Packaging Marketing: 8 Tips to Make This Your Top Sales Channel in 2024 [+ Examples]

Nothing makes your brand look more unprofessional than poor packaging. In 2024, strategic and authentic packaging marketing can accelerate your sales, brand awareness, and credibility!

In fact, 30% of businesses noticed an increase in revenue after improving product packaging. 64% of buyers will purchase a product if they like the packaging, without researching it first!

But there’s more. 81% of buyers have tried a new product because the packaging grabbed their attention. And 63% of consumers have purchased the same product again because of its attractive packaging. 

If product packaging means so much to buyers, how can your business get started?

What makes sales-driven product packaging? And how can packaging boost your brand?

We’ve done our research and outlined the benefits of packaging marketing and the ultimate strategies for product packaging that sells. Plus, we have real-life examples of brands with excellent product packaging.

Ready to leverage packaging marketing and get your products to fly off the shelves?

Let’s jump into it!

The Importance of Packaging in Marketing

Packaging in marketing is crucial because it solidifies your branding, targets buyers with information that matters, and secures trust for your business. Let’s explore each of these benefits!

1.Solidify Your Branding

Packaging marketing is vital because it allows you to solidify your branding. Your packaging will reflect your brand, giving you another way to connect with buyers and share your brand identity, values and culture.

This benefit proves why it’s crucial for brands to go about packaging marketing the right way. If you use poor packaging that doesn’t engage buyers or paints a bad image of your brand, this will impact the way shoppers perceive you.

But if you use brand-centric packaging, you can stand out from the competitors and secure your presence in your market niche.

2.Target Buyers with Information That Matters

Product packaging gives you so much space (literally) and the opportunity to convey information that matters to your buyers. You can express the vision behind your products, how your products will add value to shoppers’ lives and what makes you different.

Businesses can also provide technical, nutritional, health, and environmental information if it’s relevant to them. Rather than decorating your packaging with catchy slogans and words, focus on adding value to your buyers through the information they need to make a confident purchase.

3.Professional Packaging Secures Trust

Professional packaging shouts trust and authority. For example, people would buy a loaf of bread without packaging or branding for $1. But they may spend $3 on the same brand with customer-centric packaging.

When you use your branding and logo, you come across as an established business, making it easier to garner credibility.

With that being said, you could invest loads of money into packaging marketing, but if your packaging isn’t top-tier you’ll lose out. 61% of US shoppers say they’re more likely to purchase a luxury item again because of premium packaging. 

Source: The Packaging School

8 Strategies to Turn Your Packaging to a Marketing Channel + Examples

Packaging marketing is essential to maximize your sales, brand awareness and customer loyalty. These are the top packaging marketing strategies and examples:

1.Use Unique Packaging

The secret to successful packaging marketing lies in authentic packaging. Use a packaging design your customer base has most likely never seen before, and never will!

Research confirms that 40% of buyers are more likely to take photos of and share your product if you use unique packaging, and I’m sure you can attest to this!

But how do you design unique product packaging?

Here are a few tips for authentic packaging marketing:

• Use your brand’s color palate for your packaging.
• Don’t ignore typography. Use a font that reflects your brand identity and speaks to buyers.
• Determine how you can share your brand story through packaging.
• Evaluate what your competitors are doing and find ways to do it better!

Example of Unique Packaging for Packaging Marketing

Scanwood is a massive manufacturer of wooden kitchen utensils in Denmark. They rely on 100% eco-friendly products to create these handy utensils, and it shows through their packaging!

Instead of a basic design, Scanwood enhanced its product packaging with pictures of roots, soil and grass below the utensils. This style makes it look like the utensils are trees, growing out from the ground.

What a fantastic way to achieve authentic packaging marketing and relay your brand values.

2.Reflect Your Brand Identity

Your product’s packaging must reflect your brand identity and values. When you convey these concepts through your packaging, it’s easier to enthrall buyers and evoke emotion.

You can connect shoppers to your products and have them intrigued by your offerings when your packaging reflects your brand identity.

Ask yourself, “How does this convey our brand values, culture, and vision?” and “When buyers see my packaging do they understand who my brand is right off the bat?”.

