When’s the last time you updated your product packaging design? Is it time for a rebranding? No matter the industry you’re in or the size of your company, carefully planned branding is essential for success. Whether you have a mix of in-store and online sales or lean exclusively on one end of the spectrum, one thing is for certain: your product packaging should always be on-brand. But what does on-brand even mean?
Technically speaking, on-brand is defined as “conforming to the image or identity that a particular company seeks to associate with its products or services.” In basic terms, that means consistency. Using a consistent image, colors, and message throughout the customer’s experience with your product. In fact, brand recognition can increase 80% with a consistent color palette for your logo, content, and promotional materials.
Imagine if your business had 10 different logos, 5 slogans, 3 wildly inconsistent color palettes, and multiple different packaging materials spread across your product lines. Customers would be confused about your message and if your products were even connected. Your company’s brand recognition would suffer and so would your product sales.
Consumers want to buy products from a brand that is reliable, consistent, and that they can trust. Maintaining on-brand packaging and labels will help you do just that! In this article, we uncover how to keep your product packaging on brand through premium, custom labels and smart package design. Ready to set your company apart from the competition and improve brand recognition? Let’s get started!
Keeping Your Product Packaging On-Brand
High Value Custom Packaging
Wooing your customers with extravagant packaging isn’t enough these days. You need to blow them away with memorable packaging that tells your brand story and feels personal. The best way to accomplish this is through custom packaging. Your product, communications, and packaging must align with one brand story.
What’s your mission? What are your company values? Marketing is an important way to communicate these messages with your customers. The customer wants transparency, and they shouldn’t feel that your product doesn’t live up to your company’s claims. Eliminate any room for product/brand dissonance. Post-purchase dissonance refers to the customer’s level of dissatisfaction after buying a product or service.
This makes your product marketing a key touchpoint for establishing a connection with your customer and an important extension of your brand experience. Thankfully, investing in consistent branding, premium labels, and a high quality packaging experience is the key to achieving this and so much more!
Read on to find out how your business can maintain a consistent brand identity and experience across all marketing, sales, and distribution channels…
Why Does Package Branding Matter?
Branding and packaging go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. Whether you sell goods online or on store shelves, having quality product packaging is necessary for customers to easily recognize your products and also conveys value. Neglecting brand packaging and strategic product marketing efforts will cost your business sales, customers, and reputation. A critical part of building a solid brand is building, trust, loyalty, and retention.
Here are three solid reasons to pay attention to packaging:
1. It makes your product stand out.
Custom-branded packaging is exclusive to your brand. At a retailer, it makes your products more identifiable among other brands on the shelf – helping them stand out and break the clutter. With online shopping, product packaging also makes a tremendous difference as new customers are eager for an exciting, personal unboxing experience. 73% of consumers prefer brands that personalize their shopping experience. Don’t forget, your website is an important aspect of branding. If someone finds your ecommerce shop unattractive, they’ll go somewhere else.
Brand visibility is 3.5 times higher for consistently presented brands than those without a consistent brand presentation. And 90% of consumers expect to have a similar branded experience across your marketing channels.
2. It becomes memorable.
As they open the packaging, your customers should be delighted with what you’ve offered them. Fun and unique product packaging provide value to the customers, often enhancing the product experience. 39% of customers share product packaging on social media that they found unique and creative. This user-generated content helps you build authenticity as people are more likely to trust fellow brand users than sponsored content.
You can also encourage buyers to post their unboxing videos online. Unboxing videos are super popular on YouTube and the influencers who create them often have millions of subscribers. Remember: the custom experience begins from the moment they receive your product. Make the unboxing process memorable and it will stick with your customers. Apple is the perfect example of a brand that gets memorable product packaging right. Many people don’t even throw their Apple tech boxes away after opening them because they believe the product packaging experience was too valuable to be thrown away.
3. It gets personal.
Custom packaging makes it easy to personalize product experiences. You can add hand-written personalized notes, free samples of upcoming products, or an exclusive coupon code or offer customers can redeem on their next purchase. It makes the product even more personal for the customer, offering them a high value experience that makes them feel seen and separates you from the competitors in your market.
