Businesses continually need to find innovative ways to ensure business continuity and profitability. As a result, eCommerce stores have been popping up at an extraordinary rate with between 12 million and 24 million operating globally.

What we had noticed during the pandemic was that companies that were navigating the eCommerce landscape but hadn’t fully enforced a digital marketing strategy were left in a vulnerable position. This is something that has not changed. A digital marketing strategy is critical when it comes to increasing brand visibility online.

Various short-term and long-term strategies will improve eCommerce brand awareness. Paid advertising in its many forms, including pay-per-click (PPC) and remarketing campaigns, are essential for quickly gaining the attention of past and potential customers whereas SEO-focused content, including blogging and guest posting, has become a fundamental long-term strategy to build brand awareness and authority in industries.

Another marketing tactic that has taken the world by storm is the use of short-form video content. This means that using TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts to share content should play a role in your increasing brand awareness strategy in 2023.

It’s easy to see that knowing what the marketing and branding trends of 2023 are and implementing them into your digital plan is an effective way to see your business rise above the competition and flourish for years to come. To give you an idea of the potential, the ecommerce industry is expected to be worth $5.9 trillion by the end of 2023. In fact, 22.3% of all retail sales will be attributed to ecommerce. How awesome is that?

Let’s take a look at the ways that eCommerce brands can increase visibility in e-commerce and awareness in 2023 so that you can own a robust digital marketing strategy.

What is eCommerce branding and brand visibility?

E-commerce branding is all about creating a positive impression of your business and its products. But that can be difficult in the crowded and competitive world of online shopping. Nowadays, everyone wants their brand to be known by millions of people. But the biggest mistake they make is not using the right e-commerce branding strategy. You need to have an e-commerce branding strategy that builds strong relationships with your customers and meets their expectations.

Running an e-commerce store means you are in competition with all the other brands in the online space. So how will you help your business stand out from all the others?

The answer is simple!

You can create a unique look for your e-commerce brand that sets you apart from your competitors even if you sell the same product.

Customers will recognize you because of your personality. Building your brand online is an ongoing process that helps customers understand what you have to offer, what you stand for, and how you can improve their lives. Customers are not only satisfied with your product but also with you because brand identity builds relationships based on positive emotions. This is just one of the many reasons why it should form part of your retail visibility strategy.

Brand Visibility Vs Brand Awareness

Brand visibility is defined as the amount of exposure a brand has in relation to its competitors and industry. It is part of brand awareness, which is an umbrella term that describes many different methods for measuring the overall coverage and impact of a brand on the market.

Since brand visibility measures how “visible” a brand is to the market, it is very important how and where you measure it. In other words, brand visibility is something you want to calculate per channel, not in aggregate. You can have a search engine visibility number that is like a metric like “search volume”.

Unlike metrics like market share or search results, brand visibility metrics don’t need to be calculated against competitors or your overall market. It can seem like a static thing, something you compare and hope to improve over time.

Brand awareness, on the other hand, represents how familiar your audience is with your brand and how familiar they are with it. Brands with high awareness are often referred to as “popular” or “popular”. Creating brand awareness is useful when marketing and promoting your business and products, especially in the early stages of a business.

Brand awareness may seem like a vague concept, but in reality, it is. For marketers and consumers who like to use pure numbers to determine success, brand awareness can be rather tricky. This is why the two terms are often used in conjunction with one another to create a visibility brand awareness strategy.

Importance Of Brand Awareness For eCommerce Company

Simply put, brand awareness is about making your brand and products known to as many people as possible. This statement alone should indicate just how important brand awareness for an ecommerce company is, we’ll explain.

A well-designed advertising campaign reinforces the idea of what you are selling and gives your audience a reason to buy from you. For example, think back to the last time you bought a chocolate bar. You may have considered the type of chocolate, the fillings and maybe even the size. in addition to that, there are different brands to choose from, but the truth is that almost any chocolate bar will work. This is where brand awareness steps in to change the game and help a potential customer make an informed decision.

Any of these delicious treats would have met your needs, but we don’t usually do business with products, or in this case treats, alone. We buy things based on the feelings they inspire or the mood they provide.

In short, we buy the story that the brand tells us about its product. As a business, your job is to share the right stories with the right people at the right time to build brand awareness, long-term brand value, and customer lifetime value (LTV).