Example of Brand Identity for Packaging Marketing

If you want to know how to communicate your brand identity through packaging marketing, Ford Ranger is a fantastic example.

They included their brand name in the font of this matchbox, so buyers can’t miss it. Ford Ranger adds a picture of one of its products (a 4 x 4 pickup truck) on the side of the matchbox.

As the finishing touch, they use the matchsticks to reinforce the purpose of their product (a sturdy pickup truck to transport goods). Besides reflecting their brand identity, this is also authentic packaging marketing.

3.Protect Your Packaging

Whatever packaging you opt for, patent it! Without trade marketing your packaging, it’s fair game for anyone. In other words, if a different brand or entrepreneur steals your packaging design and the patent’s it, it’s theirs.

It’s super challenging and costly to prove otherwise. It’s tricky to patent your packaging, and different countries have different requirements for what can be patented and what can’t.

Get familiar with the laws and regulations, and patenting process in your country and invest your time and money into ensuring nobody can copy your signature design.

Example of Protecting Your Packaging for Packaging Marketing

Here’s an interesting example of patenting your package – Rolo. You’d think this brand had ROLO CHOCOLATE patented, but think again.

Rolo went the extra mile to assume it’s brand as the #1 choice for rolled chocolate and patented “Chocolate wrapped in foil and a paper sleeve”.

It’s challenging for competitors to best Rolo because of this, and the brand always gifted itself room to scale without the limitations of rigid patenting.

4.Consider Sustainable Packaging

If you know anything about environmental marketing, you’ll know that eco-packaging is the next best thing. About 57% of buyers are reluctant to purchase a product with harmful packaging, and 44% won’t buy these items.

Eco-packaging (recycled, recyclable and reusable materials) is a growing concern for shoppers, and your brand should share the same sentiment.

With so many environmental catastrophes and threats, brands must take responsibility for their products and opt for packaging materials that don’t leave a negative stain on the ecosystem.

Here are some ideas for sustainable product packaging:

• Start a return program that incentives buyers for returning or reusing your packaging.
• Reduce the size of your packaging.
• Use corn starch for food item packaging because it’s biodegradable and 100% safe for the environment.
• If you need to use ink, opt for those made from eco-friendly ingredients.
• Incorporate eco-friendly shopping bags into your buying experience!

There are loads of ways to embrace sustainable packaging marketing. Not only will your shoppers adore your brand, but you’ll help the environment too.

Example of Sustainable Packaging for Packaging Marketing

Ever heard of mushroom packaging? Keap is a candle subscription company. They opt for mushroom packaging over traditional styrofoam. Mushroom packaging is from two ultra-organic ingredients – hemp and mycelium.

Keap shows us how sustainable packaging can be more cost-effective and convenient than harmful materials. The only trick for some brands will be finding a supplier for mushroom packaging. But if you’re in the US, you’re in luck because the market is quite massive, projected to reach $118 million by 2025.

5.Make Buyers Smile

Excellent product packaging should make buyers happy when they see your product. If your packaging grabs their attention and evokes happiness, you’re more likely to turn that interaction into a sale.

How you achieve this relies on your brand identity, values and voice. For example, it may be easier for brands with a playful identity to use play-on-words or silly graphics that are true to the business’s identity.

If your business is serious, making light of serious issues (not in an offensive) could be more up your alley.

Take advantage of your visuals and consider ways to force a smile from people that look at your product. Shoppers pick up items that catch their attention, so by using your visuals it’s easier to drive any emotion.

Example of Making Buyers Smile for Product Marketing

Just Laid is a brand that sells eggs, so you can see how this would make buyers smile right off the bat.

Their packaging marketing aligns with this humorous s brand identity. For one of their boxes of eggs, Just Laid adds a silly picture of a chicken laying an egg and “looking back at the camera”. There’s no way buyers wouldn’t look at this product and smile!

Be creative with your packaging, and find the simplest ways to make customers smile even if that means doing something obscene!

6.Optimize Customer Experience

The experience shoppers have when unboxing your product is more important now than ever before. We live in a digital age, and people post and share products they love.

