Packaging – The Silent Salesperson

I loved this article from The Guardian and wanted to share it because of the excellent uses of packaging for micro-businesses it shows. Packaging isn’t just something to wrap your goods and products in, it can be a very useful selling tool and also helps to promote and build your reputation.

The first rule of any packaging is to make sure it does the job it is required to do, i.e. hold the products safely and securely until they are needed. This is a moment of truth as was explored in the article Managing Existing Customers from the Marketing Advice section of this site.

But it doesn’t have to stop there. First of all, it should contain details of how to contact you, so include your web address as a minimum, plus telephone number and email address if space is available.

Depending on the product, you might need to have instructions for use, ingredients, etc. but consider using the rest of the space available for details of the rest of the products in your range or alternative uses for it. Consider also what to include within the packaging, such as promotional leaflets or return details.

You might even want to link it with other marketing materials you have, such as videos. With a QR code, for example, you could send customers straight to the demonstration videos you have on your website. Video was explored in more detail in this blog posting Using Video for Promotion and information on how to produce promotional videos are explained in this article Producing Promotional Videos from the Marketing Advice section.

There will be a tendency to want to amend your existing packaging to include some of the areas discussed here and this is to be encouraged. But you might also want to specifically design and create your packaging to incorporate some of these opportunities, as was demonstrated in The Guardian article. Notice the Lego Gift Company and Texas Joe’s Beef Jerky examples where packaging became one of the organisation’s Unique Selling Points.