Mobile SEO and ASO

In 2022, 60.66% of web traffic came from mobile device users. An increase in mobile web browsing equates to a rise in shopping using mobile devices, too. Developing content specific to mobile is essential to not only be seen but to provide a streamline user experience for your customers.

47% of consumers expect websites to load in less than 2 seconds, if they don’t, 19% will abandon the site. This makes it critical to include speed optimization into the mix with readability, functionality, and aesthetics. If your web presence is not fully optimized for mobile, this could lead a consumer to your competitors who have already enforced strong digital marketing and SEO strategy.

By creating content optimized for mobile, you will improve your searchability as well as provide mobile users an intuitive navigation experience, ensuring that once your draw traffic to your website, you won’t lose it due to a slow or poorly designed interface. Did you know you can rank your eCommerce app higher in Google Play and App Store? Optimization applies to eCommerce apps, too.

App Store Optimization (ASO) can rank your business’ app higher than others in the same market. Therefore, this should be a priority in your digital strategy. By using descriptive titles, keywords, and high-quality content, you can improve your ASO.

App Store Optimization

Blogging and Guest Posting

In addition to brand messaging and tone of voice (ToV), blogging is crucial to keeping your brand front-of-mind with your current audience while simultaneously building trust and affinity.

Guest posting is written content that is published on websites other than your own, i.e., Medium.com. Creating copy with SEO keywords and phrases in mind will attract an audience that is unfamiliar with your business. In time, writing articles for your website and other websites will build brand authority in your industry and generate traffic to your store.

This strategy takes time but regularly creating this type of content will be a highly effective method to increase brand visibility and awareness across the web. IT organizations such as Meridian IT frequently posts to its blog as well as publishes informative articles on websites like Datamation.com and Techgenix.com.

Email Campaigning

Engaging with consumers who already know that you exist is integral to maintaining brand awareness and fostering customer relationship and retention. Email marketing has the potential to be a key influence in a consumer’s decision to choose your brand again over trying another.

Segmenting your audience data and sending personalized emails, targeting individuals with the information and products they’re more likely to be interested in, will enhance user experience and increase the chances of a subscriber clicking through to your website and making a purchase.

Paid Social Media

A brand’s beautifully-curated social media account that connects with its community organically can vastly benefit further from the regular application of paid social advertising. A recent study found that 43% of the online world are viewed as social shoppers and will contribute around $30.73 billion to ecommerce spending in the US in 2023, this means that they use social media to find inspiration for shopping.

The ability to target your desired audience through an Instagram or Facebook ad can drive traffic to your social pages as well as directly to your website, depending on how you set it up. Tailored messaging and product targeting are important to factor in when allocating marketing budget for paid social media advertising.

Using your data analytics to gain insight into what products or posts are getting traction across your social media and website will play a major role in a campaign performing well.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click or PPC is a digital advertising model that a business can implement across search engines such as Google, only paying for each time a user clicks on the advertisement.

For your ad to appear on someone’s search engine results page, you have to have specific keywords aligning with what the user has searched. This means that other businesses can rank higher if their keywords better match the searched words or phrases.

Ad auction is a way you can bid on certain keywords to achieve a higher search ranking. Since you’re paying for each time a user clicks on your ad, it is essential to only use keywords relevant to your advertisement to ensure ROI from your ad spend.

Another type of PPC is Remarketing, which is an advertisement that retargets users who have already visited your site. With this advertising approach, your ad will appear up across various sites that your website viewer visits after your site, such as competitor sites and YouTube.

Podcast

Because 62% of Americans have listened to at least one podcast in their lifetime, as well as the fact that 38% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the last 30 days, it is well worth keeping this brand strategy in mind if you have a creative content team skilled in creating audio content.

In 2023, experts predict there will be a 4.9% increase in podcast listeners, hitting 131.2 million. This growth is expected to continue, eventually reaching 142.7 million in 2025, and making up 46.4% of all internet users.

To attract the audience that you want to convert into customers, you must think about their interests aside from what necessarily you offer in terms of a product or service. For instance, fashion brand podcasts have episodes that feature seasonal launches, but they also interview professionals inside and outside of the industry and host Q+As where listeners submit questions.