Keeping Your Product Packaging On-Brand and Consistent Marketing
Now that we know the why behind staying on brand across your different products, let’s discuss the how. Here are a few tips for keeping a consistent packaging strategy:
Know your target market
Knowing who you serve is the key to developing the right product and packaging. Find out as much as possible about your customers and potential customers. Learn how they shop, where they shop, and why they shop there. Don’t stop there! Learn about your target audience’s demographics and adjust your packaging accordingly. What products do they use and why? What matters to them? Where are their pain points, and how can your product become a part of their lifestyle? These insights will help you build the best packaging that enhances the product experience for your customer.
Build your brand identity
Great brands tell a captivating story, and all facets of their brand – product, packaging, ads, stores – tell the same narrative. In short, everything will echo the brand identity and image. Have a story that connects with customers and offers them the value they want. Brand guidelines should contain:
- Brand mission
- Logo design and any variations
- Fonts and typography
- Color palette
- Imagery styles
- Tone of voice
Reinforce your brand identity with custom product packaging
Custom brand packaging can help you strengthen your brand image and convey your brand story to people. It is an extension of your product and should be given equal importance and thought. You can experiment with multiple fonts and typography to choose something that resonates with your customers. You can also choose colors to represent your brand, like luxury jeweler Tiffany’s robin-egg blue or Hermes’ bright orange. For these brands, their colors have become markers and are recognized with the products. If you’re a luxury brand, ensure that your packaging is up to par with your product value. It should be luxurious and exclusive, fit for the product inside. For fun brands, colorful, funky, and eccentric styles are winners.
Maintain consistency throughout marketing materials
The internet and social media have dramatically increased the amount of brand touchpoints that customers can experience. The critical thing to keep in mind is consistency. All your products, campaigns, and endorsements should sync with your brand identity. While you may want to experiment and play around with your packaging, ensure that the essence remains. You can continue using the same font and placement for the logo, etc. Customers should be able to clearly tell that this product is from your brand.
Partner with the Printing Professionals
Revenue can increase 23% by creating a consistent presentation of your brand. Designing packaging sounds easy, but it is a lot of work. It takes careful, thoughtful planning. Determining the best use of space on the box, package, and label are key for success. You don’t want a design that is too cluttered, unorganized, or too bland.
There are many aspects of branding to consider when marketing your products and designing labels. Logos, graphic design and artwork, packaging material, return labels, shipping packaging – and that is just the tip of the iceberg. This is why we recommend leaving it to the professionals at M&R Label! As a premier custom packaging and label vendor, we can help you plan, design, and create your packaging and other print materials. This will eliminate the guessing, trial and error, and wasting money trying to figure all of this out yourself.
With decades of industry experience, the label design experts at M&R Label are here to guide the way! We’ll recommend the best materials, sizes, and designs for your package based on your vision for the product. Our team understands the behind-the-scenes blood, sweat, and tears (hopefully not a lot!) that goes into creating your own product. We don’t take your partnership lightly!
It’s a privilege to work with new businesses to get their unique products out into the market. We truly take the time to learn your brand story so that we aren’t simply slapping any old label onto your passion project. In fact, we recently worked with Andrew Bloomenthal on the development of his new spice product, Drew’s DRUB Spice Rub. Find out what he had to say about this experience partnering with M&R Label:
“M&R Label was interactive instead of simply writing down the specifications and shoving it out the door to me. There was a genuine curiosity, which is a two-way street. If I’m going to be reordering in the future, which I plan to, I want to interact with someone I enjoy. I have nothing but good things to report about M&R Label.” – Andrew B.
Trust the Experts at M&R Label
If you want to ensure that your product packaging is always on brand, giving the best possible first impression to customers, then working with a printing partner is a must! Leave no room for error or mistakes. When you collaborate with our team, we assure you excellent customer service, creative label design, fast turnaround times, and a premium final product!
We specialize in label design, label printing, ink management, inventory management, and so much more. Did we mention our print solutions are also cost-effective? Let us help your business grow! Connect with us to find out more about what we can do for your company.