Whether you think about it or not, most successful brands are not selling a product or service, they’re selling a lifestyle and image. Toms of Maine isn’t selling toiletries, they’re selling a green, vegan, eco-friendly image. Hot Topic isn’t selling clothing and accessories, they’re selling a punky alternative lifestyle. For your brand to attract consumers it’s important to be conscious of the lifestyle you want to appeal to.

Try this, sit down with a pencil and paper and imagine your brand is a person. Write down how he or she would dress, what he or she would look like, places he or she would hang out. It’s important to have a very clear picture in your own head of who your brand is before you can successfully cultivate your brand’s image.

At my indie t-shirt retail biz Ex-Boyfriend, we’re a guy in our 20s, we like pop art and comics, we’re sarcastic, a little edgy, fun, socially conscious, urban. We infuse this character into every aspect of our brand and it helps separate us from other brands. Here are a few places you can demonstrate your brand’s personality to help attract your niche audience.

1. Photos
Use product photos that help customers relate to your products. If you sell clothing, make sure your models reflect the image of the person who’d wear that clothing. If you sell home decor items make sure your products are staged in a house that looks like your customers’ homes.

I love the above product photo by PaperPaper because not only is it just a good photo (clear, sharp, well-lit), it’s staged to really draw a specific kind of customer. The product is staged in a setting that’s contemporary with clean lines. You know the room this photo came from isn’t shabby chic or baroque or kitschy. It’s a very specific look that will appeal to a very specific kind of customer.

2. Copy
Use all the copy throughout your website to establish your brand’s voice. On my indie retail site we’re very casual in tone, we’re sarcastic, jokey, self-deprecating, and throw in some slang. It fits with our overall brand aesthetic and helps establish who we are.

Whether your brand is a southern belle or a hip hop head or a busy mom of 3 you have to make sure your tone in your writing brings that across. Talk/write the way your customers talk. It unconsciously helps build the appeal of your brand to your audience.

3. Design Elements
A good looking web design and marketing collateral is crucial. Everything from your logo to your marketing postcards should help establish your brand’s image. Think about your color choice, your fonts, your product packaging, your graphic elements. Do they match with the image you’re trying to project?

Have a look at the Toms of Maine. website for a good example. The earthy green background with the subtle woodgrain texture, the slim unassuming font choice that whispers “small carbon footprint”, the hand written text elements that suggest naturalness, the stock photos of clean wholesome people who don’t wear make up or hairspray, the images of gardening. There’s so much green and earth coming from the site that even if you didn’t speak English you’d immediately know what this company is about. This is branding done well.

So who is your brand and what can you change to make this more apparent to consumers?

BONUS EXERCISE: Ask some friends to describe your brand as a person. See what adjectives come to them. Are these the descriptors you had in mind for your brand?

There are loads of how-tos out there on getting press from blogs. Getting publicity is an invaluable way to grow your brand, so why do so many small business owners insist on sure-to-fail tactics? Although many of these seem like no brainers, I see these mistakes frequently in my online travels. So here are a few things NOT to do when trying to get press for your brand.

1. Give Attitude
When you’re trying to get press for your brand, you’re basically asking someone to do you a favor. Press is usually free. Occasionally you may get asked for a sample (my $.02 on that topic here), but in general, asking for press tends to cost nothing. This is why it’s super-important not to be a jerk. Don’t complain if the blogger has a specific format they want inquiries in. Don’t whine if they ask you for high resolution product photos or a press kit. If you’re not prepared to cater to demands from bloggers and magazine editors, don’t ask for press in the first place. The worst thing you can do is give these people a hard time or send them a nasty correspondence.

2. Nag nag nag
It’s totally fine to keep press contacts up to date on new product launches and special events. It’s reasonable to follow up if you’ve sent a sample to someone. What you don’t want to do is be a pest. Hassling an editor or blogger repeatedly with the same (or a similar) pitch, when they’ve given no indication that they’re interested is nagging. Pitching the same contact repeatedly in a short period of time is nagging.

