Category: E-commerce

Brand Management – an Effective Tool for Successful Business

A brand is not just a name, product, or service. It is the soul of a business! It is the impression of a business that links, interacts, and creates a bond with customers, employees, suppliers, and stakeholders.  

It encompasses everything from the initiation of a normal business to its extension in various dimensions. It carries the reputation and associates it with various other businesses in the industry. It is also the face of the company that is navigated by the search engines to reach the appropriate customer and client base. In other words, it is the mark that distinguishes your company from start to end.

When people see a brand, they find it to be a set of visual and verbal cues but, for any organization, it can be referred to as –

Business, Reputation, Association, Navigation, and Dimension

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

– Jeff Bezos

Brand Management 

Branding is a long-term process that requires high commitment throughout, especially in its initial phase. Nurturing and monitoring it over time to build a strong image is called Brand Management. 

It maintains the voice of the company through all the channels, whether retailer, editorial, or advertising. It creates a clear view of the company on the traditional as well as a digital platform so that the customer’s purchase process is maintained. It includes two components,

  • Tangible, such as product, price, packaging and customer experience
  • Intangible, such as the emotional connection of the customer with the product

Benefits of Effective Brand Management

The process of brand management might be challenging but the result is always furthering. Some of the benefits you attain are –

  • Increases your brand equity
  • Expands your brand identity
  • Optimizes your brand value
  • Boosts your brand awareness
  • Enhances your brand sustenance
  • Measures your brand growth
  • Build loyal customers 

Basic Principles of Brand Management

To evaluate your branding efforts and eventually succeed, you must include some factors. These specialized factors will help you break free of the ordinary norm and come up with a unique way to promote your brand. The components that build up these ideas are easy to understand and even easier to implement.

Brand Awareness is the likelihood, with which the customers link a certain brand with a specific product. It is the familiarity that people have with your brand when they are out for purchase or to acquire any service. It goes hand in hand with brand recognition and brand recall.  Sometimes brand awareness is even improved to grab the attention and make it easy for consumers to spell, like in the case of Coca-Cola, now known as Coke.

Brand Recognition is the identity of your brand that customers recall while making a purchase, like the color, logo, tagline, slogan, packaging, etc. It plays a very important role in instantly keeping a top place in people’s minds and when they are out to purchase, it signals their minds.  

Brand Equity is the differential impact, perception, and impression of the brand on the consumers. It defines the value and strength of any brand that becomes the consumer choice in the marketplace. Thus, the brand often links their products with the situations to associate with their customers in the memory and help them make choices whenever they make a purchase. The equity is often measured with the increase in sales volume, price premium charged, return to shareholders, and several other parameters.

Brand Loyalty is the consistency of the customers that are engaged with you over any competition. It is measured with brand trust, price sensitivity, commitment, the mouth of the public, and so on. This involves the efforts of customer service more than the marketer, as the satisfaction of the customers also plays a huge role.

Quick Tip – Brand Loyalty is not Customer Loyalty, it is the loyalty of the brand to provide its customer the right kind of product with the right kind of service and be available for them at every point.

Strategies of Brand Management

Simply following the traditional strategies won’t be effective as there is a lot that has changed in the business world in the past few years. With globalization, the competition has become hardcore and it needs some groundbreaking ideas to set the stage at large.  

Unique Selling Proposition

USP is the strategy that makes you different from your competitors. The most opinionated and deliberated USP influences branding, marketing, messaging, and copywriting, making your business stand out.

Before creating your USP, you should understand your products and see if it fits correctly in your market. You can ask yourself some questions and check where you belong. 

Is my product durable? 

Is it cost-effective? 

How is it different from my competitors? 

Is it innovative? 

Will it last long in the market? 

Does it focus on what customers value?

When you are clear with your question, you will be able to come out with the USP for your brand. Using the USP to market and promote your brand will instantly help you show the face of your company to the audience and grab their attention in the marketplace.   

Quick Tip – USP is not the offer, discount, or facility that you give to your customer. It is the message that you wish to convey to the consumers so that they choose you over your competitors. 

Comprehensive Model

Shift your focus to a comprehensive approach rather than just an evaluative approach. Evaluation is not a complete strategy instead, just part of the strategy. Most businesses concentrate on the link between marketing campaigns and the firm’s brand value, while others investigate the relationship between the brand and the premium price of the company’s products. Only a few focus on the trilateral relationship i.e. interaction between marketing campaigns, brands, and sales.

You need to make a basic plan followed by a sustainable plan so that you can evaluate and then re-evaluate the strategy using the trilateral relationship.   

Brand Assets

Brand Assets include all the tangible characters of branding that the audience can see, perceive and remember. Crafting the elements and maintaining their consistency throughout can be a tough task, so it is important to organize your assets and restrict access to maintain the consistency of your brand. Moreover, a routine check is also necessary to avoid overlooking.  

There are many assets but the main ones include Brand Name, Brand Color, Website, Brand Message, Marketing Channels like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others.  

Tips to Boost Management

After exploring the principles and the strategies, you must be clear about the amount of effort you need to put in to make your brand promising. But it is also important to understand that while handling business there are a lot of aspects to be taken care of like production, service, sales, shipment because of which brand management becomes a very difficult task.

So, there are a couple of choices that businesses can take to uplift their brand while reducing pressure.

Use Software System

Businesses can internally use software to maintain and organize different brand assets. The most exceptional features of the software may provide access to style guides for logo, pictures, and font and they can also take care of the copyright and the security issues that are of great concern.

Outsource Service

There are many B2B companies that take responsibility for branding your assets. The most specialized ones help you from scratch to meet your needs so that you are free to handle other issues well. 

How can We be a Great Help?

At ANS Commerce, we help companies to expand their brand position with increased sales. We help businesses focus on their core while providing them with all the other services like performance marketing, marketplace management, warehousing, and fulfillment. We provide e-commerce consultation via. technology interventions for the brandstore so that they are aware of the current gap and can adopt the best industrial practice to funnel improvement. We also serve businesses with our integral product, Kartify that lays the base for setting up an online presence. For any assistance, you can request your DEMO now!

Wish to Grow your E-commerce? Learn How to get an Amazon Best Seller Badge!

It sounds great to hear ‘Best Seller’ but is it easy to become one? Amazon, the world’s largest store for e-commerce, sells 50 million unique products in India and this success is due to the vast network of its sellers. 

Currently, more than five lakh Indian sellers constitute the third-party network of Amazon.

(Source: Economic Times)

With these many sellers and their numerous products, there is a lot of competition to get the products purchased on this platform. People do not have time to scroll through hundreds of products to purchase one. They view the top-ranking products and purchase them if they like, else they go to other platforms. To hook the audience, Amazon, like other platforms, keeps customer satisfaction at priority and ranks the products to give quick and effective results. 

What does the Amazon Best Seller Badge Mean? 

There are many features on Amazon that help sellers showcase their products and place them among the top-selling items. One of the finest and latest among all is the “Best Seller Badge”. In general, it is the tag that represents people’s choice and sale density.  

You must have seen an orange color badge on the top left side of the product that spells “Best Seller”. 

The A9 algorithm of Amazon aligns the products according to their rank depending on the number of times they get purchased. The ones that are most purchased stand on top and get the best seller badge.

Thus, to make the product stand out of the hundred a seller needs to increase the sale velocity which can rank the product high.

