Suffering declining sales year-on-year? Maybe it's time to re-brand

Before

After

Photo credit: Dion Label

If your sales are low and you find your once desired product is on a downward sales cycle, it may be time to take a look at your entire marketing mix – including your product packaging. 
 
You should look at the people that you are targeting. Do you still have a customer database from 5 or 10 years ago, that you are still advertising to? Perhaps it’s a waste of time and money because they have ‘moved on’ from your product. Perhaps their tastes have changed? Perhaps they don’t have the money they once had? Perhaps your once loyal teenage customers are now buying more ‘mature’ age products and the advertising that worked for them, is not working for the new generation of teenagers. 

If you have a timeless product, maybe you want to keep your once loyal customers, but they aren’t buying from you anymore. Perhaps a direct or indirect competitor entered the market with a superior product, a lower price, a great advertising campaign and more attractive or overall better packaging. There could be a mix of reasons as to why your brand isn’t working anymore or why your customers decided to switch brands or just stopped using your brand or product. 
 
So you need to decide if you need to re-brand to get your customers back or if you need to attract new customers that haven’t tried your brand before. Or maybe both.

It’s time to rebrand when you realise you are losing your current customers and potential customers to your inferior competitors.

The colours, pictures and graphic design on your packaging that was really popular in the 80s or even 90s is not popular now. You need to research what the
successful competitors on your level are doing, what their packaging looks like, and how they are communicating to their target market and customers.

Maybe your fluro design on your packaging is not communicating that you use only natural products in your soap.

Keep in mind, as you would with any marketing
decision –marketing is about psychology.  Many people are adverse to change, especially as they ‘mature’.  So keep in mind that if you do want to keep your loyal customer base but want to re-brand, you need to communicate to them before you change your brand, you need to communicate to them during your new brand launch, and you need to communicate to them after the re-branding has taken place. Although this will still upset some people, you need to decide what is best for your company. You may lose 10 customers that can’t cope with change, but if you need to increase sales and attract new customers, and if the re-brand is going to potentially attract hundreds of new customers, then that is the risk you need to take.

Never make decisions without carrying out a lot of research. Use common sense in your research, and ask lots of questions. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Why would they choose you (your brand) over a competitor’s product? Go and visit the shops where your product is stocked. Try to figure out why customers are reaching for your competitors products over yours. Take note of their packaging, their positioning on the shelf, their communication on the packaging, their brand image, their price points and advertising or promotional deals in-store. 

Be realistic. You might know that your product is
superior to all the other brands on the shelf – but are you communicating that to your customer on the packaging? Is your branding shouting ‘superior product’? is your price point correct? If you are selling your product too cheap, people will assume it is an inferior product. But you cannot price it out of the market either. Again, research needs to be done into the correct pricing for your brand image and product  positioning in the minds of your target market.

Remember, product packaging is a billboard for your product. In the few seconds that you have to attract your customer when they scan the shop shelf, your packaging needs to communicate your brand image, what the product is, be interesting enough and desirable enough for the customer to take the time to pick your product up and examine it for a few seconds, then make the decision  to purchase it.  It has to communicate the solution to the problem that the shopper is looking for. People purchase products to fulfil a need. If you can communicate how your  product can do that, showcase your brand image and be aesthetically pleasing, then you will be on the road to more sales with your re-branding efforts!

Reference:
Photo credit: http://www.dionlabel.com/blog-archive/tag/Rebranding%3A+Before+%26+After.html

Please note, Custom Printed Bags & Boxes does not specialise in food packaging.