What should you do? Query your contacts no more than once a month and never send them the same or a similar pitch. If you don’t have anything newsworthy to share, don’t bother. Save that contact for the future when you actually have news for them.

The pitch on the left re-frames an already pitched product as one that is timely and relevant. The pitch on the right reiterates information already sent to the press contact that didn’t receive a response the first time it was tried.

3. Link the press to an inadequate website
If you want a blogger or magazine editor to give you some press, you need to provide them with access to quality product photos, quality product descriptions and a good looking website. If your product photos are murky and gray and look like they were shot on your basement’s stained carpeting, fix that before you start asking for press.

If your website looks like it stepped out of Geocities in 1998 fix it. Don’t ask for press until you’ve got a pristine, well-designed, attractive site. While you’re at it, make sure your product information is as detailed as possible. Publishers don’t want to send their readers to a site that’s hard to use, doesn’t provide a sizing chart, doesn’t really have any return or contact information.

Don’t even think about asking fore press from a single media outlet until you’ve addressed all of these issues.

4. Ignore press contacts
Say you’ve got an interested blogger or journalist who wants to give you some press. Make it your number one priority to pay attention to her. If she needs a product sample by Tuesday, Fedex it. If she needs you on the phone at 2 for an interview, make it happen.

All the hard work you’ve put into generating press is useless if you can’t follow through. Make sure you’re on top of all inquiries you receive from publishers. Make yourself easily accessible and easy to work with. Editors and bloggers are pressed for time and often up against deadlines. The easier you can make life for them, the more interested they’re going to be in working with you.

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• Improve Your Website’s Load Time – Easy to follow suggestions for making your website load faster. A slow loading site is an easy way to lose a visitor’s interest so make sure you’re taking all necessary steps to speed things up.
• 21 Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rate – Simple to implement changes you can make to get more sales.
• How to Cope With Marketing Burn Out – tips on avoiding marketing burn out that are specifically geared to artists.

It’s not always easy to get loads of sites linking to your site, especially if you’re a new kid on the block. Getting links is pretty important however, since it not only helps customers find you, it also helps search engines find you. So how can you get sites pointing to your own? Here are a few easy ways to get things started.

1. Article Websites
Posting articles to sites like DivineCaroline.com and ezinearticles.com is a great way to start getting some links. These sites are established authorities with search engines and, even better, a lot of website publishers turn to those sources for content. This means your site may end up with even more links if your article gets picked up.

2. Sweepstakes Websites
If you’re running any sort of contest it makes sense to promote on contest websites like online-sweepstakes.com or prizey.com. Not only will this bring more people to enter your content, it will also get you some links.

3. Directories
Getting your site added to directories like indiecollective.net is another great way to start getting some link love. An even better idea is to get your site listed on some niche directories. There are link directories for just about every interest from airplanes to veganism. My retail website gets quite a bit of traffic from being listed on directories about kawaii and cats.  Make a list of all the niche interests that may apply to your website and then find appropriate directories where you can submit links.

All of the suggestions above are pretty much guaranteed links. If you submit your site it’s almost a given that you’ll get a link back. This is a wonderful way to get started but not the only way to build links. Eventually you’ll want to focus on other strategies like getting fans to tweet about you on Twitter and getting blogs to write editorials about you. We’ll touch on some of those strategies in future posts but for now, these are a great way to begin the process.

I am pretty angry with Home Depot right now.  They’re a huge corporation and won’t really know or care that a small time indie biz blogger is calling them out. Frankly my aim isn’t to make them care, my aim is to tell you what they did wrong so you don’t make the same mistake.

Lesson 1: Make Sure You Handle Packages with Care
Last month I ordered a space heater from Home Depot and it arrived broken. The package wasn’t marked fragile or packaged especially well. It’s not surprising it was broken. As a result I’m not a customer enjoying my purchase. I’m a customer being given errands. Fill out this form, drop this thing off at UPS, wait for a refund. Thanks a lot, Home Depot.

