August 15, 2011
By the ZippyCart Content Team
This week we have a very in-depth article from Antony Welfare, the Retail Inspector, about how ecommerce retailers (and all retailers, really) can focus on branding, establish their niche, and improve performance in their markets.
Introduction
Welcome to my article discussing how you can get the most out of retail marketing and advertising by establishing your brand and your niche – in other words finding out what you stand for and why you exist.
Once you know this, you can then market and advertise these points to help people understand who you are and what you offer. This then helps your customers to understand you better and more importantly you business to grow, making more sales and more profits.
Definitions:
Your niche or “Sweet spot” is the area of the market in which you operate which can be as narrow as ‘Retailing of the best flowers to people who are about to get married’ or ‘Retailing shoes to the city worker’ or as wide as ‘Selling good fruit and vegetables to my local market’.
Your brand is your image and values – it is the way you act, commu nicate and the way your business is perceived. It is what your business ‘stands for’ and is reflected in every single part of the business – from the name of the company, the colour of the logo, the type of bags, to the way your team interacts with your customers and suppliers.
Find Your Niche or “Sweet Spot” in the Market
Why is your niche or “Sweet spot” important to find?
A niche allows you to develop a very strong marketing campaign, and enables you to really understand your customer segments – the more defined the niche, the easier it will be to retail to your customers, and the easier it will be to make money.
Finding a niche in the market means researching the part of the market that interests you and your customers, and breaking that down to a defined section. Understanding what is the USP (Unique selling point/proposition) of your product in the market, and how that translates into a recognisable niche for your customers will help you define this niche.
This part of niche development is focused on the customer side of the equation – you need to look at your chosen product and product range from the eyes of your customers, and establish what they like about your product and how they would see that as a niche in the market.
To find your niche in the market I suggest the following steps:
* Go out and research the market – Walk around your local high street or shopping centre. Find out what market niches there are for your product. How do customers currently see your product in the market and where do they purchase these products from now?
* Use the internet to find where your niche would work – Have a look at where the product is currently sold and what the market looks like – is there a clear niche that you can see for your product?
* As a customer, think of what your niche would be defined as and what you would need to offer the customers. For example, if you were a florist and said your niche was ‘Selling flowers’ you would find hundreds of companies doing this on every street corner and all over the internet space. If, however, you find your customers are normally people who are attending weddings or parties, you could set your niche as ‘Retail of the best flowers to people who are getting married’. This helps you target very specific people with a high-quality tailored service just for them, at the time they need to use your products
* Talk to your customers – Find out from your customers what they see as a good market niche and what products they would like to see in this market
To find your niche or “Sweet spot” will evolve over time, the more time you spend with your customers and your products, the clearer this will become. Get out in your market and find out what people think – you will then start to close in on your niche.
Develop Your Brand
Your brand and the values your brand stands for span every part of your company. As such, the brand must be thought through and developed to a very detailed level. This is part of the process to grow and develop your business over time, but you must start with an understanding of what are your values?
Your brand is in every part of your business, from the culture and ways of working, to your logo and your packaging. It can be seen inside all the people in your business and in all the products you sell.
Take time to understand your customer first, and then develop the products for these customers. Once these processes are in progress you can then start to develop the brand around these.
Your brand is ’living and breathing’ and, as such, needs to be treated with care, and allowed to grow and develop as your customers and your team grow and develop.
To DevelopYour Brand:
Gather together your team and spend some time brainstorming the following areas:
WHAT the brand means to them; talk about your and your team’s:
* Feelings, images, looks, customers, products, people, colours, emotions, smells, sounds etc.
Then use these words and images to form a visual representation of the brand that shows what it could “look” like in words and images
This could be pages of pictures and words on the wall or a number of statements that come out from the team brain storming
An example of a vision board we used in one of my previous businesses holds different images and pictures which all form a small part of the brand and the image I wanted to create for this particular company. The addition of characters, with the static images, helped create the brand values, look and feel.
With the team, talk through your team’s ‘vision’ for the brand and allow them to ask you questions regarding the make-up of the brand in your mind. Again, always remember the customers you are targeting.
You can now develop a couple of logos for yourself and your team which will help to crystallise the vision of the brand – this can be done yourself or there are online companies that will “brand your business” for very reasonable rates.
Review these options and allow the team to ‘feel’ which brand and imagery is the best fit for your business – when you see the possible imagery for your brand (logo, colours and name), one or two will immediately ‘work’ for you and your team; these should then be further explored and understood why and what you like about them.
Once you have agreed on the brand and imagery (this will no doubt take three or four updates), you can then start to develop your business around the brand values.
The brand values are sets of statements that will help you, your team and your customers ‘feel’ the brand you have created. These values will drive your identity and help establish your USP in your niche.
About the Author:
Antony has had a long and storied career. In 2009, he left Dixons Retail to set up the retail arm of FreshMax. FreshMax had been set up eight years previously to invent the world’s only fabric which eliminates sweat patches. The “SmartWeave” FreshMax technology, is patented in the US, China and pending in the UK and Europe.
Antony is the director and founder of Retail Inspector Ltd and is ‘The Retail Inspector’.
‘The Retail Inspector’s Handbook’ (£14.99 Ecademy Press) is Antony’s first book.
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