Stand Up Pouches for Product Packaging

4 Steps to Finding the Perfect Protective Packaging

Written by David Marinac | Mar 17, 2015 1:48:00 PM
Whether it’s a conscious realization or not, product packaging is a big deal to your customers. They spend a considerable amount of time browsing grocery and department store aisles while staring at thousands of product packages. If you’re lucky enough, your product in particular will catch their eye. If not, your customer will keep searching until your competitor’s product is in their hands.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The trick to landing in your customers’ shopping cart starts with your product packaging. There’s an overwhelming amount of options and features to choose from, and selecting the perfect packaging might feel like a hike up Mount Everest. But don’t worry—we’re here to make your search a bit simpler with these 4 simple steps.

 
 
 
 

Step 1: Evaluate Your Ideal Customer

Where would your company be without your customers? They are the lifeblood of your business, and let’s face it—nearly every decision that you make revolves around them. When you are looking for the perfect packaging, the best place to start is by evaluating your customers themselves.

Defining your ideal customer can be a bit tricky, but not impossible. First, consider the product that you are offering. Who is most likely to buy your product? You can break this demographic down into several parts, including:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Lifestyle
  • Hobbies and interests

It’s a broad range, but it’s important to hit that trigger button when you’re evaluating your ideal audience. Whether you cater to kids, busy professionals, athletes, or parents, you need to understand exactly who you are selling to before you are able to produce the perfect packaging.

As you come to understand your ideal audience, you can add options and features to your packaging that meet the needs of your customers.

Step 2: Consider Your Customers’ Needs

Once you discover and evaluate your ideal customer, the considerations don’t stop there. The next step to finding the perfect protective packaging is considering your customer’s needs. What can you include that will make their lives easier? How can you enhance their experience with your brand?

The answer to your customers’ true needs lie within packaging features, sizes, and styles. This includes options such as:

  • Zippers
  • Tear holes
  • Pour Spouts
  • Stand up packaging
  • Small retail packaging
  • Large barrier packaging
  • Level of quality
  • And more

What matters most is meeting the needs of your customers. In order to discover what they truly need, you must get in the mindset of your customer. It can be difficult to remove yourself from your job title and put yourself in the store aisle, but it’s the first step to finding the perfect packaging.

Above all else, strive to increase customer experience using convenience. If your ideal customer is always on the go, it’s a no-brainer to add a zipper or re-sealable feature to your stand up packaging. Think of how you would like your packaging to function as if you were buying it for yourself.

Step 3: Perfecting Your Presentation

While it is vitally important to meet the needs of your customers, your packaging presentation can make or break buying decisions. It comes as no surprise that customers tend to select the most eye-catching packaging from the shelf. By implementing standout design features, you’re putting yourself on the fast track right into your customers’ shopping carts.

So, how exactly do you perfect your presentation, and how do you know what’s right for your customer?

The good news is that you can learn from your competitors to get ideas for what works and what doesn’t. You never want to directly swipe your graphic ideas from competitors, but take note of how competitors present themselves. Do they use bright colors, or do they keep it simple with neutrals? Can you pinpoint a direct correlation with their packaging presentation and sales?

The idea is to find your happy place on the store shelf within the competition. Stand up packaging has a big world of printing options, and there’s no reason to blend in with everyone else. Rotogravure printing allows for affordable high quality graphics to be printed on your packaging, helping you become a hotshot on the market that every customer will notice.

Step 4: Building Your Brand

Your brand directly ties into your packaging presentation, and it’s a must for creating a loyal customer base. Customers purchase products from companies that they trust. In order to achieve a level of trust, building your brand is essential to your overall strategy.

It’s easy to build your brand with flexible retail packaging, and there are several approaches of doing so. First, evaluate what message that you want your  packaging to send to your customers. Is it quality product? Freshness? Long-lasting flavor? Whatever your message, you can easily display your message with graphics, copy, and even clear display windows to showcase your product.

The next step to building a brand with your packaging is sticking to a consistent color scheme. Working with a hodgepodge of colors and graphics is bound to confuse your customer. If you need help developing a consistent color scheme that works with your brand as well as your product packaging, look to your food packaging supplier who can help you achieve a streamlined image.

The Perfect Protective Packaging: Tying it All Together

The perfect protective packaging for your customer will enhance user experience, add an element of convenience to their lifestyle while creating loyalty to your brand. Color, quality, presentation, and customer satisfaction all plays a large role in developing the perfect packaging.

Perfecting your product packaging is not an overnight process, but protective packaging certainly holds the power for attracting and keeping customers for life.