What is brand building?

How people perceive your business is your brand. The brand building process is about creating a unique image for your business. It starts with a strategy to define your brand’s relationship with its customers and how it will get there over time. A brand building strategy will help you be consistent in communication and experience across environments and assets, such as print and packaging, customer service, or social media.

6 Simple steps to build a successful brand

There are different ways you can build a strong brand. But here are six steps to get you started on a successful brand building journey:

Step 1: Determine Your Target Audience

The first thing you need to know when building a brand building strategy is your target audience. You can determine your audience based on age, location, interests, etc. This will help you define what you communicate, where, and how, so your audience can deeply relate to your brand. Depending on your target audience and their needs and aspirations, you can create a brand persona that resonates with them. Over time, your brand will need to evolve with your target audience to stay relevant.

• Pro tip: Start with smaller, specific sets of target audiences. As your brand awareness and loyalty grow, you can expand your audience base to include more diverse groups.

Step 2: Define your brand mission

Your mission and vision statements describe why your brand exists and what it is passionate about. The brand mission is what you promise to do and how you will add value for your audience. It also dictates how you execute your brand strategy daily. It will guide your branding process across channels. All this should help you achieve your brand vision – what you want to be for your audience.

Step 3: Research your competition

Every brand has its unique selling point (USP). Analyze your competition and find out what works for them, what does not, and where your brand can do better than them. The brand building process should focus on that differentiating factor. This will help you define what can set your business apart and use it to your advantage in branding and marketing. Competitive analysis is a continuous process that helps you:

• Define and refine your USP
• Improve your products and services
• Encourage research and development (R&D)
• Benchmark your branding and pricing strategies
• Identify business opportunities and threats

Step 4: Create a strong value proposition

You have studied your markets, competition, and audiences. Use this knowledge to clearly define what your brand offers and why your audiences should only choose you – what makes your brand unique and valuable. Include this value proposition in your marketing communication across channels to create a successful brand. For example, PayU’s scalable and robust platform makes it one of India’s best payment solutions providers.

Step 5: Set your brand markers and guidelines

Brand building is all about making your business recognizable and memorable. And it is done by playing on the human senses, particularly with visuals and sounds. Think Coca-Cola logo or Nokia jingle. Creating such unique and remarkable markers will create a special place for your brand in your audience’s minds. Once you have done that, document how your brand will be represented across channels. These guidelines will ensure consistency and quality.

Step 6: Market your brand

The last step is to tell the world about your brand! Set a definitive marketing strategy and create noise on channels your audiences frequent to grab their attention. Using your brand guidelines and marketing strategy, you can communicate with your audiences in relatable and engaging ways.

Apply your branding in every piece of communication, from packaging to stationary and website to marketing collateral. Identify new channels such as email, web, and affiliates to promote your brand.

Conclusion

Brand building is an ongoing process; you need to revisit it every now and then to ensure your branding is maintained consistently. The process requires expertise, and it is best to get professional help to get the best out of your efforts. You can learn more about branding in our blog on the importance of brand guidelines.

Frequently asked questions about the brand building process

What is brand building?

Brand building is creating awareness and promoting a business using different strategies and plans. In other words, it is building and displaying a brand identity through different campaigns such as on social media, websites, and events. Branding is essential for a company as it is what people see and think about it. It is your logo, tagline, ads, everything!

Helpful articles related to brand building:

• Social Media Marketing Tips
• Content Marketing Tips
• Quora Marketing Strategy
• Video Marketing Tips

Why is it important to build a brand?

Branding is important to build recognition and trust. This can help you acquire more customers and their loyalty over time.

How to plan a brand building process?

You can start with the six simple steps mentioned above to build a successful brand.

What is a brand roadmap?

A brand roadmap comprises concepts and strategies you can follow while building your brand. It includes goals, objectives, and ways to achieve them within set deadlines.

How can you build a strong brand?

We can build a strong brand with various methods and strategies. To start with, one needs to conduct a brand audit of the company. This includes a thorough competitive analysis and identifying your brand’s USPs. Make sure you are original and authentic across communications. Re-analyze your strategies regularly so you can maintain your brand identity.

How does advertising help in brand building?

The motive behind branding is to build recognition and attract more customers. Advertisement plays a great role here. It helps businesses remind their consumers of their presence. Advertisements help build brand salience. It reminds people of the product or services offered by a business by looking at its logo or advertising campaign.

What is brand reputation?

As the term suggests, brand reputation is how people see your brand. Do they see your brand as fun and quirky? Or do they see your brand as an authority in your industry? A good brand reputation means consumers trust you and like your offerings.

