, there aren’t shortcuts when it comes to building a brand. You and your employees must be completely committed.

ESTABLISHING YOUR SOCIAL IDENTITY

The Art of Social Media

Social media isn’t just about sharing photos or letting followers know what you ate for breakfast. It’s quickly evolving into an extremely powerful medium for retailers. But it’s not something that you can just jump into without a basic understanding of how it works. Think of social media as creating art. Before a painter can create a masterpiece, he has to first understand how colours complement one another. He has to know which types of brush strokes are necessary to create the effect he wants. And most important, he has to practice — a lot. Just like any skill, it requires commitment.

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The thought of entering a new space that’s quickly evolving is daunting for some retailers. But if used properly, social media can transform the way you do business. It allows you to:

• Talk with your customers, not at them.

• Listen to customers’ problems and quickly address them.

• Expand your audience base.

• Generate and strengthen brand awareness and share your brand’s personality.

• Share content and establish yourself as an industry thought leader.

• Promote and sell (on some sites) products.

Determine Your Game Plan

How should you use social media? To answer that, you have to have a solid understanding of your brand and its personality. You have to know your audience and understand how they interact with social media. You also have to identify which business goals you’re trying to address. For instance, a strategy for generating leads will be completely different than the one you’d use to grow brand awareness. And unless you’re going to have someone tending to your social media accounts on a full-time basis, you’ll want to make sure that you do at least one thing well versus trying to do four or five things poorly. It’s a quality-over-quantity approach.

Establish Your Voice

Think of social media as your company’s voice. The way that potential customers perceive you depends a lot on how you communicate online. Before you develop your social strategy, you have to determine what type of voice you’re going to have. Is your personality going to be playful, or will it be professional and buttoned up? Will your tone be sarcastic or serious? Are you going to engage with other companies in the industry? Whatever voice you decide to use, make sure it’s consistent with your brand and has a purpose. You don’t want to confuse your audience with a case of multiple personalities.

The Social Media Landscape

Before we jump into an overview of the major social sites that retailers are using, it’s important to understand how quickly the social media landscape changes. Just seven years ago, Myspace had more users than Facebook. It was “the” social media site for people between 18 and 24 years old. But when Facebook entered the social media space and gave users more freedom to share information with friends, Myspace quickly lost traffic. This massive shift in popularity quickly proved to advertisers that you have to pay attention to trends and be where your audience is at that moment.

While some social sites may see an ebb and flow of visitors, social media as a whole is still exploding. Currently, 74% of online adults are using some form of social media.1 So if you haven’t dipped your toe in the water yet, it’s time to get started. In fact, if you target millennials (adults born between 1980 and 1995) for any of your products, social media should be a priority. This is the generation that perpetuated social media. And millennials are still shaping the look and feel of it today.

1 http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/

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Overview of Sites

Social media sites typically fall into two categories: user-profile based and visual based. As the name suggests, profile-based sites such as Facebook and Twitter are typically built around a profile, user connections and status updates. It’s where people go to stay connected to one another.

Visual-based sites, such as Pinterest and Instagram, are built around sharing media, such as pictures and videos. Not only do users post photos they’ve taken, but they actively seek out pictures for design and purchase inspiration.

• Facebook Facebook has grown to be the “everybody site.” While a good chunk of the audience is between the ages of 18 and 29,2 everyone from teens to parents to grandparents are using it to stay connected.

• Twitter Twitter is considered a microblog. Since each post is limited to 140 characters, messages and tweets resemble text messages. Most people use Twitter as a source for news and for sharing what they’re doing at that moment. About 20% of online adults use Twitter, so its traffic is significant. Users tend be young adults, ages 18 to 34 and college educated.3

• Pinterest Imagine an online corkboard for posting images. Its users are predominantly female with a higher income. In fact, roughly 80% of its users are women.4

• Instagram Instagram has been growing in popularity lately, especially among teens and young adults. Instagram is mainly used as a mobile app that allows users to edit and share photos. And like Pinterest, most of its users are female.5

Connecting on User Profile Sites

In addition to identifying who these sites reach, it’s equally important to understand how retailers typically use them. User-based profiles are where people go to communicate with one another by sharing updates and news. This format also allows you to:

• Interact directly with your fans and customers. These sites present an excellent opportunity for you to build a direct relationship with customers. A simple endorsement of a user’s content, in the form of a retweet or a Like, can go a long way in connecting to your audience.

