Do you want to improve your brand in one week? Did you know that a consistent and effective brand will help you be successful on Zazzle? There are many benefits for you if you create a brand for your business. Your Zazzle store will look more professional and reputable, instilling customers with confidence and a desire to buy. Customers will also be able to identify with your brand and understand what you offer for sale. Promotion on social media will have a greater impact, result in brand recognition, customer loyalty, and increased sales and referrals. Now, do you see why it is important for you to improve your brand? Your mission, if you choose to accept it is to use the steps in this article to complete my one-week challenge to improve your brand and start increasing your Zazzle sales.
Improve Your Brand on Zazzle in One Week
When I started writing this article, I wanted to take some screenshots to show you how to do branding properly. I quickly realized that even though I know what to do to create a good brand and be consistent across social media platforms, I was not doing a good job on my own Zazzle store! Yikes! This is what made me realize that it is a good idea to go back periodically (at least every 3 months) and just check that everything still aligns with my brand.
Then I got to thinking if I know what I’m doing and I’m messing up (branding is so important…so I was really upset at myself for not keeping up a professional appearance) I thought you might be in the same situation. That is why I am asking you to do a 1-week challenge with me, to improve your brand and be consistent on all your social media platforms. So that is what the focus of this article is all about. I am going to help you take action to improve your brand so that you can achieve more sales on Zazzle.
Your Mission
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to improve your branding by following all the steps outlined in this article in one week or less, so that your Zazzle store looks professional, you send a clear message to your customers about what you sell, that your brand is consistent and identifiable on social media and that your Zazzle sales increase because of your branding.
What is a Brand?
A brand, explained most simply, is what customers use to identify your business (or you if you are the face of your business). It can be a logo and/or a slogan, plus something more intangible, like a design style or even a person.
For the purpose of improving your Zazzle store, you will need your brand to give your store and business a professional look. Plus customers need to be able to identify with your brand so that they will trust your business and buy your products.
In fact, no brand is still a brand. No brand tells customers you don’t have a clear message or purpose for your store, so they are confused and instinctively don’t stay long to browse and definitely won’t buy.
Why a Brand is Important For Sales
Customers are swayed to buy with their emotions and how connected they feel to a brand, rather than for product quality and price.
So take the time to develop your brand and avoid losing customers with a lack of brand.
Don’t worry that you need the perfect brand right away. It will evolve over time, but you need to start and keep improving your brand.
Design a Professional Logo
A logo for your Zazzle store is a must. If you currently have a picture of your dog or cat for example as your store icon image then you do not have a proper brand logo. Create a logo using either text alone or with some graphic element that represents your store name and reflects the brand you want to convey to your customers.
The easiest and quickest way to create a store logo is to use the name of your store. I used my store name “Elke Clarke Designs” (see below). It should be easy to read even at a very small size because it will be next to all your products on Zazzle as a small icon. Your customer will begin to identify with your store name and logo (the icon) and can easily spot designs that belong to you.
Use colors and font styles that suit your store theme but make sure the text is easy to read even as a small thumbnail.
You do not need to spend money on this. Just use a graphics design program to make your own or look up a free or inexpensive online service that creates logos for you.
Have a Clear Message or Slogan
Can you tell me which company each of these slogans represents? “Just do it!” “Eat Fresh.” “I’m Lovin’ It” If you said Nike, Subway, and “MacDonalds, you would be correct.
A slogan is a must for your Zazzle business. You may not think you are a big enough business yet to have a slogan, but every company started out small. Consider that these now famous slogans might have actually helped these grow to the mega companies they are today.
Your slogan can also be more of a description to help customers understand what you offer. For example, my slogan is “Beautiful designs you can customize to be as unique as you are.”
Create your own slogan now.
Add Your Logo and Slogan to Your Zazzle Store
Now it’s time to put it all together.
Add your logo to your Zazzle store by hovering over the store icon area and clicking the camera icon that comes up. This will prompt you to insert the image of the store logo you created.
Also when logged into your Zazzle account, and in the “public storefront view”, hover over the text next to the store icon and a pencil will come up. Use this pencil function to edit the text.
First, type in the proper store name. If you are like me and have a different URL name than what you want to call your store, make sure your desired name and your logo match, to avoid additional confusion.
Second, hover over the line of text under the store name and add your slogan.
Below is an image of my store home page for you to see an example.
Brand Yourself or Your Design Company Too
Now you need to repeat this process for your Zazzle profile. Here is where you have the opportunity to showcase either you if you are the face of your business or the design company that you run. Whether you have one store or many, it is important to provide an identity to who is the design company behind the store(s).
If you want to remain anonymous, then you don’t need to reveal your identity. You can create a company name that will be your brand at the business level, not just at the Zazzle store level.
In my case, I used my photo because I am the brand behind all of my Zazzle stores. Then each of the stores has its own stand-alone brand. You can choose to do this too.
If you do not want your name associated with your brand, choose a company name and create a second text-based logo to add to the “profile icon” in your account. It’s easy. You can even just use your initials. For example, for me, I could create a name like “EC Design Studio” or “EC Design Company”.
The steps are similar to before for adding the information to your Zazzle profile, except you are in your “profile” section in your Zazzle account and go to “settings” and “advanced settings” to add your company logo and slogan.
Be Consistent with Your “About” Text on Zazzle
Besides your slogan, you have “About” sections to complete, both on your store(s) and in your profile section.
Use similar language as in your slogan to be consistent in how you describe your design style and what you can offer. This is how your branding message becomes more powerful, because of your consistency in the words you use and how describe what your store and business do.
