eCommerce Archives : Persona Design

Pinterest: Top 5 Tips for Building Your Brand & Increasing Sales

August 6, 2014/0 Comments/in Brand Collaboration, Brand Story, Brand Strategy, Branding, Customer Engagement, eCommerce, Pinterest, Social Engagement, Social Media /by Lorraine Carter

In the early days of Pinterest the image-based platform, described as a “big online corkboard”, was viewed as little more than a place to exchange recipes, home decorating tips, fashion and craft ideas. But while Pinterest may be a relative newcomer to the world of social media, this highly visual network now has more than 70 million users and a wealth of untapped potential for businesses of all sizes endeavouring to build their brands.

Just how effective is brand building on Pinterest? According to data from marketing research firm Annalect:

Pinterest leads social media networks for brand discovery, with 40 percent of social media users learning about a new brand (compared to 27 percent on Facebook, and less for other social networks)

67 percent of users source and share for special occasions on Pinterest, with second place going to Facebook at only 21 percent

More than half (55%) of Pinterest users click through images they like to the company’s website to learn more about a product or service

Users pin products they are considering purchasing (62%) and products they have already purchased (21%)

Using Pinterest for your business is easier than you might think. These tips will help you create your brand strategy and engagement on Pinterest coupled with driving brand visibility across all of your digital marketing channels.

1. Show Your Brand Story

Your brand story serves as the foundation for your company’s brand, ensuring memorability, recognition, relevance and resonance with your target audience. If a picture sells a thousand words then the visual nature of Pinterest is an unbeatable strategy for illustrating your brand story in a way that ensures significant impact with your customers, especially when you consider that social media content with images drives three times more engagement than text-based content.

Because Pinterest is visual in nature, the platform is highly effective for creating an emotional connection. Remember people buy with emotion, not rational! Well-chosen and powerful images or attention grabbing video that features your products, services, key people in your business or relates to the core of your organisation’s brand, all serve as visual story amplifiers that communicate who you are, and what you stand for, in a really visceral way.

Pantone Colour Institute makes excellent branding use of Pinterest with its boards for Colour of the Year. Each board features images of the highlighted colour featured in foods, flowers, hairstyles, event ideas, and even celebrities wearing the year’s colour. The visual marketing strategy has earned Pantone nearly 50,000 Pinterest followers for 2014’s board alone, and more across the company’s 45 boards.

2. Use Pinterest to Drive eCommerce Growth

Images are inspiring, and the right images can truly transport an audience. Another highly effective brand strategy for Pinterest is to show your customers just what their lives would be like with your brand in them, so they can easily picture themselves owning and enjoying what you have to offer. Pinterest is particularly effective, when used appropriately, with tangible products as part of an integrated brand strategy to help drive eCommerce growth. Illustrating your products or services in action works really well in this regard.

You can also take your lifestyle brand a step further by recommending or joint venturing with other complementary brands products or services and showing your customers a fuller picture that brings the brand elements together. For example, a gourmet dessert company might pin images of a friends celebrating with everyone enjoying their products on a particular occasion or holiday event using the table décor of another popular lifestyle brand.

Once you’ve identified complementary brands, consider partnering with other Pinterest business users to cross-promote and increase your followers and visibility. Re-pinning content is one of the most effective ways to grow Pinterest traffic to your boards.

3. Maintain Brand Consistency Across All Content

As with any social media platform, the key to success on Pinterest is converting followers into leads and ultimately loyal customers. Pinterest provides several ways to reinforce your brand consistency and funnel visitors to your website, landing page, or email list signup.

Pins can be linked to your website, both the images themselves and the text in the description. Every piece of original content you pin to your boards should be linked to an actionable target, making it easy for customers to learn more about the images you’re displaying, and how or where to purchase them or the service they relate to. With linked images, you’ll also gain more visibility as other Pinterest users re-pin your content to their own boards where their followers can also click through.

UK online fashion retailer ASOS is a strong example of brand consistency on Pinterest. The company joined Pinterest in 2012, but didn’t see much traction until an overhaul in 2013 when it streamlined and consolidated its boards, and began posting only branded and linked pins. Now, with 35 boards and nearly 80,000 followers, ASOS enjoys strong customer engagement on Pinterest.

4. Engage Others to Spread Your Brand

Pinterest is a community, and getting others to share your content helps to grow your brand exponentially. More than 80 percent of the total content on Pinterest are repins from other boards, so it’s essential to interest your audience enough to repost your content and share with their own followers.

