5 Easy Ways to Promote Your Brand Online

A business brand is more than just a logo, and it’s bigger than your company name. It’s what your audience thinks when they consider your business and products, and those perceptions come from your audience’s interactions with you.

It stands to reason, then, that the effort needed to promote your brand has to be strategic.

Your eCommerce brand is something that people can relate to and connect with beyond just your physical products. Some of the biggest companies in the world understand this concept. When you have products that you sell online, your brand matters:

• It’s the reason why people purchase from you instead of your competition.
• It’s why they open every email you send and believe you enough to click on its links.
• It’s the reason that your fans follow you on social media, read every post, and engage with your content.

Sure, they might love your products. But they also have to feel right about them, and those feelings determine whether or not you have a strong brand.

That’s why online brand promotion involves being laser-focused on customer participation. Your brand has to encompass your entire online presence. It should infuse everything about the way you communicate and the types of products you sell. It should be built into your product details, customer emails, and the overall shopping cart experience that you create.

If you want to win your audience’s attention and beat the competition in one of the most competitive industries in the world, it’s time to promote your brand strategically.

5 Easy Ways to Promote Your eCommerce Brand

Use these approaches to promote and strengthen your eCommerce brand online:

1. Tell Your Story — In Your Voice

Human beings are inherently storytellers, so it’s no surprise that storytelling is at the heart of most modern marketing. It’s also essential for building and promoting your brand.

People buy from people, not from companies. Humans are hard-wired to remember and emotionally connect with stories. So, considering that 70% of consumers make brand preferences and buying decisions based purely on emotions, you need to tell great stories to promote your brand.

Those stories, of course, can take on any number of shapes:

• Tell the story of how (and why) you started your eCommerce business.
• Give readers the inside scoop on the people behind the brand and their values.
• Talk to shoppers about what you care about, both as a founder and as a brand.
• Tell the story behind the conception of one or more of your products.

The key here is to make these stories as relatable as possible. Once you put the story at the heart of your online brand promotion, the foundation is in place for great channel-specific marketing.

But of course, the foundation is still only the beginning of a brand house. Part of what makes your business unique in the eyes of the audience is the way you talk about it; in other words, it’s about your brand voice.

You cannot effectively promote your brand online when you sound just like everyone else. Instead, you need a personality that makes anything you post on social media and elsewhere distinctive almost immediately.

When your audience interacts with companies, they are looking for a personal experience. For a great example of personality from a company, check out Wendy’s Twitter page. They engage with their customers — and their competitors — actively. Their voice is sassy and different, telling their story as much through tone as they do through context.

2. Optimize Your Website

Your website is the central hub of your eCommerce brand. Any effort to promote your brand online has to revolve around it. That includes a few basic steps (and some advanced opportunities) to really build that brand experience.

Let’s start with the basics. First, you have to make sure that your fonts, colors, imagery, and messaging are all consistent throughout your website. Even more importantly, they’ll need to match your other channels — like your emails, social media presence, and product packaging.

Don’t end there, though. Your brand should be present throughout your website — and not just in these overt ways. Instead, its spirit needs to shine through everything you do on your website:

• Write product descriptions in a way that doesn’t just get basic information across. It should also communicate your brand personality.
• Build your homepage to showcase your brand values and why what you do matters.
• Create an engaging “about” page that tells the history of your business in a compelling way.

Even on legal pages like your shipping and return policies, you can let your personality shine. The key, again, is consistency in how you present your business and brand.

It’s an easy step to take when you launch a new website. But even for existing websites, you can work on these optimizations over time to keep moving your online brand promotion forward.

3. Embrace Your Visuals

It’s impossible to promote your brand without a focus on static and moving images. After all, 91% of consumers prefer visuals to written words.

Start with your product images, which can make or break the way your audience feels about your product quality and brand as a whole. Some quick optimization techniques to optimize your images include:

• Invest in proper lighting.
• Use digital mockups of your products if they are appropriate.
• Consider different backgrounds to make your products stand out more.
• Show all of your possible product variations, including different colors, sizes, and styles.
• Show your products in use by target customers to make them more real in a virtual context.

The best product images start taking on a life outside of their own pages, as well. A great in-use picture may be perfect for a hero image or on social media.

And don’t stop at images; video can have the same or an even better effect. The right videos give your audience a chance to know the people behind the company and to experience the products in a more immersive way.

Dollar Shave Club is a great example of branding in a video. The brand’s introductory video concisely lays out its value proposition. But it does so in such a funny and engaging way that it’s impossible to look away. At the end of it, every viewer comes away knowing exactly what this brand is about. If you don’t like it, the product probably isn’t for you, anyway.

Like your photography, a few great videos can have a life outside of your website. Consider starting a YouTube channel or sharing videos on Facebook Live. Figure out where your audience is, and get those videos in front of them. The more visual your brand is, the better.

4. Build a Blog

When it’s done the right way, blogging is a powerful tactic to promote your brand. But don’t use it as a way to be overly promotional. Instead, think about the many ways in which your blog can become a helpful tool for current and future eCommerce customers:

• Teach people how to use your product.
• Showcase new or unique ways of using your product.
• Answer commonly asked questions.
• Interview core members of your company to personalize your brand.
• Explain the backstory of products as they get developed and launched.

Ask yourself: what can you publish on your blog that answers a customer’s question or makes their day just a little better? That’s your focus for the next blog entry. Of course, you’ll also want to ensure that the same brand consistency from your website (from images to colors and voice) carries through to your blog.

Beardbrand does a great job of helping its audience while promoting its products through its “Urban Beardsman” blog, which, you guessed it, covers beard-related topics.

5. Bring in the Pros

Building a successful brand doesn’t happen overnight. Neither does strategic online brand promotion. There are many things that you can do right and many things that you can get wrong, and if you’re not careful, you’ll spend countless resources without tangible results.

That’s why bringing in a professional can be the best choice. Here at Future Holidays, we understand what it means to promote your brand and increase your online sales. We understand the subtle and obvious pieces that help create a raving fan base. If you want to talk about how we can help you better connect with your audience and build that customer base, schedule a meeting today.