Packaging

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Conversation rate optimization benefits

The packaging that you deliver your products in also says a lot about your business and has a big impact on how consumers perceive and value your brand.

Gratifying unwrapping experience

So the whole process of receiving a product that you’ve paid money for, and then unwrapping it and basically getting in to touch that product is a really important part of the buying and user experience.

If you get that right, it can massively amplify people’s feelings for your brand. So, for example, Apple, they do this incredibly well, where everything in the packaging is incredibly sleek, incredibly simple, and it really aligns with their brand positioning.

Conversely, if you get this wrong, it can be incredibly frustrating. I think we’ve all wrestled with those highly packaged electrical goods that you need scissors or a knife to get into and you’re pretty pleased when you get away without cutting your finger off. And so that’s an example of where you’re already frustrated before you’ve even started using the product. And so those are things you absolutely want to avoid.

Exposure to advertising

There’s also an additional benefit of getting the packaging right of advertising. If you deliver the product in a beautifully branded bag that all the way through the supply chain, wherever someone might see it, that’s raising brand awareness of your product. So when it’s sat on someone’s doorstep waiting to be delivered, people can see it there and that all helps the presence of your brand grow. Likewise, it’s an opportunity to include flyers and tokens about new products that your business offers when customers are buying your products because you know they already like what you have to offer because they’ve chosen to buy some of your products. So this is a great opportunity to increase customer loyalty and increase customer value.

Reinforce positive brand perception

So all of these things work together to reinforce the perception of the brand, and you’ve got to make sure that that’s a positive one.

Disadvantages of inappropriate packaging

Poor customer experience

There are other considerations and potential problems about getting the packaging wrong, too. So I’ve already spoken about the poor customer experience of struggling to get into the package, but there’s an additional consideration. I think we’ve all had those packages where you’ve bought a small product and it arrives in a giant box with card and tissue and everything all around it to stop it rattling around in the box. So that often says to the customer, who are often now very environmentally conscious, that this supplier is not taking those environmental considerations seriously. And again, that can have a negative impact on how the brand’s perceived.

Over-payment to carriers

There’s also a very real commercial cost of that because packaging is usually charged by the courier based on the volume that the packaging takes up. So by having packaging that is much larger than it needs to be, you’re often spending large sums of money effectively shipping air around the country.

So it’s really important, both from a consumer perception and from a hard-nosed commercial point of view, that you optimize the packaging as much as possible to make it as efficient as possible.