• Position yourself as an industry thought leader. Providing helpful content or industry information is an effective way to quickly elevate your reputation with your customers. For instance, try sharing current industry trends or discussing the release of upcoming products. Sometimes, just providing helpful tips can endear you with your followers.

• Provide customer service. Whether you like it or not, when you create a social media profile, you’re effectively adding another customer service channel for your customers. Make sure that you listen and provide solutions to customers — even the ones leaving negative feedback. Also, your responses need to be timely. Try to reply to enquiries or posts on the same day you receive them.

2 http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/12/30/social-media-update-2013/facebook-users/3 http://www.politicit.com/democrats-advantage-twitter-2014-twitter-demographics/4 http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2014/05/07/pinners-be-pinnin-how-to-justify-pinterests-3-8b-valuation/5 Appdata 2013

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If you’re thinking about using profile-based sites in your social strategy, make sure you consider the following:

• Being heard over the noise. Advertisers have been flocking to these sites for years. And because of that, they’ve become a little crowded and noisy. You’re definitely competing with other companies for attention, so make sure your posts add interest and value. Otherwise, they’ll just be contributing to the noise.

• Timeliness. Because there are so many posts flying around, information you share will be overlooked in a matter of hours. To combat this, consider increasing your message’s frequency. Don’t be afraid to repost or refresh information so you stay top of mind among followers. To know how many times you should post to each platform, you’ll need to work closely with analytics. Though there is no “magic number” for how many times you should post on each platform each day, there are some loose guidelines to follow.

For example, you should concentrate on posting more and refreshing your Twitter content, over that on, say, Facebook or LinkedIn, since a shelf life of a tweet is far shorter than any other platform. Also, consider your audience and time zones. The key is striking the balance between informative and annoying. You never want to spam your audience with constant posts about your product. On the other hand, you also don’t want to post so infrequently that your audience drops off or disengages.

Share and Inspire

Visual-based sites are unique because people typically visit them for design or purchase inspiration. Therefore, these sites are also useful places for retailers to promote their brands or products. Specifically, you can:

• Drive additional traffic and revenue to your site. Most of these sites take users directly to the retailer’s page when they click on a product image. Just make sure that your site is optimised for mobile visitors, since a significant portion of social media users will be using tablets or phones.6

• Encourage sharing. A simple way to promote the sharing of product images by your webstore’s visitors is to embed social sharing buttons on each product page. Make it easy for users to show off the products they like and share those they purchased.

• Reinforce your brand. Share pictures that show your company’s culture. Whether you’re documenting a company outing or a team celebration, give users a peek at your company’s culture to let them know that your employees live out the brand every day.

If you’re going to share pictures, make sure that your images are high resolution and visually appealing. Remember, quality matters. The content you share on your company’s social profile is a reflection of your brand.

Building Your Profile

As you strive to be visually appealing, don’t stop with your product images. The background design and profile picture you use on these sites will tell users a lot about you. Keep the following in mind:

• Your profile needs to be consistent with your branding. Think of your profile as an extension of your webstore. Make it instantly recognisable.

• Pay attention to the keywords you use in the “About” section. This will improve your standing in searches.

• Be aware that sites have character limits within profiles. One tip to get around this is to include text in the background image itself. That way, it won’t count against the character limit.

• Adjust your privacy settings. You may or may not want to share all your information publicly.

6 http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-engagement-statistics-2013-12

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Growing an Audience

Now that you have an understanding of how the sites work and what your profile should look like, you’re only missing one thing: followers. There are several ways to attract new followers. You just need to determine which techniques make the most sense for your company. Here are a few to get you started:

• Promote your social presence to your existing customers on your website. It’s an easy way to leverage your site traffic to tap into existing users who may already be fans of your site. Let them know which social networks you’re on by sharing links to your profiles. Also, make sure your visitors can share information directly from your product pages through social media sharing buttons.

• Use Incentives. People love free stuff. Don’t be afraid to reward users who share your content with a discount code or free shipping. Just be careful with what you offer. You don’t want to come across as a company that buys all its followers.

• Spread the love. Repost or retweet your followers’ content when it’s relevant. If someone includes a favourable comment about your brand in a post or tweet, reply with with a thank you and share it with your other followers. This technique can quickly strengthen relationships with your audience.

