Competition in e-commerce is getting tougher. Favourable prices and a good product are far from guaranteeing that the offer will be in demand. To appeal to as many clients as possible and make maximum sales, you have to approach the promotion competently. It is vital to create a brand that will allow you to differentiate yourself from competitors, increase the demand for the product and increase the credibility of the online store. How to build an e-commerce Brand? We will give you several tips to help you plan your strategy effectively.
To get good results, you need to research your target markets carefully. First, try to identify associations with colours and images in the countries where you launch your product. It is essential to consider the meaning of colours and how images are perceived in different cultures. Second, think through the sales channels in your target market. Where can people see the brand and interact with it? Do you need to make some changes to your branding in connection with this, for example, to make the product’s packaging more discreet? Third, is your brand name consonant with a local word – if so, isn’t that word rude/weird/repulsive/indecent? Observe how other brands in your industry are positioning themselves in the market you want to enter. Learn from them. Find out what branding and localization approaches they use.
Adapt the e-commerce brand, marketing materials and packaging to local norms and expectations. To become a successful brand in many markets simultaneously, you need to understand how to adapt to each of them—partner with companies that offer endless possibilities for the best custom brand packaging like RXD. You may need revisions, changes, or brand updates. When brands adapt to local markets while maintaining consistency, this is called glocalization.
After decades of worldwide success, IKEA opened its first store in India in 2018. In order to appeal to Indian buyers, the company had to adjust its offerings and assortment slightly: reduce the height of cabinets and tables to match the average height of buyers in India; Add more Indian and vegetarian dishes to the restaurant menu at the store; Offer furniture assembly services as Indians are not used to assembling furniture themselves.
It can be challenging to determine which strategy will work effectively for consistent brand perception in a particular market. But it is imperative to decide on.
Caring for your audience means you can give people something familiar. When one company buys another, the branding can remain unchanged to maintain market awareness. One of the best examples is “Walkers chips. Have you ever noticed that the packaging of these chips is identical to the packaging of Lay’s chips? Only the name is different. When PepsiCo acquired the Walkers brand in 1989, the decision was made not to rename the British manufacturing company to Lay’s because Walkers were well known and loved in the UK. The company did not want to alienate its longtime fans. Today, the chips known as Walkers in the UK are called Lay’s in all other countries. Although Lay’s chips entered the UK market under a different name, the brand’s packaging remained recognizable.
Sameness is key to building an effective e-commerce brand. Something has to unite all the elements of your brand into a coherent whole: the same colours and style. This approach will help make the brand and its elements recognizable to the audience. When developing international branding, problems can arise if your logo is made up of words, mainly if it uses a different alphabet than the new market. In this situation, the best solution would be to translate the text while preserving all other branding elements (font, colours and general appearance of the logo) unchanged.
An example of maintaining brand sameness is Twix, which was created in the UK in 1967. From 1976 to 1991, this chocolate bar was called the Raider in Europe, while it was called the Twix in the USA. Eventually, in 1991, the company decided to make its branding consistent and dropped the Raider name. This chocolate bar is now known all over the world as Twix.
Make sure you are legally entitled to do so before launching your brand on the global market. Be careful when examining already registered trademarks and brand names, logos and other branding elements. The sooner you do this, the better. Ideally, this should be done during the branding and planning phase. Remember that each country has its laws and requirements regarding intellectual property, so before entering a new market, you will need time to understand them. It may be worth consulting with a lawyer specializing in intellectual property issues so that you do not face unexpected legal action or refusal to register your trademark in the future.
In studying this issue, you will likely find it impossible to bring your brand to any of the markets. This happened with Burger King when it tried to enter the Australian market in the early 1970s. At that time, there was already a restaurant with that name in Adelaide, so the franchise buyer had to choose a different name. Burger King’s senior company, Pillsbury, offered many names already registered as trademarks that could be used for the burger chain. The franchise buyer chose the name “Hungry Jack’s,” which also gives US customers the brand of pancake mix. Otherwise, all the critical components of branding remain the same: the logo’s shape, colours, typeface, and packaging.
If you plan to bring your company to the international market in the future (if it is an e-commerce brand), develop branding considering the interests of customers from different countries.
Sometimes, successful branding is the right mix of the global and the local. McDonald’s is a significant brand that uses global and regional branding elements to function effectively worldwide. The American version of the menu has many beef dishes, but it would be wrong to use the same menu in India, where cows are considered sacred animals. Therefore, the company changed it to include lamb, chicken and a variety of vegetarian options prepared with local flavours to meet the needs of customers in India. Likewise, McDonald’s has developed unique menus and promotional materials for the different countries it operates, serving dishes such as spaghetti in the Philippines and corn pies in Thailand.
When developing a brand, business people often make several mistakes that prevent them from achieving the desired result. Remember them and try to avoid:
An e-commerce brand has hundreds of small tasks. Marketing research, positioning, naming, corporate identity development, trademark registration, promotion are just a few that must be done to make the company recognizable. Thinking that a brand is just pathos and expensive image advertising is a big mistake. The brand is not limited to creating a slogan and logo. Everything is much more global. This is an individual style, a constant presence in the communication environment, a special language, associative connections that are understood without further ado is used and recommended to others.
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