Gain Marketing Exposure With Gift Packaging Ideas
Nav Heir
Gain Marketing Exposure With Gift Packaging Ideas
If you’re an e-commerce brand, you don’t get the luxury of a physical storefront, and that’s why you need gift packaging ideas. That’s because when they receive your package, they get a ‘storefront’ experience before they open their product. That means, whatever your packaging looks like is the same as how they might view a physical storefront or what the inside of the storefront looks like before they make their purchase.
We’ve all walked into a store and been immediately turned off by the way the place looked because of colors, light, smells, and general styling. And that meant no matter how great their products were, we would always have that first (negative) impression. Now let’s contrast that with walking into a store that looks pretty, sleek, or stylish, and automatically tend to believe the products inside are of high quality. You can use that same premise when you are sending your products out as an e-commerce brand.
The gift bag you use to package your product in can be your very own storefront experience. In this article, we are going to tell you how to make your gift bag packaging unforgettable so that your customer has a great first impression of your product even before they open the bag.
Why Your Gift Packaging Is So Important
When your customer lands on your page, they get a lot of information from your images, fonts, style, as well as reviews or other trust signals you’ve placed on the page. But the actual emotional connection doesn’t happen until they get your package. When they get the package, your brand becomes real for them.
A customer may have been waiting many days or weeks for your delivery, and they are full of anticipation and curiosity about what your product is going to look like when it gets there. And most importantly, they’re hoping that what they saw from your website in terms of look and feel is going to translate into the product they are going to get. And that isn’t just about the product, but also about the experience they are going to get when they open up your package.
Example
If they get a plain generic package that could be just about from any business, the experience they expected to receive in association with your brand is not there. The message they receive is simply one of a business somewhere sending an unfeeling product.
However, if a customer receives a beautifully designed package that aligns with your branding, they feel like they have connected with your e-commerce brand in the real world. And with that, their expectations of what they hoped to feel in experiencing your brand are met.
The difference between those two experiences is stark, and within that space is a real opportunity for e-commerce sellers. When you create a custom gift bag that truly imparts your brand, the customer can be in your physical store as soon as they touch the packaging that you provide.
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Be a Part of the Unboxing Experience
If you’ve spent time on social media, you will have seen unboxing videos that influencers use every day to talk to their followers. And that trend isn’t just isolated to influencers, but people receiving packages share what they’ve received in their daily packages. This provides a key opportunity for brands.
Don’t Be Boring
Would you ever share anything with anyone that was inherently boring? Of course you wouldn’t. You would share something that is different, exciting, and visually-stimulating, and that goes for your customers as well. And this is where strong gift packaging ideas can come from, as when your packaging feels intentional and looks good while telling a story, it can become content.
How Unboxing Helps Marketing
Unboxing content can help you drive organic exposure as well as brand awareness, and with that, can help with social proof. And with that, you can encourage new and repeat purchases.
If you want to maximize this experience, custom-printed gift bags are very effective because they create an immediate impact visually. And that visual impact can communicate quality, personality, and brand identity even before your product is revealed to your customer.
TabNewHow Custom Printed Gift Bags Are a Game-Changer
When we look at all of the gift packaging ideas out there, custom printed gift bags stand out because they are able to combine function, branding, and presentation for your brand. They are especially effective for e-commerce sellers because they can help provide instant brand recognition, elevate the perceived value of your brand, and lead to increased brand exposure due to their reusability.
How They Help With Brand Recognition
When you have a custom printed bag, it turns your packaging into a marketing asset, and your logos, colors, typography, and messaging bring it all together. Instead of just using a regular shipping box, your packaging can become a part of your brand identity, and over time, this can build a certain familiarity and trust that bland, stock packaging can’t.
It Can Elevate Your Brand Value
The way you present your product 100% influences the way your customers think about your project. Packaging alone can make a $20 product feel like a premium product and make a $1000 product be perceived as low value. Your custom gift bag can help you signal a variety of premium product values, like care and attention to detail.
That is especially important if you are an e-commerce brand selling competitive spaces like beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and healthcare, where customers don’t just care about the product itself but everything that surrounds it, including the packaging.
Extend Your Brand Marketing With Reusability
Gift bags get reused all of the time, and that’s very different from other types of packaging, like wrapping paper. And that means your brand can continue to circulate for events like birthdays, everyday events, and even holidays like Christmas.
This type of branding is subtle, but it can be very powerful because you’re not just packaging an item, but you’re packaging your brand in a way that lives beyond that one transaction. Your gift bag packaging could be your marketing billboard when your customer holds it and walks out onto the street.
That bag can end up on picnics, at work, or out on a camping trip, there are no end to the possibilites of where your custom gift bag can go. And so if you ensure branding goes with it, you gain marketing exposure on your packaging dollars.
Get Versatile
Having one type of packaging throughout the whole year might have been good enough in the old days, but today it is boring and lazy. Customers want the brands they love to be a part of their lives through the seasons.
That can mean everything from creating special holiday packaging for Christmas and Easter to Autumnal cozy curations. The point is that customers are looking for you to show them how they can be a part of your curated experience.
Operational Efficiency
Gift bags can make your whole packaging process easier because they require little to no assembly and are faster to pack than wrapping. That means it is an efficient and scalable packing mechanism when you are trying to grow your business.
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Gift Packaging Ideas Using Custom Printed Gift Bags
So how can you use your gift packaging to create maximum impact? Here are some fantastic ideas to help you get started and ensure your brand stays ahead of the rest.
