Labelling Reflects Your Brand and Affects Sales
Product labelling is an essential part of your branding and is a really important element in the sales process. When designing a label for your product, it’s key that you sit down and continually refer to your branding guidelines to ensure that your design is consistent with your company brand. Any product sold in store in a competitive environment such as a supermarket can have its success determined by the quality of labelling. Do consumers recognise your brand; does your labelling reflect the price point of your product?
Successful Uses of Product Packaging and Branding
An example of successful branding and packaging is supermarket own brand products which have been divided up into a value and luxury range. Using Tesco as an example, they have created two brands where you can visually see the difference in their price point. Subconsciously, consumers are already making judgements about the quality of what is being sold.
Take for example; a jar of tomato pasta sauce. Their value branding is plain, uses the term “everyday value” and uses their red and blue logo, reinforcing the value element of their product. The font is very basic, plain and isn’t trying to convey any brand message as it may detract the impact of their luxury range. Their price point and product quality is reflected in their product labelling and therefore you would consider the label to be “on brand”.
Another thing to consider when designing your product labels are your competitors. You need to determine who they are; whether they hold a bigger market share; or whether consumers are more likely to recognise their brand over yours. Understanding your competition is the key to creating a branding strategy on your labels. You may decide to design a stand out label to attract attention to your product. Or, you may concentrate on underlining the quality elements of your product and why it is better than your competition.
Features and Benefits – How to Sell Your Products
When you consider underlining value, many people will consider this to mean selling at a low price. However, underlining value is about defining the features of your product and selling to the consumer the benefits that comes with them. Defining a feature isn’t the whole journey; a customer assessing a purchase, especially a high-price product, will likely question what value that feature brings to justify the price. Reinforce the benefits of your product features to close a sale; it is something that is important to have on your product labelling.
For example, Roundup Weed Killer’s product label has the standout message “Treats up to 150m2 – Kills the roots, so weeds don’t come back” as their features/benefits message on their product labelling. They’ve identified the key features their target audience are searching for and made them stand out on the label. They then go on to identify what their product is suitable for. It even provides a visual for what their product is compatible with, leaving the consumer with no other questions.
Assess Your Product Labels and Make Changes
Whether you sell online or offline, product branding will have a key impact on sales. Online you can use your webpage to add a further description to sell your product, but you will have to have a picture of the product and it’s the first impression which counts for so much with consumers.
In store and in any offline environment your labelling has to be the sales pitch for your product. If it’s on a shelf and you don’t have a salesman to answer any customer questions, your label is the go to source of information for potential buyers meaning it holds a great deal of power on whether or not you make the sale.
Audit your current labelling, consider the following questions:
- Does your labelling reflect your brand?
- Does your product label catch the eye of the consumer?
- Does it underline the main features and benefits?
- Does it answer the questions a potential buyer will ask?
- Does it reflect the price point of the product?
- Would you buy your product?
Answering these key questions will give you a picture of what your product label needs to cover and will give you the information need to create a strategy on redesigning your labels for future success.
Contact our Abbey Labels team today to ask for further information or to get advice on product labelling or branding.
