How Important Is Your Packaging and Labeling?

The individuality of your brand is one of the most important strategic assets that you will have at your disposal.

It can go a long way in aiding your small business to achieve long term goals and objectives in terms of communication. This individuality can take the form of your brand’s name or the logo. You need to check and maintain these quite regularly in order for you to get the most traffic from them. The individuality of the business is not only a representation of the business, but of the values and ethics as well as being a very effective communication tool. Consumers are much more keyed into a businesses’ values and ethics than they were just a few years ago.

You can make use of packaging and labelling to promote your business and thus generating traffic to your site. By simply displaying the promotion that you are running, you have the chance to reach to a significant percentage of your target market. It is important to note that there has been a trend in which more and more online businesses, a well as brick and mortar stores are shifting towards self-service in order to promote efficiency.

Therefore, your packaging presents an opportunity in itself becomes a significant marketing element. As a shrewd marketer you need to consider marketing as necessity.

If your package is attractive enough then people will be drawn to it and also the consumer will be more likely to remember it.

There are some few elements that your packaging must satisfy and these are: identification, protection, promotion, convenience, attraction and most importantly - readability.

I recently attended a very large vendor market that has been going on in our area for years! It’s a well established market and typically has 250 - 300 vendor booths. This event is very well attended and the day I was there, it was very crowded. With that many booths, you’re bound to have some vendors selling the same type of items. I purchased some sugar scrubs from one particular vendor. Out of the booths that sold this product, this particular one just impressed more than the others. The booth was well organized and items were easy to identify.

The “feel” of the actual product was a bit different than your typical sugar scrub, this one had a “velvety” feel to it. The scents of the products were not overbearing. I knew I had to have some of this, and ended up buying six (6) different scrubs, along with a few other products I didn’t even try in the booth. The sugar scrubs were priced at $7.00 each, the other products ranged in price from $5.00 each to $8.00 each. If you read this blog very often, you know that I typically spend more at these vendor markets than I think I will. At this particular booth, I spent just over $95.00. Once I got home and used the product, I fell in love. A few weeks later, I realized I had some birthdays coming up and thought some of these products would be great to give as gifts. However, by that time, I had already used product out of every single container I’d bought. So I couldn’t give those as gifts. No big deal, I’ll just contact them and see if I can order directly from them.

I had planned to order all the birthday gifts I needed for the next few months (12 in all).

My plan was to buy the three (3) items I had purchased in each scent from this vendor, and make a little trio set for each birthday gift. One of each product would’ve cost $20.00 each. A great price for a birthday gift of items of this quality. I had no problem spending money with this vendor again, because the products were sooooo good. I had twelve (12) birthday gifts to purchase. I also considered buying some extra for upcoming female graduation gifts. The price for this little trio would’ve been $20.00 each for what I intended to purchase. The twelve (12) birthday gifts alone would’ve resulted in $240.00 in income for this vendor. I decided I would order three (3) more sets to have on hand for those graduation and just round out my order to $300.00 in products. Do the math: $20.00 X 15 = $300.00 in returned orders, not to mention the original $95.00 I spent at the vendor market. In just a few short weeks, I was planning to re-order from this vendor. They would have made $395.00 from my sales alone. This from a complete and total stranger that just happened to find their booth at a vendor market on a Saturday in May, buy some things and fall in love with the products.

What entrepreneur wouldn’t like that type of repeat business from a brand new customer?

The product label on top of the sugar scrub container was great. I loved the crisp and clean design of this label on top of the product. It was a very nice representation of the product itself; good sized logo, name of the scent was easy to read. However, the label with the ingredients was wrapped around the backside of the container, which was close to an inch tall. While the ingredients were easy to read, the company information was not. I decided to grab my magnifying glasses in order to make out the contact details, but that was no help. I asked a few others if they could read the details for me - no luck.

So I grabbed some of the other products, hoping for a better outcome. No luck there either. One of the product labels was smaller than the sugar scrub label and if I couldn’t read the sugar scrub label, I wasn’t going to be able to read that label either.

If this entrepreneur had simply used another round label on the bottom of the product, there would have been much more room to not only include the ingredients of the product, but the Facebook page, website, phone number, something so that a customer could re-order from them! In large enough print to be legible.

And then I started thinking……

• How many people at that particular market were just like me.

• This vendor market happened to be a three-day event.

• They fell in love with the product and wanted more.

• Weren’t going to be able to get it.

Then the business side of my brain kicked in and I couldn’t help but wonder how much money they were missing out on.

So I sat down and did some “creative thinking math.”

On the conservative side, I wondered if just ten (10) people bought the sugar scrub each day, then wanted to order just one more…..

30 people over the course of three (3) days that wanted to purchase one more sugar scrub at $8.00 each, that’s $240.00.

But what if those 30 people bought two (2) more, that $480.00, in addition to the original purchase.

However, I seriously doubted that only ten (10) people purchased them each day, I was in that booth, it saw a lot of traffic and I stood in line to check out with my purchase, so I felt confident that ten (10) was just an absurdly low number.

So I tweaked my numbers to 20:

20 new purchases each day, that wanted to buy again would be 60 people at $8.00 each = That’s $500.00.

And if they bought two (2) more = $960.00 on top of the original purchase.

Still, I felt this number was conservative based on what I saw taking place in that booth that day, so I wanted to adjust my numbers one more time.

I was pretty confident that this booth probably had an easy 50-75 purchases in a day’s time. Probably more.

I’m going to use 50 as my “high end” estimate.

Again,

50 people X 3 days, 150 new customers during the event.

If those 150 purchased one more item at $8.00 after this event = $1,200.00

And if they bought two more items at $8.00 after the event = $2,400.00

So I invite you take a look at your product labels, tags and/or packaging. In fact, I demand it.

Are you making it easy for them to order again?

If not, you may be eliminating the option for repeat customers and leaving additional income on the table.

If you’re lucky enough to have affiliate partners (those who you partner with to sell your products), they’re likely marking your product up in order to make a little profit themselves. While that’s fine, if the customer can identify how to order from you directly, and recognize that they an order from you and save paying the mark-up, that’s a win for you and a win for them!

Your product packaging should be such that it is able to communicate with the consumers about various things. Firstly it should inform them on how to use the product; it should also contain some information about the company, your website and your logo. Ultimately, through your packaging you are able to create some level of awareness to your customers concerning the website of your brand as well as the social media pages. The curious consumers will definitely seek out your online presence thus resulting in higher traffic and higher sales!