Facts Behind the BSR of the Product on Amazon

Even if you have got the badge, you need not remain idle with just that. There are some facts behind the BSR (Best Seller Rank) of the products on Amazon. Some of them are as follows-

  • You receive the best seller badge only for that specific category in which you have sold the most. It means that if Samsung has received a badge for its oven, that doesn’t mean that it will have the badge for air conditioning or any other category as well.
  • Several products in a single category can have the best seller badge depending on the number of sales. It means that, if there are multiple products in the same category with high sales volume, then they will all receive the badge. So, the badge is not product-specific.
  • The badge gets updated every hour. So the product that had the best seller badge an hour ago might not have it now. This means that 24 times a day the seller is at risk of losing the badge. 
  • The ranking of the product on both Indian and global sites might be different. This means that, product ranking #1 on Amazon.in can rank #100 on amazon.com.
  • Amazon has placed the tag “Best Seller” as the navigation category on its website. This has made it easy for the customers to directly look into the bestseller deals but has also made it more valuable for the sellers to enter the club to increase the sales.    

Importance of Amazon Best Seller Badge

If you are a seller on Amazon, you must know the advantages of this feature.  

The feature places the products with the badge on the top of any category or subcategory that a consumer searches for, making it the first recommendation. And when Amazon’s algorithm itself is recommending your products, your sales will automatically go up.  

Even when the consumers are looking for different products with irrelevant keywords in the same category, the product with the best seller badge will reflect, boosting the sales again.  

COPA for Amazon’s Best Seller Badge

By now, you must be aware of the importance of the badge and the reason behind the competition that is rising to acquire it. This is not the time to lose hope but the time for determination. It might sound difficult but remember, nothing is impossible. The only thing you  need to remember is, 

higher the rank, easier the sale, quicker the badge

Now follow simple steps to get quick results

Categorizing

You need to be very precise while categorizing your product. Random or irrelevant placement of your product can take you away from your target audience. So, jot down the features of your products and then specify them under the appropriate category. 

For example: if you are selling a mouse, you need to go on

Electronics > Computer > Accessories > Mouse > Wired/Wireless

Optimizing

Before showcasing the product live on Amazon, it is important to do an extensive keyword search. You can use Amazon itself for a few suggestions, for example, for selling a mouse you can simply type on the search bar and check for the keywords, or can also use keyword planner for the same. There are also several other tools that you can opt for to make your search more relevant. Add these keywords to your product title and description as they get tracked by Amazon’s search engine.  

The image also plays a crucial role, so choosing a high-quality image is also important.

Quick Tip – The keywords should be placed according to their relevance and must not be repeated. They must not be placed with a comma or space between the keywords.

Pricing

Competitive pricing plays a pivotal role in increasing your sales in any market. You need not go for the lowest price to sell your product but must keep your range acceptable. Because if your competitor is selling the same product at a lower price, there is a great chance that you might lose your audience. And still, if you are charging high, you must list your reasons to make it clear for your customers to understand the high pricing.   

You need to stay profitable yet marginal to gain traction.  

Advertising

One of the most acceptable ways to boost the rank of your product is to promote it with Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign. Promotion helps sellers bring their product to the sight of consumers quite often, thus increasing sales drastically. 

Quick Tip – Competition on the Amazon SERP (Search Engine Result Page) will only grow, so rather than falling behind, it’s time to participate in the competition.

Hurdles to the Path of Best Seller Badge 

  • There are different categories and subcategories, some small and others large. So the time and efforts taken by you to get the badge might vary depending on the density of the category where your product falls. 
  • When it comes to purchasing, people do not invest much time. Further, Amazon’s first page has so many products that people do not bear to go on the second page. So if your product does not land on the first page of the result then your customers might not reach you for your product.  
  • Sellers might lose their badge even after an hour and might not gain it again for a while if they are not constantly working for it. Keeping a loop with campaigns and offering discounts often works to regain the badge. 

Get Quick Assistance for Better Results

ANS Commerce is the one-stop solution for the full-stack service, where we provide Marketplace Management to businesses that are busy working on their core products. While optimizing the resources, we take care of the opportunities of the brands at various marketplaces to help them enhance their sales and business in a limited time. 

Whether you are facing a problem with Account Management, Growth Planning, Operational Execution, or Reputation Management, our experts will help you all without any hassle. You can also reach us for transacting customers and increasing your product purchase on the marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart and others. So connect with us and ask for your DEMO now! 

7 Hooks from Ramayana to Vitalize Business

Characters pass generation to generation heritably, but knowledge finds its way naturally. No matter who you are or where you are from, you always have something to imply in life that comes from your forefather. Even the strategies applied back 5000 years are indispensable. Diplomatic planning, organization, the ethical codes, the happy workforce if implied today can take you to the next level. 

Modern books are en vogue but the lessons from history are always a get-go.

Ramayana, the epic mythological book of Hindus ascribed to Valmiki not only entails the significance of dharma (duty) but also recites commitment, leadership, management and diligence that are must to run any business. 

Let’s comprehend the sure-shot corporal lessons to sundry in this entrepreneurial era.

Prioritize your Brand Name

Building a long bridge to Lanka was not easy as there was limited resources and time. One of the followers inscribed the name of the Lord Rama on the stone and threw it in the ocean; it floated (just the reverse, as all stone sinks). When Lord Rama thought of helping the subordinates and threw the stone without inscription, (as it was being thrown by Lord Rama itself) the stone sank.

Lesson – The incident proves that it is not the person or the position that holds power but the name of the brand you are using. You are known by your brand name and so brand name matters a lot. All the decisions should be taken in consideration of your brand and its exposure in the market. Employees under the brand name, whether high or low, should understand its importance and try to uplift it.  

Learn to choose your brand name and color to attain great heights

Limit Powers and Manage Stakeholders

King Dashratha, who ruled the vast kingdom of Kosala, capital Ayodhya, had three wives named Kaushalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi. Each of their sons were eligible to take over the charge of the kingdom and so Kaikeyi came up with the decision of sending the eldest son Rama to the forest derailing Dasharath’s ruling plan. On the other hand, Ravana after ignoring his wife, brother and grandfather got backstabbed.

Lesson – When there are too many stakeholders with decision making power it becomes difficult to control the organization. Keeping them happy further becomes a difficult task, so it is important that you limit your stakeholders and keep them in interest else your power might dilute without you being knowing.

Quick Tip – Organizations should keep a concern on the interest of the stakeholders as individually they might not hold much power but when they come together can affect decision making, delay your projects or stop business plans.

Choose your Alliances Wisely

To win against Ravana, Rama needed a powerful ally, but he chose Sugriva instead of Bali as Bali was unethical and kicked his own brother Sugriva to take over the kingdom of Kishkindha and abducted his wife. On the other hand, Sugriva’s managerial skills were so accurate that he was able to make Angad work for him who could have been an arch-rival. 

Lesson – If you ally with an organization that works unethically, you might nurture your business but it would sustain only for a short duration. To win a long term reputation and maintain your brand name you need to partner wisely and look for the one that can lead strategically and be a support even in difficult times.

Create Clear Vision with In-depth Analysis

Each time a problem knocked Rama; he deeply analyzed the situation, made a clear vision and shared it with his subordinates. Whether it be the time when he was asked to leave Ayodhya, help Sugriva or save Sita, his extreme approach has always made him a success. Even when Hanuman was sent to Lanka, he first analyzed the territory of his enemies, the people, and the internal situation and then made a vision for his act.

