Packaging As A Marketing Tool

Making it for the customer to buy is essential to your marketing effort -- don't ignore packaging as a part of this process.

How you will package your audio information product and what goes out the door with it deserves as much planning effort as the production of the product itself. Product packaging will be your first impression on your customer. This is a key to repeat business. What can you do to make it easier for him to purchase other products?

Case in point. I buy a lot of informational products over the Internet, some to check out the competition and some for use in my business. I recently had a need for some buyout music, so I bought a couple of items on eBay and here’s what I got.

They can't buy if they don't know what you are selling

The first CD was packaged in a paper sleeve and had only the album name and website address on the CD itself. (At least it had that!) There was no documentation as to what was contained on the CD and no information about what other products the company had available.

The second CD was attractively packaged in a plastic case with a color insert and complete listing of contents. The CD itself had a color label, but no website or contact information. And again there were no catalog sheets or information enclosed with the shipment.

I checked out the websites of both vendors and determined that they both had many other products available. What a missed marketing opportunity!

Don’t look at packaging as just something to contain your product – it can be your most important marketing tool. Why? Studies tell us that it costs 10 times as much to get a new customer than to generate repeat business from an existing one. When you ship a product to someone, that person has become a customer. Don’t miss the chance to make them a repeat customer. How the product is packaged and what you include with it is an almost free tool to help you do this.

It doesn't cost much more to deliver a quality product

I find it extremely irritating and almost insulting to pay over a hundred dollars for a software package and then have the program disk delivered in a paper sleeve. Some so called “expert” with an MBA probably calculated how much the 10 cents saved by eliminating the plastic CD case would increase the “bottom line” of the company. What he didn’t calculate (these kinds of things don’t plug into a spreadsheet very well) was the cost of customer dissatisfaction and the cheapening of the company’s image. Raise the product price by 10 cents and leave the case in!

All CDs should be labeled and in a plastic jewel case and have a printed insert that lists the contents of the CD. Your product should look first class and be as easy as possible for the customer to use. The label on the CD or cassette should include your web address in case the other packaging gets lost and they want more product a year down the road.

The only exception to this might be a CD that is included with a book and is contained in a sleeve that is glued inside the back cover of a book. This might be necessary if the book is being sold through a variety of sources and a separate CD would create an inventory and handling problem.

All orders should include some type of catalog sheet listing other products and how they can help the customer or increase his profitability. Better yet, you should include a discount coupon or some type of special offer encouraging the customer to buy from you again.