How to Brand your Retail Business Better?

Although prices and selection play a huge role in consumers’ mindset, shared values are definitely the most important criteria for the strong B2C relationship. With this in mind, we can easily realize why branding is the essential part of every retail marketing strategy. It allows retailers to emphasize their values and helps consumers to make a clear distinction between their store and the competition. While big retail chains have hundreds of employees, who work on branding projects, small business entrepreneurs often need to contrive inexpensive and simple ways for building their brands. In this article, we’ll share several useful tips that will help you to improve your branding strategy and position your business high, on the retail market.

Consistency

Brand consistency is very important for developing a clear message and delivering it to the target audience. Small businesses usually have problems with brand consistency because they are not able to reach the same level of uniformity that’s very prominent among the big retail chains. Still, they need to continue trying because brand uniformity drastically improves customer trust.

So, if you run a location-based retail store, eCommerce website, or eBay and Facebook accounts, you need to accomplish a high level of uniformity and promote your company’s visual identity across all sales and marketing channels. In the digital world, this type of uniformity is easy to achieve. You just need to use the same colors, fonts, logos and styles across all of your platforms. In location-based stores, uniformity requires both time and investments. You need to design uniforms for your staff and use company colors and a logo for decorating your store.

Carefully choose your location

When it comes to retail stores, the location of the venue can make the branding process much easier. Have you ever asked yourself why clothing stores are always located in malls and on promenades, while hardware stores are nowhere to be found in the Downtown? It’s because people often buy clothes impulsively, just because they’ve liked some clothing item from the shop’s window. Hardware purchases are much less impulsive. People buy tools and building material when they want to renovate their homes and they won’t redecorate their room, just because they’ve seen an interesting wall paint, while taking their afternoon stroll.

Choosing the right commercial real estate is the essential part of the retail branding process for another important reason. Branded stores on prominent locations can serve as a powerful marketing tool. Consumers on the sidewalk often enter the well-designed stores to check the latest offer, to experience the atmosphere inside or just to be seen.

Give out free stuff

When we say free stuff, we don’t only think about brochures and other printed advertising materials. Retailers can easily uplift their brand‘s identity by giving out free products. You can give out the samples of the products you sell, or you can bundle the cheaper items with the more expensive ones. Many stores also give out promotional merchandise to their customers. This way, they’re keeping them satisfied and improving their loyalty.

When giving out free products, you shouldn’t only focus on your customers. Local retail businesses also need to help their communities and the best and the most natural way to do that is by giving out the products they are selling. You can organize special promotional events, just for this purpose. This way, you can make locals realize the benefits your products bring and make them grateful for the free things and the good time they’ve had.

Use unconventional branding methods

Everybody knows a thing or two about the importance of logo and company colors. But the branding process goes far beyond visual identity. Location based stores often need to target consumers’ other senses in order to attract them and improve their loyalty. Pleasant sound and scent can also build your store’s brand identity. For example, retail businesses that target younger audience often play loud and aggressive music. On the other hand, supermarket chains try to create a perfect family environment within their stores and make their shoppers relaxed. That’s why they are always playing quiet, slow and relaxing music.

Big brands like Abercrombie & Fitch often use scent to cause emotional reactions from customers. Some retail stores, especially the ones that sell Indian apparel and garments use various relaxing fragrances to attract the shoppers and make them feel relaxed. Sometimes customers smell these stores before even seeing them, which affects their mood and perception and motivates them to enter the store and spend more time in it.

The retail niche has become much more diversified in the last couple of years. Many entrepreneurs see this trend as a challenge. If you want to create a successful retail brand you should view it as an opportunity to win over new customers and to strengthen your brand’s identity on many different levels.