Are Your Products Being Seen? Or Lost in the Crowd
You might have a great product but without exceptional utilizing packaging as a marketing tool to present it to your target customers, your product might just end up sitting on the shelves.
Packaging is one of the most important aspects of marketing that every brand should take full advantage of.
What Is Meant by Packaging in Marketing?
Packaging means enclosing your product in a wrapping material, such as a book, CD, or album cover, that helps identify your product, protects it during distribution, markets it, keeps it clean, and differentiates it from the others.
Packaging is also important because it affects other aspects of your product, like breakage rates, ease of distribution, ease of use for the customer, labeling, and whether the stores will be willing to stock it due to appropriate “displayability,” as described by the Entrepreneur.
What Are the 3 Types of Packaging?
There are various packaging materials used nowadays, including paper bags, plastic containers, corrugated boxes (cardboard boxes), poly mailer boxes, bubble mailer boxes, boxboard (paperboard) boxes, rigid boxes, sacks, and crates.
Packaging may be divided into three main categories;
Primary: This refers to the product’s immediate packaging, which is usually retained until the consumer is ready to use the product. It may also be used throughout the life of the product, as in the case of a plastic jam bottle.
Secondary: This is the additional packaging that is given to a product to protect it. This packaging is also usually retained until the consumer is ready to use the product.
Tertiary: This is packaging that is used during transportation. It includes things like crates and pallets.
Why is Packaging Crucial as a Marketing Tool?
Packaging is one of the most effective marketing tools that a company can use. Customers are lured by attractive packaging. Proper packaging can make your product stand out in the crowd. When you have strong, attractive, and durable packaging, people will associate the same qualities with your brand.
Your packaging also acts as a silent salesman, quickly converting customers who have seen your brand. When done right, using packaging as a marketing tool can accomplish many things:
Packaging attracts customers to your product: If you have ingenious packaging that stands out from the rest it, will attract customers to your product.
Packaging sells your product: The color schemes, images, quality, design, and labeling sell your product to the customer. Immediately, the customer should get the information they need about your product and decide to buy.
Retains your customers’ interest: If your packaging makes it easy for the consumer to enjoy your product, they will keep coming back. It also provides important information that they can read during their free time or as they use the product, to relate more with your brand and want to buy it the next time they are shopping.
What are the Five Functions of Packaging?
Besides using packaging as a marketing tool, it can also play the following important functions:
Protects your product.
Provides convenience during distribution and use of the product.
Enhances security by ensuring the product is not tampered with.
Acts as a platform for displaying important information about your product.
Packaging helps identify your product.
Clearly, retailers should pay the utmost attention to the importance of using packaging as a marketing tool for their products. The success of their product may depend on it.