Picture yourself in the cereal aisle of your local grocery store. As you look around at both sides of the aisle, you see all kinds of cereal slogans and mascots from Toucan Sam to Snap, Crackle and Pop, to Cap’n Crunch to the Trix Rabitt to BuzzBee, the Honey Nut Cheerios bee.
As you look at all those mascots smiling at you from the front of those cereal boxes, if you’re a small business owner, you might think to yourself “Boy, I wish my business could have something catchy like that.”
Believe it or not, these days you can. In fact, it’s never been easier for businesses of all kinds to have their own custom packaging, custom logos and custom printing to attracting customers of all kinds.
Custom packaging can be as simple or as creative as you need it to be and with it, your company can put its stamp on its products, letting customers know what you’re all about.
As the spending habits of Americans continue to evolve, companies are always looking for the latest and greatest in custom packaging to help their products stand out. It’s hard not to see why because after all, the right custom packaging can:
- Significantly boost sales
- Be extremely effective in marketing
- Foster relationships with new and old customers alike
Bottom line: custom packaging that’s effective can help you market your product. But you may be wondering how to make it so effective. Here are several tips to help your company’s packaging stand out:
- Simplify: You’ve likely heard the phrase K.I.S.S—Keep It Simple Stupid. It may seem like a tired cliche, but it’s an important thing to remember in many industries. It also applies with packaging solutions and even signage displays. The best thing you can do is to keep things simple. Look at iconic brands like Coke and Pepsi and Nike. Their logos are simple, yet everyone can easily identify them. With your company’s custom packaging, you can use digital commercial printing to print a simple yet effective message.
- Stay professional: There’s no doubt that companies need to wow customers, but one of the best ways to do that is to keep things professional. For example, professional printing can help give your packaging a polished look and it’s something that about 80% of businesses say helps them stand out from the crowd.
- Know your market: One of the worst mistakes any company can make is not knowing their target market. This can result in packaging or marketing that doesn’t have a target audience and can lead to confusion among customers. Marketing to adults requires a certain finesse and marketing to children must be done with care too, since they don’t always have the ability to make purchases themselves.
- Stay relevant: Another mistake companies can make is not staying relevant. It’s important for companies to stay with the times, pay attention to trends and offer customers something that’s going to stick. Whether it’s a logo or a unique packaging design, you need to offer something that’s going to make customers care.
- Keep size in mind: As a customer, size of packaging may not matter to you, but it matters to some people. With that in mind, make sure the size of your company’s packaging appeals to customers. It can be hard to find a balancing act between small and big packaging—small packaging has a small shelf-life and big packaging can be costly—but your company needs to find that perfect balance.
- Don’t be afraid of change: One of the best things a company can do to stay relevant is to occasionally change up packaging. How does a company pull this off? It’s simple: for times when your company is offering big deals or during holidays, companies can easily have something that appeals to customers for Christmas, Halloween and other holidays.
With the right custom packaging, your company can put its products in the best light possible and have something that separates your company from other similar companies. By marketing to your target audience, keeping your message simple and letting them know what they’re buying when they purchase your product, you’ll appeal to customers and be able to keep them.
