How to make your product more interesting, or what customers really care about

Sales methods based on presenting the product as the best in the world will no longer convince any customer. The success of a product that sells itself depends on a combination of variables, in particular the quality of the product, the use itself, the competition, the brand, the price, the attractiveness, the marketing, the image and the packaging design. How to design a product that would make customers say, “That’s awesome, I want it!”

To make your product sell well, and preferably on its own, it’s not enough to make a product in a flashy package and sell it cheaper than the competition. Your efforts and investments towards the ultimate goal of building a popular brand and achieving high sales should be based on five basic approaches.

1. Link product benefits to the results customers want or expect.

Customers want to buy your product to achieve an outcome with it. They may want to lose weight, have fun, be trendy, make money, or find mental balance. Your job is to sell the customer the result they will achieve with your product. Advertising and presentation slogans that begin with “How to be…” are popular and effective because they focus on the result, not the product. To link product benefits to results, your e-store, website, ads and other customer communication channels should include clear information about achieving a specific result.

2. Design your product to match the experience your core target customer wants when using the product.

Your product should be easier to use than competing products. Ideally, most of your customers should be able to use it without studying the manual. Otherwise, you will create a negative experience for them. How can you improve the customer experience when using your product?

• Offer them basic support,
• answer any questions that customers have,
• include a clear manual with the product,
• make a short instructional video,
• make the product interesting enough to keep customers interested,
• introduce new customers to the community that uses the product.

3. Show potential customers that their concerns are unnecessary.

In your marketing activities, you need to think about minimising the perceived risks that unconvinced customers may feel about your product. Packaging is one of the tools that serves as proof that the product is indeed the product with the characteristics with which it is offered to the customer and that the customer will not be deceived about quality or use, especially for more luxurious products.

4. Learn from your competitors and look for ways to win over them.

After successfully eliminating customer concerns, the goal is to exceed expectations and maximize product value. Customers compare products. Most likely there is at least one related product that they can compare yours to. This creates a certain level of expectation that your customers have.

Identify your competitors and their weaknesses. It is important to understand the quality of competitors’ products and also where in the quality range yours are. Not only will your competitors tell you how good your product needs to be to succeed, but they will tell you how much it should cost and how it should be packaged. Find out what activities the competition is doing to sell the product and, most importantly, what are the competitors’ shortcomings that are your gateway to differentiation and success.

Competitor research can reveal weaknesses not only in the product itself, but also in the way it is presented and what it is packaged in. Packaging is the most powerful tool to differentiate and uniquely identify a product with a brand. Just as customers immediately associate a product with the Apple brand when they see the sleek silver apple packaging, every retailer and marketer must look at the packaging of their own products as a key sales tool. How do competitors package their products? In what sizes, volumes and types of packaging? The answer to this basic question will tell you what to do differently and better.

5. Be aware of the value of attractive packaging and make the most of it.

A product may taste or look great, but few people will buy it if it is too expensive, in unattractive or inadequate packaging, or if the labels and tags are unattractive and uninformative. The packaging must match the product in every way. When the product is luxurious, cheap and poor quality packaging would suggest the exact opposite. If the most important characteristic of a product is its environmental aspect, plastic packaging would negate it.

In addition to its basic protective and transport function, the product packaging and its label have an equally important task, namely:

• Convince the customer to buy the product,
• inform the customer,
• assist salespeople with sales,
• advise the customer on how to use the product properly.

Creating an interesting product that customers love is about moving from the position of the seller to the position of the customer and finding the right combination between affordable production, the right price, attractive packaging, clever and effective marketing and, last but not least, open communication with customers.