This is a guest post by Arka
Custom packaging is a fantastic marketing tool that brands often overlook. In this crowded marketplace, as brands scream for attention, custom packaging can be an effective marketing tool that can help you cut through the noise and stand apart from your competition. Although your customers witness your packaging for only a few minutes, you can create a positive buying experience in just those few moments. In fact, custom packaging can make or break your brand. But, if done right, it can help increase your sales! Let’s dig deep to understand.
Get noticed with ‘out-of-the-box’ design
A custom-designed package helps your product get noticed. When you’re in the department store and confused between two brands, packaging can influence you to make a purchase decision. Packages that are attractive, stand out, and not just plain ‘vanilla’, tend to grab your attention and influence your purchase decision. While the quality of a product does matter, the packaging is the first point of contact between you and the customers. It is important to pay attention to your packaging as much as you do to your product. Your product package is a blank canvas where you can play around your brand story to create a purchase preference for your customers.
Custom packaging for brand recall
Remember that arrow and a smile on the custom shipping box waiting at your doorway from Amazon? Every time you see a custom shipping box with that smile arrow logo, you immediately know that it is from a particular brand – Amazon. Custom packaging helps with easy brand recognition; custom packaging creates a positive impact and boosts excitement in customers when done strategically. In short, custom packaging increases your sales when done consistently.
Educate your customers through custom packaging
Custom packaging is not just meant to attract customers by its look and feel, but it can be also used smartly to educate and connect with your customers. Packaging can talk about the product, your brand’s philosophy, how you care and impact the environment around you, and a much more! Your packaging can give customers a way to connect with your brand in a way that a product alone often cannot. This helps keep your brand in the top of consumers’ minds as they make a purchasing decision. Custom packaging can smartly connect you with customers, which can affect your bottom line in the long run.
Emotional selling through custom packaging
A psychology and marketing study established that impulsive buying has a lot to do with the attractiveness of the packaging, even when the buyer might not have initially had an intention to buy! During the study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (an MRI) was conducted to measure the neural response (activity in the brain) against the perception of product packages and impulsive buying tendencies. The study found that attractive and custom packaging produced a more intense impulse, establishing the fact that there is indeed a relationship between impulsive buying and custom packaging. Other brands use this idea to increase their sales and so can you!
Create an unmatched ‘unboxing’ experience
With tons of unboxing videos already posted to social media, it is no-brainer that many shoppers are glued to the unboxing experience in addition to just the product. When a brand creates a positive unboxing experience, it encourages the customer to share their experience on social media (read: free marketing for your brand!), plus you can convert a one-time customer into a loyal returning customer. Unboxing experiences complement a brand’s traditional marketing efforts and you shouldn’t miss this opportunity to stand out.
Customization is the key
We love customization — it shows thoughtfulness of person or party giving it to us. With customized packaging, you can add a personalized note, timely holiday greetings, and promotional offers that can be shared with customers’ friends and family — every bit of customization counts toward creating a joyful experience for customers!
