the right product packaging

The Ultimate Guide To The Right Product Packaging

A well thought out packing tape can do many things for your product and shore up your bottom-line. What is inside is indeed important, but amazingly, good packaging can do wonders for your product. Good packaging has the ability to elevate a brand, justify a higher price and distinguish your product from the competition, but that is only part of your benefits. In order to understand the significance of packaging, you need to also understand how packaging communicates. The fundamental elements of packaging include design, shape, colours, materials and text. Each element has a specific purpose in communicating something about the brand by itself and relative to the whole package. Consider these:-

  • Your values and brand voice
  • Your target audience
  • What the product delivers

Inherently, the packaging is also expected to communicate things like market value and the benefits that the consumer can get from the product.

Packing tape is also widely employed for securing the packages for movement from one place to the other. When you have a large number of packages to move every day, a packing tape dispenser comes in handy.

Product packaging is your marketing tool

When you think of product packaging as a marketing tool, it is easier to understand the importance of packaging for your business. Your packaging design will help customers distinguish your product from the competition and help you in building brand recognition with time.  When the packaging is thoughtful, it also helps to influence consumer behaviour and enhance your revenues. The ultimate objective of good packaging is to sell your brand.

Let us now examine the other attributes of your packaging:

1.   Choosing the packing material

When it comes to choosing packing material, you have a wide range of materials to pick from. Your option between the plastic or paper route will be guided by the style of the brand and the product itself. However, you should also know that consumers tend to have a preference for paper packaging and a consumer-oriented packaging always works best for you.

2.   How do you transport your products

A successful packaging plan should be functional and easy to transport. If your eye-popping packing design loses all its shape and sheen before it reaches the retail shelves and the customer, obviously, your efforts do not yield the desired results.

3.   Budget

Similar to most other marketing strategies, the budget will significantly impact your packaging decision making. But, when you draw up a packaging budget, you should take into account not just the cost of packaging material but also the creative work needed to make a packaging that sells.

black analog watch in black box

4.   Customer-centric packaging

The world is becoming more and more customer-centric and you need to follow the crowd to emerge as a winner. From the choice of packaging material to the colours, every aspect needs to be optimized in a way that they are appealing to your customers. Thankfully, in the digital age, you can get all the information on the potential reaction from your customers on most aspects of your packaging with a few hours of focused research.

5.   Consider the product

Irrespective of the most attractive professionally designed packing, if the packing cannot protect the content, all the money that you have spent creating that stunning packing goes down the drain.  Consider a product like biscuits and you instantly realize that the product needs multilayer packing to keep it crisp till it is on the hands of the end consumer.  Therefore, while the external appeal is still important, the internal packing must be temperature sensitive, moisture-proof and protected from movement inside the pack. Consider the special attributes that your products demand in terms of packing.

6.   Learning from competition

You can learn a lot from competing industries in terms of the consumer packs, the type of packing tape used and more.  Packing tape dispenser will, however, be determined by the kind of packing tape that you choose. But, you should take care not to copy the competitor’s design or even the design elements to stay safe from unwanted litigation. When you study competition for the purpose of packaging, consider your competition as well as industries similar to yours and the environment in which they are selling.

7.   Packaging requirements

Most governments lay down certain stipulations with regard to consumer packs and there is some essential information to be carried on the packs. Understand these and incorporate them into your packaging design so that it does not appear like an afterthought.

square gold-colored analog watch on brown wooden board

8.   Understand customer personas

Most marketing consultants can help you study customer personas so that you can incorporate all the aspects that are important to your customers into your packaging design. After all, the end-user of your packaging is your customer and therefore it is essential that every aspect of the packaging is appealing to him/her.

9.   Feedback and results

At times, it can be challenging to get things right in the first attempt. Take a few months to understand what is right and what is not with your packaging.  Perhaps you may need the services of experts to get to the bottom of this. However, it is important that you do not keep changing the packaging at frequent intervals since that can potentially send the wrong signals to the consumer.

10. Finding the right packaging experts

One way you can significantly steer clear of the pains from trials and tribulations is finding packaging experts in your product category and drawing from their experience and expertise. Undoubtedly, expertise and experience come at a cost but that is an investment that you are making into your own future success.

Conclusion

The digital world offers plenty of relevant information for industry and business. Set aside some quality time and scour through all relevant pages to come up with the best solutions for your product packing.