In the world of retail, if you don’t have a brand, you don’t have much at all. Without one, you risk entering the market (and possibly exiting one rather quickly) as yet another nameless name on the shelf, one often purchased by accident when mom sends her kid to the store to get the product that actually sits next to your product on that same shelf. Your brand is the key reason for your buyers to come back, the key reason they wear or use your product, to begin with.

But just having a brand is also not enough in the ever-growing realm of retail. To make sure you get in front of the right audience, and preferably in front of enough people so that your chances of boosting sales are high, you should use all of your creativity and marketing know-how to grow your brand awareness every day. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind that will help you enhance your presence in the retail universe and grow your chances to become a household name.

Diversify your content creation

From the SEO point of view, as well as that of pure credibility, content is your best, if not your only bet in the oversaturated world of retail. Mere fluff-laden blogs with an occasional keyword here and there will no longer cut it to help your brand stand out in search engines, especially for common phrases such as “quality sneakers” or “best prom dress”. People want personalized, highly selective experiences, and they expect you to provide them through every bit of content you produce. That includes all of your product descriptions, every blog post, and every video you add.

From your website content, the kind you share on social media, all the way to the content you allow and inspire your users and customers to create (such as product reviews, blog posts, and videos), you need to make sure that your content pool is diverse, trendy, and up to date. Of course, brand consistency also needs to permeate all of your content efforts, to allow your brand to emerge no matter where, when, and who creates and posts is. 

Build a stellar web presence

Your website is your retail brand’s greatest asset, and it can make or break your efforts to increase sales, engage more customers, reduce the number of abandoned carts, and inspire reviews. In fact, stellar website design needs to reflect your brand’s values perfectly and to serve as its most trusted vessel to convey your brand’s messages. It’s the key to keeping your retail brand memorable and to make sure it stands out among so many others that have similar offers.

Not to mention that a great part of your website’s design includes its ease of navigation, its loading speed, and of course, its visual appeal that will determine how long your customers will stay interested, linger on your site, or how often they’ll decide to go through with the purchase. No modern retail brand can survive without a spotless website, hence the need to regularly update your digital presence to ensure consistency as well as a wonderful user experience. 

Work with influencers

Influencers play a great part in increasing brand awareness in the retail industry. They are the digital versions of our traditional word-of-mouth recommendations, they are relatable, and they have a vast pool of followers eager to look up to them, mimic them, and make the same choices based on their preferences. Therein lies the rub: handpicking influencers to work with is far better than investing in random collaborations that are short-lived. Consider it a commitment that will skyrocket your retail brand’s awareness in the eyes of your audience and soon-to-be audience. 

From locally-based micro-influencers all the way to major players on social media as well as celebrities, you have numerous opportunities to build and grow your brand’s digital presence through such collaborations. Make sure that the influencers you choose are, of course, in line with your brand’s values, and that they actually have access to people that fit your target market. Because the only thing worse than no brand awareness is having any awareness in the wrong crowd.

Partner up with the right people

Are you a small retail brand that specializes in a certain wearable? Or do you own a chain of stores that sell different brands in different locations? In both scenarios, working with the right local people means gaining more exposure in the right locations for your brand. For example, if you’re a larger retail business, you can benefit from supporting a smaller local brand by working on a project to add their accessories to your stores, while they support your effort to enter the local market by giving you a share of their shelves.

As a smaller retail brand, partnering up with a complementary business in the neighborhood can help you gain the right exposure, too. For example, we all know that coffee goes delightfully well with scones and muffins. If you have a brilliant recipe for cinnamon rolls or pumpkin pie, why not work with local coffee shops to offer your lovely goods in their stores? Multiply that by a range of different collaborations of local nature, and you’ll quickly gain more traction for your brand.

The retail world is fast to change, and those who cannot adapt tend to fade into oblivion. Use these tips to stay one (or several) steps ahead of the competition and stay relevant to your audience, no matter where they are. 

When you see the logo where a bite has been taken out of the side of an apple, then you understand immediately that the logo belongs to Apple, Inc. A business logo has a subtle effect on its customers. Customers will associate your trademark with a good feeling and a pleasant experience when they see your logo.

One part of starting an LLC is to have your Articles of Organization created. This outlines the basic details about your company such as the company’s name, address, and registered agent. 

The right logo for your business is a type of brand awareness solution to take your investment to the next level of success. Your logo represents your business name and helps to set you apart from your competition. Your logo needs to present a strong yet friendly impression.

As you grow your business, your well-planned logo will also give your business prominence allowing more people to know all about your goals. Logos widely represent business loyalty and honesty.

When your business, its products, and/or services welcome customers and the public with quality, your logo will bring customers to you because it will be your logo that they will look for.

Does a logo have any legal standing? No, there are no legal requirements to register your business logo. However, to protect it from being used by someone else, you should register it as a “trademark.” Your specially designed logo should be registered with the U.S. Intellectual Property Office.

Legally, your logo must follow certain rules, that include the following:

• The logo should not contain any offensive material
• The logo must not be misleading
• The logo should not contain or describe what your business represents
• The logo cannot be a commonly-used statement, phrase or a collection of everyday words

Lastly, you must conduct logo research to ensure that your logo likeness is not used by another business in the U.S. or globally.

There are around five things that a good business logo should have:

1. What’s In a Name?

When Apple was first created, its logo featured the apple plus its name on the right side. Now, as a global brand, it no longer needs a name—just its logo. Your early business startup is small, therefore your logo should include your brand name. Your startup will require a good deal of exposure and using a logo with your brand name will keep your name in the public’s eye.

