Whether you sell handmade candles on Etsy, run a small bakery on Facebook Marketplace, or have your own storefront, making your products stand out is essential for a small business.
And that’s where custom packaging comes in!
Investing in high-quality and attractive packaging that showcases your unique style can help create a good first impression and ensure your brand stands out.
If you’re wondering about the potential benefits of custom packaging for your small business, and how to get started with a design, read on to learn more:
The Role of Custom Packaging in Enhancing Brand Identity
In today’s connected world, there’s an endless number of custom products for sale around the world.
That’s why having a strong brand identity to keep your products memorable is so essential.
Custom packaging plays a crucial role in this, by effectively communicating the unique values and characteristics of your brand.
And this helps create lasting impressions on consumers, making them want to always pick your products over the others that are available.
Here are a few of the ways that custom packaging for your small business can help create and maintain a strong brand identity:
1. Improves Visual Appeal
The primary role that custom packaging plays, concerning brand identity, is visual appeal.
The images, colors, graphics, and other design elements involved all help to create an appealing look and a recognizable brand aesthetic.
That’s why taking your time to come up with the right design is so important.
Consider using image editing programs to brainstorm ideas, and visiting websites like Yellow Images to get top mockups and 3D models to use as a base for your design.
2. Showcase the Essence of Your Brand
While visual appeal is important, brand packaging goes beyond simply attracting your potential customer’s eye.
Custom packaging can also help you showcase the essence of your brand and its key values, through your branding and design choices.
This can create a more memorable and engaging experience for your consumers, as they get to connect with you on a deeper level.
For example, if your brand focuses on sustainability, using eco-friendly packaging materials and showcasing your commitment through your packaging design will cause your brand to resonate well with the target audience of environmentally-conscious consumers.
3. Enhances Brand Recognition
Perhaps the most important role of custom packaging is to help ensure your customers associate your products with your brand.
Just as the Nike checkmark is immediately recognizable on shoes and clothing, you want your customers to know from your packaging that items are yours.
With custom packaging, you can showcase your brand logo, tagline, and any other desired elements, and place them front and center.
Doing this consistently across packaging for any of the different products you offer will strengthen your brand identity and create a sense of reliability.
Economic and Environmental Advantages of Custom Packaging
Custom packaging solutions for your products not only help with aesthetics and brand identity, it also provides economic and environmental benefits.
Choosing the right packaging can help you both save money and minimize waste. Here’s how:
Economic Advantages
Investing in custom packaging means that you can tailor your packaging to the specific needs of their products.
This helps to optimize the design and materials used, leading to a reduction in production costs and an improvement in operational efficiency.
Additionally, custom packaging solutions can be designed to maximize shelf space, letting you put more products on display to help increase sales potential.
Environmental Advantages
If making environmentally-friendly choices is a priority for you, custom packaging can help make that easier.
You can opt to use eco-friendly materials, such as recyclable or biodegradable options, reducing your carbon footprint and appealing to an increasingly environmentally-conscious audience.
This may also eventually lead to economic advantages, as increased popularity and acceptance of the product typically translate to increased sales.
Implementing a Successful Custom Packaging Strategy
So, how do you go about implementing custom packaging and incorporating it into your overall business strategy?
Here are some considerations to keep in mind when developing custom packaging for your small business:
1. Understand Your Target Audience
The first thing to do before you even consider diving into the design process is to develop a clear understanding of your target audience.
You need to understand your business’s demographic, their preferences, and their purchasing habits.
This will enable you to create packaging that appeals directly to their needs and desires, thus increasing the chances of them choosing your product.
2. Research Your Competitors
Next, consider doing some market research to understand your competitor’s packaging design choices, and how customers have reacted to them.
Through this research, you can look for gaps in the market that you can fill, or fashion out opportunities to differentiate yourself.
With a strong understanding of your competition, you can ensure that your custom packaging stands out and captures the attention of your intended customers.
3. Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate
While it can be tempting to take on all the design tasks yourself, it’s far more effective to recruit other options when creating your packaging.
Reach out to product designers, packaging experts, and anyone else that might help you create the perfect look for your products.
Getting outside opinions can give you valuable insights to make sure that your final design both looks great and functions effectively.
4. Consider Functionality
When it comes to choosing a final packaging option, remember that design is nothing without functionality.
If you’re selling a product that needs to be kept cold, for example, your packaging should ensure it can hold up in the refrigerator.
Ensure your packaging is easy to open, can protect your products during transport, and meets quality standards for your item’s intended use.
5. Test and Improve
Finally, make sure to thoroughly test your packaging to ensure it’s meeting your needs.
Consider recruiting a focus group, even if it’s just comprised of friends and family. Get feedback from your testing and use them to make any necessary adjustments.
Even after moving forward, you’ll also want to make sure you continue to improve your packaging to ensure it’s as effective as possible.
While custom packaging may not seem like a priority for a small business, it can provide multiple benefits to your products that make it worth the investment.
Take your time to come up with a great design that appeals to customers, and you’ll likely soon find that your sales and brand identity improve as a result.