Building a brand is no longer a secret, whether you are dropshipping newbies or experts, especially when running independent stores. But how to make your brand stores shine out among others? How do convince customers to choose YOU, not other competitors? And how to attract long-term customers for sustained margins? This article separated it into four parts to help you redefine what branding is and how to brand a business.

What is "Brand"?

'Brand' means your business identity. It is not just a name or a logo. A brand is everything about how your audience perceives you. You can see the brand as a person. Take Demi as an example. If you want to introduce Demi to a friend, you will need to know her characteristics then introduce her to friends who share the same value or hobbies. Demi, from China, loves traveling and painting. She is outgoing and willing to help others. So you will introduce Demi to other friends who like to draw or travel and have an open personality. Building the characteristics is also builds the solid base of your brand.

To begin with, you need to decide the main product of your stores to target a particular kind of audience. For example, mother and baby related products are targeting parents as their customers. It will be hard to position your stores when your products are random.

Then, you will need to do audience research for a given niche/product(s) of you and find out the connection between your product and your potential target customers. Do they need your products or would they be interested in your products? The following questions can help you better understand your audience.

1. Age range

2. Gender

3. Geography (Location/Time Zone/Nationality)

4. Language

5. Income

6. Life stage

7. Interests

8. Challenge (pain points)

Also, you can proceed with competitor research to see how they achieved success. After you learned everything you need from both your target audience and your competitors, you can start building your own brand image.

Create Brand Personality

When you have confirmed the brand targeting audience, it is the time you can begin to shape the brand personality. When talking about brand personality, people always think of the brand name, logo, font and web-design. However, these are only the basic framework of your brand. You can name your website by yourself or hire someone professional to do it for you; same for the logo, font and web-design. Some people will use Fiverr to find correspondence professionals. But there’s more. Brand generators like Namelix, Shopify business name generator can help you struggle with a catchy name. For logo design, you could also use Hatchful or DesignEVO. You'll get hundreds of available logo options，just pick your niche, choose a visual style and they will pop out. More useful tools for store building can be found on cjdropship.com.

Compare with a catchy name, a good logo, or typography, the more important thing is we need to make sure that the content you are creating should make your audience feel connected. The next four points will satisfy the personality of our brand.

1. Values

2. Frustrations

3. Desires and Aspirations

4. Influences and purchasing decisions

So make sure your brand name, the value your brand presents and all the contents present on your website and social media are all matching with your audience.

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Make Your Own Package

Third, pick the packaging of your product and print it. Dropshipping without a custom package can quickly reveal that your store is not a real brand. You are just a middleman. You can easily lose customer trust and lower brand authority simply by that. Thus, after you have made your logo, you can print your packages with a special brand logo and replace the former ones. If you think it's time-consuming to repackage the product one by one, you can consider to find someone else to do it for you.

CJ package is a great choice, and it has a special package produce department to make your design come true. You can go to My Custom Packaging on CJdropshipping's website and upload your design, CJ will then print, pack and ship it for you. CJ makes all kind of packaging includes custom zipper bags, cloth bags, shipping bags, cloth tags, thank you cards, and even stickers. Visit CJ's website to make your custom packaging real.

Maintain A Good Reputation

At last, to improve customer loyalty, you still need to pay attention to these aspects:

·  Product quality:

Try your best to keep your product quality at high level to meet up with your ads. It’s a good idea to sourcing products on different platforms to find better ones.

·  Shipping:

Usually, you will see that the delivery time can take more than a month with some delivery services. This is definitely not good for your brand's reputation. Try to make your shipping time under 15 days or even 10 days.

·  Customer services:

It is very important to listen and answer every question from your customers. If your customers want a refund of their purchases or exchange products, remember to deal with every requests with sincerity and handle them properly. Be responsible for every order.

Final Words

Identifying your target audience is not a case of guesswork-it is an informed process that will help you create brand impact and connect with customers. In the long run, branding will make your store outshine and differentiate it from other stores. Leave good impressions to your customers will result in a better business.