14. My Favorite Packaging Goals for Product Businesses

Let’s chat about setting goals for your product business. Specifically, goals packaging design can help you achieve. Every business is different. That’s why I’m talking about my top five favorite outcomes impacted by packaging design. Things you won’t want to miss:

• The five areas of goals to consider for your business

• The two different types of financial goals to set

• One type of goal that is unique to ONLY product-based businesses

• The most crucial intangible goal to set

Hello and welcome to Product Packaging and Profit, where we help product-based businesses turn packaging design into a competitive edge to attract customers, grow sales, and boost profits.

I'm Kelley Kempel, After 20 years of designing packaging for national retailers, I founded Hidden Path Creative, a graphic design studio that supports entrepreneurs with branding and packaging to get their products seen and sold. I'm sharing the secrets that launched big brands so your products can stand out.  Let's get started.

Intro

We are back and I am so excited about the topic that I have to chat with you all about today.

As we talk about branding and packaging for your product businesses, we know it is an investment. We know that you are spending money, time, and resources to get back something that truly represents your business and helps you build your brand. You want to make sure that you are getting results for that investment.

And when we talk about results, I mentioned this a little bit in the last episode, you kind of can't measure those results unless you know what you're trying to achieve. And that comes down to setting goals for the investments in your product business. So that's what we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about today.

Episode Transcript

Now, when we think about investing in something like packaging design for your business, a lot of times people think that they're just paying for deliverable. They're just paying for that box design, that label design, the time that's gone into that. But ultimately, anytime you're investing in your business, you want to not just be getting a one-to-one dollar return on that investment.

You wanna be getting some multiple of that, two times your investment, five times your investment, 10 times your investment, and you, so you really want it to be a worthwhile spend. But how do you know if it's a worthwhile spend? How do you know if you are getting that amplification of the money that you are putting in?

Well, this is why we're gonna talk about goals because each business is gonna have different goals that determine what they want to invest in, where they want to invest, and how much they want to invest. But ultimately, Before you decide to invest, we'll help you target that money, but also make wise decisions.

The goals will then also help you to look at that return on investment. So today, I wanna break down really five areas of goals that you may set when it comes to investing in packaging design. Some of these are going to be very tangible. Some of them might be a little less tangible, but they're all really great types of goals to consider.

So let's, let's break this down a little bit. First and foremost are sales goals. It's not uncommon to. A new client comes to me and says, Hey, we're looking to update our packaging because we want to grow our business. That's fantastic. But how do you want to grow your business? This can, from a sales perspective, growing your business as a product-based business can look like a couple of different things.

It can look like growing your overall sales, so you're going to increase. The total number of product sales that are coming into your business. It could also be that you want to not necessarily increase the quantity of the overall sales. Maybe you want to increase the average unit retail. You want to increase the amount of money that someone is paying for each unit of your product

That's a great sales goal to have, and that's something that's really tangible around one particular product that you can look at that outcome. Another great sales goal and this is maybe more particular in terms of e-commerce, but growing your total cart value. So how do you increase the amount that each customer has?

Spends with you every time they shop with you. Now, any of these three goals would be great to have. You may have some combination of these as well. But ultimately these are just some really ideal top-level sales goals that you may have. Another area where you may have goals that you're trying to reach are marketing.

And these can come in a few different ways. So one of my favorite marketing goals is attracting new customers. And when we look at packaging design, when I look at packaging design, I'm always trying to look at it through the lens of the customer. What does, what does the customer expect? How can we surprise the customer?

And what is the customer seeing? So identifying a new customer that you want to. Is a really specific goal that we can achieve with packaging, retaining existing customers. You may think I wanna retain existing customers. Why do I have to change anything? You may not be having that goal of retaining existing customers may tell you just that, that you don't have to change a thing, or it may tell you that you only want to change specific things so that you keep equities that those existing customers are familiar with and have a relationship with.