2. Coloring/Fonts

Did you know that there is color psychology in logo designs? Logo coloring is to invoke emotions within people to become your future customers. For example, black represents tradition or authority; red represents boldness and excitement; green represents peace and newness, while blue represents strength and confidence.

Choosing the right font for your logo is not as easy as it sounds. Your business logo will need to look at size and typeface. Play around with fonts but be careful when you use “script” fonts because your business name or wording could become illegible.

3. Adaptability

You may design a logo for your startup business, but since your plans involve growth, your logo must remain relative or adaptable to your expansion plans. Remember, a logo symbolizes your entire brand, not just what you are asking the public to buy right now. Your logo is the personality of your company that will appear on all your paper products like letterhead, business cards, and more.

4. Simple Is Best

Have you noticed the simplicity in logo designs today by the leading brands? Simple wording has nothing to do with your business being the new horse out the gate or whether you have been operating for years. Simple logo designs convey more meaning than you think. It is a less complicated process in your creation of what will reflect the nature of your business.

5. Consistency

What your logo concept requires is consistency. There is no such thing as using your logo too much. Use it often and widely with the services you provide, with the products you design, and on all outgoing and in-office correspondence. Large brands whose logo says it all began by flooding the market with its design and name. A small business should also use its logo in a variety of scenarios.

Influencer marketing is estimated to become a $10 billion industry by 2020. One of the major reasons for this is the high ROI that you can get from it. In fact, almost 90% of all marketers feel that its ROI is greater than that of other marketing modes.

As the interest in influencer marketing grows, more brands are starting to incorporate it into their marketing strategies. However, a successful influencer marketing campaign isn’t easy to execute. You need to plan a lot beforehand and find the right influencers to collaborate with as well.

Numerous steps, such as figuring out who your target audience is, planning your budget, optimizing the content, and tracking your progress make it complicated. However, big data can help you do all of that with ease. Through big data analytics, you can use your data to find and create new opportunities for your brand.

Here’s how you can do so: 

1. Calculate Your ROI

It’s crucial to calculate the ROI of your influencer marketing campaigns to understand how successful they were. For that, you need to keep track of your engagement, reach, sales, and more.

However, almost 84% of marketers say that calculating an accurate ROI from influencer marketing campaigns is challenging.

When your campaign doesn’t meet your expectations, you should consider analyzing how you can manage these losses. To do so, all you need is big data and a solid tool like Google Analytics. You need to figure out how much value the campaign brought your brand. This should be compared to the amount that you’ve invested in the campaign.

If you find that repeatedly your returns are less than your investment, you may need to rethink your strategy. In some cases, you may have to end your partnerships with specific influencers as well. 

2. Find Relevant Influencers

One of the biggest challenges that brands face is that of finding suitable influencers for their campaigns. In fact, about 50% of marketers say that finding fake followers and engagement is their chief marketing challenge.

Finding influencers manually can be quite a task. You need to go through every influencer’s profile to check if they are authentic. In this case, too, big data can come to your rescue. Through big data, influencer marketing platforms can create a database of influencers from a variety of niches and locations.

Using these databases, you can simplify your search for the perfect influencers for your brand. There are many platforms like Influence.co, where you can find relevant influencers and reach out to them. Influence.co takes it a step further by allowing you to post your campaigns on the website so that interested influencers can approach you instead.

Apart from helping you find relevant influencers, big data can also help you find genuine influencers. The engagement data and audience metrics can help you make an informed decision quickly. 

3. Decide on a Direction

There are multiple options available for brands to partner with influencers. You can launch a variety of different campaigns that are aimed at different goals.

However, deciding on the goals is quite a task in itself. You must decide what your specific goal is. For example, it could be to increase your website traffic, generate more engagement, or get more sales.

Big data can help you make a more informed decision about your goals from influencer marketing. Your sales data will be able to give you a better idea of what you need to do to improve your brand. It’ll also help you decide on an ideal influencer who can best help you achieve your goal.

For instance, say your own footwear business, and most of your sales are coming from Instagram. In this case, you should consider partnering with an influencer on Instagram who showcases footwear regularly. This type of collaboration with a relevant influencer could help you increase your sales. 

4. Reaction to Updates

It’s necessary to change your approach with time to grow successfully. Marketing trends keep changing dynamically, and you must adapt in order to stay relevant. Big data can help you do so by keeping you updated with the latest changes in digital marketing.

Such an analysis beforehand can help you take the right steps to increase the performance of your campaign.

5. Creating Engaging Content

The content that you use for your influencer marketing campaigns decides how well the campaign will perform. If your content isn’t authentic or seems forced, it may not be effective with your target audience. This can lead to the loss of your credibility.

It’s best to give your influencers complete creative freedom. Most influencers value this, and at the same time, it’s better for your campaign too. Influencers know their audiences better than you do so they know what works for them.

You can, however, provide general guidelines to your influencers. Big data can help you with content in this case as well. Based on data from tools like Mention, you can see what’s trending in your niche. You can monitor keywords, brand names, and topics to figure out what type of content is most effective with your target audience.

By staying on top of the latest discussions in your niche, you can create great content that your audience will connect with. 

Final Thoughts

Big data is very helpful when it comes to influencer marketing. It helps you make more informed decisions based on solid data.

You can calculate your ROI and find relevant influencers for your brand using data. At the same time, it can help you create better content and help you remain on top of the latest changes in marketing and in your industry. Lastly, it can make the process of setting a goal for your campaigns easier too.

Are there other ways big data can help marketers improve their influencer marketing campaigns? Let me know in the comments.