Lesson 2:  Pay Attention When You Get Returns
Home Depot got our return and charged us for the return shipping! We called and sat on hold for a very long time, until finally we got a human on the phone. We explained that we didn’t feel we should have to pay to return a broken item. They agreed but…

Lesson 3: Make Life Easier on Your Customers
The customer service person informed me that since the charge was in some sort of limbo (charged but not actually having gone through) we’d have to call back again in a week to ask them to refund the shipping charges! Why can’t they just remember to do it themselves? Make a note or something. At this point I’ve been sent a broken heater, forced to go out of my way to mail it back, been mistakenly charged more money for this inconvenience, forced to call and sit on hold to complain about it and now I’m being asked to call and sit on hold AGAIN!

This is a pretty big customer service fail. I probably won’t order from Home Depot again as a result. This isn’t to say I expect retailers to be perfect. Mistakes happen. It’s how they’re handled that can help or hurt your business.

Here are a few examples of ways we’ve fixed oops moments that resulted in satisfied customers in my online retail business:

1. We sent them the wrong item
Every once in a while there’s a mix up in our shipping department. Some times we do send the wrong thing. When this happens I tell the customer they can either a. return the item on our dime or b. keep it and give it to a friend. Customer is left with two options and he or she can decide how they want to handle it.

2. We are out of stock
Sometimes we run out of inventory at the same time that an order comes in for the out of stock item. We do eventually get the item back, but occasionally it’s outside our usual window for shipping a product. When this happens we alert the customer and offer to cancel their order or ship the item for free when it does arrive in stock. We also offer a coupon code for the customer’s next order, in the hopes that they will give us another try.

3. The post office screwed up
This isn’t so much us screwing up, but it happens. Some times the post office takes longer than it should to deliver a parcel. Occasionally parcels get lost.  In these situations we give the customer their shipping fee back and a coupon code for their next purchase. If a package gets lost, we replace it on our dime.

Does doing the right thing for customers cost money? Yes. Does it take time? Definitely. On the plus side, most customers are pretty happy with us and we get a lot of repeat business and word of mouth referrals. So in the end doing the right thing helps us grow as a business.

How have you fixed your oops customer service moments?   Are there things you can change in your return or shipping practices to provide better service?

In my opinion, some of the trickiest things to sell online are edibles and bath/body products. You’re trying to sell something that appeals to your customers’ sense of touch, smell and taste in a medium that won’t allow them to taste, smell or touch. What is a savvy web business person to do to get around this challenge?

1. Samples
Samples are by far and away the best way to get people hooked on an edible or scented product you sell online. Sell sample sized versions of your products and sell sample packs so people can try more than one thing.  If you can allow your customers to build their own sample pack, even better.

Trade samples of your products with other businesses and ask them to include your samples in their mail orders so their customers can discover your wares.

Include a coupon with each sample purchase, so if customers like what they sampled, they have even more incentive to come buy a full sized product.

Include samples of your products with orders for full sized products. Give customers something new from your product line to try, or give them a sample sized product to share with friends.

2. Tasty-monials
If your cookies really are out of this world or your perfume will turn the average Jane into a man magnet, let your customers tell the world. Inviting customers to leave testimonials for new customers to read is a great way to drum up business.

Customers trust objective 3rd party reviews so get your existing satisfied customers to give them.

3. Give them Cues
Make sure your product descriptions and product photography do your product justice. Take the shop Lolli Luscious for example. The product photos aren’t just bright, sharp, clear and well lit, they’re staged with props that help the customer imagine how the products smell and feel. The product copy is evocative as well. These details help the customer imagine using a scented and tactile item that they can’t smell or touch before ordering.

4. Return Policy
If all else fails, you have to stand behind your product. A generous return policy will help put your customers at ease. Offer to take back an item even if it’s been opened and tried, and the customer was unhappy with the product. While this might result in a few more returns, the boost in sales should far outweigh the cost of providing customer confidence.