Create Layered Reveals
Instead of just placing your product directly in the bag, you can create a sense of discovery by using materials like tissue paper or a card. You can wrap your product in tissue paper inside your custom gift bag, or use a special seal or sticker that makes the closure for that bag.
Handwritten Details
You can provide the most beautiful gift bag in the world with the most beautiful product, but do you know what times that by a thousand percent? A handwritten note or a handwritten detail on the bag itself. Customers pay attention to the details, and when they are unboxing, they point those details out to their followers.
If you can sit down and write a little handwritten note on your gift bag to the customer who trusted you enough on your website to buy the product, you will be doing your brand a great service and providing your customer with the ultimate customized brand experience.
Go Minimalist Luxury
If you can create a bag that looks like less is more, then you win, and that is what an understated custom gift bag is. You can use neutral colors and subtle logo placement to give it the premium branding field inexpensively. On top of that, you can also use premium finishes like matte, embossing, or foil to give it an extra kick of exclusivity or even just high-end branding.
Personalized Gift Bags Get You All the Way
E-commerce gives you a chance to create personalization that in-store brands can’t. That means even as simple as something on your custom bag can be treated as a chance to create a personalized experience. You can write a personalized note and drop it into your gift bag or even create special inserts for your particular customer segment that make your brand more connected and human.
Creative Branding Opportunities with Gift Bags
Gift bags are fantastic tools for marketing because they are blank canvases for you to use your creative juices on, and you can use them for your marketing in a variety of ways. You can use them for storytelling by printing quotes, illustrations, or snippets of your brand story. Gift bags can be used for limited edition gift bags for seasonal or event-specific designs, and create urgency and encourage repeat purchases.
Your gift bags can be used for collaboration by partnering with artists or influencers to design unique gifts that help both of your brands when you have a common target demographic. You can also offer personalization for your customers as an offer with names or initials.
The Power of Ribbon Handle Gift Bags
It might seem like a little thing, but it is one of the most impactful upgrades you can make to your packaging to get the best results. Most standard gift bags use standard paper handles to get the job done; ribbon handle gift bags bring a certain level of sophistication to your product that people immediately want to share online and within their IRL world. On top of that, you can create custom ribbon handle gift bags so that the bags are always your walking personal brand wherever they go after your customer unboxes your product.
Create Themed Gift Bags
You can take your branding to a whole new level by curating a gift bag experience based around a theme. For example, if you sell beauty products, you can create gifts for night routines and fill the gifts with things like scented candles, teas, face masks, chocolate, and anything else that goes alongside those things.
For an added experience, if you are a high-end luxury brand, use gift bags with handles so the customer feels like they are really receiving a special product. These gift bags with handles create that sort of “shopping-in-a-luxury-store” type of feel to your product. And as we discussed before, it is very important for your customers to get an in-store feeling outside of the store.
Why E-commerce and In-Store Packaging Is Different
Gift packaging for both e-commerce and in-store should reflect your brand and jive with what your customer avatar expects for a great experience. However, there are some key things you should think about when you are looking for gift packaging for one or the other.
E-commerce Gift Packaging Needs
- Protection
- First impression based on packaging
- Unboxing Experience Important
Retail Gift Packaging Ideas Needs
- Branding is visible when carried.
- Efficient for the staff to put together
- Goes with retail interior
Costs for Gift Packaging
Your productis going to determine the type of packaging you should invest in. This is important because whatever kind of packaging you go with, chances are you’ll be buying it in bulk. That means you don’t want to make a mistake and then have to spend even more money buying the right kind of gift packaging.
If you’re just starting out, then go with something simple like a plain kraft or white paper bag with a logo. Then transition to higher quality packaging like embossed bags. Look for a packaging supplier that has low minimum order quantity (MOQ) requirements.
Some packaging companies have high order quantities that can last a small business more than a year. That’s likely not the way you want to tie up your capital, and you may not have the space for it, either.
Get a quote from a few suppliers. Here, you need to decide if you want to get the packaging that allows you to absorb the cost or get packaging that may require you to increase your prices a little. And thanks to low MOQs, you can play around with this a little, so if a design doesn’t look quite right the first time around, you can always rework it for your next packaging buy.
Why Packaging for E-commerce Is So Important
If you’re in e-commerce, you have to know that your packaging isn’t just a way to deliver your products; it is instead a way for you to brand your business better. The right gift packaging ideas can transform your product shipment from the mundane to one that can strengthen your identity and also make it one that your customers want to share with their friends and followers.
And that’s why custom printed gift bags can become a critical component of your branding and overall marketing strategy. They are cost-effective, versatile, and highly customizable so that you can present any sort of persona you want through your packaging. And that persona should be the one you want your brand to be known for, because when you send your products in good quality gift bags, those bags will be used again, and you want everyone that comes into contact with or viewership to ask about your brand because they saw your impeccable gift bag.
FAQs
What kind of packaging attracts customers?
Packaging that attracts customers tells a brand story, has color that pops, is unique in some way, and it should also be functional in relation to the product inside it. Packaging that can be reused is appreciated by customers, too.
What are the new trends in packaging?
Eco-conscious packaging is now mainstream. That means it is now commonplace to expect that your packaging is made out of recyclable materials, can be recycled, or at least is reusable. Because that is the case, customers expect that you have some sort of sustainability factor woven into your packaging plans.
What are the 7 types of packaging with examples?
The seven main types of packaging include boxes, bags, bottles, glass jars, plastics, metals, sustainable packaging, and luxury packaging. Examples of each, respectively, include corrugated cardboard boxes with a logo, gift bags with a ribbon handle, mason jars, plastic film, metal cookiebox-style container with lid, recycled paper wrapping, and custom wooden jewelry boxes.
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