Hey, it’s Bob. And in today’s episode of Real Retail TV, we’re going to explore why your branding is more important than ever and why you can’t afford to have slipshod branding.
So branding is this idea of having a strong, positive, consistent perception of your store. And that entails many, many different things, colors, having consistent colors that represent who you are. Copy. The words that you write, that express who you are, your design.
All of that sort of ties into this idea, Kayla’s term your brand vibe. Who are you? And as we had this conversation, it just really sort of came back around to this idea. That we are now living in an omni experiential world.
This idea that before the pandemic, people came into your store. Your business was really store centric, but the pandemic has changed everything and now people get to experience your brand in many ways other than your store. Omni is the Latin word for many. Now it is omni experiential.
They are experiencing your brand on your website. And the question I wanna ask you, does it look and feel like you, like your store? Is your brand represent your vibe?
Does your social media represent your brand? Is it consistent with your website.
Is your if you do live social selling? Does your set? Does the vibe on the set? Does the vibe in the show is it consistent with your vibe, with your website, with your social media. So all of these things need to be the same. They need to have the same look, the same feel, the same vibe.
Because you see, one of the great opportunities that you have right now as a small to midsize independent brick and mortar retailer is you have the opportunity to transcend your local market. To expand into a national even international market.
So before COVID, you were sort of limited by the the size of your trade area. You might have had some e commerce capabilities. You might have done a little bit of, social selling. You might have had a social media presence, but it was all about driving people into the store. Now with omni experiential, people all over the world have the opportunity to find you, to relate to you. To buy from you. I’ll share a story that I’ve shared several times before, but it bears repeating.
Susan Glen Wallace owns a small knitting store in Bay City, Michigan.
Before the pandemic, her business was really about her local customers.
Bay City isn’t a big town.
So her business was really limited by her marketplace.
When the pandemic came, she started doing Facebook lives and selling on Facebook lives. And Susan is Gregarius.
She has a good presence, She’s an expert knitter and all of a sudden she started to sell all over the country. She could sell all over the world But what she shared was that it’s just easier for her to keep it here in the US.
But the moral of the story is one of her best customers is a customer in Bozeman Montana.
And this woman in Bozeman Montana thinks of Susan Glen Wallace and a piece of you as her local knitting store.
This is the power of omni experiential.
But in order to harness the power, of omni experiential, you have to have your branding stuff together. It cannot be slip shod. It cannot be sloppy. It cannot be a little of this, a little of that.
You cannot have your next door neighbors uncle’s nephew do all of your branding. It needs to be tight. It needs to be good. It needs to be professional.
It needs to be intentional.