Can packaging help you sell in a new way?

March 27, 2012

How we package our products and services often communicates more than we think.

Sometimes — a fresh look at packaging can introduce you to a new buyer, make you more attractive to prospects you’ve known for awhile or reinforce a buying decision for your current customers.

I was in Walgreens the other day and a end cap display caught my attention.  They were little boxes of pills but rather than being named/described as some generic brand — they were packaged according to why you might use them.

  • “Help, I have the sniffles.”
  • “Help, I have an achy body.”
  • “Help, I can’t sleep.”
  • “Help, I have a headache.”

I thought it was a brilliant strategy.  Rather than get into a brand war with the category leader, why not just re-define how the category is packaged and go right at the consumer’s need.  I’ll be curious to see how this new line sells.

We had a bit of the same problem at McLellan Marketing Group.  Everyone assumed that we could only work with large clients with really big annual budgets.  While we love those kinds of clients — we also love working with entrepreneurs and small businesses.

But how do we communicate that to the marketplace?   We repackaged ourselves.

We knew that this group of potential buyers had very unique concerns about working with an agency:

  • I won’t know how much it’s going to cost
  • I don’t have a big enough budget
  • I don’t know what I’d be buying

And we repackaged ourselves to eliminate those worries.  We literally created packages — with a pre-determined monthly fee.  Think of these packages as the garanimals of marketing.

The buyers can pick and choose from the menus and with our help, create a custom package that fits their business’ needs.

(You can download a PDF of the MMG packages for easier reading by clicking here)

But they have 100% control over the cost (because they decide which monthly fee they want to pay) and they can see all they get for their small budget and they know exactly what they’re going to get.

This packaging strategy has brought us a whole different category of clients — who are enjoying agency expertise at a price they can afford (and control!).

How could you re-package yourself or a particular product or service to either overcome buying hesitation, to introduce yourself to a whole new audience or to do an end run around the category leader?

 

 

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