An Often Missed Secret for Strengthening Brand Awareness

When customers go to a retailer to buy your product, the first image they see is the product packaging. Your product is most likely sitting between other similar products. There it is side-by-side with your competitors leaving you clinging to the hope your customer will recognize your product and choose it over the others. Does your product packaging stand out among the crowd?

That’s a tough challenge when selling in a retail store. For online stores, there is more flexibility in what we can use to grab the customer’s attention. We can entice customers with cool graphic designs, pictures of people using our products, and even videos. We can even dedicate an entire landing page to promote the benefits and features of the product.

But even with an online store, we still benefit from promoting our products by highlighting and featuring the product packaging because packaging plays a key role in supporting your company brand.

Why is that? It’s because on average it takes 5 to 7 impressions for people to remember your brand. What’s more, branding is more than name recognition. It’s about making a connection with the consumer and product packaging can be used to help do that simply by what you include on the packaging.

So, what does this mean for you? It means you have an incredible opportunity for strengthening your brand awareness with the strategic use of your product packaging. Here’s how.

Include your product packaging in advertisements, social media, and online promotions.

Take a look at your marketing plan. What sales tactics do you have in place to sell your product?

Online advertising? Social media marketing? Traditional print ads?

For all of these tactics, don’t forget to include images of your product packaging. That way, when consumers see your packaging in advertisements it will reinforce your brand and help with brand recognition when it’s time to buy.

Don’t stop there! Look at the entire buying journey from direct mail to email to cart checkout and your follow-up thank-you note. How can you strategically include images of your product packaging in all of these important communications?

Example: With an online store, images of the product packaging are most often what is used during the checkout process. When your customers click ‘add to cart’ a nice image of the product appears in their cart.

Here are a few more ways to integrate product packaging in your brand awareness marketing:

• • • Social media: Have you seen influencers ‘unbox’ a new product. Steal this tactic for your own marketing strategy. Create a video of a customer reading and pointing to important messages on the product packaging and then show them opening the product packaging. For ideas on what to include on your product packaging read 24 elements you can feature on a custom box

    • Print ads: Include an image of the product packaging in the advertisement or in the corner with a special call-out message.

    • Online ads: For PPC or other online advertising, include an image of the product packaging right in the ad next to your call-to-action message.

Use custom-designed packaging to make your product stand out from the competition.

In a sea of plain, tan cardboard boxes, be the red box with a cool design. Be the box customers want to hang on to. When you choose custom-designed packaging for your products you open the doors to a wealth of design opportunities. From simple choices like choosing the colors you want for your packaging to more creative options like including a special cut-out with the box design.

Custom-designed packaging gives you the opportunity to share your unique brand story and accentuate your value proposition. For more on ways to differentiate your packaging read How can I make my packaging unique.

Are you taking advantage of all the benefits of custom packaging with yoru branding strategy? Brainstorm with one of our packaging specialists and let’s come up with a design to knock your customer’s socks off!