How can you promote your products or promotions efficiently, while making sure that it does not bore your customers? On-pack promotions are a great way for brands to increase sales significantly. Such simple marketing technique will be able to tremendously benefit your brand in many ways, and we will explain it in this article!

It is widely used by many brands today to promote their current products and help gain brand recognition. Common on-pack promotions that are often seen are cereal brands giving away a bowl with each purchase of cereal, or promotional glasses with every purchase of alcohol. In this article, we will talk about how you can you create fantastic on pack promotions for your consumers and how this will tremendously benefit your business.

How can you offer the perfect on pack promotion for your consumers?

Understanding Consumer’s Needs: Firstly, you need to understand the consumer’s needs to be able to cater to their taste and preferences. This way, you can really stand out from the crowd and add value to your product.  A well thought out on-pack promotion will definitely give you a competitive edge in many ways.

Creating Value: Secondly, think about where, when, and how your product will be used. You can also survey customers about this and generate feedback. This way, you are also bonding with them, which will also help uphold brand image. For example, if you sell sodas in stadiums – you can offer customers with a on-pack coupons that will allow them to stand a chance to win a prize that is related to sports events. Many will buy from you due to the attractive prize that they might win. By doing this, you effectively provide value, generate buzz and leave your mark in consumers minds.

Capitalise: Third, it is important for you to not spend excessive capital on the actual gift, but still deliver enough quality and value for it to be attractive. You will need to decide on the budget of your marketing campaign, and decide the quantity and the type of product you will manufacture. On one hand, if you produce a really cheap item that still holds enough utility to boost sales, you can choose it to be a gift with purchase. One the other hand, if your bonus item was more expensive to produce and conveys high quality and utility, you can make it to be a purchase with purchase. For a little bit more money, customers will benefit from a really useful item.

The advantages of a good on-pack promotion

  1. Firstly, it helps you gain customers and increase customer loyalty. This is because they will feel inclined to purchase from you when they are provided with occasional gifts. Not only so, but it will also add value to your offer because they feel like they are gaining more whenever they purchase from you. This leads to higher customer satisfaction. With higher satisfaction comes with further sales increase!
  2. The second advantage of on pack promotions is their highly customizable nature. This means they offer easy branding for you and this turns into a really simple way to put your brand front and center – which increases brand exposure and recognition.
  3. Third, these promotions are really cost-effective! You can massively produce gifts with purchase at an affordable price. Another option is for you to set up fewer but more high-quality prizes. In the long run, both promotional tactics will create will make all the effort worth it as you maximize your gains and profitability.
  4. Last but not least, you have secret allies when running efficient on pack promos: children! Who never saw that one kid pestering to get that awesome branded bowl or promotional on-pack toy? They are good negotiators and can often bring you more sales if you know how to effectively and successfully get their attention. 

How to make my on-pack promotion work?

You need to make sure your on-pack promo adds real value to the product, be it gift with purchase or purchase with purchase, the client needs to perceive the utility in the item you provide with the sold product. That means you need to link your promotional item with the product as much as you can and communicate effectively. You sell coffee? Try to offer a branded mug. A product for children? Try a card game or collectibles.

Collectibles are great on-pack gifts as they encourage more purchases to bring the whole collection together. Collectibles can either stand by themselves, such as different color branded glasses. But, if you want to receive better results, you can make it so that the real value of the gifts is attained when all collectibles are found. Think about puzzles, card games or figures, the best part is it works with customers of all ages!

You can also add a code on your product to win prizes! This creates a sense of urgency for customers to buy your products as the prizes come in limited numbers. You can have many different prizes and the rarer ones will be fewer. Do you remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? A famous chocolate factory decides to hide in one chocolate bar “golden tickets” that grant the finders of them a lifetime of free delicacies… Of course you can’t always guarantee that to your customers but you get my point, prizes as in/on pack promotions can start crazes. The potential gain will attract people and sometimes make them buy more from you to increase their odds to get a prize. A lot of households are actually “prize hunters”, buying every product involving a contest in hopes of winning something useful for free.

If you opt for an on pack code or contest, you need to make sure to change your packaging a little. Your product packaging should be able to relay the rules of the contest and explain it well. This will also involve creating POS displays promoting both your product and the possible prizes. To increase sales even further, consider rewarding the shops that sell winning packs as it will encourage them to display your product in the best way possible.

Similar to when designing your products, the on pack promotions needs to aim at a certain audience to maximise its perceived value and increase sales. Using the brand colors and the branding space effectively, your on-pack promotion will represent your brand well. Every goal is then fulfilled – brand recognition, higher perceived value, customer retention and of course, a sales increase.

For more information, please click here to find out more on on-pack promotions, and how they can be the key in vastly improving your business.

Conor O’Donovan is the CEO of The ODM Group, a Promotional Products Agency based in China & design agency in Vietnam. Conor has led multiple branding projects, designing and manufacturing marketing materials.  These range from small on-pack cover mounts, to large POS displays, to complex electronics. With more than 15 years of experience and 8,000 published articles on the promotional products industry, ODM is an industry leader on marketing, design and product development.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].