Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27 in Community Help Boards in Community

Last Post Oct 27, 2006 3:05 PM by: deirdre@ebay.com

Replies: 75

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Sep 28, 2006 9:23 PM

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Topic: Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand

Host: planthabit and jill.of.all.trades
Date: Friday 10/27
Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm PT
Location: Workshop Board

Description: Please join Janelle Elms, eBay University instructor, author,and Silver PowerSeller and Phil Dunn, marketing and advertising writer, for the third installment of The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing workshop series. This session will help you design listings that sell faster and make you more money. We'll cover critical presentation and visual techniques, including layout, design, buyer psychology, photography and more.

Cheers,

Deirdre
eBay Community Development

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Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:24 PM

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Hello everyone and welcome to the third installment of The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing workshop series. In this presentation, we'll help you design listings that sell faster and make you more money. We'll cover critical presentation and visual techniques, including layout, design, buyer psychology, photography and more. This second presentation and Q&A session is titled “Critical Visual and Presentation Techniques.”

My name is Phil Dunn, marketing and advertising writer for Fortune 500 companies. I’m here with Janelle Elms, eBay University instructor and co-author of our book, “The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing.”

We’re not going to go over general eBay mechanics here. Instead, our aim is to assist you in going beyond the basic nuts and bolts of eBay and delve into some more advanced marketing approaches.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:25 PM

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As we all know from our personal lives, critical judgments are made based on appearance. Imagine you’re house hunting and your real estate agent shows up in sweatpants and a baseball cap. Would you trust this person’s competence
to handle this complex purchasing process?

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:26 PM

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The same holds true for your eBay business. Customers judge your dedication to your business by the appearance of your eBay Store and listings as well as the off-screen materials such as your business cards and packaging. You want every aspect of your business to present a consistent visual image that expresses your business personality and reinforces your brand. These efforts lend credibility and professionalism to your eBay business that pay off in increased sales and profits.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:26 PM

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You can make the most of your presentation and business identity by following three basic strategies:

• Build your brand image by creating a visual or graphic identity.

• Use your brand image along with solid Web design principles in your item listings and eBay Store.

• Strengthen your brand image beyond the screen with printed materials and packaging that reflect your business identity.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:26 PM

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Let's start by addressing an important concept here – graphic identity.

Most people think of business logos when they think of graphic identity. Designing a great logo is a major step in the process, but creating a graphic identity encompasses much more. It’s about developing a complete system of graphical elements that represent your business. It’s also about making conscientious decisions regarding all visual aspects of your business. It’s determining a style, a look and feel for your business, and injecting that theme, with consistency, at any and every point at which you interface with customers. These decisions about your visual style help you create a harmonious visual message you can use in your eBay listings, eBay Store, printed materials, and beyond.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:26 PM

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The first step in creating a graphic identity for your business is easy: choose a typeface or font that suits your business personality. Typography is an incredible communication tool that conveys style and emotion well beyond the meaning of the words. The font can work wonders in conveying your brand image. Once you’ve chosen an appropriate typeface, you can and should use your font of choice in everything from your logo and some aspects of your Web design to your invoices, stationery, and any other communication with your customers.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:26 PM

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Think about the visual associations that go along with your specialty or niche. If you sell women’s beauty products, your visual style might reflect grace and femininity. If you sell scrapbooking materials, you might consider a style that is homespun or crafty. If you specialize in vintage art deco barware, a swanky retro look would be a great fit for your business. High-tech businesses obviously benefit from a streamlined, modern, or even futuristic appearance. Take a few moments with a pen and paper and brainstorm the sort of visual associations that fit your business.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:27 PM

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Be sure to experiment with the font you choose. You’ll use this font not just in creating your logo, but also in the printed correspondence you send to your customers. Type up and print out some sample documents to see if the font conveys the same feeling on paper as it does on your monitor. You also want to be sure that your text remains easy to read while still conveying the desired message about your brand. Creative, expressive fonts are really fun to use, but you need to be sure that your customers can decipher the content of your message; so whatever font you choose, make sure it’s easily readable. Even if a font looks cool, if it’s difficult to decipher, it will have an undesirable effect on your customers.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:27 PM

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With SMP, functions such as feedback and customer e-mails that once were handled individually can now be handled dozens at a time. A few simple checks of boxes and clicks of a button and you’re on your way. You can even set preferences to automatically send customers e-mail, notifying them of winning bids, payments received, or items shipped.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:27 PM

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Let's talk about color.

Color can be a fun, easy, and effective way to build your eBay graphic identity. Large retailers and corporations use the power of color to convey brand messages. Think of Tiffany’s robin’s egg blue gift boxes and shopping bags, or the UPS brown logo, brown packaging, brown vans, and brown uniforms.

Even the UPS slogan “What can Brown do for you?” incorporates the colorful brand message. Have you ever made the mistake of going shopping at Target wearing khaki pants and a red t-shirt? The other customers flog you with questions and requests for price checks because they’ve come to associate that color combination with Target and its employees.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:27 PM

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Different colors are associated with distinct emotional connections. Use them to cultivate your eBay brand. Color associations include, but certainly aren’t limited to, the following:

• Green Calming, environmentally friendly (Simple Green cleaning products)
• Red Intense, exciting (Red Envelope gifts, Red Hot Chili Peppers band)
• Blue Businesslike, contemplative (IBM “Big Blue,” Miles Davis’s album “Kind of Blue”)
• Purple Mysterious, regal (musician Prince, the L.A. Lakers)
• Pink Femininity, innocence (Victoria’s Secret, Johnson’s Baby Lotion)
• Yellow Joyful, cheerful (Curious George books, rubber duckies)
• Orange Energetic, industrial (the Home Depot logo, neon signs)

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:28 PM

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Ask yourself, “If my business were a color, what color would it be?” Yes, it does sound a little new agey, but by listing colors, you can make a color association that clicks with you and might make sense to your customers.

If you take the time to discover a color, or a scheme of complementary colors, that works for your business and its identity, you’ll be able to incorporate this color into many aspects of your eBay business. It’s a great way to add continuity to the design of your logo, the Web design of your eBay listings and store, printed items, packaging considerations, and more.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:28 PM

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Next topic... Logos..

A great way to determine the style of your logo is to search and compile a reference file of other logos that you find appealing. You can find examples of existing logos that you see every day, from the food packaging in your pantry, to advertisements, letterhead, and packages you receive in the mail.

The Web offers another great resource. Google the word logo, and click the Images button on the menu bar to perform an image search. In less than a second, you see hundreds of logo images to peruse for inspiration.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Oct 26, 2006 3:28 PM

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Now consider any visual associations or images that you can link to your business identity. These associations could either come from the products you sell, from your business name, or from a generalized impression of your eBay brand.

Co-author of "The 7 Essential Steps to Successful eBay Marketing" (McGraw-Hill)

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Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27

Member Workshop: Putting a Face on Your eBay Brand - Oct 27