You don’t need a fortune 500 budget to make a lasting first impression. A well-designed custom packaging can do it rightly without going out of your budget. Sleek looks, amazing outcomes, and easily attainable- what else a business wants. It’s a secret weapon of brands who have made their way before you. See how here!
Packaging Gap Between Small and Big Brands
Take a stroll through any retail shelf, online or offline, and you’ll see one thing: big brands are well-put-together, consistent, and easily recognizable. They know how to package their product. Their product packaging is a well-designed brand asset backed by complete design departments and multi-million dollar budgets.
That gap can be daunting for a small business. However, the truth most big brands don’t want you to know is that custom packaging is now accessible to the masses. MOQ has been significantly reduced. Short runs are now cost-effective with digital printing. Today’s buyers, especially those who find brands on social media, are actively seeking for the unique, the human, and the story-driven. It’s where the little guy can get the upper hand.
DID YOU KNOW?
- 72% Consumers say that packaging design is an important factor in their purchasing.
- 40% Online consumers post product images on social media if they are “gift-like”
- 52% customers are more likely to come back to a brand that offers top quality packaging.
Why First Impressions are Still in a Box
When it comes to ecommerce, there’s no storefront window, no sales clerk, no surrounding lighting. First contact with your brand is when a customer holds your package in their hands. That’s the moment it’s all about.
Decades ago big brands realized this and that is why luxury products, consumer electronics, and even quality food products spend vast amounts of money on structural packaging design.
What big brands, however, can’t do as easily is feel personal, local, and handcrafted. That’s your edge.
Consider this: When someone orders a candle from a small candle company, he’s not just looking for the candle. They wish to have experienced something unique. A well-wrapped package, with a handwritten style note on the inside of the lid, shows thought, care, and craftsmanship, something no large-box brand can replicate on a mass scale.
Custom Packaging as a Branding Tool
Packaging is a silent salesman. All of the colors, fonts, materials, and messages on your box say a lot about your brand even before the product is visible.
Custom packaging allows you to:
- Use your brand colors and logo in a consistent manner for each order
- Share your origin story with inside-panel printing
- Design a graphical identity that’s easily recognizable on the doorstep of a customer
- Utilize top quality finishes (matte lamination, spot UV, foil) and indicate quality.
- Stand out from white label, generic competition with ease
Customers should not just read a label when they see your box, they should feel it. When your online brand matches your physical packaging, it creates trust even quicker than nearly every other touchpoint.
Unboxing Experience Advantage
What was once a niche YouTube phenomenon is now a reality in marketing that is known as the “unboxing experience”. Millions of consumers record the unboxing of their favorite package, add photos to their own feed and provide organic and authentic exposure that can’t be bought.
For small businesses, this is what you can create as an unboxing experience:
- Brand colors in custom tissue paper or crinkle paper.
- A personalized thank you message and/or discount code on a printed card
- Stickers, samples or a little ‘bonus’ item
- A QR code that goes to a welcome video, how-to guide or loyalty page
- Packaging that is sustainable and carries a message regarding your eco efforts.
All of these do not need to be expensive. However, when combined, they make an experience that customers wish to share and sharing is the new word of mouth.
Customer Loyalty in Packaging.
Retention is where the money is for small businesses. It is 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. Custom packaging is not only a great first impression, it strengthens the bond with each repeat purchase.
If a customer receives an order and feels “I love receiving their packages”, then you have created emotional loyalty which a big brand’s anonymous brown box can never duplicate.
Seasonal changes in packaging, special designs during the Eid or Christmas or Valentine’s Day, make your brand look alive, attentive, and celebrating the same moments as your customers. This makes packaging a relationship touch-point, rather than a shipping requirement.
Customers who have had a positive experience with your packaging are much more likely to gift your products – and therefore add new customers to your fold at no acquisition cost.
Eco-Friendly Packaging as a Differentiator
Sustainability is no longer a niche issue; it’s a force that is driving purchases, particularly from younger shoppers. Which is where a small business has a structural edge – you can be more agile than a large brand with legacy supply chains that are tied to non-sustainable materials.
You can opt for recycled cardboard or compostable mailers, or use kraft paper and soy-based inks, and thus associate your brand with issues that your customers value. But what is more is that you can actually tell that story, which, when it comes to sustainability, is something that big brands do awkwardly as their sustainability is not always complete, or is not always true.
Sustainable options to explore:
- Corrugated boxes that are recycled and have a low amount of ink.
- Alternatives to biodegradable mailer bags and poly.
- Use water activated paper tape rather than plastic tape
- Compostable / plant based void fill
- FSC certified paper/cardboard stock
Label your box 100% recyclable packaging and then live by that rule. Your customers will know, and remember.
Cost Myths: Can Custom Packaging be Affordable?
The largest myth that small business owners have is that they should only use custom packaging if they can buy 10,000 units at once. This was the case 10 years ago. It isn’t today.
Modern packaging suppliers including Pack Role USA provide options such as short run digital printing, custom sizes, brand matched colors, and at quantities as low as 50-100 units. The more you scale up the more your per unit cost goes down, and the more packaging ROI compounds over time.
The true question should be, “can we afford custom packaging? It is the question of whether we can afford to look “generic”. When you’re in a saturated market, it’s true that looking like everyone else is going to cost you as well, just not so easy to spot on a spreadsheet.
Interesting Facts!
- 30% average repeat purchases experienced by brands that improved packaging.
- 5× times higher perceived value when premium packaging is used.
Practical tips to get started
It’s not necessary to change everything at once. Take the biggest change for your business and work your way from there.
Getting started checklist:
- Review your existing packaging and think about what it is communicating about your brand?
- Identify 2–3 brand colors that you want to be present on every box and mailer
- Your brand canvas should begin with your outside material, mailer box, or shipper.
- Include one “wow” inside – a sheet of tissue paper, thank you card or sticker sheet
- Ask several vendors for samples before ordering a big quantity.
- Think in terms of an unboxing design and take pictures of it that you can use on social media
Perfection on Day #1 is not the objective. ‘Progression’, we mean from generic to specific, is the start point. Each enhancement is a testament to your customers that you care about your brand as well as their experience.
Final thoughts
Large companies have scale. However, there are aspects of business that small businesses can never buy: authenticity, agility and a true story. That’s where custom packaging comes in — that’s what a customer can hold in their hands, photograph, and post to their followers, and remember when they’re ready to buy again.
You don’t have to spend more than the big brands. All you have to do is out-think them. And it all begins by customizing your boxes by Pack Role.