Having other Pinterest users highlight your brand is a far better endorsement than plugging your business on your own. This holds true not only for repins, but also for user-submitted content that you pin to your boards. There are many creative ways you can invite users to submit pins. For example, auto manufacturer Honda created a campaign called “Pintermission,” where the company chose five influential pinners from among their followers, and gave them each $500 to bring a pin from their own boards into reality.

The company asked the pinners to collaborate with each other, and to upload photos of their projects to Pinterest once they were completed. Honda also created promotional posters for the campaign that parodied popular motivational images. As a result, the Pintermission board received more than 4.6 million views and over 5,000 repins—and the campaign also spread to Twitter with the hashtag #Pintermission.

5. Your Brand, Visualized

With a compelling brand design, and easy tools for linking and sharing, Pinterest is a really powerful branding tool for most businesses. You can strengthen your brand visibility significantly through the use of meaningful images, engaging video, consistent brand messaging coupled with encouraging user engagement through pins, comments and competitions on Pinterest.

What do you think?

• Is your brand a good fit for Pinterest?

• Are you sharing your brand story through images or video?

• What might complement your brand lifestyle messages and help customers envision your brand as part of their lives?

• How are you ensuring you maintain brand message consistency with your images or video content creation?

• Have you used Pinterest effectively yet to help drive your eCommerce growth?

Feel free to share your thoughts or comments in the box below. We’d love to hear from you!

Branding Amazon: 3 Lessons to Learn For Your Brand Success

July 15, 2014/0 Comments/in Brand Experience, Brand Promise, Brand Values, Customer Engagement, Customer Service, eCommerce /by Lorraine Carter

Amazon is one of the most recognizable companies in the world, occupying and serving more global regions than any other organization. And while it may seem hard to imagine branding a store that sells “everything,” the world’s largest ecommerce store has managed quite well! In fact, the name Amazon has practically become synonymous with online shopping.

While your company may not have the reach and capabilities of Amazon just yet, there are still several branding lessons you can take away from the mega-store’s strategies, positioning and brand management.

Image via www.amazon.com

1. Root Your Brand Identity Through Your Business Story

The humble start of Amazon is among the best-known business origin stories in the world and this story has been a tremendous asset in establishing the company’s customer-centric brand positioning. Millions of people know that founder Jeff Bezos left a high-paying career to found a startup bookselling company, which at first he operated out of a garage. The company’s unusually rapid ascension from selling books to U.S. customers, to selling everything to the whole world, completes the Cinderella story, even with its ups and downs along the way.

With this powerful brand story firmly established, Amazon is able to maintain its image as an organization that will always care about its customers, no matter how unimaginably large it becomes. Amazon’s story is a differentiator, setting the brand apart from other mega-corporations through its entrepreneurial grass-root beginnings. Their customer centric approach still is one of their highest brand values and drives the whole focus of the business in terms of their business model, brand strategy and customer experience.

Your brand story is a really important part of your whole brand strategy and any business seeking to strengthen its brand leverage should consider amplifying it appropriately in a way that’s relevant to your customers.

People buy with emotion and your story helps build that emotional connection. That said, your story needs to be worth talking about so you really must craft and communicate it in a way that your core target audience finds truly compelling, memorable and referable using a systemized approach like our ‘Story Selling System™’. Develop your brand story by revisiting the reasons you launched your business in the first place. This can help you pinpoint the areas worth leveraging to increase your brand recognition in the market. What was and still is your big ‘Why?’ To quote Simon Sinek, ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it.’

2. Highlight Your Brand Differentiation at Every Opportunity

Ask anyone what sets Amazon apart from other online retailers, and they’re likely to answer in a number of ways: the product selection, the customer centric approach and the prices. Regarding the selection, the original tagline for the company when it only sold books was “Earth’s biggest book store.” As the organization experienced exponential growth and added product line after product line, it became known as “the world’s largest online retailer.” Today’s Amazon customers can expect to find anything they’d like to buy—and some things they would never buy—available for sale on Amazon. This enormous selection of products is a crucial part of Amazon’s brand differentiation.

