Consumers in the 18-25 age bracket are 74% more likely to share an image on product packaging that they have found particularly pleasing or luxurious on social media if they have made the purchase online.
Protein packaging to impact sales
The role of your protein packaging in consumer decisions cannot be overstated. It’s the first contact you make with your target audience, and, for many, it’s the first hurdle they fall at in their pursuit of revenue. 52% of online consumers say they would return to a business if the packaging they received felt premium, and businesses have reported a 30% increase in interest when attention is paid to packaging your brand. Smart packaging can instantly bridge the barrier between a product and a browsing consumer, standing out on the shelf and making clear, attractive promises to your market are invaluable for generating and retaining interest. Investing in making your protein packaging as consumer-friendly as possible, therefore, should be a top priority in any business.
A third of all consumer decision-making is based on the packaging of the product alone. These decisions are often quick, with shoppers relying on quick-fire judgments to select the product that most aligns itself with their own needs and lifestyle. A number of strategies can be employed to ensure your brand is the one that ends up in the basket after those seven seconds of first impressions (the estimated length of impression time from Business Insider).
Brand Icons
Often, one of the strongest threads tying a consumer to a particular product is the brand iconography. A clear and attractive icon that quickly promotes your brand’s personality is invaluable to the development of a consumer relationship, which can serve for generations of buyers. Emotional attachment through memories of past experiences with a product can be an immensely strong pressure on the consumer’s willingness to purchase. Brand icons can quickly tap into this emotional attachment through tying these feelings and memories to a single visual cue. Serving as a long-term reminder of the quality of your product, as well as the ethos of your company, your brand icon is going to be the first point of call for a browsing shopper and so should become your starting point for designing your protein packaging. Continuing this message throughout your protein packaging with adherent colours, typography, and style ensures that your brand is an obvious and ever-present element within your packaging.
Consistency
Representing your brand and product continues into every crevice of your packaging design. You can boost consumer interest in your protein packaging by ensuring that this representation is consistent through many different facets of your design. On both a conscious and subconscious level, your prospective consumer is scrutinising your product from the very moment they lay their eyes on the shelf, so staying on top of your design palette is a priority.
Colour
Colours used throughout a product’s packaging can set the tone for your product’s use, and ultimately entire brand. Carrying strong visual messages that readily give way to emotional responses, colours can unite products across a brand and even become a solid brand communication tool. Calming colours such as white, yellow, and green can instil a sense of cleanliness and simplicity, happiness and global sustainability respectively in your consumers. Whereas bolder colours such as black suggest control, luxury and power, and are often seen in male-oriented product packages. Neutral colours can invoke peace and gentleness, while red can promote a fast, exciting product. In general, the brighter the colour, the less serious a product’s packaging is taken so it is important to bare your brand’s goals in mind when selecting your palette.
Complementing the colours you use in your protein packaging is especially important when considering your typography. Clarity is a necessity when it comes to pairing a font with a base colour. If consumers cannot read the crucial information on your protein packaging, the box is going back on the shelf. It is also critical to consider the personality carried in the font that you choose. Different typography designs can convey a sense of elegance, delicacy or simplicity in your packaging design, and can often make or break the harmony of a product’s packaging.
Material
Maintaining a packaging design that not only grabs your consumers’ interest but also promotes the aims and quality of your brand and product even includes the very substance of your package. The materials you use can speak to your market in different ways, as well as promoting your business’s ideals. Sustainable packaging is proving incredibly popular as environmental concerns soar, while investing in premium luxury packaging adds immeasurable value to your brand in the eyes of a shopper. Creativity with materials can often stand out to a prospective buyer and can infuse a sense of originality and innovation into your product.
The materials you choose to use for your protein packaging also affect usability. Size, accessibility and ease of use are all determined by the shape and proportions of your protein packaging. Is your product designed to be carried in a handbag or pocket? Is it designed to sit in a bathroom cabinet or on a table in a bedroom? It’s important to keep these considerations in mind when developing packaging that will continue to engage consumer interest long after they’ve made their initial purchase. Ensuring that your packaging is also substantial enough to protect the product inside while retaining simple structure for manufacture and transportation costs will also resonate well with your market.
Social Media
If you are successful in creating a packaging design that speaks to your target market while promoting the quality and goals of your brand, you can expect to retain customer interest through social media rippling. Consumers in the 18-25 age bracket are 74% more likely to share an image on product packaging that they have found particularly pleasing or luxurious on social media if they have made the purchase online. A further 40% of overall consumers say they would share images of a product’s packaging online if it was interesting or gift-like. Social media, therefore, presents a unique opportunity to retain and generate consumer interest based on your packaging. Typically, unique and interesting designs, as well as luxury packaging, garner the most online exposure, so these routes certainly hold their own appeals in terms of interest generation.
Dedicating time to developing an engaging product packaging design can prove immeasurably profitable to generating and retaining consumer interest in your product. As your first contact with a prospective buyer, you need to know your products reflect your overall brand, stand out and deliver on promises. Overall, your packaging should present an experience in itself in order to become memorable. Thereby, you’ll establish an emotional connection with the customer, affording the opportunity for further online exposure on social media.
Thanks to Marketing Profs for the useful stats we used in this article!