15. The Ultimate Growth Tool for Product Business for Product

Welcome to episode 15 of Product, Packaging, and Profit. Let’s dive deeper into how packaging design can help you grow your project business. Specifically, how can packaging help you grow your visibility and reach? Things you won’t want to miss:

• The difference between growth and scaling

• How packaging can grow the visibility of your brand

• The most valuable thing packaging does for your product

• How packaging can free up your time

• The multiplication of packaging

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

Welcome back, product friends. I am so excited to be joining you again today.

If you've been listening in the last couple of weeks, you know that I have been talking a lot about what return on investment looks like for your product-based business. And last week as we were talking about those five areas of goals to consider when you are investing in anything in your product-based business, it really stood out to me that so many of those goals revolved around the idea of growth, growing sales, growing your audience, growing your profitability, so much growing going on in there.

Episode Transcript

It really got me thinking about the idea of growing your business and how can packaging help you grow your business. So I want to, I wanna take a few minutes to talk about that today. Now, before we dive into this topic too deeply, I want to just talk a little bit about the difference between the idea of growth and scaling, because I think we sometimes use those terms interchangeably, and I am gonna mention both of them today, but they do mean two different things.

So I went to my favorite business resource, Harvard Business Review, and this is their definition. Of those two words, growth means adding revenue at the same pace. You are adding resources. Scaling means adding revenue at a much greater rate than cost. So in my eyes, this means growth is kind of a one-to-one investment in the outcome.

You are putting as much money, time, and effort into the business. As growth is happening versus scaling is that multiple, you are putting in time, money, and energy, but what you're getting back is much greater. There's this exponential multiplication that is happening. So some of you may be in this growth stage, some of you may be in this scaling stage, but it's good to kind of know those two different things because there are.

Some things that are gonna have a much greater return on investment, and that is in more of that scaling space versus that, they're kind of one-to-one that's happening in that, in that growth phase. So when it comes to packaging though, how can packaging help you grow your business? Well, one of them.

The best thing that packaging can do for a product-based business is can amplify your product visibility. Now, when I'm talking about product visibility, I mean where your product shows up, how your customers see your product, and then how they start to see it again and again. Packaging becomes this visual representation of your brand and your business wherever your product shows up.

So when you use your packaging over and over again to represent your product, that repetition is going to create recognition and memorability for your brand and your product, and that is something that you're packaging is doing for your business. When you are not there to talk about your product, and to me that is a big part of growing your business and growing your brand.

Are people starting to notice your product? Are they remembering your product and are they recognizing you? And packaging plays such a huge role in that, and to me, that's one of the reasons why investing in packaging for product-based business is important. Because your packaging essentially starts to become the face of your brand.

It starts to show up for your business, and you not only wanna make a great first impression when somebody first encounters your product in a store, online, or in person, but you want it to be memorable. In a way that the next time they see it, they recognize it, and then the next time they see it, they recognize it again, then they start to feel like they're seeing it everywhere, and then they start to suggest it to other people.

That, that repetition, helps create that recognition. Is so valuable. And once you've invested in your packaging, you have the ability to make that happen by including the packaging in your e-commerce photos, in your social media photos, and in your ads. Some of the brands that I've worked with have continued to show their packaging over and over again in their marketing, that packaging becomes an iconic part of the.

And that takes us to the next way that packaging can help grow your business. Your packaging can help take your brand, take your business from one-to-one, selling to one to many. Selling. That starts to sound a little like scaling, doesn't it? And that is because. You May 1st be starting out and selling your product online, on social media, on your Facebook page, on your Instagram page, but you also might be selling it in person at a market or a fair or selling it in person to a buyer at a boutique or a store.

And at that point, you are selling the product and there's just one of you, and that's great. Don't get me wrong. I think that it's really important that you are able to convey the specialty and uniqueness of your product and tell that story and get people on board with it. But it's kind of like time.

Well, it is like time. There's only one of you and you can only speak to so many people at a time. And when people buy from people they buy based on that personal connection.

As you want to grow your product business, having packaging that tells the story of your product in a powerful way allows you to speak to more people at once because your packaging, every place shows up. It can connect with one or more. If you go to a market and you have 10, 20 products on your table that each ha that are each in their own packaging and you are speaking with a customer and two other people come up, three other people come up, they can pick up that product and connect with the product through the packaging.

At that point, you're selling to four people at once. Even though you're having one conversation, your packaging is helping you sell to more people.

Again, this is kind of where, you know, growth meets scaling, but this is really how packaging is going to help you grow your business. It's going to allow you to speak to more people at once, and it's not because of how loud it is it's because of how many times you redo it. It just has to do with the replication of it all, the repetition of it all.

And it doesn't matter whether it's you're standing at a table in a market or somebody goes online and they see your product on an e-commerce store on Etsy, on Amazon. If other boutique owners are seeing your product on Fair Juniper Market, these wholesale markets, and they're picking up your product for their shops because of your listing, because of the packaging, and then that packaging goes into that shop, your product goes into that shop with the packaging and more customers come in and get to experience your product.

That is the multiplication of packaging. I wish I had, I wish this was a little more visual. Even if you're watching on YouTube, I'd make a chart cuz this is like one of those things where you start with one and it breaks off into two and then it breaks off into four or five. And before you know it, your product has a much greater reach than it did before you invested in packing.

Because the packaging is helping to amplify that reach. So think about it. When you're thinking about growing your product business, what do you need more of? Do you need more time? Do you need more visibility? Do you need to increase that presence? These are all things that. Packaging can help you do this. And when, when you're looking at these goals of growth for your product business, consider how packaging can help you get there like we just talked about, it can help you reach more people in less time without multiplying yourself.

Without having to create new products. One of my longest-running clients has only three products in their line. They launched with one, and because of the branding, because of the packaging, and because of the marketing that they did, they were able to sell deep into that one item and then strategically add to their line.

It wasn't about creating all of it. Different products, this variety of products. It was do one thing really great and tell that story. So this is why I get so excited about working with product-based businesses because the packaging has this ability to tell your story in a really strong, concise. We take the story, we turn it into visuals, and we turn it into messaging.

We, make sure that when somebody is approaching your product, they get a sense of what it is visually before they get to talk to you, before they, you know, get up to the shelf and get to read all of the text from far away. Your packaging should, should draw somebody in and give them a little insight into what your product's.

Then it should invite them in to learn more. If you are interested in learning more about how packaging can help you meet your business growth goals, I would love to chat with you. Head on over to hidden path creative.com/service guide. You'll get an overview of how we can help end a link to book an intro call with me. I can't wait to talk.

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. If you enjoy the show, please rate and review us wherever you're listening, and be sure to come back for our next episode.

Until then, this is Kelley Kempel of Hidden Path Creative, and don't forget what's on the outside matters too.