In business, as in life, viewpoints are constantly shifting, and business owners have to adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Cultivating a successful brand and staying relevant with your target audience isn’t a one-time effort. This process is known as brand development.
Although brand development often starts with a dedicated period of effort, it’s ideally an ongoing, iterative process. Developing your brand will be part of your ecommerce business journey well beyond your launch.
What is brand development?
The brand development process is the work you do to build a brand. It’s the series of decisions you make to position what you sell as more appealing than what your competitors sell. Brand development can include tweaking your brand’s identity, messaging, or visual marketing materials to appeal to potential customers or shifting the majority of your brand’s efforts from one social platform to another.
These actions are an attempt to grow your brand. The hope is that the more good decisions you make over time to develop and maintain brand consistency, the stronger it becomes.
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Brand development vs. branding: What’s the difference?
It’s easy to confuse brand development and branding since they are closely connected concepts. The brand development process is the ongoing journey of defining and strengthening your brand over time. Branding refers to a collection of cues (such as your brand’s logo and visual identity) that distinguish you from other brands, particularly within your specific niche.
To illustrate the difference between brand development and branding, consider Chomps. As founders Peter Maldonado and Rashid Ali developed their product—a meat snack in the jerky space—they spent time figuring out how it would stand out on a shelf. Noticing that their competitors all used similar color schemes and masculine positioning, Peter and Rashid realized they needed to take a different approach.
Using customer feedback and panel data, they opted for a more colorful look for their packaging that stands out and is gender-neutral, therefore appealing to a wider audience.
In this example, the brand development process involved researching competitors, collecting and assessing feedback, and revising their logo and color scheme to catch the eye of their target customers. Their branding encompasses their final logo and packaging (colors, fonts, and how they are arranged).
Factors that drive brand development strategy
To develop your brand, consider what you offer your target audience and why it matters to them. Then you can start thinking about how you want to show up as a brand and define your brand identity. Here are the main factors that influence a brand development strategy:
A clear value proposition
Articulate what unique value your brand offers to customers and where that fits within your market or niche. What does your brand promise people? Your value proposition should inform your marketing campaigns (how you’ll communicate your value) as well as the nuts and bolts of things like your product listings (how you’ll describe what makes your products or services appealing or distinct).
Distinct brand positioning
How is your brand different from the competition? These differences can be based on unique features of your product, price, quality, sustainability practices, or exceptional customer service. Nailing down your brand positioning within your industry means you’ll know what’s fixed and what’s flexible, making it easier to evolve your brand in response to any larger strategy or market changes.
A compelling brand story
A clear brand story—whether it’s about a founder’s initial inspiration, the passion driving a brand’s mission, or the values guiding a business—provides a narrative that resonates with your target audience and differentiates an ecommerce brand in a crowded market. It allows customers to connect with a brand on a deeper level than just the products being sold. Whatever your story, be authentic, clear, and concise. Test your story and brand voice on family and friends to get feedback, and workshop it with staff and business partners until it feels right.
Free Worksheet: Brand Storytelling
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Tips for developing and maintaining your brand
Drawing from the experience of Chomps’ founders Peter and Rashid, here are some tips that your ecommerce brand can use no matter how far you’ve progressed in your brand development strategy:
Get to know your target customers
Chomps initially marketed its product to CrossFit enthusiasts, based on Rashid’s involvement in that community. And while it saw some initial positive movement, investing in true market research a few years later revealed a surprising customer insight. Its customer base was about 70% female, which entirely differed from the founders’ assumptions.
This example highlights the crucial role of investing in market research to gain an accurate understanding of who is actually buying your product to support brand growth. While it’s great to start with an idea that fills a gap or fulfills your passion, your business’s longevity relies on customers and their brand loyalty. To reach your target market, you have to know their beliefs and motivations.
You can ask customers directly for feedback about your products and their experience with your company. To be more rigorous with your market research, there are plenty of free and paid branding tools and market research tools to explore.
Directly engage with customers
Before expanding into retail, Chomps spent years building a brand on Shopify and social media, directly engaging with customers by responding to emails, comments, and DMs, and fostering relationships with repeat customers. This community-first approach provided a significant advantage when it eventually entered retail spaces; it could easily direct customers to those stores while also reaching new customers within its target audience through word of mouth and easy access to its products.
For ecommerce brands, actively engaging with your audience can create a loyal customer base and contribute to long-term success. Acknowledge your supporters by encouraging them to tag you in photos and reviews that you repost, responding to comments, hosting Q&A sessions, and sharing behind-the-scenes content. Not only does this increase your credibility, but it also further develops your brand personality and can encourage a sense of community.
To further encourage customer loyalty, consider implementing a rewards or customer loyalty program for repeat purchases, referrals, or social media engagement. Incentives can be points that accumulate toward future purchases, discounts, or exclusive access to new products or experiences.
Evolve your brand messaging
For ecommerce brands, content (blog posts, social media posts, videos, infographics, etc.) plays a vital role in brand building. Through your content, you can deepen people’s understanding of your brand identity, flex your expertise in your industry, and create a community.
When it comes to brand strategy for social media, answer a few key questions to get started. Do you want to educate, entertain, engage, or all of the above? Maybe TikTok and Reddit are where you want to attract new customers, while YouTube is where you want to talk to existing ones. Perhaps there’s a seasonality to your business, so you should plan your content calendar around the peaks and valleys of your sales season. Set clear objectives for your content on specific platforms.
You can also use social listening tools to learn how people view and talk about your brand online. These critical insights can guide your content strategy to drive business growth. For example, if an element of your product or service is perceived negatively, you can focus on that area internally before sharing improvements or a clearer explanation of the element in question online.
Brand development FAQ
What is a brand development strategy?
A brand development strategy is how you strengthen and grow your brand over time. Once you know where your brand is now and where you want it to go, a brand development strategy maps out how you get there.
What is the most important step in brand development?
Articulating your value proposition and brand positioning is key to developing a brand. Define what makes you different from and better than the competition. This will help you make initial decisions while creating a stable foundation for any future market or strategy pivots.
What is an example of brand development?
One example of brand development is refreshing your current packaging and marketing communications to better reach the people who buy your product, using updated information about their demographics.