Deliver a brand-centric unboxing experience that makes your product easy to use, access, and show off! And guess what? Other shoppers watch unboxing videos too. They’re bound to gain interest in your product if they see how branded and premium your unboxing experience is.

Around 35% of consumers watch product unboxing videos, and 55% are persuaded to buy a product based on the unboxing experience.

Another aspect to consider is making your products easy to open. If shoppers need to build your product, or it’s technical, provide a helpful hand guide.

To provide a fantastic customer experience for packaging marketing businesses can also:

• Include loyalty cards, Thank You cards, or contact cards.
• Encourage buyers to share an unboxing video by offering them valuable, accessible rewards like a discount.
• Add discount coupons for their next purchase.
• Gift your customers with freebies, like samples.
• Include a bio about the person or people who created your products, and the vision behind them.

Example of Customer Experience for Packaging Marketing

Birchbox established a new niche, offering loads of sampled cosmetics for a subscription. When buyers open their Birchboxes they find a note from the two founders.

This note details what’s inside their box and how to use each product. Not only is this so personal, but it also makes it easier for consumers to use your product and reap all its benefits.

7.Minimize Wasteful Packaging

We’ll explore minimizing wasteful packaging now because it ties in well with customer experience for packaging marketing.

Wasteful packaging like lots of plastic and wrapping is bad for the environment and it makes your product messy to open. You could be selling a product that seems like it needs a lot of packaging, maybe furniture or electronic goods.

But you must finds to keep your packaging as simple as possible, otherwise it makes the unboxing experience uncomfortable.

Make it quick, easy and delightful for customers to open your products.

Example of Minimizing Wasteful Packaging for Packaging Marketing

For the Galaxy S7, Samsung optimized their space and layout, using as little packaging as possible. When opening their new phone’s box, buyers have the almost unroll the phone out.

Compressed between the phone and it’s box, Samsung designed spaces for the complementary accessories like the earphones and charger.

This is the perfect example of strategically laying out your product packaging so you use as little space and materials as possible.

8.Be Honest

Do you know what customers dislike more than poor packaging? Lies! Don’t make false claims on your product packaging because the side effects can be dire.

Not only could be faced with serious legal consequences (depending on the nature and depth of your lies), but you’ll lose your credibility, authority and any advantage of brand loyalty. If your packaging says it is made of recycled materials, it better be made out of recycled materials!

Being honest is not only about false claims either. Some businesses mislead their customers by making it seem like the customer is getting more pieces or items, but when they open the packaging, they’re getting much less than they excepted. Think about the big box of expensive chocolates with just three pieces inside, or the big bottle of detergent with a third of the bottle empty.

Another example of deceiving shoppers is by making the product look sensational on the packaging, but it’s far from that in reality. Like this:

If you have a genuine product and you’ve taken ethical steps in manufacturing it, there won’t a reason to lie. While you may think you can get away with it, you probably won’t. Plus, it’s not worth risking your brand’s potential and values.

Example of Being Honest for Packaging Marketing

A Swedish Vodka brand took being honest to a whole new level through their product packaging. On the bottle’s front, shoppers will find a picture of skeleton-like body, with red dots on all the places alcohol affects. While this may seem like the brand is putting people of their product, die-hard Vodka loves probably appreciated the sentiment and honesty.

Conclusion

Packaging marketing is crucial for brands because it boosts your credibility, provides buyers with the information they need to purchase, and solidifies your branding.

For successful packaging marketing, use unique packaging, be honest, make your buyers smile and evoke emotion, and consider going green!

Businesses must also optimize the customer experience and ensure their products are easy and fun to unbox. There are many ways to optimize your brand packaging and accelerate sales, begin with these ultimate strategies.

References

PackagingofTheWorld: The Power of Packaging You Probably Didn’t Know About

JohnsByrne: Packaging Matters: 3 Purchasing Behavior Statistics Everyone Should Care About

PR Newswire: New Data Reveals Preference for Sustainable Packaging Remains Strong in a Changing World

Zion Market Research: Mushroom Packaging Market – Global Industry Analysis