Updating your packaging labels can help your business in different ways: breathing life into your brand, helping you stand out against competitors, and even attracting new customers. But should you? Change for the sake of change isn’t usually a good idea, especially if it will upset your faithful customer base and negatively impact sales. Before you rush into any redesigns, check out these considerations to see if an update is right for you.
Whether it’s for a completely new look or a simple tweak of your current one, there are a variety of reasons why it might be time to update your custom labels. Let’s explore some scenarios where new labels would be beneficial to your business.
Expanding The Brand
Expanding into new markets can be a great opportunity to reinvent your product’s look or experiment with different labels because new audiences won’t be biased. Digital label printing is a cost-effective solution for printing multiple versions of your labels to test in different markets. Digitally printed labels can also be used to personalize your design for specific audiences and markets.
Adding New Products
Like new markets, adding new product lines can expose your brand to a wider audience that you haven’t reached before. With a new or updated look, your product will be able to put its best face forward to discerning consumers. Changing your packaging labels can also improve brand consistency through all your product lines. One option to consider is to use color-coded labels to better distinguish each product line.
Market Changes
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory bodies are constantly reviewing and modifying their labeling regulations due to new information and to better protect consumers. Whenever changes are enacted, manufacturers have a certain amount of time to update their packaging labels. It’s important to monitor labeling regulations that apply to your products and update your labels if needed.
Staying Fresh and Relevant
Customers’ tastes evolve over time, and what once worked for you before may not be working now. With ever-increasing competition, keeping outdated labels can be bad for business. You don’t need to completely change your labels to keep them fresh and relevant, even simplifying your label design or using a different material can help give your product’s packaging a breath of fresh of air without losing the essence of your brand.
Giving Packaging Some Pop
Blending in with a crowd is good if you’re a spy, but not so much for selling products. Revamping your labels can not only help differentiate your brand from competitors, but they also make it easier to grab customers’ limited attention spans. Also, unique labels and packaging can inspire customers to take photos of your product and share it on social media (talk about free advertising!).
Refining Your Message
If you’ve been in business for a while, your brand’s message has probably evolved over time due to new or improved products, services, processes, etc. – but do your packaging labels reflect that? Give customers a clear picture of what your brand is about with labels that are up-to-date.
Environmental Considerations
Changing your packaging labels not only can give your product a new look, but it can also be good for the environment too. One eco-friendly option is to use renewable materials like tree-free label stock (made from bamboo pulp, sugar cane, and cotton linters) or polyactic acid (PLA) compostable film. Another option is to reduce the size of your labels which will use fewer materials and lower your price per label – talk about a win/win!
So, is it time for new packaging and labels?
If you answered yes to any of these examples, then it might just be time to ditch your old labels. Our customer service team will be happy to discuss the goals you want to achieve with your new labels and guide you to a labeling solution that will work best. Need some design work? We can set you up with an experienced label designer that can help. If you decide to hire a designer on your own, please keep in mind that web and print design are different, so make sure they have experience with designing artwork for high-quality printing. Please feel free to share our advanced artwork specs sheet with your label designer to ensure your labels are suitable for print.