But if you know who your existing customer is and retain them as a. And things in your customer'’ lives are changing, whether it's due to current economic, current social climate seasons of life-changing. Knowing that you still wanna target that existing customer can give you insight into what and if you need to change anything.

Another really fantastic marketing goal is increasing organic marketing. So this may sound counterintuitive. How is, if you want more organic marketing, how is making a marketing shift going to get you there? But ultimately, organic marketing is about encouraging your audience to share your product and uncover your product.

These are things that we can make adjustments to encourage your audience to share and become brand advocates. All right, we've got two more bullet points on this marketing goal, and they are really interesting. So the last two are increasing brand perception and increasing value. These two become a little more intangible in that you have to get creative in how you measure them.

But if you are looking to change how people see your brand or change how people see the value that your product brings to their life, these are definitely things you wanna share with your brand designer, your packaging designer any of those creative investments that you are making. And again, this goal will help to guide the decisions that you make along the way.

And brand perception and value perception are two great things that an updated package design can help you with. All right, now we're gonna get a little more specific when it comes to goals. Your product business, because these are goals that are really, they only really apply to product businesses, and that is what are your retail goals.

So you may currently be an e-commerce-only business, but you may have goals to move into wholesale and to get new wholesale and retail partners. That's big. And that would require potentially some big changes to your packaging design. Heck, you may have been selling only on your website and not have packaging that is ready for retail.

So that is a great goal to share with your brand designer, your packaging design, as you're getting ready to start a project and when it comes to having your product. Live in-store at retail. Increasing shelf impact is another fantastic goal to have. So you may have been out in the market for a year, a few years, and things may be changing around you and you may say, Hey, we see an opportunity to be more eye-catching on the shelf, to stand out differently from our competition.

So that is definitely a goal to bring into the project. You may be changing something about your project, your product, or your brand, and you wanna highlight that newness. That is another goal, and that's more of a design goal. So that when you look at your updated packaging design against the original, does that newness come across?

And when you're sharing that news. Within that retail goal, that probably connects to another goal that you've created, whether it's a sales goal or a marketing goal. Highlighting, newness can help drive sales, it can attract new customers. So that's definitely one of those interconnected goals that I see.

Another retail goal or retail adjacent goal is gaining more press. It's when you have a product that becomes synonymous with the packaging, particularly if you're in skin care, beauty, cosmetics, some of the bath and body care where your brand and your product are really represented by that package, or it doesn't exist outside of that package.

Sometimes our retail goal is to gain more press place, place. And having packaging that is visible and recognizable when it is reproduced as a photo at a really small size is something that can help you get more press placements if that packaging is visually appealing and is going to look great on the gift guide website or on the page of a gift guide in a magazine.

Editors are going to be inclined to include you in their round. And that's definitely something that you want to share with your package design partner so that they know that they need to look at your package in that small scale of a photo, as well as the actual size. But I always love that as a goal to get more visibility, to get more press placements, and to get new retail partners.

So exciting for the brand. All right. I wanna bring it back to those dollars because they're so, they're so important. When you're running a business, you're in business to make money, so sometimes your goals are around profitability. We already talked about sales goals. That's one way to increase those dollars.

But another great way to increase those dollars is to look at your profitability. A lot of times when I ask customers and potential customers about what roadblocks they are running into with their packaging, the challenges that they have are around per piece. The price is very expensive. Shipping is very expensive.

It takes a long time to put my packaging together, like packaging my item and putting all the labels and all the things that I have. Guess what? These are all profitability goals you can set at the beginning of a project. So first and foremost, you may say, I wanna increase the profitability of my products, which would mean you're looking at lowering, either lowering your cost of goods or increasing the overall price.

Might be a combination of both. Well, when you're working with a brand designer, a packaging designer, you can look. Can we reduce the per-piece packaging costs to increase that profitability? That would be a goal to set. And that's a really that's a really tangible goal, reducing those packaging costs.

