Outstanding Packaging Makes Your Packaging Stand Out
.How Inflation is Changing the Way Customers Buy
Inflation is stirring things up and making it hard for manufacturers, The cost of making and delivering a product goes up at the same time customers become more careful about what they're willing to buy.
That changes the game.
Customers compare more closely. Price gets more attention, and so does the quality. Ultimately, the customer wants to know: What am i getting for my money?
Packaging plays a big role here. Research has connected packaging with perceived quality, value and purchase attention. When customers are looking harder at their options, your packaging can help make sure the comparison works in your favor.
Here are some places worth looking.
Make Your Best Reason to Buy Easy to Find
Pick up your package and give yourself three seconds
What did you learn?
Now put it beside two or three competitors and try it again.
Effective packaging tells the eye what matters first, second, and third. It automatically differentiates your product from someone else's, without being able to try the product.
Maybe your product lasts longer. Maybe it's manufactured in the U.S.A. Maybe your warranty is better, your product is easier to use, it's more eco-friendly and reusable, or you include something competitors charge extra for.
If that advantage is buried on the back panel, you're asking the customer to find it.
Make sure your customers know the strongest reason to buy, up front, where they can see it first. That's a difference maker.
Study the Competition, Not Just Your Package
Maybe it's time to go shopping. Take a look at your product amongst the competition and look at the entire shelf, display, or online search page.
What colors dominate? What claims does everyone make? Which packages look alike? Does yours command attention or disappear into the category?
Now that you know that, differentiate. If every competitor is visually busy, simplicity may be more noticeable. If everyone leads with essentially the same claim, your opportunity may be to lead with something genuinely different.
Whether your product is established or brand new to the marketplace, this is handy information to have. Buyers don't buy in isolation. It's a competition. They're choosing between you and somebody else. So win that battle!
Design for Where the Decision Happens
A package that performs beautifully on a retail shelf can become surprisingly weak online.
Recent eye-tracking research has found that packaging graphics designed for online shopping can attract greater visual attention and interaction. Target's guidance to emerging brands suggests a simple test: shrink your package to thumbnail size and see whether the product, primary benefit, and brand are still immediately understandable.
Try it with your current packaging.
What survives?
Whatever disappears can't help make the sale in that environment. Strategy can help to overcome this hurdle. You simply have to include "design purposefully" into the blueprint. It's an important marketing step when you're creating your custom packaging design. (For more information about strategic packaging ideas, call us at Ashtonne Packaging and let's start the discussion).
Give Customers Another Way to Buy
Higher prices don't always eliminate demand. After all, the consumer still wants the product.
What options can help them choose yours? Depending on the product, that might be a smaller quantity, trial size, multipack, refill, concentrated version, or clearly differentiated good/better/best offering.
That creates a strategic question: Could a different package strategy give a price-conscious customer a new reason to choose you?
By the way, have you noticed we have not said "cheapen your product" or "spend less on manufacturing costs"? In fact, some of these strategic solutions can help raise the top line. "Shrinkflation" is a strategy, and you may be able to charge more for less.
Make Your Value Easier to See
Research suggests that visual design, typography, structure, and information can influence perceived quality and purchase intention. How something appears will influence perception.
A precision-manufactured product may need packaging that communicates technical quality. A food product might depend more on appetite appeal and ingredient transparency. A product built around convenience should make that convenience obvious.
The package should help customers understand why your product is worth what you're asking them to pay.
Find Margin Where Your Customer Never Sees It
Structural packaging expertise is a game changer.
How much labor is required to hand assemble and pack it? How efficiently does it fit into master cases and onto pallets? Are you shipping unused space? Is product damage creating replacement and customer-service costs? Are multiple packaging components adding unnecessary inventory, packing or assembly steps?
A fraction of an inch can seem insignificant until it's multiplied across a case, a pallet, a truck, and a year's production.
A more efficient packaging process, driven by results-oriented strategies, saves money on the bottom line, without cheapening the product. Everyone wins that way,
Take Another Look Before Your Competitor Does
Inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer. Your competitors are battling it, too. But so are your customers, and so they're in the market for something different. And better.
Take advantage of this opportunity instead of hunkering down with your accountant to try to make the numbers work.
Put your packaging on the table and look at it strategically. What makes yours different?
At Ashtonne Packaging, we'd like to talk with you about strategic packaging. Let's look at what you're using today. Let's look at the competition. Let's look at where you want to grow and where costs are putting pressure on your business.
Let's take a fresh look at your packaging strategy. Then, let's decide what happens next.
At Ashtonne Packaging, we have the experience and the expertise as innovators and problem solvers. We focus on the customer!
Call 877-522-6937 or contact us via email here and we'll guarantee someone will get in touch with you fast!
