How To Make Your Labeling Project A Success

I often hear people say things like “I’m highly visual” and “I’ll know it when I see it,” but I believe it’s crucial that we begin to identify the elements that we enjoy and perceive so that we can use them in our work and to market our goods. Today, I’ll discuss three straightforward modifications you may make to your product packaging to boost sales.

When a new idea is introduced to the world, it can be challenging to determine whether a concept is sound or whether it was properly communicated. I’m aware that many people are aware of the value of a good idea, but they may feel that I didn’t present this in the best possible light and ask what they can do to boost sales.

Me Me Me

The first mistake I see product-based business owners making is what I call “Me, me, me”. A lot of product-based business owners will make decisions and kind of focus on themselves throughout this kind of product journey. As business owners, I think it’s our job to help customers decide on investing in our products. But I think it’s important that we help them make that decision. We don’t necessarily need to make those decisions for them.

When making decisions on colors, fonts, and styles, it is crucial that you include your ideal customer as much as you can, and not take on the decision all on your own. That way, when you put something into the market, you can be sure that your customer base will like it and they’re gonna gravitate towards it.

If you don’t know what your customers are thinking, or you’re trying to get a gauge on what they’re thinking or what they will want, ask. Yes, ask. In this digital age, it’s awesome that we can connect with people all over the world in such a short amount of time. If you want to know what people are thinking, the internet is full of opinions, or people are willing to tell you what they think. Don’t make decisions just based on a whim or based on what you like or what you think. Please source that information from your customers so you can make informed decisions about what it is that they want. 

Too little/Too much

The second packaging error I observe business owners making that they might easily correct to increase sales is either giving too little or too much information on their product packaging. I want you to consider how you would like your items to represent you if they were on a table and you weren’t there. If you’re thinking about making some upgrades and some enhancement in your product packaging, really do this exercise, like put your products on a table and think about what your products would say if somebody would have a conversation with them.

This first product, whatever this product is, has nothing on it, no label, no logo. It looks like juice but it could be something else. This product says nothing. There’s no information here for me to make a decision. There’s nothing here. I don’t know what’s in it. I don’t know who made it. I don’t know what this is. Is this for sales, is free like, I don’t know, no clue?

This next product on the table only has a logo on the packaging. If your logo is the only thing on your product packaging, you’re doing your products a disservice. I do have more information from the previous one with the logo, so now somebody can say, oh, Left Brain Creative Group made this juice or whatever it is. But if you don’t know my brand, and you don’t know, that’s my logo, you don’t even know who made this still. I feel like you don’t have any more information to decide than you did when it had nothing at all on it.

The next product example that I see a lot of is having too much information. This one says “Gets you moving, best stuff ever”, “Crafted in the ’90s”, and “Creative juice made by Pam’s daughter”. There’s much more information here than in the previous two examples. But is this information helping a customer make a decision? Yes, I can identify what this product is but do I want it? Can I easily like say this is something I want? Not really, because the information that I need to make a decision that’s kind of buried at the bottom, and in the middle. There’s a lot of junk here. This mistake, runs the gamut from, way too much, to way too little, as far as product packaging. I think it’s important to find, like some sort of balance. And I think the ideal balance is figuring out what information your customers need to know, to make a decision. So this is a much more cleaned-up example. I think it’s important to note like when you think about the front of the package, you wanna think about what somebody needs to make a decision, and other supplemental information might be good to include somewhere to put on the back, on the side.

All Together Now

The third way I think people kind of get in their way as far as packaging is cohesion and combining all the elements. I see this a lot with people who tend to think through one step at a time versus seeing the full scope of the project. We’ll keep going with the juice example. I came across someone selling a dark green juice. They packaged the juice in a clear bottle, which is great. But they opted to print the product labels on clear material at home. I see this issue with business owners who are more concerned with like cost versus investment.

I was recently watching a video by Dr. Ben Hardy, he’s a behavioral psychologist, and he talks about a cost mindset versus an investment mindset. He said some people are focused so much on the cost mindset, they’re focused on just getting out what they put in, versus someone who’s focused more on an investment mindset, where their future is always growing because they’re investing in themselves right now.

“Nothing is a cost. Everything is an investment to those who are growth-oriented. Every relationship is an investment. Every decision is an investment.” – Dr. Benjamin Hardy

So what I find is, when a lot of people try to cut costs, they usually end up with a result that reflects that. A simple fix for this would be to approach your packaging project more insightfully. When you’re in the grind it’s easy to fall into the nitty gritty of getting things done but sometimes when you can look at a project, with like a god view, an overview where you can see the whole thing, you can see how the parts are moving. When you can see how they all move and mesh together, you can usually come up with ideas that weren’t initially available to you.

With a new approach and renewed vision, you might decide to hire a package designer or a product designer. Somebody to help you kind of visualize these things more clearly. One solution to this packaging example could be using white ink. We’re still using clear labels, because cause we want to see your green juice, but using white ink behind, the text on the labels that you already designed, or even using white ink as the text color. These are options that you don’t get when you’re printing at home because this is a different printing capability. Usually, you would have to work with a retailer (like my friends at Stickermule) or a digital printer to kind of get options like this. Another option would be to just print opaque, you can still see the juice in the bottle. Your label has a nice clean, color, and everything is legible which can be an issue when trying to print at home.

We usually stop becoming the business’s bottlenecks when we hire a designer and use their knowledge. Most of the time, it’s us that are keeping us from moving forward. It’s crucial to enlist the help of the right people if we choose to take on these more challenging projects, like the packaging for your products, to get there and succeed. Even though these things are tiny, they have a big impact on how well your products are sold. Start small, but don’t be afraid to think broadly.

If you are a product-based business and you are ready to take a look at your visual identity and see you know what packaging changes you can make to enhance your products and help them sell more I’d love to chat with you. Reach out here.

Also, be sure to check out Sticker Mule, they can help you print some standout custom labels​ for your product packaging!