Lesson – Only after an in-depth analysis a clear vision can be created. And once you have a clear view you can lead your team to act fruitfully. Throwing the arrows blindly without a target will lead you and your company to nothing. 

Learn about SWOT Analysis or Porter’s Five Forces for an accurate E-commerce Business Analysis   

Seek Experts’ Assistance

Vishwamitra, the most venerated rishis of those times also known as the Rajarshi taught Rama the art of warfare and also gave him the knowledge of Devastras to help him kill powerful demons. On seeing Rama leaving the kingdom for the commitment of his father, Bharat learned how to do the righteous things simultaneously, standing on commitments made.  

Lesson – As the owner of a business it is important to understand the fast changing market trends. The assistance of the experts and learning via workshops, seminars and conferences can develop skills in your employees and make them equipped to face a challenging business environment.

Quick Tip – Every expert has a lot to teach from his life lessons, a close interaction of your employees with these experts can make work smooth and more understandable. 

Keep your Team Motivated

The most eminent incident where Jamvant asks Hanuman to go to Lanka to locate Sita to inform her about the presence of Lord Rama was highly motivational. Jamvant knew the true potential of Hanuman and just needed to ignite it in order to make Hanuman go to the enemy camp. 

Lesson – A leader always knows the true potential of his employees. It is the prime responsibility of the leader to keep the spirit ignited and motivate the employees to do their best in every project.  

Compete in a Fair Game

The complete Ramayana exhibits human greed. Kaikeyi wanted Bharat on the throne, Surpanakha wanted revenge when Lakshmana cut her nose, Ravana abducted Sita to possess her which in turn created war. On the other hand Rama played with ethics and won Sita in a ‘Swayamvar spardha’ and even he warned Ravana to return Sita to avoid battle.  

Lesson – In business you are always in a strong competition. Some play clean and some dirty. The tricks can work once or twice but a long term stability in the market only comes after you play it fair.  

Learn about the social responsibilities that you should adopt in your Organization

Each verse of Ramayana teaches kindness, tolerance, patience and success. The more you read the more you will learn about the tactics for true victory and its essence in the modern world. 

How can ANS Commerce be a Major Help?

Challenges are part of business but with challenges comes the opportunity to meet the partners who can hold your back and help you take care of your business. 

At ANS Commerce we take care of all your e-commerce related queries and provide you the curated solution from performance marketing to warehousing so that you can lean on us. Our full-stack solution with expert hands will meet your needs even in the peak period of the festival and allow you to focus on your main task.    

You can connect with us and grab a free DEMO today. 

Why Do Businesses Demand Forecast During the Festive Season?

Now that the festival is around there is an expected wave of demand for products at every store. Planning the products, the retailers are getting ready to block the shelves to increase their sales. 

Is this Enough to Run a Business?

Running a business is not just anyone’s cup of tea, especially when you are willing to grow, gain profit and flourish every season. Mere assumptions don’t work! You need to roll your eyes and foresee the future. You need to understand the kind of capital you need to invest, the number of products you need to produce, and the inventory units you need to keep up the stock. And able to answer,

  • What is your capital expenditure?
  • How much cash flow is required to make a profit?
  • What is your mitigation plan for the upcoming festival? 
  • What is your profit margin for this year?

Understanding your demand and forecasting your projections at a historical scale is important to predict the future and foresee the sales.

Well! The biggest challenge still lies in the shift of these projections for which you need to optimize your scale with time.

You need to understand how Demand Forecasting works in order to beat the challenge and make the right business decision. It is not hard to understand that demand is what is laid by the customer, and forecasting is the prediction that is done by the retailer to make supply decisions. But what’s hard is to get an accurate assumption of this demand with time and acquire the right amount of stock to meet the supply.

Demand Forecasting

Demand Forecasting is a progressive method that uses historical sales data to predict future sales figures. It is a comprehensive process that involves everything from planning, producing, inventory, warehousing to estimating, delivering, and logistics. It helps the businesses analyze the market potential and strategizes growth that is far away from any risk.  

For example, a store producing cake of different flavors refers to the last 12 months’ sales data and understands which flavor made high sales and in which season or occasion and based on the past sales he is able to forecast the shortage, make a plan and keep a stock. In comparison to the one that is new and is unaware of the flavors in demand, the prior store will always have the benefit of key sourcing.  

Steps to Forecast Demand for E-commerce

Although no one can be certain for the future, several techniques can help you with a detailed analysis and better business estimation. So, whether you are a small business or large, Demand Forecasting can help you draw the margins and understand that there is no business without demand and it needs to be processed with high accuracy.

Schedule Peak Period 

Depending on the season and festival the trend occurs anytime. There are many peak periods around the year when the sales are more in comparison to the other days. Viewing historical sales can reflect the important months where the sales dip or is good or discount should be offered to engage the customer or not.

Prepare Budget

Efficient financial decisions are important to reduce unnecessary expenses and expand the opportunities to choose a strategic investment. Keeping extra stock at a low sales period just wastes the resources and increases unnecessary budgeting. So pre-budgeting to enhance operational processes around forecasting demand is a must.  

Plan Production

Anticipating what customers want and keeping the stock helps channelize the offerings. Customers want what they want and acquire it when they want so your demand forecasting should be in sync with the market. Else you will lose the customer to your competitors and will take more time to engage the new.       

Optimize Inventory

Demand forecasting helps drive responses to harness analytical optimization and shape the inventory to reduce error over time. It helps you remain right at the place where you are, never under or over-stock. Your evaluated performance over time will increase the word of mouth and gain expansion in business.    

Strategize Development 

Demand Forecasting is a one-on-one task. The process requires testing, learning, and then developing a strategy to enhance sales. Closely analyzing the products and efficiently tracking the sales can help make the right strategies for development. Network balancing should also be taken care in order to constrain your business environment for a longer period of time.

Quick Tip – To avoid frequent stock out you need to keep a feedback loop and start your next forecast with updated allocations. 

Types of Demand Forecasting

The benefits of demand forecasting can be truly tasted once you are aware of your current position and have a clear idea of where you want to reach. There are different types of demand forecasting that can help you weigh your data and depict it over a period of time. They are broadly categorized into two:

On the Basis of Economy

Macro-level

This forecasting deals with the economic level demand that is measured by the national income and Index of Industrial Production (IIP) etc. It helps businesses understand the opportunities for their expansion and market shift.

Industry-level

This forecasting deals with Industry level demand for products as a whole, such as demand for cement, clothes, steel, pharmaceuticals in India, etc. It guides businesses with statistical data for trade under any policy.  

Firm-level

This forecasting deals with the product demand for a particular firm, such as demand for Raymond clothes, Birla cement, etc. It helps businesses improve the aggregate growth of products in the market.

On the Basis of Period

Short-term

If you are a new firm this forecasting is especially for you. It covers forecasts for a short period, generally from six months to a year and is most useful in making tactical decisions depending upon the nature of the industry you are in.

Long-term

This forecasting is for a longer period. Generally done by the old firms for the period of two to five years or more to help take major strategic decisions, such as the expansion of plants, opening a new unit, etc.

Major Demand Forecasting Models

To trail the influence and gather vital information of your business, simple and statistical methods are adopted which are classified under various models.

Market Research

It is a very generic research technique that is completely goal-oriented. It requires customer-specific surveys which are in the form of questionnaires, surveys, feedback, or opinion that are laid while purchasing a specific product. As this research is very random it should be taken care of in terms of location, geography, and demography. 

This method is mostly adopted when businesses are forecasting for low-demand products, as it gives a clear view of its sales in specific regions. 

Sales Opinion

It is a complete knowledge and experience based method that requires input from each salesperson of a particular region. The salesperson depicts data depending on the customer’s demand and evaluates the perspective that presents the final judgment. 

This method is more accurate as it relies on the perspective of the salesperson who in case of any error is held accountable.    

Delphi Technique

This Demand Forecasting is done by the panel of experts and facilitators that are appointed for a specific segment. The questionnaire is sent to the experts and a consensus scenario is attained after a few rounds of expression and discussion among the experts. 

The method is mostly adopted by big businesses to get the most accurate information from the experts. The only flaw lies is, time consumption. 

Econometric Technique

It utilizes a complicated mathematical equation to correlate influential factors with the demand. An equation is fine-tuned and the variables are inserted to generate an accurate forecast. It is mostly used to track economic factors of the current scenarios like the businesses that flourished in the pandemic or the businesses that flourished before pandemic. 

The data of this method is adopted only when the controlled conditions are applied by you. 

Barometric Technique

It is a unique method adopted to predict the future depending on the recording of the past and deploying the statistical analysis on the series of economic indicators like leading, lagging, or concurrent. The leading shows the market activity that is ahead, lagging that change after a short time and the concurrency that varies according to the economic activity.

This method gives you the complete range of information where your business lies and where you can take it. 

Trend Projection

It is a method that deploys historical data of around 20 to 25 months to project the demand scale by graphical or square method and forecast the specific product. The most granular level of growth can be attained by examining the date and time of the order, revenue or return. Depending on the data you can adjust your inventory and evaluate your business.   

Quick Tip – In a competitive scenario as today, if you are not forecasting the demand, you are losing a lot, not only in terms of staff, production and sales but also in terms of efficiency and profit. A good forecast provides appropriate planning, selection, layout and management that lead to profitable business.

With the market shifting so drastically it becomes difficult to track the customer demand and meet its expectations. Demand Forecasting helps you channelize your work and make a record so that you are able to make decisions, launch products, plan inventory and optimize the supply chain as per the demand. 

Connect with ANS Commerce

At ANS Commerce, we help brands build their business and take it to the level where they imagine. From brand building to demand management ANS works on everything to help you increase sales. You can also rely on us for inventory optimization, performance marketing, and warehousing to improve your conversion rate instantly. 

Get connected and request your free DEMO now! 

How to Skyrocket Your Online Sales this Festive Season?

The festive season is all set to arrive with a plethora of opportunities for online stores. Online stores have already decorated their websites with Diwali aesthetics, appealing advertisements, and lucrative discounts. Customers are eagerly waiting for more exciting offers and deals to buy their favorite products while the brands are all geared up to grab this opportunity and grow their online sales as much as possible.

To help you make the most out of this festive season, we have curated 8 e-commerce festive tips. 

Tips to Boost Online Sales

Provide a Smooth Mobile E-commerce Experience

Smartphones and tablets are used extensively by customers to shop during the festive season. A study conducted by an e-consultancy reveals that 62% of brands with mobile-first website design experience an increase in sales as compared to brands with desktop-only website designs. To increase sales through mobile e-commerce ensure your website is visible and accessible through any mobile device. Work on a high-speed and seamless mobile e-commerce experience for your customers.

Prepare Your Own Festive Theme

Just like you decorate your home during the different festivals, the festive season brings an opportunity for you to revamp your online store. An appealing web page appearance during this time of the year can leverage your brand impression and online sales to a great extent. 

While figuring out ideas to design your online store, picking up a theme can do amazeballs. You can create a powerful festive vibe and make your customers feel that this time for shopping is special. Select suitable layouts, customize your logo, design attractive banners, add visuals and videos to make your online store appear more appealing and engaging.  

Quick Tip – If you are looking for a brandstore partner then you can get your hands on Kartify. It is optimized for all business types and comes with 60+ integrations. With fully customizable UI/UX, it offers an exceptional e-commerce experience. 

Promote Your Offers and Deals on Social Media

Social media is the most successful connectivity tool between you and your customers. Engage with your target audience in creative ways on social media platforms at this time of the year to drive conversions. Make attractive posts, promote your products and your festive offers, play quizzes, post daily stories, and much more. Use insights from your industry and competitor analysis to gain more perspectives to create content. Social media shares will also influence the search engine ranking of your content.

ANS Commerce offers in-house tools for testing and tracking marketing campaign performance. To learn more about the same, request your free DEMO today!

Focus on Customer Service 

Customer service is very significant when it comes to online shopping. The festive season is a great time to increase conversions as well as make loyal long-term customers. Since a lot of products are being purchased, handling the customer service becomes even more important. It is also the time of the year when your customers are going to spread the word about your brand to their friends and family as everyone will be talking about the festive season sale. Efficient and timely delivery of products makes your customer feel happy and valued. 

Adopt the Gift Card Approach 

Curate exciting and attractive gift cards for your customers with creative offers. It is an excellent way to hold potential customers. Your customers can share these cards with their friends and family members too. Since gift cards are usually an impulse purchase, make sure they are highly visible. 

Display Top-selling Products on Your Landing Page

Your top-selling products have the best potential of being sold during the festive season as they are the ones that are most frequently bought by your customers throughout the year. Display these products effectively on your landing page to give a reminder to your existing customers. Adding spotlight to the best products also leads to the formation of a good impression on your new customers. You can generate content around these products and make their access easy for visitors to increase customer engagement. 

Create Engaging Offers for New Customers

You can engage and retain new customers for a long period of time by specifically crafting valuable rewards and offers for them. You can provide them with free shipping, discounts, cashback, and many more offers on their first purchase. Referral bonuses or early access to an upcoming sale are some of the other lucrative benefits you can provide them.  

Offer Free Shipping and Smooth Returns 

Shipping cost is one of the reasons for card abandonment by the majority of customers. During the festive season when your customers are looking to save every penny on their purchase, providing free shipping is an excellent marketing strategy.

Apart from shipping, providing a hassle-free return process to your customers provides them with a smooth experience. Especially during the festive season, you need to be prepared for a lot of return orders. Therefore formulating a smooth return management process is going to be beneficial for you as well as your customer. 

ANS Commerce has been integrated with diverse logistic players. It ensures timely delivery of products with optimized costs for both domestic and international deliveries. To know more, you can request your free DEMO now! 

How Can We Help You This Festive Season? 

The festive season brings with it plenty of opportunities and challenges. From brandstore to order fulfillment, brands have a multitude of tasks to handle. 

Being the only full-stack e-commerce enabler in India, ANS Commerce provides brands with all e-commerce solutions. Having an experienced team and currently working with 100+ brands, we ensure expertise in each of our offerings. At this time of the year, when there are so many tasks for you to manage, we are here to handle everything e-commerce for you. Meanwhile, you can focus on your core product and offerings. 

Nature Inspired Lessons for Building a Brand

Our earth is 4.5 billion years old is filled with an abundance of experiences. These experiences have in-store in them useful learnings for all of us. 

Are you starting a new business? Or are you already part of a business journey? Or are you interested in learning about entrepreneurship and branding? Mother Nature has take-aways for all of you to perceive your business in a way that provides you the best possible growth. 

The invention of submarines was inspired by whales, airplanes were inspired by birds, while termites provided inspiration for creating a ventilation system. 

When you look at the nature around you, you will observe a myriad of beautiful shapes, colors, and patterns. Their aesthetics is such that it makes us feel good when we are surrounded by them. Further, if we dig deeper to understand how they work, we learn a plethora of things about how they interact with their surroundings. These learnings from their beauty and function have served as an inspiration to many architects, designers, and engineers around the world to create buildings, products, processes, and much more. But can nature inspire entrepreneurs too? How could a squirrel making its house inspire a business plan? 

Lessons Inspired By Nature for Building a Brand  

Camouflaging into the Surroundings Will Not Make You Visible 

In nature, animals often camouflage in their surroundings to protect themselves from their predators. There is a huge diversity that shows this trait, like turtles, chameleons, snakes, moths, owls, and much more. When an animal is camouflaged, its color and texture merge with its surroundings such that it is difficult to spot it out. 

Create a Business Idea that Stands Out 

Unlike these animals, we want our business idea to be spotted out easily. If we keep repeating what others are doing, or have a new idea but are not able to put it across distinctively, our business will camouflage in the market and won’t be able to grow. To get spotted and valued in the market by our potential customers, we need to develop an idea that either solves a new need or an existing need of our customers differently and efficiently.

Proper market research helps you understand customer behavior and needs in a particular market. It will help you learn what is existing in the market and what can be added. By the end of the research, you will be able to measure the potential and scope of your business idea. 

Quick Tip – You can design a survey form for your market research. Design questions that would lead you to gain insights into how your customers will interact with your business idea. 

SWOT Analysis can serve as a useful tool when performing market research. It helps you analyze and develop a clear understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your business. 

To read further about how to conduct a SWOT Analysis you can read this article. 

Mutualism is a Decision of Surviving Together

There exist beautiful mutual relationships in nature where two organisms depend on each other for their needs. These associations are peaceful and exist for a long time. There is a diversity of mutual relationships found in nature. One such example is that of Oxpeckers and grazing animals. Oxpeckers feed on ticks, flies, and other insects present on the body of these animals while the animal allows it to interact with its body and live on it. The bird gets food while the animal gets rid of ticks or insects. 

Create a Relationship with Your Customers that is Valuable to Them 

Adopting mutualism in your business strategy is equivalent to investing at a potential point that gives benefits for the long term. When you form products or services that offer real value to your customers, they in return form a relationship with your business where they can make a consistent worthwhile investment. This win-win situation for your business and your clients is the beauty of a mutual relationship. 

Quick Tip – Seek genuine reviews from your customers to improve your business and sync it with their needs from time to time. You can design your own process of taking customer reviews. 

Right Habitat Promotes Best Natural Growth

Koalas live only on Eucalyptus trees as they feed on their leaves. These marsupials are only found in areas that have these trees in good numbers and density. Eucalyptus provides Koalas with the perfect environment for their growth which they cannot find elsewhere. There are many organisms in nature that are like Koalas and which grow to their full potential only in certain habitats. The right habitat provides the right environment and food for their growth.

Reaching Right Audience Promotes Best Business Growth

This phenomenon of growth applies to business as well. Each and every business idea is meant for a particular audience segment in the market. Understanding and defining the target audience clearly and figuring out ways to reach them is the pathway to grow your business effectively. 

Once you define your target audience, you can develop their persona map which will help you define their demographics, needs, interests, motivations, and pain points. Persona mapping can help you design suitable marketing strategies to apply to your business. 

Further, analyzing your audience engagement helps you understand who is viewing your website and how they navigate it. You can know about their interaction with your social media content through different parameters.

Quick Tip – You can use tools like Hubspot, Hotjar, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights to get extensive information about your user responses.

Nature Provides Abundance Of Aesthetic Inspirations

Mother Nature provides beautiful color pallets, patterns, and designs that are visually appealing and attractive. You would see nature’s creations with vibrant colors juxtaposed with subtle ones that make them look alluring. It offers a wide range of earthy colors too which feel soothing to the eyes. It has gradients and different color combinations that are visually harmonious and soothing to the eyes.

Choose Your Branding Colors and Aesthetics Wisely 

There is ample inspiration that we can get from nature’s color palette. We can use these color combinations in our website design. There are many elements that we may wish to highlight on our website where we can use vibrant colors. Depending upon our brand language and style, we can pick up color and design elements from nature. 

You can know more about how to choose your brand colors by reading this article. 

Quick Tip – Define your brand core values and vision before choosing aesthetic inspiration from nature as it will help you know your needs which would further guide you in selecting appropriate visual elements. 

Nature has a Steady Pace 

From the birth of a baby to the growth of a tree, nature has its own pace. The life cycles in nature are inherently consistent and patient. Undoubtedly, nature accomplishes an efficient functional and aesthetic formation as a result of its consistency and pace.  

Accomplish Your Targets with Patience and Consistency 

In a similar manner, accomplishing a business target in a stepwise process holds certain significance. Following a process-oriented approach might require a lot of patience and effort but it is rewarding in the long term. Just like nature, the business also requires small consistent steps and long-term planning in order to accomplish a strong presence in the market. A well-established business leads to earning greater profits. 

Nature Keeps Evolving

The environment in nature keeps on changing, the situations around life are never constant. Sometimes, when these situations become unfavorable for the survival of a living being, it needs to adapt according to the circumstances in order to continue its life. This gives rise to the need for evolution. In nature, a plethora of organisms evolve in different ways to suit the needs of the environment. One such example is that of a group of lizards that lived in the base of a tree trunk. Gradually as their native place was invaded by brown lizards, they started shifting to the treetop. In order to survive on the treetop, they grew extra sticky feet over the years. 

Understand the Changing Market Trends and Evolve Your Business Accordingly 

These lizards just like other organisms in Nature set examples for us that there is always a way out to evolve and survive. Just like these lizards, your business also needs to evolve according to the changing scenarios of the market in order to survive and grow better. We need to keep a check on each and every aspect of our business and make sure it is doing better in regards to the current market scenario. 

Our target market comprises our potential customers who live in a world that is constantly changing. Understanding this change and how it is affecting our customers from time to time helps us modify our business strategies accordingly. Staying updated with the digital trends help in drawing out the best ways of marketing your offerings which leads to effective customer engagement. 

Opening a new brand or running an existing business is a complex process that requires thought processes and decision-making at different levels. In such a case, nature is present to provide a framework of perceptions that can ease out the complexity by showing clear ways of going about building a strong brand. 

By understanding how nature works and aligning our business strategies with its learnings, we can make a difference. 

How Can ANS Commerce Assist You? 

At ANS Commerce, we take care of everything e-commerce for your brand while you focus on your brand core values and product. We offer brand store tech, performance marketing, marketplace management, and e-commerce warehousing & fulfillment. 

To connect with our team of professionals, you can request your free DEMO today. 

How Porter’s Five Forces Help in E-commerce Business Analysis?

Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces analysis is a framework for assessing the level of competition within a certain industry. This model is useful for evaluating an industry’s weaknesses and strengths by identifying and analyzing five competitive forces that shape every industry.

According to this framework, competitiveness does not come solely from competitors. Instead, the state of competition in a given industry is determined by five fundamental forces:

  1. Competitive rivalry
  2. Threat of new entrants
  3. Bargaining power of customer
  4. Bargaining power of supplier
  5. Threat of substitute products

Understanding Porter’s Five Forces and how they apply to a particular industry can help a brand adjust its business strategy accordingly. For example, you could take full advantage of a strong market position or strengthen a weak one, all while avoiding future mistakes.

SWOT Analysis Vs. Porter’s Five Forces

Both Porter’s five forces and SWOT analysis are analytical techniques used by brands to make strategic business decisions. 

Although both of these models define a brand’s position in the market, the key difference is that the five forces model focuses on external factors, whereas SWOT analysis is more focused on the internal conditions of the organization.

Quick Tip – When taken in conjunction with a SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces can help you understand where your brand or business fits into the industry landscape.  

To read further about how to conduct a SWOT Analysis you can read this article. 

Understanding Porter’s Five Forces

Competitive Rivalry

The number of competitors and their ability to undercut a brand comes under the first of the five forces. Higher the competition in an industry, the lesser the power of the brand. If a brand’s competition offers better deals or lower product prices, suppliers and buyers seek them out.

Conversely, when the competition is low in an industry, a brand has more power to charge higher prices and set the terms of deals to increase sales and profits.

For example, In the e-commerce industry, competition among major players is very high, as there is no switching cost for customers. The players are constantly competing on the basis of price and factors that influence buyers’ choices such as quick delivery, discounts, and offers, variety, customer service, and much more. 

The Threat of New Entrants

It is not only existing rivals that pose a threat to firms in an industry; the possibility of new entries in the industry also affects competition. The less time and money a brand’s competitor takes to enter the market and become viable, the more vulnerable an established brand’s position becomes. 

The severity of this threat is determined by the entry barriers into a particular industry. The greater these barriers to entry, the lower the threat for existing players.

For example, The threat of new entrants in the e-commerce industry is high, as there is very little cost involved in setting up an e-commerce website.

Bargaining Power of Customers

The ability of customers to drive prices down or their level of bargaining power is one of the five forces. Customers have a lot of power when there aren’t many of them and they have a multitude of choices to buy from. Moreover, switching from one company to another should be easy for them.

However, buying power is low when customers purchase products in small amounts, act independently and when the seller’s product is very different from its competitors.

For example, the Bargaining power of customers is very high as there are many players in the market with similar products and there is no switching cost. Buyers prefer the brand that offers the best price among other factors such as product quality and delivery time.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers

This force examines how much power and control a brand’s supplier has over the ability to raise prices or lower the quality of purchased goods or services, which in turn would lower an industry’s profitability potential.

The important factors that determine supplier power are the availability of substitute suppliers and the concentration of suppliers. When a company has a large number of suppliers, it is in a better position.

For example, the bargaining power of suppliers is low as there are many suppliers in the market, and therefore the e-commerce brands have the power to choose their suppliers.

The Threat of Substitute Products or Services

The Threat of Substitutes formulates the fifth and final force. This force investigates how easy it is for customers to switch from a brand’s product or service to another. 

It looks at the number of competitors, how their prices and quality compare to the business under consideration, and how much profit those competitors make, in order to see if they can cut costs even further. Switching costs, both immediate and long-term, as well as consumers’ willingness to change, inform the threat of substitutes.

For example, the threat of substitutes is very high as there are a lot of sellers with similar products and services, and there is no switching cost for customers.

It is not mandatory for e-commerce brands to conduct a Porter Five Forces analysis, but it is clear that it aids in the future of the business. It will point your business team in the right direction by minimizing threats and weaknesses while maximizing strengths.

How Can ANS Commerce Help You?

When it comes to running an e-commerce business, there are multiple obstacles to overcome. At ANS Commerce, we provide full-stack e-commerce solutions to our clients so that they can focus on their brand and product rather than worrying about the challenges in the industry.

To connect with our team of professionals, you can request your free DEMO today. 

Key Takeaways

  • Porter’s Five Forces is a framework for analyzing the competitive environment of a brand in a specific industry
  • A brand’s profitability is influenced by the number and power of its competitive rivals, potential new market entrants, suppliers, customers, and substitute products
  • To gain a competitive advantage, a Five Forces analysis can be used to guide business strategy

How to Use Rhetorics to Boost Your Brand Voice?

Rhetorics in Marketing 

Rhetorics is the art of effective speaking and writing. This art can be leveraged in building your brand content in a manner that communicates your message to your audience effectively. In simple words, applying certain elements of rhetoric can boost your brand voice. 

The art of effective communication is not just used in particular circumstances but is embedded in human thought and expression. We are using it all the time, consciously or subconsciously. It is not just about how to persuade a person but about understanding how human language and communication work. Hence, in marketing, Rhetorics refers to understanding your brand and its goals and further communicating it with the help of certain elements.   

Elements of Rhetorics

Pathos: Evoking Emotions in Your Content

Emotion stimulates our mind 3000 times faster than rational thought.

Businesses are not B2B or B2C, they are human to human, that is H2H and human beings are driven by emotions. A piece of information can easily slip from your mind, but an emotional story is hard to forget. By creating a pleasant emotional response, your content becomes instantly memorable and is remembered for a long time. The experience you provide induces gratifying feelings in the person and they automatically start associating their feelings with your content. For forming more such associations you can follow a variety of ways. 

Include Your Customer Value Propositions

People always look for relatable content. Tell your audience how your products or services inculcate your customer’s values and personality.  

Adapt to Your Audience’s Culture

Understand your audience’s existing knowledge and habits of thinking and use them as a resource tank for your communication.

Use Spellbinding Words

Choice of words plays a crucial role in brand content. Trigger your audience’s imagination by using evocative words to communicate your message. 

Narrate a Story

No one wants to hear monotonous information. If content cannot hook a viewer’s attention then it lacks enticement. By forming and narrating stories you can make your content interesting and memorable. 

Use Music and Imagery

Music and visuals are the best resources that you can avail of to add life to your content. Use powerful images and suitable music to get your audience gripped.  

Quick Tip – You can use versatile emotional graphs to create stories that affect the audience. When you introduce a situation with a negative emotion followed by a solution that induces a positive emotion, the story becomes impactful. 

Kairos: Finding the Right Moment in Time

Time evokes opportunity, and that’s extremely compelling.

Time acts as a tool that collects your audience’s attention to specific topics more than others. When you curate these topics in your content, you automatically catch your audience’s attention. The ever-evolving market comprises changing needs, trends, and desires. Understanding them, from time to time can give you the right pick-ups for your marketing content.

Create a Sense of Urgency

Marketers create a sense of urgency in various ways which impact their audience to give more significance to their information as it is time-bound. Limited offer sales, call to action, buy now, are some of the examples of this strategy. 

Adopt the Latest Technology

The people you target to appeal are visiting a plethora of websites and social media channels every day. They are well aware of ‘what’s new’ and what gives them a better experience. 

Include SEO Researched Key-words 

A keyword that is trending this month will be replaced by another keyword a few months down the line. That is why good SEO research assists in driving traffic to your content. 

Empathize with Your Buyer’s Journey 

Guide your buyers along the purchase journey. Be aware of what their thoughts and responses are likely to be at each stage and interact with them accordingly. 

Telos: Defining Your Purpose

Brand’s purpose is your brand’s superpower.

The purpose of a brand is the impact that you wish to have on your customers and society as a whole on a long-term basis. It is beyond profit-earning which is basic to each and every brand. Building a brand culture, brand purpose gives rise to emotional touchpoints with which you connect with your customers. 

Brand purpose helps you set a target point. Once you are aware of that point, you can ideate a number of ways to reach there. This paves way for creativity in your brand content that revolves around a particular brand purpose. Through your content you can teach your users, you can make them laugh, you can make them curious, or even narrate a story. Perhaps, everything that you decide to do becomes meaningful once it aligns with the purpose of your brand. 

Some key advantages to having a brand purpose are –

  • Your brand purpose benefits not just your customer but society as a whole
  • It can help you build a strong emotional relationship with your customer
  • A unique purpose can distinguish your brand from that of your competitors 
Quick Tip – To define your brand purpose, make your brand core values and mission statement explicit. To gain clarity on your brand voice – document a description of your audience, the way they speak, and your ideal relationship with them. 

Ethos: Leveraging Your Credibility

A brand is simply trust.

Choices are highly influenced by trust and this is especially true for a long-term relationship. With so many options in hand and a bunch of insecurities, a person would select a brand that wins its trust easily and profoundly. A brand with a good reputation and word of mouth definitely has a higher likelihood of being trusted. 

Ways of developing credibility for your brand – 

Keep Things Consistent

Whether it is your brand website, product advertisements, or social media content. Consistency in the tone can uplift your brand image. 

Add a Spotlight to Your Achievements

No matter how big or small an achievement is, you can showcase them all. From earning your first customer to achieving milestones. Each and every achievement counts. 

Use Testimonials

Collect your client’s testimonials from online reviews, social media, and surveys and use them to boost your business’s credibility.

Publish Thought Leadership Content

By publishing, perspective, and advice from your company’s leaders on current trends and news will showcase your brand’s expertise and experience. 

Collaborate

You can collaborate with influencers and content creators that match your brand values. It adds a human touch to your content and can increase engagement. 

Logos: Curating Your Content with Logic

Information dressed with facts and figures is highly convincing, credible, and emotionally reassuring.

When you explain your information logically to your audience, supported by facts and statistics, they are compelled to trust you. That is when they build credibility and find meaning by associating themselves with the information provided. It helps them make an informed decision, as well as explain their decision-making basis to anyone they may communicate with. 

The logic-driven approach is particularly useful in the B2B sphere where a company has to make the best use of its resources and money. In order to curate logical content, the following points can be kept in mind-

Check Your Content’s Authenticity

Make sure the content contains correct factual information and is technically sound. You can add the sources of the information to validate your research and argument. 

Do Good Research

Good research always raises the bar of your communication. Before forming a piece of content, research it. Also, check what your competitors are doing to make your content different and valuable. 

Verify Content’s Utility

Keep yourself at the user’s perspective and check the utility of the content. Is it actually delivering the intended message or is it losing the game?

Use Objective Tools

Include objective tools such as graphs, statistics, and numbers to prove arguments. These tools are easy to understand and read. These can be used in a number of creative ways to communicate your desired information.  

With the help of these elements of Rhetorics, you can make your brand voice impactful and authentic. Well-strategized content is a long-term investment that results in well-established brand identity. Such an accomplishment is possible by understanding the utility of Rhetorics in marketing. 

How Can ANS Commerce Assist You? 

Building a brand requires working on multiple aspects altogether. While you focus on your core offerings and products, we are here to handle everything e-commerce for your brand. Our team of experts is approachable to give you expert guidance and support. From brandstore tech and performance marketing to marketplace management and warehousing, we got it all covered for your brand.

To connect with our team, you can request your free DEMO today. 

How to Choose a Name for your Brand Store?

The name of your brand is a powerful asset to your business. It is an opportunity for your brand to be memorable and remembered. Within a fraction of seconds, it can convey the idea of your brand or engage your audience to learn more about your brand. Hence, investing in a structured thought process to come up with a powerful name for your brand can be rewarding forever. 

“Your brand name is more than just a word, it is a frequency that is going to resonate in the world of your target audience”

When deciding a name, you can literally get a plethora of thoughts buzzing around your head like bumblebees. While it is a great idea to hear all your thoughts, it can be helpful if you absorb certain knowledge coming from the experiences of the world around you and structure your thought process accordingly. Learning about certain points to consider while making your decision, figuring out a strategy that fits your brand goal, and finally going through certain examples of our partner brands and knowing their brand name story. 

Points to consider when choosing a brand name

Keep it simple

A simple name is always easy to remember. One that is easy to pronounce, concise, and pleasant to hear, is never forgotten. Take examples of the songs you like to hear, have you ever had to put a lot of effort to understand or learn them? Your mind learned them without so much conscious effort because they appealed to you, were catchy, and melodious. The same psychology can be applied while figuring out a name. A short and simple one-word or sequencing of two rhyming words or alliterative short words can help you come up with something pleasant and interesting. 

Consider your future vision

You might turn up with a certain name but if you haven’t considered the aspect of your future vision then you need to give it strong consideration. A cross-check about whether the name of your brand aligns with your long-term futuristic goals will help you get re-assured if the name will always work for your business. You can start your business small but ultimately you would want to grow your business. You might be selling certain products initially but in the future, you might incorporate other products too. Hence, keeping the aspects of the future of your business in mind will help you come up with a future inclusive name.

Pick up relatable words 

Aligning the objectives of your brand with its name allows your audience to understand your work by using logic. For example, if you sell home decor lights then keeping a name like – Bright Addition is more logical than keeping the name Pink Valley. A relatable name helps the audience to make more sense of the product range and brand objectives. It helps them make better associations between your brand name and their needs from your brand which ultimately makes your brand memorable for them.

A meaningful name builds strong brand connectivity

Find out a meaningful name, one that reflects your niche, brand identity, and type of products you will sell. This will help you make better brand connectivity. 

Quick Tip – Make sure before deciding your brand name, you have a clear idea of your brand identity, its core values, value propositions, ideas, kind of products, and future vision, as it will help you align your brand aspects with the name of your brand. This will allow you to formulate an all-inclusive brand name. 

Ensure domain name is available 

When you decide on a name, you would also be finding a domain name for your online business. While searching for domain names, you need to check for a name that has not been taken prior. You need to check this for your website as well as social media handles as you will prefer to keep a constant name to maintain consistency.

Quick Tip – .com is one of the most popular top-level domains, hence it is challenging to find the same. But don’t fret if .com is unavailable as a domain for your brand, going with snazzy domains that are unique can also rank well on Google if the website is of good quality and offers a good user experience. 

Strategy to finalize a brand name 

Determine what you want to accomplish

Visualizing an outcome before working for it is the best way to approach a plan. How do you want your brand name to interact with your audience’s mind is the foremost question that you need to ponder over. Do you want to create a visually appealing experience or a pleasant sound? Do you want the audience to decode a message immediately as they hear your brand name or do you want to make them more curious to find out more about your brand? You need to sketch a clear picture of the experience you want to create for your audience. 

