Ecommerce Branding Guide

Learn exactly what it takes to lock in ecommerce branding that works for your bottom line.

Why read this guide?

Here’s where your company is headed: you have finally become the brand you always wanted to be.

This guide is about how to get there.

After you work through the steps below, here is what you can expect:

• Everyone who needs to know about your brand knows about your brand and exactly what it stands for.
• When looking at your pricing, customers consider your brand and are willing to pay more to shop with you because you’ve earned it.
• Your customers voluntarily tell the story you worked so hard for them to tell…because it’s true!
• Your brand shows up in your marketing, your products, and the customer experience. It’s like an identity. Everything else in the business comes out of your brand and backs it up.

Instructions on How to Use This Guide

This isn’t a long-winded article. It’s short and to the point so that it can be quickly useful to C-level and senior leaders.

1. Read each section carefully and slowly.
2. Double check that you understand the section and think about if you have already completed this work.
   1. Have you done it recently enough? (things change)
   2. Have you done it with the right quality? (no shortcuts)
   3. Have you done it fully? (half-baked won’t work)
3. Use the prompts we provide and write down on a piece of paper any areas that you think need follow-up. These could be key areas of opportunity for your business.
4. When you have been through the guide, you will have a list of branding areas to look into. Rank that list by impact, effort, timing, and cost.
5. Tackle item #1.
6. Get help. If I could be of service to you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Section 1: Assess Your Brand Today (in its current state)

Remember: Brand Planning is Relative!

First thing we do is take a look at where you are today because any planning on next steps has to be relative to that position.

Ecommerce Branding Areas to Consider

Walk this list. Which of these do you feel has room for improvement in terms of your a) understanding and insights, b) planning and strategy, and/or c) execution. Mark L (low), M (medium), H (high) or IDK (I don’t know) for each based on your perceived room for improvement.

• Your market (specifically look at competitors)
• Your sub-market or niche (again, competitor-focused)
• Your brand’s value proposition(s)
• Your brand’s differentiator(s)

Section 2: Define Your Brand Goal (in its future state)

Walk this the list below now and jot down goals for the performance of your future brand – what you want to get out of it.

Do not write down what seems doable. Write down what you actually want your brand to do. Set goals for how much your brand should change what customers do here:

• Purchase conversion
• Purchase price
• Loyalty

If you don’t think your future brand should impact these three items, you shouldn’t be completing a branding guide. Perhaps the big question for you might be, how much should I expect a revamped brand to impact these items? Now that’s a good question. That’s where I help. Feel free to reach out to kick start a convo.

Next, set goals for how your brand will impact:

• Organic traffic
• Ad conversion
• Referral traffic
• AOV

Other items to consider:

• How many months/years do you have to hit these brand goals?
• Are there incremental milestones of achievement you feel would be acceptable?
• What budget can you commit to achieving these goals? Put another way: what ROI would justify that budget?

Section 3: Build a Plan for Ecommerce Brand Development

By now you know where your brand is today, where you want it to be, and what timeline and budget you have. The next step is a branding plan that connects the two. The plan shows how you get from where you are today to where you want to be. You will want to identify the following for each activity/initiative you plan:

• KPI Targets (leading indicators)
• Relevant and correlated future goal target (from Section 2)
• Due dates
• Person responsible for driving the initiative
• Minimum budget

Section 4: Implementing Ecommerce Branding Initiatives

Even a good plan can fall apart when you put it into practice. When that happens, you never see the gains the plan promised. Take a look at these areas of implementation in your creative and customer experiences and mark L (low), M (medium), H (high) or IDK (I don’t know) for each based on your perceived room for improvement.

• Quality fit
• Messaging fit
• Aesthetic fit
• Voice fit
• Experience fit (includes service)
• Packaging fit
• Partner fit

Summary

That’s it! There is no trick to this. You win on your brand by working through these items steadily, one at a time. Spend a few minutes on each item above until you understand it. You will come away with a short list of ways to make your branding work harder for you. Our 13 DTC branding lessons article walks through what this looks like in practice.