You would probably be surprised by just how many brands you know of. The Green Starbucks logo, the little green of a Tiffany’s bag and the bold black and white of the Sephora stores – instantly recognisable! In today’s technologically enhanced world, it’s no longer enough for brand simply to exist, it must be seen to take on an identity. Communication, interaction, and engagement are essential to develop a retail brand identity that can meet the ever increasing demands of the consumer.
Take your in store experience online
It is so important to blend both the offline and online presence of your brand. The majority of research and shopping is done online and creating a strong Internet presence is key to building a brand and maintaining loyalty. For a consistent approach, it’s recommended that the offline, in store experience mirrors your business’s online experience.
A great example of a brand who have achieved this successfully is Nordstrom. Building a strong Pinterest following, the brand link its brick-and-mortar stores with its ecommerce site. Stores use Pinterest to discover which items are in demand with their audience. In the brick-and-mortar stores, the popular items are identified and displayed so customers can easily find the most pinned merchandise.
Relate to your audience
Nothing is more off putting than jargon and over use of technical language. A chatty, accessible tone of voice across communications such as our website, email marketing campaigns and social media make it easy for customers to identify with the brand and engage with you. Speak to your customers as if they are your friends. Consider your social media – a customer tweets with a query and the reply is constructed from business terminology – it doesn’t engage. Making the response personal, adding initials of an employee who writes the tweet and a positive message can give the customer the feeling they are valued. And engagement with a brand means increased loyalty and sales!
Incorporate humor
Successful brands relate to their audience. Humor is a great way to grab attention and create a talking point. Instore it is so easy to create a short term promotional campaign with Window graphics and take this online to your website, how about a Halloween campaign? Use a window graphic to make a photo backdrop, ask your customers to take a photo in front of it (don’t forget a brand logo) and ask them to upload to your website to be in with the chance of winning a prize? There are so many ideas you can try!
At AGRetail we are here to help you build your retail brand. From creating the brand, building your website to Instore graphics, talk to us today about your requirements.