The post 6 Simple Steps For A Successful Brand Building Process appeared first on PayU Blog.

The Basics Of Organic Traffic 

There are two ways of driving consumer traffic to your e-commerce stores – organic and inorganic. Organic traffic is generated through unpaid means, i.e., not having to pay for ads and affiliates. So that means if you are in the early stages of your business growth, you should become an expert at organic sales. You wouldn’t want to burn cash on expensive marketing early on and pile on debt. With research, trial and error, and experience, you will get better at driving organic traffic and overshadowing your competition.

How Does Organic Marketing Work? 

Organic marketing works on the concept of ‘keyword search’. Whenever potential consumers search for a keyword on a search engine, they get directed to the website with the best offering. You must have experienced this phenomenon yourself. Suppose you want to buy a personalized notebook online. You look for this product on a search engine, say, Google. Google calls the words that you enter in the search bar ‘keywords’. Now, Google uses its advanced search engine technology to find an e-commerce store with a matching product on sale. That’s it. The more relevant and valuable the content, the higher your ranking.

What Should Be Your Organic Marketing Strategy? 

Researchers believe that the highest-ranked page gets 30% of organic traffic, the second one gets 17%, and the third gets 12%. These percentages keep decreasing as the website rankings go down. If you operate in a highly competing business environment where many traders have transitioned to online selling, ranking high will not be easy. High competition does not mean that you should endeavour for anything but the top-most rank – the more formidable the challenge, the better the rewards.

So here is what you have to do to improve sales –

1. Create good quality content that appeals to your audience. 

2. Make use of links. 

Let’s dive right into the ways of driving organic traffic to your e-commerce website in India.

SEO A.K.A Search Engine Optimisation 

To develop your search engine ranking, you must understand how they work. Search engines use bots to crawl web pages. Algorithms analyze the content on these web pages and rank them according to predefined criteria. For strengthening your SEO fight, pay heed to the following points:

1. Choose the right mix of keywords at the optimum density for your content. 

2. Use catchy headlines and keep the content easy to understand. 

3. Use suitable images that get the consumers’ attention. 

4. Explain your product offerings exhaustively. Remember, you provide product descriptions for your customers; hence, write the features to connect with your audience instantaneously. 

Create A Blog For Your Brand 

People trust you if you provide them with guidance and reliable advice. Consider blogging as an opportunity to do just that. Your target audience could have several questions related to the correct usage of your product and the product that could be the best fit for them. If you operate in the fashion industry, your content should inspire your audience, keep up with the latest trends and talk about tips that work.

Consistent blogging is the key to building a community around your brand. Think about the diverse situations in which you would use the product yourself and build a story around that. If a person reads about a product on one platform, she will purchase it from the same one.

Focus On Product Descriptions 

Your e-commerce website needs to talk about your products in great detail. Make sure to use keywords here and keep the content engaging. As your business runs around these products, the product descriptions are the centre of attraction – make them unique. Add e-commerce store images that show what the product looks like along with its usage.

Choose The Right Keywords 

The entire organic marketing strategy depends on the kind of keywords that you use. Your keywords should describe your offering specifically and not be generic. Mention the colour and design of the product or any USP that you pride yourself on. A product-centeric keyword strategy will help you get to the right target audience and increase your conversion chances.

Compelling Site User Interface (UI) 

Your site architecture should be easy to navigate. Allow the customers to reach product tabs with the minimum number of clicks possible. Expand the number of landing pages on your website. With more landing pages, you get the chance to talk more about your product characteristics. You must cover all the details possible to avoid customers from drifting to another website for information.

Linking Works Magic 

Backlinks are required from industry-trusted influencers. Partnering with influencers could be tricky as your competitors would be doing it too. Do your research, and once you have figured out what works, your business can accelerate to the next level.

For a noteworthy brand, a robust payment solutions provider is needed. PayU, a powerful payment gateway, provides 150+ payment options and allows you to securely receive international payments in different currencies. PayU lets you create customized invoices and send them to customers. Also, receive payments and access the status dashboard under the same umbrella.

Conclusion 

Once your website traffic grows, you are responsible for providing a smooth check-out experience to your customers. PayU is not only your payment gateway but also a risk management tool. After opting for the service, your business will benefit from high-risk order flagging and detecting payment fraud. Grow your freelancing, startup, or SME business and make correct business decisions with PayU.

The post How To Drive Organic Traffic To Your Online E-Commerce Store or Website? appeared first on PayU Blog.