Ecommerce
Step-by-Step Guide to Building an Ecommerce Brand
- Written by Rachael Pilcher
When you’ve reached a high volume of ecommerce sales, the next logical step is to think about how to grow further and diversify your product range.
If you’re like many entrepreneurs, that means looking at starting your own brand instead of simply being a reseller. But building an ecommerce brand isn’t just about creating a cool logo and a snappy tagline.
A brand will be another arm of your business that has its own distinct personality, mission, and style. As Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.”
Before you launch headfirst into your exciting new brand, it’s important to map out a plan that can direct your brand’s growth and differentiate you from existing products in the market.
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll be laying out the foundations of building an ecommerce brand to take your business to the next level.
We’ll look at the benefits of creating your own brand, and how you can work towards building something that customers remember and prefer over your competition.
Benefits of building your own ecommerce brand
Starting your own brand can be a great way to capture more market share as an existing business, as well as letting all your entrepreneurial creativity loose on an exciting new project.
If you get it right, there are a bunch of short and long term benefits that will make creating your own brand very much worth your while.
Differentiate from competitors
As a reseller, it can be challenging trying to stand out from the eleventy million other resellers out there stocking the same product lines.
A quick search on Amazon for any product will return a bunch of similar sellers fighting for customer dollars with the same items, with only their customer reviews and slightly different photos to set them apart from each other.
Building your own ecommerce brand gives you the huge advantage of being able to differentiate yourself in an increasingly crowded market, which means you’ll be more visible to potential buyers.
With your own brand and product, you’ll also get free reign over how to position and market your items, which can often be difficult when you’re reselling.
Get more control over the customer experience
Creating a brand enables you to influence every part of the customer experience — from your website, to customer service, to the final unboxing when a customer receives your awesome branded products.
Ensuring a consistent, delightful buyer experience is one of the most effective ways to stir up a buzz about your brand.
Think about all the times you had a ho-hum online shopping experience.
Now think about the times you bought from an ecommerce brand, and they blew you away with every part of the buying experience.
A quick search for “unboxing” on YouTube returns thousands of videos of customers excitedly opening parcels from their favorite brands, showing just how important creating a great buyer journey is to today’s consumers.
We personally love it when brands go the extra distance to create a more personalized customer experience — and with your own ecommerce brand you can do the same.
Increased brand loyalty
Taking control of the customer experience means you can ensure that every customer touchpoint with your business is consistent and positive.
This is a critical first step to building a loyal customer base.
If a customer has a strong initial experience with your new brand, they’re more likely to return and make additional purchases — as well as telling their friends and talking about it on social media.
Higher profit margins
As a reseller, you’re pretty much stuck with the profit margins set by your suppliers, and these can be sliced down on a whim without much warning. By selling your own products, there’s a greater opportunity to lower your ecommerce costs, control your end pricing, and increase margins.
A popular brand can set much higher prices for their products and services, as customers are willing to pay a premium for them.
For example, you might be able to sell a standard baseball cap for a few dollars. But you could sell the same baseball cap with your cool brand logo embroidered on it for exponentially more, creating a healthy boost for your bottom line.
7 steps to build your ecommerce brand
1. Decide on your core product range
As a larger ecommerce retailer, you’ll already have a good idea of your best-selling items, as well having exciting entrepreneurial thoughts about new products, private labeling, or D2C models that can fill a gap in a specific market.
Once you’ve decided on your products, you’ll need to think about how you’re going to develop them for your brand. You can go about this in a few different ways:
Create products from scratch yourself
For example, the Beardbrand creator noticed there was a gap in the market for quality beard care products following the global “beardy” trend.
He reached out to a small beard oil company and asked if he could resell their products at wholesale prices, allowing him to test his market and pricing without taking out a risky bank loan.
Once Beardbrand had a good idea of what was selling, they began making their own product line in small batches, and the business skyrocketed to $100,000 in monthly revenue within 5 years.
Your products don’t need to be complex, they just need to fill an existing need for your ideal customer. Whether you’re exploring localized manufacturing or going offshore, high quality items are your number one priority. Today’s consumers don’t tolerate mediocrity when it comes to online shopping.
If you’ve only got limited funds, it’s best to narrow your focus and launch your ecommerce brand with a single, high-quality product, versus launching with a range of average quality products.
Chubbies started their ecommerce brand selling only retro-styled shorts for men, with a core focus on making those shorts exceptionally high quality. This strategy paid off, and the brand has gone on to raise millions of dollars in funding, expand their range, and become an ecommerce legend.
2. Research your competitors
Even if you have a high-quality product like Chubbies, without being aware of the existing market players you’ll struggle to get traction.
It’s unlikely that you’ll create a product with zero competition, so you’ll need to be smart about positioning yourself strongly and strategically against existing product leaders.
Chubbies obviously had a ton of competitors in the shorts market. These included other online stores, as well as huge retailers like Abercrombie who also marketed to the 18-35 year old males that Chubbies wanted to sell to.
But Chubbies decided they wanted to capture the more niche “'Friday at 5pm” type of males who were going on a trip over the weekend and needed some cool new shorts to take with them.
By getting crystal clear in their positioning, they could tailor their marketing and advertising to reach those exact customers.
3. Research your customers
Once competitor research is done, you need to think about who your ideal buyer might be. This will help align your products with your marketing and sales efforts. Ask yourself questions like:
How old are they?
What are their pain points?
How can you tap into their existing needs and desires?
Where do they spend time online?
What are the search terms they use when they’re looking for new products?
Start narrow with your market, so you can create a clear picture of an ideal customer. You can always go broader when you start seeing some success.
Say your ideal customer is a millennial. They will have different priorities, needs, and expectations around the products they buy, compared to other demographic age groups like GenX.
