How psychology and sensory marketing can boost your product sales

Did you know that your packaging and label trigger the mental process needed to buy your product? Because they are the consumer's first encounter with your product, they directly influence the decision-making journey.

Your product’s packaging and labelling should be an extension of your brand and reflect the emotional attachment you want your consumers to connect to the product. Ensure that your product’s exterior is designed to catch your customer's attention and impact their thought process, ultimately leading to a desire to purchase.

How can you sell more by using sensory marketing?

Sensory marketing or branding is a marketing technique aiming to trigger the consumer's senses to influence desired emotions and behaviour. That's why packaging and label design are two key factors behind any shopping decision. 

For a marketing manager, brand manager, or packaging specialist across Africa, it's vital to have a well-designed strategic plan for what your label should convey to the customer. This will help your potential buyer quickly categorize your product and move the individual closer to purchase.

The label should accurately represent the product’s contents to prevent any dissatisfaction from the customer. It's all about meeting their expectations at this point.

That's why you need a clear vision of what the customer should expect when looking at your product in a packaged state:

• Is it a more exclusive or expensive brand, or more on the affordable side?
• Does the packaging contain a product for mature people or young people?
• Is it a product with a modern style or more of a vintage look?

These are all impressions you can control through labelling and packaging by utilizing the principles behind sensory marketing.

Read more: Five key factors to consider before developing your new product

How does label design influence cognitive processes?

The exciting study, "Neural Correlates of Impulsive Buying Tendencies during Perception of Product Packaging", conveys precisely how labelling and product decorations either trigger negative emotions or stimulate the brain's reward centre. The results show that product decoration can lead to impulsive decisions to complete a purchase – even if the customer wasn't procuring your type of product at all.

The way you design and label your product or packaging can affect cognitive processes such as:

• Recognition
• Perception
• Attention
• Learning
• Higher reasoning

Read more: How to make your packaging and labelling stand out from the crowd

How can colours and textures create an immediate reaction from customers?

When it comes to labelling design, two elements work exceptionally well together to influence cognitive processes leading to purchase:

• Colour choice
• Type of texture

This is because they impact the human senses for touch and vision.

Colours significantly impact behaviour and cognitive processes, but the effect goes beyond that. Research shows that approximately 62-90 per cent of the buyer's decision-making process is based on colour alone.

The advertising and design industry tends to recognize and utilize specific theories regarding the connotations different colours convey. Using these colour theories correctly can also influence how your customers feel while using the product.

Here are seven ways that different colours can create different associations when they are integrated into your label and packaging printing design:

1. If you want your product to be associated with energy, youth, freshness or new beginnings – try YELLOW.
2. If you want your product associated with care, strength, passion or maturity – try RED.
3. If you want your product associated with warmth, enthusiasm, motivation or youthfulness – try ORANGE.
4. If you want your product associated with something nurturing, feminine, fascinating, or playful – try PINK.
5. If you want your product associated with something clinical, responsible, financial or clean – try BLUE.
6. If you want your product associated with something organic, growing, revitalizing or healthy – try GREEN.
7. If you want your product associated with exclusivity, ethics, creativity or quality – try to PURPLE.

Which label textures promote sales?

In the Harvard Business Review article "Please Touch the Merchandise", two marketing elites, Lawrence Williams and Joshua Ackerman, explain the neuroscience behind touch:

"Physically holding products can create a sense of psychological ownership, driving must-have purchase decisions."

So, what does it take to make a consumer want to pick up and touch your product? The colour choice, communication and price may be enough, but what if the label's texture could encourage physical touch?

If you want to enhance a standard label material, we have several strategies here at Skanem that can be applied to tempt customers to pick up your product:

• Using our TACTILE VARNISH, we can create a realistic 3D feeling, such as the illusion of a raindrop or a grain of sand on your label.
• We can make the label look and feel like leather, snakeskin or pineapple – to name a few – by using our TEXTURED VARNISH.
• We can make the label look and feel extra soothing with the SKANEM SOFT & GENTLE TEXTURE LABEL, making the product appear smoother.
• We can even add a scent to the label to elevate your brand and the customer’s experience using our SCENT RELEASE.

Read more: A guide to choosing the right materials for VIP

As one of Africa's largest label printers and manufacturers, we get genuinely excited every time new and old clients, big or small, ask us to collaborate to develop the perfect labels for their products. After all, our goal is not merely to deliver your labels; we also want to ensure that your labels enable your products to sell – more.

With a global presence, large multinational clients, and exciting up-and-coming start-ups, our team at Skanem Africa are here for you whenever you need to discuss and design labels.