To attract the audience that you want to convert into customers, you must think about their interests aside from what necessarily you offer in terms of a product or service. For instance, fashion brand podcasts have episodes that feature seasonal launches, but they also interview professionals inside and outside of the industry and host Q+As where listeners submit questions.

The Gucci Podcast regularly features guests from famous chefs to environmentalists, and it also covers topics on artificial intelligence and sustainability in the fashion world.

Podcast Marketing
Image Source: Spotify.com

Brand Ambassadors

A social media brand ambassador doesn’t have to have a large following, but their following might be the precise audience a brand is wanting to target. This type of brand ambassador is typically gifted products in exchange for the promotion of the brand’s products through the ambassador’s social media account. Some brands offer commission or store credit schemes, which can attract a more proactive type of brand ambassador.

When choosing the right candidates for the job, this can be an effective and cost-efficient way to promote your brand and build its online awareness. The fashion brand Koa Paris is a brand that launched in 2020 and has worked with brand ambassadors to achieve its growth amidst COVID-19. 

The Metaverse

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that the online world offers the potential for so much more than we’ve been using it for.

In general, the metaverse can include virtual reality – described as a continuous virtual world that persists even when you are not playing – as well as augmented reality, which combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, the metaverse doesn’t need to be exclusively accessible through the CoR or the AR. Virtual worlds – such as Fortnite – are accessible using PCs, game consoles, and even mobile phones. These components all form a part of the “metaverse”.

Many companies are using the metaverse train to envision a new digital economy where users can create, buy, and sell things. The dream is for metaverses to be interoperable and allow you to transfer virtual items, such as clothes or cars, from one platform to another. While some may argue that new technologies, such as NFT digital assets, can be portable, this is not true, and moving things from one video game or virtual world to another is an extremely complex task that no company has been able to solve – yet.

When it comes to adding the metaverse to your retail visibility strategy, it’s all about finding ways to enhance the consumer experience with digital technology. Consider things like virtual Easter egg hunts or exclusive digital, live events.

5 Tips To Increase Brand Visibility

Asking yourself how to increase brand visibility online? Well, when it comes to increasing brand visibility, there are a few things you can do to up your game, here are 5 of the most effective options.

1. Give back to your community

Not all brand development happens online. You can build awareness by getting involved in your community in a meaningful way, such as sponsoring an event, making a corporate donation, or encouraging employees to get involved in a charity.

It can be as big as hosting a large event or it can be as simple as donating items to a small flea market for a local fundraiser.

2. Give a gift

Everyone loves a gift. Giving away something for free is a great way to get skeptical customers to try your product. It can also create buzz around your brand online. Whether it’s a free sample, a free trial, or a “freemium” business model, the flavor of what you’re offering helps attract people and build awareness for your brand.

3. Organize competitions on social networks

The point above is about creating brand awareness by making it easy for people to try your product or service. This point also includes freebies, but this is about using giveaways to draw attention to your brand on social media.

The “tag-a-friend” entry form of social media contests is a particularly effective way to attract new eyes to your social accounts and, in turn, increase your awareness. If you collaborate with another brand or content creator, you will increase the size of your new audience even more.

4. Working with social algorithms

Instagram may have postponed the Sponsored Content algorithm changes for now, but it seems that Sponsored Content is here to stay on the Meta platform.

Promoted content increases the chances of discovery on social platforms because your content is seen by users who are not already following you. This additional exposure is a great way to increase brand awareness.

5. Run an awareness campaign

Social marketers all know that brand awareness is a key business goal for most brands that use their tools, which is why they provide awareness-focused advertising.

What are the best targeting options for gaining brand awareness? This specific score may vary by platform, but will always be referred to as awareness, brand awareness, or reach.

In short, brand awareness campaigns are an easy way to ensure that your social media budget is invested in brand awareness and ultimately drive brand awareness in 2023.

The Verdict

Conceptualizing a digital marketing strategy for 2023 and beyond is ultimately going to require a creative and data-driven approach, leveraging the latest technology and software that we’re constantly gaining access to. With the help of your marketing team or by outsourcing to experts in the field of digital strategy, you can start implementing some of these techniques today, like writing a brand blog, and begin planning other projects that require longer preparation time, like starting a podcast. With consistency and time, these digital strategies and branding trends of 2023 will make your brand unforgettable.