Why Your Brand Matters More on a 3rd Party eCommerce

“Visual Identity is one of the most important aspects of the front-facing commerce business. Without clear direction on visual styling, typography, font selection, or color use, the brand begins to create confusion without even realizing it.” – BigCommerce.com

How you present online matters. A lot. From day one.

There are many experts who can help companies build a brand – you may have used a great agency, or you may have a branding guru in house. Google the subject and you’ll find a long list of credible companies with lists and steps for brand building. Steps like choosing your brand name and logo, colors, messaging, imagery, taglines, and building the brand promise. All of these are important steps and should be done. Consistency in brand messaging is one of the many factors that determine the growth and success of your business. 

That’s all well and good for your own eCommerce site. But what if you’re selling on third-party marketplaces? Reseller sites? Does your brand even matter? The answer is yes. Big time. As eCommerce owners and managers, building a powerful and engaging online brand is our most important work. It is a KPI that cannot be put to paper –– but do it right, and every single goal will be surpassed. Research tells us that people buy from brands that are familiar and that they trust.  In B2B, it’s even more important. Consumers can generally afford to be fickle or try out new brands. Businesses, on the other hand, have more at stake, and the purchase can reflect on the buyer themselves.  Therefore, businesses care about the longevity of the brand, and trust matters.  To illustrate this point, a study by Lippincott, compared B2B and B2C buyers who purchased tablets. As you can see from the graphic below, the consideration of brand for B2B buyers in the purchase decision was much more significant.

 But how do you ensure your brand stands out on sites you don’t own? The answer: You Product Information Content. 

Traditionally, B2B organizations have left the branding work to the PR teams and the product information work to the product management teams. But in the world of eCommerce, those two worlds are now one. Your product information content on third-party marketplaces is your golden ticket to customer communication, engagement, and inspiration. Your product information content is your most important vehicle for communicating your brand promise.  Neil Patel, digital marketing and branding expert says that “B2B companies that fail to focus on their brand and market it effectively are essentially neglecting their future and their clients.”  

Third-party resellers and marketplaces (think Amazon, NewEgg, CDW, LabX, ePlane, RS Components, or any other vertical industry marketplace) have their own branded look and feel – styles, colors, etc. – and if you’re selling your products on multiple sites, they are all going to be different.  Selling on marketplaces – particularly third-party marketplaces – can backfire without careful execution. Many organizations struggle with this because they think that they don’t have any control over their own brand messaging, that the marketplace doesn’t allow them to showcase their unique brand identity.

While the opportunities for customization are indeed different from your own eCommerce store, you can, in fact, showcase your brand through your product information content. This content is yours, and it’s where you do have some (and in some cases, significant) control.

Let’s take a fictitious example and walk through some of the ways to do it. 

  Elements of a brand: 

• Your logo
• Your brand colors – red, white and black
• Your tone and voice – approachable, easy going
• Your value proposition & brand promise – simple and easy to use products
• Your target customer – the technical consumer

You can make your own eCommerce store adhere to all of these elements easily enough. Your marketing department and brand team will provide guidelines, ensuring that all of your content adheres to these rules. Customers will enjoy a consistent experience on your site each time they visit.

Now you’ve decided to sell your products on a marketplace/channel reseller site. That site has its own brand, look and feel. Its brand colours are not the same as yours. Its tone is different.  Your products are now one of many and your content must follow the rules of the new marketplace site. When a potential buyer finds your content, how will they know it’s you?

This is where your marketing and brand team can help translate the brand guidelines to support the product information content that will be syndicated to the marketplaces. 

Let’s go back to Product Information Excellence Element #1 – Optimized Product Information Content and step through some of the items on our checklist.

1. Copy – You want consistency with your tone and voice. Therefore, your copy should mirror the “approachable, easy-going” tone of your written content. You want your content to be familiar. If your brand promise is that your products are simple and easy to use, you should include copy that communicates this message clearly.  Do you have a tagline that your customers will recognize that you can consistently weave in? If you are speaking to a technical consumer, your copy should be at the right technical level, consistent with your own E-commerce site.  It should be familiar and sound like you.

 2. Images – Your image gallery could be a real opportunity to be more creative. It is, however, dependent on the rules of the marketplace. Some are very restrictive and may not allow backgrounds, annotations, contextual images or graphics at all. Most marketplaces are evolving, realizing that they need to compete with the likes of Amazon and others. Assuming that you have some ability to customize your images, go back to your brand guidelines for direction. You can incorporate your red/white/black brand colors into your annotations and graphics. This may seem intuitive, but few brands do it.  Be consistent. Do it for every image. Think about your contextual shots – the ones that show the product in use or are instructional in nature. What kinds of backgrounds are on your web site?  Do they have a consistent look and feel? (they should!)  Do you use black and white photography or color?  Use that same look and feel consistently in your product photography and graphic design for channels you don’t own, and your brand can come through.  Do it consistently for every product and page. Customers should recognize those images as your brand.  They should be familiar and look like you. 

 3. Enhanced Content – You probably have content on your own web site that you can use on marketplace sites. These would be the additional images, copy, tools (charts, graphs) and interactive content. As we said in Element #1 – if the site allows it, be sure to include it. But – be sure to include it in a way that is consistent with your branding. Layout, table formats (including colors and style), downloadable content – should be as consistent as possible with your own eCommerce store branding. It should be familiar and distinguish you. 

4. Videos – Similar to the images and enhanced content, your brand guidelines should dictate a look and feel that customers recognize. You will likely be able to use your own logo in the videos which you will want to ensure is prominent. Just like the style guidelines for your own site, your marketplace videos can be a terrific tool for communicating your brand promise. Consistent voice and/or captioning will help customers recognize your content and your brand. It should be familiar and identify you.

A recent study from eTail, “A 2020 eTail Report” found that maintaining consistency of brand messaging across third-party eCommerce marketplaces was important to the majority of retailers in their study, and that most of these respondents employ a unique team to manage this content channel. The best performing companies understand that while individual channels require content in different formats, the work to create a consistent and compelling brand experience is important – and requires work. CMOs know that they must interact with their customers at every point in the customer journey and more than ever, this includes online marketplaces. 

You want your customers to be immersed in your brand, to search it out, and to recognize you when they see your products. 

Online resellers and marketplaces have their own brand, and the most important thing you can do as a seller is to achieve excellence in your product information content. Step one is to optimize the quality of the content. Step two is to customize your content for each marketplace requirements. And Step three is to ensure that your brand is consistently displayed and communicated in all of your online content.

In the next article, Step #4 in the 6 Elements of Product Information Excellence, I will talk about how your product information content can be used to accelerate your sales goals beyond the single product conversion. Stay tuned.