Building a jewellery brand
Launching a strong brand is easier said than done and requires a little bit of planning, soul searching and research. Jeweller, Karen Young, outlines the four key elements you need to consider when developing your jewellery brand.
A good way of approaching the development of your brand is to come from the point of view that everything is connected, and you need to work on the entire brand experience if you want to build a brand that grows your business.
Your branding is a visual indicator of what your company offers as a whole, and goes beyond just your jewellery. It is just as much about your design process and materials used, customer service, perceived value, visual identity, and market differentiation as it is about the necklaces, bracelets, and earrings that you sell.
Your branding can be broken down into 4 areas that you can work on to develop your jewellery branding ‘package’:
- Your Story
- Your Visual Identity
- Customer Perception, and
- Your Market Differentiation.
The four key elements to build a powerful jewellery brand
1. Your Story
Your story is almost as important as the jewellery itself in terms of creating a connection with customers. In the handmade marketplace, you and your story is what encourages customers to buy. By making that connection, they’ll be more likely to remember your work and return.
Your customers and potential customers are interested in how you craft your pieces and how you transform raw materials into something creative and unique. They want to know about you, your skills, the tools you use, the reason you started on your creative journey and ultimately why you do what you do. There is an emotional connection and when they buy a piece of your jewellery they purchase a little bit of the ‘magic’ that is you and your creations.
A great way of starting to build the customer connection is by writing an artist statement. Your artist statement will summarise your story, what your values are, what drives you, and why you make jewellery. You can then weave the essence your of artist statement into your branding including your tag line, your website and your about page, your business cards and other printed marketing materials, social media and your face to face sales pitch.
2. Your Visual Identity
A strong visual identity goes far beyond a snazzy logo (which is a great start by the way!). You need to really understand your customers and what their motivations and needs are in order to start building a powerful visual identify. It demonstrates that you are able to relate to your customers lives and their style on a personal level. You will do this through many elements such as colour, fonts, vectors, your tag line, and by keeping these consistent across every touchpoint with your customer. Each of these things should ‘speak’ to your target customer and create an emotional connection over time.
Your photography is another critical aspect of your visual identity – you want to really show off the detail of your beautifully handcrafted pieces. If you don’t have clear photos that make your customer believe they are seeing the piece in person, then no amount of social media, Facebook ads or email promotion will sell your jewellery.
Also think about the style of photography that best represents your brand. Do you want to create a vintage feel to your photographs or does a simple, modern and sharp photographic style represent your brand best? You will want to keep your signature photography ‘style’ consistent across your website, social media and printed materials.
An example of a lifestyle photograph incorporating jewellery
A key area where your visual identity really comes together is through your printed materials such as tags, jewellery boxes, business cards, other inserts for your packages and even your jewellery displays at craft fairs and events. Your branding should be consistent across every touchpoint with the customer both virtually and in person.
By creating a strong visual identify you effectively create a visual language that you use to present and promote your jewellery brand to the world that will create a connection and will be remembered.
3. Customer Perception
What do you want your customers to think of you, feel about you and remember about you?
Remember no one needs jewellery! And so perception of you and how your brand makes them feel is essential in motivating people to buy. Those thoughts and feelings are directly influenced by the way you communicate your business message, and how you treat prospects and customers.
You can create a beautiful logo and sophisticated marketing materials, but if your customer service is inconsistent and below parr, your brand will not have the best reputation it could do, and will put people off buying.
If customers perceive your jewellery to indicate a certain lifestyle, emotion or ideal, then they will be willing to pay for a little piece of it. A diamond for example is essentially a lump of carbon! But through clever marketing people see them as a luxury item that will last forever and will pay a lot of money for it. So it is worth spending a little bit of time brainstorming how you want your customers to ‘feel’ about you and your jewellery as this will underpin all of your branding decisions including your photography and product descriptions.
4. Your Market Differentiation
Why should people buy from you and not another designer?
What makes you and your brand different from the competition? Is your finish better? Do you make particular use of a technique or material? Do you package your jewellery more beautifully that the competition? Do you offer an extra personal touch with your customer service? It is these small details that create differentiation between you and the next designer so really try and drill down into quite a low level about these little details so that you can succinctly articulate the end-to-end customer experience to your customers and how you will meet their needs better than anyone else. Buying jewellery is a considered purchase for most people and an experience, so it is your job to make sure it is a good one, as this is what encourages people not only to buy but to come back again and again.
Building a strong and memorable brand does take time and patience, but by considering these four elements of your brand from the outset you can start creating emotional connections with your customers that mean you will be seen and remembered in a busy marketplace.
What are your top tips when it comes to branding your business – tell us in the comments below!
…
Special Business Week offers
Our founder, Jessica Rose is hosting a FREE webinar masterclass on 26th January at 6.30pm on Boosting your Online Sales. Grab your spot on the webinar here.
…
And don’t forget our special offers on business courses for this week only we are offering 25% off business day classes held here at the School using the code 23011701. This code can only be used over the phone so please call on 020 3176 0546 to book your place. This discount is only available on bookings made during Jewellery Business Week 21-27 January 2016 inclusive.
Click here for more details of all the business courses included in this offer.
…
And our New 8-week Online Jewellery Business Bootcamp will be starting on 27th January so if you would like more help with your jewellery business we would love you to join us!
Author: Karen Young