You can see the examples of the text I have written in each of the images above. Now you can write and or revise your about sections to improve your brand.
Your Banner and Media Files Must Mirror Your Brand
To improve the professional look of your Zazzle store and create credibility for your brand, your banners on your store and Profile page, as well as your media files, must be consistent with your brand. (See the images above and below for examples.)
Customers feel good when things just naturally fit together and look cohesive. Use similar images of products too in all these areas, including the categories, so that customers can easily follow from banner or media to the category and click through to get what they saw and now want to buy.
If you do not have a graphics program to create a banner or media images, then I highly recommend you find free public domain images that allow you to create a consistent brand message, even if it is not as fancy as the banners I show here. To help you with staged product images, check out this article and tutorial.
The buying experience is already difficult enough for customers. Don’t let your lack of proper branding make it harder for them to buy. After all, you want to make sales. Right?
How Bad Branding Can Affect Your Zazzle Sales
When people ask for my help with their Zazzle store, one of the first things I notice is the lack of branding or inconsistent branding.
Would you buy from Subway if one store had a red and green logo instead of a yellow and green one? How frustrated who you be if you expected a fresh Subway sandwich, but instead they only served pizza? Will you be confused if “Subway’s” Pinterest account was called “Sub Sandwiches” without no mention of “Subway” and the logo was different? You get the picture.
The brand is a consistent logo, slogan, and identifiable service or product offering that the customer knows they will get when they choose a company. It’s what makes a business successful so you need to improve your brand too.
An Example of Bad Branding
I am making this example up, but I have come across many Zazzle store owners who can not understand why they don’t make sales. A large part of the reason is that they have not created a proper brand.
Here’s an example. There is a cat photo as the store icon, a banner of abstract artwork, and a profile photo of a vintage painting of a girl with the name of the store as “Sunbeams” and the profile name “BB”.
l, as a customer coming to this store, I am super confused about what the store and designer are all about. From the store logo, I think I will see cat products, the abstract art banner makes me think maybe it is an artist who has a pet cat. The vintage girl painting throws me for a loop because now I don’t know if the style is vintage art or abstract art.
The names confuse me as well, except I’m guessing it’s something to do with art. I am even more confused when I see that the products are for weddings and special occasions.
In this example, it is clear that the branding, or lack of it, creates confusion and inconsistency and there is no way for the customer to identify and link the products to the items used for the branding.
People’s brains don’t like confusing situations like this, so their brains will think things like…untrustworthy, poor quality, uncertainty and will probably NOT stay too long in your store to buy.
Keep Your Brand Consistent on Social Media
Now that you have improved your brand on Zazzle, it’s time to repeat the process on all your social media platforms.
The worst possible way to ruin your promotion efforts is to be inconsistent in your brand across your social media platforms and Zazzle. If you impressed a potential customer on Instagram with your amazing photos of food and travel, then if they come to your Zazzle store, which sells wedding invitations, they will be confused and frustrated.
Your content (your branded identifiable delivered product or service), your logo, and your slogan or message about what your business is all about must all be the same everywhere. This creates a continuity that makes customers happy and confident in what you have to offer as a business.
Now out is your turn to tackle all your social media sites. I was totally off with my Pinterest site and had to fix the slogan, and the image and even pin more items so that it had a similar look to what is in my Zazzle store. The fixed version is shown below.
Why Does Brand Consistency Create Sales?
Seeing the same logo, slogan, and store or account name on multiple platforms imprints you on a customer’s mind your brand. This repetition creates confidence in the customer and breaks down the mistrust usually associated with the selling-buying process.
Subconsciously it also creates a need to have an item. Or it causes the customer to remember the item once they need actually need it and want to buy it.
Even if you are not thirsty, if you see someone drinking a coke, all of a sudden you’ll want one. If you saw a great cell phone case design while browsing Pinterest, then 2 months later when you need one, you will remember that case. Now you will buy that one without the need to start from scratch researching other cases.
These are examples of selling without selling. Your brand is helping guide the customer through the buying process they need to go through to feel they want to buy from your business.
These are all subtle selling techniques that work really well if you are consistent with your branding and create customer confidence and a good browsing experience for them.
What have you learned?
- Branding is vital to improving your sales on Zazzle
- To brand your Zazzle store and business you need a logo, slogan, and clear message on what your business will do for the customer.
- Your branding must be consistent across all your social media sites and with your Zazzle store and business
- You can improve your brand by following the steps in this article
- Take the one-week challenge with me to get this important task done
What is the most valuable lesson you learned from this article?
I love reading your comments. Tell me how you did with the challenge.
Free Class – One Day Only – November 1, 2018
I am passionate about helping you improve your Zazzle sales so that you can make the money you want as I did. After mentoring thousands of people I have found that there are 5 common mistakes that people are making that are killing their Zazzle sales.
Do you want to know what they are and know how to fix them?
If you just said “Yes!”, then you will love my FREE CLASS I am holding LIVE on November 1, 2018.
The FREE CLASS is called:
“5 Zazzle Mistakes That Are Killing Your Sales and How To Fix Them”
Click this link to reserve your spot before the spots fill up.
See you on November 1, 2018.
About the Author
Elke Clarke is a mentor, teacher, and online entrepreneur. The 5 Step Profit Plan VIP Mentoring Program™ is Elke’s signature program that shows you the exact steps she takes to generate millions in sales on Zazzle every year. She is the author of the upcoming book “Creative Online Millionaire”.