• Promote with paid ads. This approach may not be an option for everyone, but if you have the budget for advertising, consider reaching new audiences with paid social ads. Promoted content allows you to target people by demographic, location and even preferred content.

• Be patient and emphasize quality over quantity. Building a sizable, relevant audience takes time. Don’t get frustrated if it takes several weeks or months to develop a following. Why would you want to share content with 10,000 fans, if only 100 of them were interested in what you’re posting?

Sharing Content

No matter how you decide to use social media, the content you share is the key to your success. Always provide value to your followers. The last thing you want to do is annoy followers by flooding their news streams with self-serving noise. Remember that you’re there to talk with your customers and not at them. Here are some best practices to get you started.

• Be timely and relevant. Align your content with relevant current events. Did your product line release date just happen to be when Apple’s “bendgate” fiasco was in full swing? Find a way to slip that trending hashtag into your post. Not only will you capitalise on the hashtag volume traffic, but you’ll give your brand that human element consumers relate with. But be careful to know what the hashtag means before you use it. Some may be about more serious topics don’t lend themselves to brand messages.

• Map out an editorial calendar. You should always have content ready to share. Planning ahead will help your content stay relevant and prevent large gaps of time between postings.

• Conduct an internal content audit. Audits will help you discover the collateral you already have on hand. Just make sure that the content is still timely, relevant and consistent with the current iteration of your brand.

• Don’t be tone deaf. Listen to what people are saying about you. Ideally, you can use feedback to make your social experience better for users. You may even get a better idea of how your brand is being perceived. This type of data is invaluable to your company.

Be Prepared

It’s not surprising that unhappy people are typically more vocal online. And unfortunately, negative word of mouth tends to spread faster than positive. But you can’t just ignore everyone who posts a bad review about you. They still need attention and replies. To prepare for this type of communication, consider the following:

• Have a mitigation plan in place. Start a list of pre-approved responses for different scenarios and make sure that everyone responsible for sharing social content has a copy of it.

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ABOUT CHANNELADVISORChannelAdvisor is a leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions that enable retailers and manufacturers to increase the scale and profi tability of their global sales through dozens of online channels including Amazon, Google, eBay, Facebook and more. Through automation, analytics and optimisation, ChannelAdvisor leverages a single inventory feed to more effi ciently list and advertise products online, connecting suppliers with shoppers to increase sales. Billions of dollars in sales are driven through ChannelAdvisor every year, and thousands of customers depend on ChannelAdvisor to substantially grow their businesses.

0203 014 2700 | www.channeladvisor.co.uk | ukteam@channeladvisor.com

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• Respond quickly and thoughtfully. Try to respond as quickly as possible. Situations can escalate and get out of hand in a matter of hours.

• Prepare an internal emergency contact list. If a scenario catches you off guard, make sure there’s an internal emergency contact list in place so the appropriate people in your company can be reached at all hours. This is also when having legal help on standby is smart. You really can’t be too careful. There are too many horror stories of companies digging their own graves on social because they weren’t ready for a crisis.

• Use a dedicated customer service account. Many companies use separate customer service accounts on each social media platform to handle customer questions and concerns. This is an effective way to move a tough conversation out of the public eye. Also, with a dedicated account in place, you can respond under the customer service handle even if the initial question or comment was made to your standard account.

Measurement

The power of digital marketing lies in the metrics that you receive from a campaign. And social media opens you up to a whole new world of data. However, it can be overwhelming if you don’t have a tool or service to help digest it all. To ensure that you’re not missing any critical information, consider using a social management tool like Hootsuite or Buffer. These types of tools will help you schedule messaging, track popular topics and posts and identify important trends.

CONCLUSION

You should now have a better understanding of how to establish your brand and get started in the social media space. Stay tuned for the next installment of the “From Conversation to Conversion” white paper series, where we’ll provide tips and best practices for choosing the right advertising channels for your digital marketing campaigns.

If you have questions along the way, or want to find out how ChannelAdvisor Digital Marketing can help you with your online strategy, please feel free to email us at ukteam@channeladvisor.com or call 0203 014 2700. You can also receive regular digital marketing updates by registering for the ChannelAdvisor newsletter, ECOMmunicator.