You’ve Been Branded!

submitted by a client of MerchantAdvantage who uses Channel Management with Chanaltycis

by Uncle Chen

Have you ever wonder why people buy more products from a reputable store, even if it’s more expensive?  Ever wonder how you can get that type of brand loyalty?

It’s the familiarity with your store and your brand that makes the consumer comfortable. It’s the idea, and hopefully the reality, that the consumer is a part of your store.  Thus, if you are able to make this “connection”, more often than not, customers don’t necessarily mind spending an extra buck if they are part of the proverbial “Family”.   Now what creates this familiarity for the customer?

It is often the image they see when they close their eyes. What is the thought that comes to their mind when the think of your storefront, let’s say Widgetwatcher.com, for this analogy.

Close your eyes and think of Widgetwatcher.com…Maybe you see a short, green alien with big eyes looking around for the best customer service.  BANG! In an instant, you’ve been branded. Now Widgetwatcher.com has turned from just a web store, or just another name in the marketplace, but is now a tangible idea; Widgetwatcher.com is now a vision that the consumer can identify with and be a part of and can remember.

Now the next hurdle is pushing that image wider, let’s say into all of your marketing channels.  How would one do this with CSEs?  Simple, continue to push that marketing image to your customer.  And we bet that even when your price is a little higher than the rest, consumers will still be satisfied buying from you as they are associating much more with you than just overall price.

Some tips and tricks to increasing your brand awareness are adding you logo as an image to items that might not have an image.

Often, when I go on a CSE and search a product, five products or more come up and some have no image – at all!   I, personally, would be not drawn to any product without and image and probably would not click on it. But if one out of those five products without an image has a  “logo” image attached to it, I would probably click on that product first.

Now the question for everyone is how do I go through a 30,000 product catalog feed to find the 50 products that have no image associated with it and insert your company logo or other brand image associated with your company?

Some of the tool based feed products in the marketplace can easily do this for you using their convert function. I use MerchantAdvantage’s Channel Management with Chanlaytics application by going to the channel, under channel data find image URL field, click convert, search blank and replace it with a logo URL. In seconds,  my marketing sites have been branded and all products now have an associated picture.

Most channels don’t have a problem with this tactic but sometimes they may not like it.  I don’t know exactly why as you are still associating your company with a product, so if they notify you, just remove the conversion.

As parting advice, Uncle Chen says:

“Always add/upload your logo to CSEs.  It’s true that your domain name will show up by default, but the images that appear leaves will always leave a lasting impression.”