A recent study on millennial brand loyalty showed that:
68% prioritize product reliability and durability
54% expect high quality for the price
50% expect positive interaction with your customer service team
42% expect good ethical and moral standards
Interestingly, only 24% of millenials say that a product with the cheapest price is important to them. So if you were planning to market a “cheap as chips” product to the millennial market, it may not be as successful as you’d like.
For your ecommerce brand to connect emotionally with your ideal customers, you also need to speak their language. The language of millennials (drip, rizz, lit, stan) will be totally lost on other age demographics!
Once you get your messaging dialed in, your ideal buyer will be more responsive to your marketing and content, which means a healthy boost in brand awareness and sales.
Audience-focused marketing will naturally attract potential customers, and they’ll be happy to pay a good price for your brand’s product, because they already want it.
Take Liquid Death for example. They literally sell water, and their brand is now worth $700 million. They launched with a very clear focus on their ideal customer, and the messaging they would need to use to attract them. It’s a strategy that definitely paid off.
4. Outline your key differentiators
Chances are you already have a lot of competitors, so how will you show up in a way that makes you stand out?
This is where your unique value proposition (UVP) comes in. Your UVP is basically a summary of “what makes your brand different and/or better”. It will help you show up online in a way that makes your buyers understand how and why your brand is different from the others.
As part of your differentiating process, you also need to think about your brand’s core identity:
Vision: Get clear on the story and vision behind your brand. Why did you start, and what are you hoping to achieve as you grow? And most importantly, why should your customers care? 55% of consumers say they are more likely to make a purchase if they love a brand’s story.
Values: Your brand values should connect with your ideal customers. They should be creative, memorable, and short, to help you build an initial connection online. You’ll typically display these values on your brand’s About page.
Visuals: While a cool logo doesn’t guarantee a successful brand, it’s important to put a lot of thought into how you want to show up online. Up to 90% of customers say they make snap buying decisions based on color alone, so your choice of fonts, palettes, and designs are all important factors.Once you’ve got your brand visuals defined, you’ll also need to ensure they stay consistent across all of your marketing touchpoints to help build brand trust and familiarity.
Voice: Creating a strong brand voice can be a powerful differentiator in itself. This is the part of your marketing that defines your brand’s personality. It should also reflect your brand’s values. Will your brand personality be laid back? Humorous? Snarky? Or more formal?
5. Stay consistent
All of your favorite brands have one thing in common: consistency.
When a big name rebrands, it can cause such an uproar that everyone online has their heated opinions about the new logo. Most brands tend to stick with what they’ve got, unless there’s a really good reason to change things.
Consistency is one of the most important parts of building a successful brand. By showing up online looking the same and sounding the same every day, across every touchpoint, you can build brand credibility and trust faster.
The consistency factor extends past your logo and voice. For example, if one of your core brand promises is inclusion and accessibility, and you suddenly change your website to something that doesn’t reflect either of those things, you’ll quickly lose a lot of the customer base that you’ve worked so hard to build.
6. Delight your customers
As we mentioned earlier, a positive customer experience is critical for the success of your ecommerce brand. The better you serve people, and the more personalized you can make your interactions, the more your brand will thrive.
Modern customers have pretty high expectations when it comes to online shopping. So you’ll need to dig deep into your existing customer experience knowledge, and see how you can make it even better for your new brand.
Consider things like:
Branded packaging
Notes, discount cards, stickers, and other added extras
Referral bonuses
Loyalty programs
An intuitive, mobile-friendly website built on a reliable platform (e.g. Shopify)
Segmenting your email list
Responding swiftly to customer queries
Creating a vibrant community on social media
Simple returns process
Flexible shipping options
Flexible payment options
Shipping software to help you fulfill orders faster
A robust inventory management system
Responding quickly (and calmly!) to negative feedback
By creating a fantastic shopping experience, you can build your brand’s equity in the marketplace.
This means more word of mouth referrals, more positive chatter about your brand online, and more customers rushing to defend your brand if they see someone else post negatively about it.
7. Create scroll-stopping marketing content
As an experienced ecommerce seller, you already know that a “build it and they will come” approach doesn’t work. You’ll need to lay out a strategic roadmap for content creation so your products get in front of the right people.
Based on the planning you did way back in step 3, you’ll know who your ideal customer is, what type of content they consume, and where they hang out online. This makes it a lot easier to get in front of them with engaging marketing content.
Social media content is a huge traffic generator for ecommerce brands. 89% of consumers state that they buy from brands they follow on social media, and 84% say they will also choose that brand over a competitor.
Some other high-converting marketing ideas include:
YouTube videos (this video from Dollar Shave Club has 28 million views!)
Product demo content
Live streams
Customer-created content, such as unboxing videos
Comparison content
Podcasts
Content marketing
Advertising
Email marketing
Strategic brand partnerships
Your marketing strategies will change as you figure out what your customers are most responsive to.
You’ll also need to monitor how customers are talking about you online, and what they’re saying. Reputation becomes increasingly important as you build your ecommerce brand.
Make sure you regularly check for any comments on your social and marketing content, and respond quickly to them. And yes, this includes any negative reviews!
Setting up Google Alerts for your brand can help you pick up new places that customers are talking about you, so you can actively monitor things as your brand grows.
Further reading
Building an ecommerce brand can take some time and planning to get right, but the benefits can be immense. It’s a dynamic business asset that will develop as your products, strategies, and customers evolve.
You’ll have greater differentiation from your existing competitors, and more control over your products and customer experience. Could you be the next Beardbrand? Or the next Chubbies?
By positioning your brand correctly and working on creating a consistently awesome experience for buyers, amazing things can happen. Profits skyrocket. Products become top sellers. Your brand becomes everything you ever dreamed of. All you need to do is take that first step.
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