Today we finish out our 3 part series on brand building. If you haven’t listened to parts 1 and 2 we really encourage you to go back and give those a listen. We have covered what kind of products work well on an e-platform and how to bootstrap your brand with sites like Amazon. We’ve also covered trademarking and registering a brand. Today we’re going to discuss the why of having your own brand.
Having your own brand is all about control. If you hold the reigns on a product you can better serve your customer in terms of quality, customer service, and overall business decisions. We discuss this with these points:
That completes our series on building your own brand. We hope you got some great information from it and are inspired to rethink your own business strategy. Remember ecommerce is a rapid changing industry and we want to see you succeed! And if you missed parts 1 and 2 go back a couple episodes on our site or iTunes.
Mentioned During Today’s Episode:
If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Part 2 of our How to Build a Brand series. Last time we went over a few things to get you thinking about your brand, but on today’s episode Grant and I are getting into the nitty gritty and talking about the tools you’re going to need to build your brand successfully.
Remember, branding is always easier if you can inspire an emotional reaction or attachment with your product. But finding that product is easier said than done. Both of us have our hands in several niche businesses, and we have some pointers to get you thinking about what kind of product you want to invest your brand in and where you can find it. Sometimes you have to wait around for inspiration to hit, but in the meantime you can develop your domain, establish an SEO engine, and find a way to make social media work for you. Grant and I explain exactly how to do this with a little insight into:
Whatever you are choosing to brand, the tips we share in this second part of our How to Build a Brand series will help you advertise better, sell better, and maintain long-lasting and reciprocal relationships with your customers.
And stay tuned for our third and final installment of How to Build a Brand!
If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes.
This episode is part one of what will be a two or three part series on brand building. You hear a lot about selling your products to make thousands on Amazon, but the way that we look at it is that those things are just get-rich-quick schemes. You’re not building a long term presence or brand, which is what we’re here to talk about today: how to build your brand.
Personally, we have our own brands that have all individually reached success. We discuss the strategy we’re using of researching a market in depth and looking at other products in the same niche that are similar to what we want to do that we can do better. We see their rankings and figure out how to improve the product and build a brand around those improvements.
We’re here to talk to you about how to do that, and so much more like:
Before you really commit to your brand, be sure to test it out first. It comes down to reducing the damage of your bad decisions and asking yourself: “Are we still gonna sell enough every day to make it worth our while?”
It’s really necessary to get the confidence under your feet to be able to pull the trigger on larger purchases, as well. Having an idea of how much money you can put into your brand for most people will be the predominant factor in deciding what kind of brand you can even launch. If you’re just trying to get an idea of the market, we tell you about a quick test you can do with $500 or less.
If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes.
Today’s podcast focuses on niching down your audience, but first a listener question. Tyler asks, “If you can share experience with MAP pricing?” If you would like to ask Ecom Crew a question head over to our contact form or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.
Grant says MAP pricing was used on Treadmill.com. MAP pricing is the minimum advertised price, and it is an agreement between vendors and sellers stipulating the lowest price the item can be advertised at. Some even argue whether MAP pricing is legal or not. Our experience was that we abided by it. The decision to use MAP really comes down to the vendor and seller relationship. If you aren’t making any money, you may want to reconsider your strategy. Mike says that MAP pricing can make things really tough if you are selling on MAP, but others aren’t. There are some ways to work around it such as free shipping or coupons, but we prefer not to have to deal with MAP pricing if we don’t have to.
Niching down ad campaigns is a topic that came up in Mike’s mastermind group. Ecom Crew has really been ramping up our advertising campaigns. Mike was sharing advertising campaigns with the group, and the advice is to niche down to a smaller audience. Campaigns can be targeted by state, sex, age, and income this really focuses on who the customer is. Likewise, Grant feels that finding a profitable sector in any paid advertising is the way to go. It’s common for people to shop in the mornings between 8 am and 10 am. Monday is a good shopping day as opposed to Friday. People from states with higher incomes often buy higher priced items. It pays to modify the spending budget to focus on profitable sectors and lower the budget on unprofitable sectors. Negative keyword lists are a great way to avoid wasting money and not paying for tire-kickers.
Next week we’ll be talking about how to build your own brand. This should be a multi-part series that can help avoid issues like MAP pricing.
Mentioned on this podcast:
If you have any questions or anything you’d like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes.