Make the most of the brands you sell

Back in the old days, before the Internet came along I used to focus a lot of time promoting brands in local stores… you know, proper buildings! We used to put together a nice window display, advertise on the radio and in the local press and sometimes get the area representative of the brand to come down and do demonstrations. All this can be and should be done online. Making the most of the brands you sell can really help customer experience and hopefully lead to a few new searches and sales coming your way.

Talk about the brand on your brand page

You don’t need to go mad and write a 1000 word essay on each brand (see below if you want to) but write a short paragraph highlighting the unique selling points.

• If it’s an established brand then mention how long for. “With over 50 years of experience….” or “…working with Italian silk for over 75 years”.
• Add a small flag. Do they manufacture in the UK, Italy, France etc. Use the flag to emphasise home made products or high quality. Only use a flag if it screams quality, a ‘Made In China’ flag probably wouldn’t cut it!
• Add a small brand logo on the page.
• What are the USP’s of the brand. It could be long lasting, quality & affordable or luxury. Look at the benefits of the product to the customer and think about the reasons why they should buy the brand.

Over the next few weeks add a little bit of love to your brand pages and you’ll hopefully end up with a better user experience and a few extra searches and sales to boot.

Write a ‘History of’ about your brands

This would make great content for your blog an hopefully attract the search engines and a few long-tail searches.

• Do it properly. If you’re going write a ‘History of’ type article then go for it. Write about how the brand started and why they started. Work through the decades highlighting how the products have changed.
• Go retro and find images of products from the 50’s, 60’s 70’s etc.
• Get an interview with the current CEO or Marketing exec and embed it in your post. You can use a Skype Call Recorder for interviews and edit the calls using Audacity. Its not as tricky as you think!

Once you’ve put together your post don’t forget to link it to the brand page on your store and promote it well on social media and your mailing list.

Brand of the week

Every now and then pick a brand and focus on it for a week. Use all the promotional tools at your disposal to create a show and tell of the brand.

• Refer to the ‘History of’ article on your blog and use it to help the promotion along.
• Post the old retro pictures you’ve gathered on social media and ask followers to reminisce.
• Pick old and new products and do a comparison. Highlight how things have changed for the better. Mix it up and do this on your Facebook page.
• Create video demonstrations of the brands products. Video is really easy to create. Buy a cheap tripod and phone attachment and go for it. Most phones will record HD video and don’t worry about quality, its the content that counts. Remember the BBC use Skype video in the 6 O’Clock news!

Make sure you plan a brand of the week campaign really well Create a content calendar so you know what needs doing and when. Use your social media to compliment what you do on your blog and website. To make life even easier use Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule some posts.

Conclusion

Some of your brands will have a wonderful history and heritage so use this to help you generate sales to your customers and followers. Don’t forget to plan! Planning makes life easier. I use tools like Trello, Todoist and Calmly Writer to help me keep track of what’s going on. Hit up the comments if you have more suggestions.