Why Custom Packaging is the Key to Building Your Brand

noissue Custom Stickers, Custom Packing Tape, and Custom Tissue Paper by @leifshop

It’s no secret we’re living in a truly digital world. While the normalization of online shopping was already well underway pre-pandemic, Covid-19 and the rise of lockdowns globally accelerated this trend.

Ecommerce revenue globally has reached an estimate of $5.8 trillion in 2023, and is predicted to reach $6.3 trillion in 2024, and there’s no signs of this sales growth slowing down, either: Nasdaq predicts 95% of purchases will be online by 2040.

With this rise in online sales comes raised expectations. Shoppers now expect brands to deliver on customer experience and personalize their ecommerce shopping experience, just like they’d experience it in-store.

What’s one of the easiest ways to elevate your customer experience and bring your brand to life? Your packaging.

Packaging is the first physical touchpoint a customer has with your brand and can turn a product into a retail experience. When done right, it builds a connection with your customer, expresses your brand’s values and creates an unforgettable unboxing experience. It also helps with customer retention and achieving consistent sales.

Shoppers have raised the stakes of what they want from brands operating in the online space, so it’s up to businesses to deliver through creative, branded packaging! Consider it a blank canvas to show customers the best representation of your brand.

Here’s why packaging is so important for brand building.

1. It signals your values as a business.

The packaging you use is a statement on your brand story and what your business values. Using packaging that’s made of materials like virgin plastic tells your customer that when your brand made that business decision, you didn’t factor in the effects on the environment.

As a sustainable alternative, using circular materials that are recycled, compostable, or reusable shows shoppers that as a brand, you’re making responsible choices and choosing to lessen your impact on the planet.

Communicating the correct end-of-life disposal shows you care about what happens to the packaging beyond when it leaves your fulfilment center or home.

This creates brand advocacy with shoppers who are more environmentally conscious than ever before in 2023 and will champion businesses who are doing the right thing. There’s a lot of them out there: 74% of consumers aged 18 to 34 are likely to purchase a product if it and its packaging go beyond single-use or are sustainable by design and disposal.

💡 Packaging idea: Create a customized, eco-friendly mailer bag that communicates the circular material it’s made from on the exterior. This ensures there's no confusion about its end-of-life disposal, while showcasing your brand values. noissue's Custom Recycled Mailers and Custom Kraft Mailers are fully customizable and available in low MOQs.

2. It helps with brand recognition.

What do you think has the most impact when it comes to someone remembering your brand: plain, nondescript packaging or packaging with a slick, sophisticated repeating logo?

Your packaging is the first opportunity for your brand to become a tangible and tactile experience. Customers can see, feel and experience your brand identity.

Choosing a packaging design that showcases your brand’s logo, name or brand colors will leave a far deeper impression on the recipient. It also helps them recall your business when it comes to reordering that particular product.

You don’t have to overcomplicate it, either. Choose a clear color palette (your brand colors) and make it consistent to your other channels, harness the power of typography through a bold message (like a call to action) and don’t make the design too busy to distract from the message at hand. Less is often more.

💡 Packaging idea: Create a repeating design with your logo or icon on different packaging products, such as custom tissue paper, a branded box and and a custom card for the ultimate branded unboxing experience.

3. It creates an unboxing experience, which helps with customer retention.

Alongside its more functional purposes of protecting products, your packaging is the key to building a connection and growing customer loyalty. The aesthetic look and feel of your packaging and how it affects product presentation is more of a consideration than ever before.

Much like the tangible experience bricks-and-mortar stores can provide through touch, sight and smell, packaging can transform a product into a retail experience.

Businesses can use layers of packaging that draw in many different elements: a tactile custom tissue paper they unwrap, a custom card they read, a custom tote bag they can wear, and a custom mailer bag they can reuse thanks to a double adhesive strip.

52% of shoppers are likely to make repeat purchases if they get premium packaging from an online retailer, so it pays to build an experience around your products to encourage customers to spend again.

💡 Packaging idea: Create a custom, compostable tissue paper newsletter to wrap products in, but use it as an interactive tool where customers can learn more about your brand through the content you include in it. We've created some custom templates here for your brand to use!

4. It encourages further interactions by linking to your brand’s digital presence.

Packaging isn’t the end of your customer’s journey – it can be just the beginning! Customizing your packaging with a call to action encourages customers to continue to interact with your brand, both online and IRL.

Brands can use the exterior of a custom box or custom mailer bag to share their social media handles as a call out to join their community, display a QR code that sends the customer through to a specific landing page, show a personalized hashtag to use when posting content so you can easily find user-generated content, and more!

It’s an incredibly easy way to build a relationship that goes beyond the sales transaction by sending your customer to another one of your brand’s channels, where they can learn more about your business story, values and community of brand advocates.

💡 Packaging idea: Shout out your brand’s social media handles on the exterior of a custom shipping box or custom paper shopping bags as the ultimate form of visibility for your online community.

5. It encourages social sharing of your products (and packaging!)

Branded packaging is a guaranteed way to get customers sharing your products online, and get even more eyeballs over your products. There’s a reason Think With Google has found the amount of time people have spent watching unboxing videos on their phones is the equivalent of watching the movie Love Actually more than 20 million times!

When a product arrives complete with an engaging unboxing experience, people are more likely to snap a picture or video of it and share it on social media with their community. This is valuable word-of-mouth marketing for a brand that helps you reach a much wider audience than your own social media channels.

💡 Packaging idea: Use the design of your custom box, card or mailer to nudge people towards sharing a picture on social media. Include instructions for getting the best possible picture, your social media handle and a unique hashtag they can use.

Get started with custom packaging

Choosing a branded packaging solution is one of the easiest ways to elevate your customer experience and grow customer retention and consistent sales.

As the first physical touchpoint a customer has with your brand, packaging can turn your product into a retail experience.

Ready to make a great first impression and get started with building your brand through custom packaging? Check out noissue’s packaging options here and start designing today!