You can also say, can we reduce the packaging labor? Can we reduce the time it takes to package the product? Whether you're doing it yourself or whether you. Somebody on your team that packages the products, is there something you can change about the packaging that reduces the amount of time you are spending packaging your product?

What can you do to reduce shipping costs? Now this one gets a little bit more complex, I would say, as a packaging designer, this is definitely something I would need to partner with you on as a business owner. Is there anything that can be done with the packaging to reduce the shipping costs? And first, you have to look at what goes into those shipping costs, right?

It, it's the size of the product and the packaging. It's the weight of the configuration. But definitely, sometimes there are things that can be done with the packaging to reduce those shipping. And I mentioned this at the top of the profitability goals, but raising that product price now that's a great goal to have and something great for your packaging design partner to understand now.

When raising that product price, you may also need to look at raising your packaging spend to include a higher-end material. But again, this should be a multiple, right? Like if you're raising the amount that you're spending on your per package piece by whatever that is, it should be a factor of how high you're raising that price.

But you can also. Going back to that idea of increasing value perception, a change to the design may look higher end without any material changes, and that may allow you to raise your product price. And bees are goals that if your design partner isn't aware of them, they can't help you meet them. But if they are aware of them, ugh, these, these are the things that I love helping.

Love helping clients with it, and I love seeing them happen. I love how some small design changes can increase the way customers see your brand, see your product, and allow you to charge more for them. All right, so profitability goals are definitely goals to not overlook when you are investing in your product business, specifically investing in packaging.

But this last set of goals, these are, these may be the least tangible goals, however, these are some of the most important goals, and I think as a business owner, it's really important that you take a step back, look internally, and understand what intrinsic goals you have about investing in yours. And when I talk about Intrinsic, I talk about that internal feeling that you have about your brand and about your product That packaging can help with.

One of the biggest transformations that I see with an updated package design or a new package design is an increase in confidence about your product, about your. Excitement to share your brand, your product, and your packaging with more of your audience. I think sometimes it's easy to overlook this as a value, as an outcome, but ultimately you need to be proud of the presentation of your product.

And when you are proud, you share it more. And when you share it more, you hit more of those marketing goals, you hit more of those sales goals. And I just don't want you to overlook what personally is driving you to invest in updated packaging or invest in updated branding for your product based. I have a client that I worked on branding with and you know, local, local in the area here.

His team Al increased his team was so excited about the new logo for the business and how cool it looked to them that they were excited to wear the new business t-shirts that they wear when they go out in the field. That is almost unquantifiable, but also a huge asset to a business is a huge, huge asset.

When your team is excited about your brand and will share it, and when you have a recognizable visual or package that can continue to be shared, so thinking about that, you're investing not just in that one package, but you're investing in it. The image that can bring your team together, that's going to be shared over and over and over again that customers are going to see over and over and over again.

It is that repetition of message that just as much as that design output itself helps you reach your business goals. I just want you to think about like, which of these goals or which of these combination of goals are you trying to achieve the next time you're looking at investing in branding or packaging design for your business?

And don't keep them a secret. Share them with your business partners so that they can help you achieve these. If you're interested in talking about your business goals and possible packaging changes that can help you achieve them, I'd love to have a call head on over to hidden path creative.com/service guide, all one-word, service guide, and you'll get an overview of how we can help what those packages look like, and a link to book an intro call so that we can break down what your business goals are and talk about.

Packaging can specifically help you achieve them.

In Closing

Thank you for listening to Product Packaging and Profit, a podcast for product entrepreneurs looking to level up with packaging. We hope you'll join us next time to hear more about how packaging can help propel profitable product businesses. Next week I'm gonna be back with another bonus episode where we chat about my designer toolkit and why you'll want to learn Adobe Illustrator if you're looking to design your own package.

So join us next week. Until then, this is Kelley Kempel of Hidden Path Creative. And don't forget what's on the outside matters too.