In this insightful episode of eCommerce On Tap, Nathan invites Sandy Dedeian, the founder of Rectified, Inc., a digital consultancy agency.
Sandy Dedeian offers valuable insights into scaling e-commerce brands successfully. From establishing a solid foundation to aligning brand messaging and gathering customer feedback, the conversation sheds light on essential strategies for brand growth.
As e-commerce continues to evolve, understanding the changing landscape and staying adaptable are crucial factors in achieving sustainable success in the competitive online market.
By embracing innovation, leveraging data-driven strategies, and fostering meaningful customer connections, e-commerce brands can unlock their full potential and thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Join them as they discuss various aspects of scaling e-commerce brands and provide valuable advice for brand owners looking to take their businesses to the next level.
1- Establishing a Brand Identity
Sandy starts by telling us the importance of building a brand, emphasizing the importance of defining the brand’s identity, target audience, and unique selling propositions. Establishing a strong foundation allows e-commerce brands to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace.
Building a Strong Foundation:
In this context, foundation refers to building a backstory, brand identity, branding guidelines and messaging strategies across all your marketing campaigns. Sometimes, more than the product, it’s about whether or not you can create a brand perception that lasts.
Owning your brand:
The digital marketing expert highlights the benefits of having full control over the brand experience and customer journey. By selling through an independent website, e-commerce brands can build a loyal customer base and establish a direct relationship with their audience.
2- Scaling With Consistency
Rectified, Inc. is an agency that specializes in helping brands scale. Its founder emphasizes the significance for brands to find their purpose, target audience, and brand messaging strategy. She says many brands aren’t consistent with their branding everywhere. It’s one of the most critical, yet easily ignored aspects of marketing.
By understanding the unique value proposition of establishing a brand identity and aligning it with customer needs, e-commerce brands can effectively communicate their story and create a strong emotional connection with their audience.
Alignment across platforms
Consistent branding and messaging across different marketing channels are crucial for building brand recognition and trust. Sandy says it’s crucial for a brand to maintain cohesive brand identity and voice through social media, email marketing, advertising campaigns, and website content.
Testing and analyzing messaging
Rapidly testing and gathering feedback on messaging allows e-commerce brands to refine their approach and identify scalable markets. Sandy shares insights on leveraging A/B testing, customer surveys, and user feedback to iterate and optimize marketing messages for maximum impact.
She also shares a footwear brand’s success story after aligning its messaging and targeting the right audience. By understanding its customers’ pain points and desires, the brand was able to create a compelling narrative that resonated with its target market, leading to increased sales and brand loyalty.
3- Engaging Customers and Feedback Channels
According to Sandy, the most effective way of leveraging social media platforms and email communication is to gather feedback from customers. By actively engaging with customers through these channels, e-commerce brands can gain insights, address concerns, and build a community around the brand.
Recognizing and engaging with your audience
She cites an example of a brand that started out with a trending product on TikTok appealing to teens and young adults but later became popular among people ages 50 and above.
Her advice for everyone is the same as it was for her clients: create engaged communities on platforms based on where your target audience interacts. For the brand in question, this meant going to Facebook rather than TikTok or Instagram, even though these platforms served as the brand’s origins and were the focus of major marketing campaigns.
These community spaces prove reliable for customers to interact with brands, fostering a sense of belonging and loyalty while providing e-commerce brands with valuable feedback and ideas.
Testing and analyzing consumer preferences
Creating feedback channels also makes it easy for conducting polls, testing different strategies and approaches, and gaining insights from customer interactions. By understanding customer preferences, e-commerce brands can tailor their products, marketing campaigns, and overall customer experience to better serve their audience.
4- Exploring Retail Distribution
All brands come to a crossroads as they grow, where they have to decide whether or not they’re going to explore retail distribution. As lucrative as it might seem, Sandy warns from experience that it’s not a positive game-changer for all. Some brands have reported losses in retail and fared much better in expanding their D2C operations.
Retail Considerations
Sandy weighs the pros and cons of going the retail route and assesses the impact on margins and production capabilities. While retail distribution offers broader exposure, it can come with increased costs, reliance on intermediaries, and potential challenges in maintaining brand consistency.
Direct-to-consumer advantages
Sandy highlights the benefits of selling through e-commerce websites and reducing middleman costs. By owning the customer relationship and controlling the sales process, e-commerce brands can capture more profit margins, gather valuable customer data, and deliver a seamless shopping experience.
5- Navigating the Changing Landscape of E-commerce
The never-ending addition of new tools and automation platforms for brands sometimes makes it challenging to decide what and what not to go for.
The key to success in e-commerce is the ability to quickly adapt to technological changes and remain flexible which is why Sandy urges brands to recognize the importance of staying informed about emerging trends and leveraging new tools and platforms to reach customers effectively.
Tracking sales across platforms:
When asked about tools like Triple Whale and High Rose for effective sales tracking, Sandy says brands should use what they need to in order to get a holistic view of their activities as a business.
By monitoring sales and marketing data across different platforms, e-commerce brands can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions.
But at the same time, it’s easy to sign up for multiple tools that perform the same or redundant functions while unconsolidated data silos and costs keep piling up.
Identifying vital tools in today’s ecosystem:
Sandy says leveraging analytics tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and marketing automation platforms can help create streamlined processes. These tools enable e-commerce brands to automate tediously repetitive operations, personalize customer experiences, and optimize marketing efforts.
Takeaway
This week’s episode of eCommerce On Tap lays out several instructions and game-breaking tips and advice that can help a brand evolve and scale.
Thanks to Sandy Dedeian, the founder of Rectified, Inc., important questions about establishing a brand identity, creating a buyer persona, implementing a holistic trackable engagement strategy and exploring retail options have been explained if not answered.
We thank her for taking the time as well as everyone else for tuning in!
About Sandy and Rectified, Inc.
As a digital marketing specialist in the field since 2004, Sandy has evolved with the ever-changing world of social media, search engines and eCommerce brands.
After a career of helping brands establish credible identities, design backstories, create and track customer journeys and more, she started Rectified, Inc. and continues to provide her services with her team, taking marketing off the shoulders of eCommerce businesses.
Rectified, Inc.’s holistic approach to marketing and branding focuses on e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands. By understanding the unique challenges and opportunities in the online space, they can provide tailored strategies that drive growth and customer engagement.
Website:
Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandydedeian/
https://twitter.com/rectifiedco