It's a fact that packaging products and by packaging here we do not mean to have them nicely wrapped with colorful ribbons and glitter. What we mean by packaging here is bundling products together or giving your offer as a package or more than one product together in a bundle. A good example of this is the "Combo meal" in fast food restaurants where instead of buying a sandwich and a drink and fries separately, they are offered to you as a complete package a "Combo" Packaging is very common in the fast food industry that it represents over 90% of fast food sales.
Other than the obvious benefit of increasing your overall sales that the packaging or bundling strategy does it also gives you a number of other benefits such as:
1- Lowers marketing costs by advertising multiple types of products or services in one ad
2- Up sell your customer by default (Packaging is a form of up selling )
3- Can be easily used to sell slow moving products or services
4- Exposes your products and services to a new list of prospects in a joint venture
5- Gives a higher perceived value of your products and services to your customers.
There are many benefits of the bundling or packaging strategy if you apply it to your business and can have a great impact on your sales and can also help you decrease your marketing costs. The main idea is to create packaged or bundled deals of your products and services for your customers and offer them at a lower price than what the customer would pay if he/she purchased them individually which actually also plays psychological tricks on the mind of your customer and gives him/her the perception that he/she will need that additional item or items anyway. Makes your customer believe that this is a good deal and i'm getting more than one item for a lower price so will end up saving money.
Some important Packaging/Bundling rules:
1- Your packaged offer should solve a specific problem. Your customers will only buy it if it solves a problem they have or fulfill a specific need.
2- Packaging and Bundling is all about empowering your customers or offering different choices. providing different choices and options with increasing value is what motivates customers to " up sell " themselves by choosing the more expensive option.
3- Try naming your different packages names that shows value for example silver, gold, platinum notice how each word in this examples shows increasing value.
4- The additional products or services that are added on to the basic package have a low cost to you. The “add-ons” need to be cost effective because the incremental price you are charging needs to provide significant margin to the package.
Packaging creates a higher perceived value by increasing the benefits and lowering the unit price. Examples of packaging and bundling are everywhere. If you don’t have enough products or services to create a package offer, consider joint venturing with a company that does. Remember to provide a strong up-sell option in your package by offering multiple options, each progressively more valuable and expensive.
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