Small businesses who use custom packaging can punch above their weight. We explain how.
Image: Box Produced by QinPrinting
Running a small business in a global marketplace can be as tough as it is rewarding. As a savvy small business owner, you're always on the lookout for exciting new ways to boost your brand visibility and ratchet up your competitive edge without breaking the budget. Custom printed boxes are a low-investment, high-return way to do exactly that. Let's dive straight in.
The power of packaging
Never underestimate the power of packaging. Just a simple upgrade or a few tweaks on your current packaging plan can revolutionize your brand visibility, deepen customer engagement and retention, and add dollars to the bottom line. Here's a few of the many benefits of a customized box design:
- Makes your products stand out on the shelf — whether the shelf is virtual or in-store
- Puts your brand, logo, tagline, and core messaging right up front
- Makes a memorable impression on customers
- Turns unboxing into a positive emotional experience
- Protects products in transit avoiding profit loss through damages and returns
In all situations — from retail outlets and point-of-sale through e-commerce applications and delivery to trade shows and product fairs — a branded, custom printed box makes your stuff stand out. Given the low investment needed to create a stunningly attractive box and the multiple marketing benefits you get from it, as a small business it's not an opportunity to ignore. Let's look at the best ways to leverage the impact of the customized box and use it to elevate your small business in the modern marketplace.
5 Ways to leverage the power of custom packaging
You can make even a limited marketing budget work extra hard for your small business with the right approach to custom packages. The essential materials and costs are not expensive. In the end — once the design stage is complete — we're talking cardboard and ink. Here are five factors to keep in mind when planning, designing, and printing your custom packing boxes.
1. Customize for the customer
It may seem obvious, but it's worth stating at the outset: your box must be designed with the customer at the forefront of your ideas. Clearly, it should be branded, but it should also be created with your core consumer demographic in mind. Make the box — the colors, the imagery, the wording — to appeal to the aspirations and values of your customers. In most cases, you'll already know your customers well and have done extensive market research; and in most cases your branding will already be aligned with the consumers your business targets, so there should be no big barriers here. Just make sure that your designer has all that information in the brief.
2. Product presentation
A good custom printed box isn't just a pretty way to transport goods. It's a powerful opportunity to control your product presentation when it arrives to the customer. A snug-fit custom insert shaped precisely to your product communicates increased value and enhances the appearance of the goods, making the unboxing experience a pleasure for the recipient. With minimal investment and a little creativity — and printed cardboard! — every product that leaves your warehouse becomes like a gift in the hands of your customer.
3. Surprise and delight
Most customers want an experience, not just a product. And it's so easy to enhance your custom printed box even further by adding thoughtful inserts. Cardboard box inserts can be anything from luxury materials — think silk or velvet for a high-end beauty product or jewelry — to a personalized thank you note or discount gift card. At very little added cost you can make a significant emotional impact on your customers that will create positive associations with your brand and product and have them coming back for more.
4. Start a conversation
A plain cardboard box — especially if it's not customized to fit the product and has waste space filled with polystyrene beans — is dull and uninspiring. It's not a good way to start a conversation. But if your product box is colorful, intriguing, beautifully designed with the product and the customer in mind, it's a different story. Because a box like that speaks to the customer and engages their emotions, it's a great place and moment to start a conversation.
Inside the box is an opportunity to put in a customer feedback form, a quiz, a request for a review, or a QR code which links to your social media. You can offer added incentives to encourage engagement. For example, the customer could be entered into a prize draw if they post a picture to their Instagram and tag your company. Or invite them to join an exclusive Facebook group which offers discounts and asks for feedback. Or anything else you can think of!
But why? Two reasons: again, it makes the unboxing experience more memorable, giving the consumer a sense of being valued and recognized; and it provides you with feedback, reviews, and marketing data while also encouraging free advocacy on social media. That's a ton of powerful engagement, promotion, and information at no extra cost.
5. Be eco-friendly
According to a recent study for Trivium Packaging, 74% of consumers say they not only prefer environmentally friendly packaging but they're happy to pay more for products that are delivered in boxes made from recycled and sustainable materials. Custom printed boxes can capitalize on growing consumer commitment to ecological responsibility and sustainable practices while saving money and touting your business's ethical credentials.
Here at Qin Printing, for example, our paper is from 100% sustainably managed, FSC certified sources and we use environmentally friendly, vegetable-based inks. So, your custom printed box can be good for the environment as well as good for business.
Ready to boost your brand, capture new customers, leverage loyalty, and power up your profits?
As a small business owner, you know that even when you can't compete with the ‘big boys' on price or range, you have all kinds of advantages to offer your customers that the larger companies can't: the personal touch, genuine customer service, attention to detail, and a vibrant, unique brand. But it's still vital that you do everything you can to get your brand and your products seen, and that every customer you make, you keep. And you need to do all that with the minimum investment.
The answer, then, is to leverage something that you've got to do anyway — that's already an essential business process — but elevate it, shake it up, get creative, and add value to it. You've got to ship boxes anyway. So why not ship beautiful, branded, bountiful boxes that boost engagement, delight customers, and increase sales?
Worried about the costs involved? You may be happily surprised. The impact that a custom printed box and a few packaging inserts can have on the consumer experience is many times more than the cost of designing and manufacturing the boxes themselves.
We've been in the business for decades and we've a lot of experience to draw on. Our materials are second-to-none in terms of both quality, sustainability, and competitive pricing. We have our own in-house designers and a history of happy customers all over the world. We're here to help. Just get in touch for a no obligation quote, or to chat through the options and explore the possibilities. We know that your success is our success and so we always go the extra mile. Let's talk.