The second prong, regarding the lowest prices, has been part of Amazon’s branding strategy from the beginning. In fact, the company is so dedicated to under-pricing its competitors that part of Bezos’ business plan was not to make any profits for the first four to five years of operation, in order to keep prices low for customers. Other money-saving features have been added to the retail site in addition to low pricing—the most notable being the Amazon Prime program, which offers customers free two-day shipping, unlimited movie streaming, and now unlimited music streaming for a yearly subscription fee of under $100—amounting to around $8.25 per month.

Amazon’s huge selection and low prices figure prominently into their branding, marketing and positioning. Then their customer centric approach means they are constantly innovating on ways to enhance the customer shopping experience. Customers are continually informed of money-saving opportunities through onsite callouts, email notifications, and public announcements. Every customer’s online experience is bespoke and tailored according to their browsing interests.

3. Remain Flawlessly Consistent with Your Brand Promise

Above all other factors Amazon’s brand promise has driven the company’s explosive growth, worldwide expansion and enduring popularity among customers from every walk of life. It is a simple promise, though from a business standpoint it’s not so simple to keep: consistently deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Everything about Amazon is engineered to serve the customer in the best possible way. From the unmatched product selection, to the powerful search engine that allows shoppers to find exactly what they’re looking for in seconds, to the customer review system that supports shoppers research products from trusted sources (other consumers) as well as an opportunity to voice their own opinions and experiences with products, to low prices and highly responsive customer service communication. When you shop with Amazon, you’re guaranteed a flawless experience with as little hindrance as possible. And if you don’t get what you expect, Amazon will make it right.

In addition to setting the standards for the online customer experience, Amazon has built in several innovative customer features that enhance the overall environment. The company’s popular 1-Click ordering feature, which saves shoppers’ preferred payment and shipping information and lets them complete purchases with a single click, not only improves the customer experience but also increased impulse buying. And along with the extensive customer review system is a massive online community, with forums and message boards that allow Amazon customers and vendors to interact, discuss products and more.

The key to successful branding is, amongst other things, absolute consistency in everything you do combined with an unshakable brand promise. When your brand promise is reflected in every facet of your business, from customer-facing features to employee actions, to your products or services themselves, you create a customer experience which engenders lasting loyalty, high profile brand recognition and a much more powerful market position.

And in case you’re thinking otherwise, you don’t have to be Amazon to apply these brand strategies. All of this is very doable at a micro local business or national level and when done well, with absolute commitment, significantly contributes to your abilities to achieve brand success, sustained growth and increased profitability.

What do you think?

• Is your brand story really well developed and most importantly, known to your customers and resonating with them? If not ask about our Story Selling System™

• Have you identified the best way to integrate your brand story into your brand positioning?

• Is your brand really different, distinctive and memorable and are you capitalizing on your brand differentiators effectively?

• How can you draw attention to the unique aspects of your brand?

• Where is your brand promise being fulfilled properly and which areas of your business are weak and could benefit from reinforcing your brand promise more effectively?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

Has Your Brand Leveraged Mobile Marketing and mCommerce Yet?

November 30, 2012/0 Comments/in Brand Strategy, eCommerce, EProducts, Integrated Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Mobile, Mobile Commerce, Online Marketing, Smart Phones, Social Engagement, Social Media /by Lorraine Carter

Four out of every five smart phone users in the US accessed retail content on their device in July 2012, with the retail giant Amazon receiving 49.6 million visitors via mobile devices alone.

Among all interactive marketing platforms, mobile marketing is expected to grow 38% over the next five years with an estimated $8.2 billion being funneled into it by the year 2016. This rapid shift in consumer behaviour is too significant for brands to ignore and survival depends on the ability to adapt to this very dynamic retailing environment.

As Smart phone apps, social media, mCommerce, digital wallets and mobile enabled websites become much more mainstream, there is a rapid need for new thinking and entirely new marketing strategies to capture and leverage this growing and extremely lucrative market.

Brands who best understand consumer behaviour as they engage in mobile interaction will be in the best position to capitalize on the shift in market dynamics. Critically, brands that are early movers and embrace mobile marketing are much more likely to boost bottom line profitability and lead with greatest market share.

Connecting with your Customers 24/7

Adapting to mobile marketing is not as easy as it might seem. The multiple different ways you can communicate with your target audience is vast and growing everyday as new social platforms and apps are launched to market every week.

However the ability to connect in a meaningful way has become increasingly sophisticated and challenging for brands. Customers have a bewildering array of choice. Now its about how you cut through that barrage to attract their attention, give them something they want on their terms and continue to build your brand relationship and meet their needs that is a critical part of the brand strategy mix.

