You’ve done your marketing down to the dot. You’ve handed out flyers. You’ve sponsored Facebook ads. You’ve done everything to get your product in front of your target market. But have you made sure your product packaging helps to seal the deal?

Many entrepreneurs tend to underestimate the value of product packaging, thinking that customers ultimately care about the product, not the packaging it comes in. But product packaging is often called the last advertisement your customers will see. In other words, packaging is the last step in the marketing process, which means it can make or break your entire marketing campaign.

To set up your products for success, be sure to follow these four rules of effective product packaging.

Take Advantage of Cusps

You may not notice this as a consumer because it’s subconsciously planted into your mind, but cusps are a great visual cue that you can use in your product managing. Cusps are best described as sharp and accented curves that used to place strong emphasis on the product.

These icons serve to trigger certain emotional responses from the viewer. These emotions range from fear to strong caution: basically, our “fight or flight” instinct. In this case, however, it’s “look away or buy.”

Less is More

While entrepreneurs are often advised to find ways to “stand out,” that doesn’t mean you have to go all out and dazzle customers with “busy” package designs. What usually happens is that you get too preoccupied coming up with a visually interesting design that you forget the point of the product packaging—to convince customers to buy your product.

So, simplicity is, without doubt, still a thing of beauty even in today’s advanced visual landscape.

Make the Message Memorable to Anybody

Here’s a good way to test how easy it is to recall your product package.

Get a group of children—around 5 to 7 years of age—to look at one of your advertising materials. It can be a video, a poster, or one of your digital ads—just make sure it’s actually child-friendly. Next, tell the children to go to the store or supermarket and look for the product. If they can find it with no problem, you know you have a memorable product package.

A product package that a kid can recall should likewise be memorable to adults. The easier it is to read the name, logo, and message on your product package, the more likely it will stay top of mind with your target audience.

This brings us to the next rule…

Be Iconic

Be simple, but be iconic.

Create something that resonates with your customers. Take cues from Coca-Cola, Google with its Android logo, and Apple’s partially-eaten apple logo. These are all simple icons, but they have been very effective at ingraining themselves into the minds of the market.

Work closely with your graphic design team to come up with a design and the colour scheme that you and your designers think will be very effective at capturing the hearts and minds of your customers.

To get more packaging updates and insights, be sure to follow this blog. If you would like to learn more about our packaging solutions, get in touch with the Smartbag team by calling us at 1300 874 559.