Your brand name can create a buzz. But how do you want to do it? 

Types of brand names –

  • Founder/ Inventor’s name 

If you want to use a person’s name as your brand name then it can be a good idea. But make sure the name is not very challenging to pronounce or else it will be difficult to remember. 

  • Describe an image

The hack to creating images is using words that the audience is easily familiar with. For example – Burger King. We all are familiar with burgers as well as kings. Even though we might or might not imagine a king eating a burger but we will somewhere visit the memory associations of our brain that will produce images of burger and king and ultimately we will remember the brand name. On the other hand, we are also familiar with Enterprise solutions but none of them form an image in our minds because our brain memory doesn’t have strong associations with these words. Hence, if you are looking for a similar experience then brainstorm words that align with your brand goals as well as simple memory associations of your audience. 

  • Describe an experience

If you want to describe an experience. For example – An adventure sports brand was named ‘Energy Flow’. When a person comes across this name, it automatically feels a rush of adrenaline or an image of similar associations related to ‘energy’ and ‘flow’ in the mind. These verbs help build an experience in the minds of the audience and such experiences are hard to forget. 

  • A meaningful name 

If you want your audience to connect with your brand value propositions through the name of your brand in one click then work out a meaningful name for your brand. 

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Quick Tip – Brainstorming words that connect with your brand’s value propositions can help you come closer to your objective of forming a meaningful name for your brand. 
  • A name which is not an existing word 

You can also formulate a name that is not an existing word at all. It allows you to be unique and stand out from your competitors. 

Evaluate your names objectively

You can evaluate your brand name’s effectiveness by considering the following points  

  • Check originality of your brand name
    It is crucial to check whether your name is original, that is, it has not already been picked up by any other business. Choosing a name that infringes on any other company’s trademark can lead to complications and you would ultimately have to change your name. 
  • Envision your marketing strategies before hand
    Planning strategies that you will apply to market your business and its products to your target audience will help you in your brand name decision making. Visioning your promotion strategies will help you understand how you can integrate your brand name in your marketing plan beforehand. 
  • Ask yourself
    Self-satisfaction is the primary objective of evaluation. If you are yourself unsatisfied with the name of your own brand, you won’t be able to feel connected to your goals. If you are satisfied with the name then go to the next step of evaluation and ask your friends and family about the same. 
  • Ask your friends and family
    It can be a good idea to take feedback from your friends and family as they can serve as a sample to verify your choice for your larger target audience. 

Examples of our partner brands who chose their brand names wisely

Xante

Being a wholesome nutrition brand the name Xante stands for excellent health. The letter ‘X’ in Xante is derived from eXcellent, which further combines with a french word ‘Sante’ which means health. You can learn more about Xante at https://www.xante.in/ 

Akiva

Akiva is a meaningful brand name, it means ‘To protect or shelter’ in the Hebrew language. 

True to its mission of providing health care, the brand name connects with its mission and vision. Being a simple and unique name, it is hard to forget. To shop with Akiva, you can visit https://akivasuperfoods.com/

Curio Cottage


The brand started its journey by selling Curios and Jewellery in a cottage, hence the name. It’s a simple and straightforward name that is true to the brand’s value propositions and reflects the roots of its journey. You can check their jewelry collection at https://www.curiocottage.in/

Remember, the name of your brand is not just the title of your brand story but also a significant element of your long-term brand experience. It is an asset for your promotion strategies and an element you will always be playing creatively with. An efficient thought process aligned with your brand value propositions and differentiation touchpoints can make your brand stand out in the marketplace. 

We have curated a #brandlogoseries where we have showcased the thought process of logos of different brand partners and how every logo speaks a story! To check out the logos, their visual details, and the stories behind them, visit our Instagram Page.

How to Create your Brand Color Palette?


The colors of your brand form the first impression of your brand in the minds of your customers. In less than a fraction of a second, they communicate your brand’s idea to the viewers. Being a strong medium of visual communication they have the power to –

  • Make your customers feel and behave in a particular way by evoking certain emotions 
  • Direct your customers to take a particular action
  • Grab the attention of your customers to a particular element
  • Enhance your brand’s awareness and make it memorable 
  • Make your website elements better visible and readable

According to scientific research, a person starts to form an impression in less than one-tenth of a second. 

By choosing the right colors you can form a suitable color palette that will help you in forming effective branding and marketing strategies that make a difference. Before you select the colors for your brand, you must be able to identify your brand with its values and mission statements. A simple process when followed in a step-by-step manner can make the whole idea of color selection easy and effective.

Define your Brand’s Identity

Before deciding the colors for your brand color pallet, it’s important to know what your brand stands for and what makes your brand stand out from its competitors. 

Write down your brand’s value propositions and mission statements in an authentic, clear, and precise manner. Highlight the main words which will help you condense down to certain strong words that define your brand in the best possible manner.

Quick Tip – Brain-storming followed by mind-mapping of the strong words of your brand can help you expand and then contract the necessary terminologies into categories. 

Understand the Psychology of Brand Colors

By now we have realized how color is a powerful asset to our branding and marketing business. Now, we need to understand how the psychology of colors works in order to gain the necessary knowledge to apply for selecting our brand’s colors. 

Each and every color holds certain meanings and evokes certain emotions. Red stimulates passion and vibrance while yellow is more cheerful, friendly, and warm. Although our interpretation of colors is subjective and can vary from person to person, there are certain generalizations that can help us make a better decision. 

Apart from understanding the meanings that single color holds, we need to learn how to interpret color combinations and how they are being used by different brands today. Color theory gives us useful insights to strengthen our understanding of colors. 

Color Theory and Types of Colors to use for your Brand  

  • Primary colors – The primary colors of your brand are the colors that define the major characteristics of your brand. The colors that fall under this category are – red, blue, and yellow. 
  • Secondary colors – These colors are created using primary colors. They compliment your primary colors. Secondary colors can be used in multiple ways along with primary colors. The colors that fall under this category are – purple, green, orange. 

Choosing Color Combinations 

  • Using contrasting colors – These are the colors that are located opposite to each other on the color wheel. To create a contrast, one can also pick colors apart from these that juxtapose well with each other. Choosing contrasting colors can create a lively, quirky, and funky essence. It can also be used to highlight certain elements of the brand. 
  • Using analogous colors – These colors are the ones that are located adjacent to your primary color. This color palette can create visually appealing designs. 
  • Using monochromatic colors – These colors are shades and tints of primary colors. Using different lighter and darker shades of the same color together can build a unified and soothing color palette for your brand. 

Align your Brand’s Identity with the Right Colors and Color Combinations

Finally, you can align the words and ideas that define your brand’s identity with the colors and color combinations that convey the same message. Pick up certain colors that strongly support your brand’s identity and color combinations that justify your brand’s idea. Try different color combinations and see which one best suits your idea. You can use certain tools to check your color selection.

Now that you know how to pick up colors for your brand, you can start creating one. Do not forget to follow the process. The brand color palette is an essential part of brand marketing and business strategy, that is why you need to select your colors thoughtfully. Once chosen, you can add the main colors to your brand’s logo and can use the entire color palette to design the various tools of your brand marketing. 

The logo is a strong visual representation of your brand. It narrates the story of your brand in just a glimpse. With appropriate colors and a clear story, you can make a difference. Check out the brand logo story of our partner brands on our Instagram account.