Customers are now connected 24/7, if they choose, through hand held devices such as tablets, mobile devices and particularly smart phones. Shopping, banking, entertainment are just a click away and the ever-expanding array of functions each of these has to offer has led to a massive shift in brand interaction through how and when people buy. Online buying behaviour is very fluid and dynamic.

Consumers now demand seamless interaction across all channels. Brand touch-points through all mediums are now expected rather than seen as a value-adding benefit. Customers want to interact with brands on their own terms and increasingly develop affinity with brands that provide a ubiquitous view of purchases, loyalty points, social media tie-ins and customized experiences. Personalized and location-based marketing techniques are moving from ‘desirable’ to ‘essential’.

3 Tips for Understanding the Right Mobile Strategy for Your Brand

Mobile marketing is not only necessary to meet new customer demands, it also provides brands with a variety of additional marketing tools to drive expanding business needs.

1. Mobile: The Service Enhancer

Apps can be a powerful way to enhance your core product or service and help develop closer relationships with your customers.

Apps such Bank of Ireland’s online banking App, or the RTE player App which allows users to view their favourite shows on the go makes the brand’s core service more attractive to customers. As a result, the mobile application is likely to increase the level of brand-customer interaction and boost brand loyalty.

2. Mobile: The Brand Enhancer

If your aim is to create an app for brand building then you must make it an integrated high engagement component of a wider marketing strategy. Coca-Cola developed a highly integrated brand experiences that encouraged customers to embrace mobile engagement in coordination with offline marketing activities in Hong Kong called ‘Coca-Cola Chok! Chok! Chok!’.

3. Mobile: The Business

Retails brands, particularly those who engage in online selling should explore developing a fully integrated mCommerce strategy and optimize the experience across multiple platforms, for both mobile websites and apps.

Amazon encourages customer interaction via laptops access as well as through apps on multiple mobile devices. Each touch point allows customers to browse, shop, compare prices, read reviews and share products with friends. Amazon adds value to the customer experience by giving them full access to their existing shopping basket, wish lists, payment and order history across every device they use. Shopping on Amazon has never been easier for the customer and the retailer has the profits to prove it.

The Starbucks app uses the smart phone as a loyalty card, making it easier to manage balances and reload money. In some stores, the mobile device can actually be used to pay for purchases. One of the highlights of this app is the ability to create personalized drinks.

Going Mobile? What you need to know

26,000 Apps were submitted to iTunes App store in the first seven months of 2012. With the explosion of Apps in the market place many brands waste huge sums of money investing in an over crowded marketplace. Apps like any digital initiative must be ground in clear strategies that harness specific business needs and user interests.

Whether creating a brand App, developing a mCommerce strategy or fully utilizing a mobile-enabled website, brands must begin by analyzing customer behavior and establishing goals for their mobile strategy. Understanding how to leverage data analysis and reporting to help build a great customer experience is key to becoming successful as a ‘mobile’ brand.

If we have learned anything from Social Media marketing in the last number of years it is that understanding the analytics is key to maximizing ROI. The number of fans, comments and click-throughs do not necessarily translate to bottom line results. Geo location data and advanced analytics need to be incorporated into mobile strategies to understand segments, influencers and customer behaviours.

What is the value of mobile marketing to your brand?

Brands need to develop a clear understanding of the mobile experiences’ value proposition to customers and the potential impact on the core business. Is the mobile experience going to be an additional sales channel? Is it going to enhance the in-store experience? Is it going to increase customer engagement with the brand and build loyalty?

The most important word to consider when adapting to mobile marketing is integration. Mobile marketing and mobile advertising for brands can only be truly successful when it becomes fully integrated into your overall brand strategy. It can be an incredibly powerful tool when it harnesses the synergy offered by linking with the other marketing touch-points. The mobile landscape is changing rapidly. Do not be the brand that gets left behind.

• Have you strategically integrated mobile marketing into your brand strategy?

• Could an ecommerce strategy help grow your bottom line and extend your brand reach?

• How are you going to leverage mCommerce in the coming year to grow your business?

Branding Amazon: 3 Lessons to Learn For Your Brand Success

1. Root Your Brand Identity Through Your Business Story

2. Highlight Your Brand Differentiation at Every Opportunity

3. Remain Flawlessly Consistent with Your Brand Promise

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