The Importance of Developing Your Brand Identity

I want you to take a moment to do a quick audit on the appearance of your shop and the types of products that you have in stock. Take your seller hat off and put on your shopper hat.

If you were a shopper who knew nothing about your handmade shop and stumbled upon it after a quick Google search, would you be able to describe what your shop sells in one sentence in or less?

For example, would you be able to look at the first page of your shop and say, “Yes, this seller makes really great handbags” or “This shop creates amazing farmhouse themed wall art”?

Or, would it sound something more along the lines of “Well, it looks like this shop sells vinyl decals, oh and jewelry, and this page over here has some baby crochet items. I guess you just have to scroll through everything to see what you find”?

The first two shop examples reflect clear brand identity and focus. This type of focus can give your shop the ability to gain traction within your specific niche or industry. The last shop example with lots of different products creates confusion and prevents the customer from understanding what they are buying from you. It can also make the customer hesitant to buy because they can view you as a jack of all trades, master of none. This admittedly could be a totally unfair assumption on the customer’s part, but they have nothing to base it from other than seeing a mix of seemingly non-related items sitting next to each other in an online store. If you make great products from separate categories, fabulous! I recommend creating separate shops to avoid customer confusion. Allow yourself the ability to form separate identities around each product type. This will also enable you to better target the individual audiences for each product rather than trying to reach all audiences all the time. If you are constantly trying to reach everyone, you will ultimately reach no one.

What if you are just getting started or in need of some focus? If you are just getting started and not quite sure what you want to focus on selling, think about this sentence and fill in the blank, “When a customer comes to my shop, I want them to be excited to purchase xyz”. What is it that you want your shop to be known for? That passion and excitement that you have for making your products will shine through to your customers.

If you are just making those extra random things to fill in space in hopes of making a sale, your customers will feel that lackluster energy, too.

So, if shoppers are unable to quickly identify what you are known for as a seller, it’s time to get clear about your brand. What do you specialize in? What is it that you can make for the customer that will knock their socks off? Remove all the extra background noise and filler products so you can focus on your strengths. If you have multiple strengths, even better, just organize them into separate shops so that your customers can understand them better. This should also help to know who you are speaking to when you are advertising resulting in a more focused marketing strategy.