You are at the stage where you have poured your money, energy, time, and research into creating a bath product that you think customers will love.
Have you already gained positive reviews and you can see the potential? But where do you go from here?
Building a business that sets you apart from competitors and has a valued reputation is going to attract more customers, sales, and growth for your brand.
To take that next step you’re going to want to establish a consistent visual brand design that expresses your brand personality and resonates with your audience.
The bath and cosmetics industry in particular is filled with creative and eye-catching packaging.
Being products that are associated with luxury, you want the outside of your product to reflect the inside and therefore it needs to attract your ideal customer.
So how do you get started with branding?
Identify your ideal customer
Ask yourself who the ideal customer is that uses your products.
It can be difficult at first if your only thought has been to target ‘people who have baths’ or ‘women who want to relax’.
Try to be more specific, because the more characteristics you can identify, the more you can zone in on and focus your attention towards.
Create a customer profile where you list all the attributes of your ideal customer such as age, gender, location, hobbies, occupation and likes or dislikes.
For example, Megan is a young Mum who is very environmentally conscious.
She uses baths as a way to unwind from the children but also likes experimenting with new scents and products she finds on instagram.
She enjoys the gym and works as a teacher.
Of course all your customers are not going to be exactly like Megan, but creating an identity means you can pinpoint characteristics such as the way Megan likes to experiment as a focus point in your marketing.
Brand Positioning
Your bath product could be anything from a bath soak to a sugar scrub, just as are many other products out there on the market.
But you should know what it is specifically about your product that makes it stand out, that makes customers pick it over other brands.
Is it your environmental mission, or a tailored formula for each customer, maybe it’s your all natural ingredients.
Whatever it is that makes your product remarkable, share it as much as possible.
Standing out from your competitors helps you recognise where your brand stands compared to competitors, it is really useful to use in your branding and when expressing the brand to your audience.
Brand Personality
In lieu of your brand positioning, now you have established what makes your product unique and what your customer wants, now it’s time to identify who and what your brand is.
How did you come to be, and what is the goal for your brand.
This can be expressed in a mission statement, which you can read more about here.
What is going to be important for your brand though, is figuring out what are the brand’s values, attitudes and personality traits.
There are 5 different common traits that your brand can all under, try and pick 2 to 3: Excitement, Sincerity, Ruggedness, Competence and Sophistication.
A consistent set of traits will help a customer resonate with your brand, and elicit an emotional response.
It’s also going to help you create cohesive branding that aligns with your values.
Brand Visual Identity
Now we are onto the fun stuff.
Remember, packaging is a huge element of branding in the cosmetics and wellness industry, so using the same brand palette, font, logo and key words across your branding and packaging is going to benefit your business the most.
Your brand colour palette is important because that is the first thing audiences will catch.
Start from the get go and include colours that reflect your brand personality.
Are you a luxury brand – try royal blues or purples associated with precious stones.
Or a natural brand, you may want pastel and neutral colours that reflect your natural ingredients.
Consistency in your colours and font will create a feeling of trust and recognition for your brand.
Hudson Made – Worker’s Soap
A great example of using your brand visuals to reflect your brand personality and values is in this soap product by Hudson Made.
“This small batch artisanal product is for the man (or woman) who understands that being good with your hands means being good to your hands.
Whether calloused from carpentry, weary from farming or pencil-stained from paper-pushing, our Worker’s Soap provides your hands with a heavy-duty, capable clean.
And it’s not just a hand soap: natural pumice makes it perfectly suited for scrubbing tough spots like elbows and feet.” The vintage font as well as simple charcoal palette perfectly reflects the brand’s values of competency, tough and clean.
It has a clear purpose and a customer looking for a no-nonsense product like this is sure to spot it straight away.
Top Tip: Allow trends to inspire you
Inspire is the key word here.
While the goal with branding and packaging is to help you stand out against your competitors, drawing upon trends can keep you up to date.
Intricate line drawings, Unique custom fonts or modern minimalist pastels are all current trends you can see across packaging design, but with each brand making it their own.
Use your brand personality to influence your design concept here on out.
Visual branding is a tool to express your brand personality to your customers so that they can recognise and resonate with your brand values.
Consistency in your design across branding and packaging makes customers see your brand as professional and trustworthy, making you something they want to invest in.
Of course visual branding and packaging also helps add value to the customer experience.
Bath products are a treat, an indulgence or a remedy, they’re all purchased with care.
The visual appeal can add to the unboxing and user experience.
If you have ever opened a bath set gift, that is part of your experience, and that is where some brands have elevated their packaging design to add value to their product.
Lush gift set boxes are a good example of elevating their packaging.
As a brand they recognised that the reason many people would buy their product was for others.
Pre packaging a gift box using their brand visuals is a unique concept that makes their products instantly recognisable to the receiver and the giver.
With cosmetic branding and packaging you have a lot more to work with.
You want to show that your product is vegan friendly, fda approved and cruelty free if that is a main selling point for your brand.
Things like material (paper, plastic, cardboard), packaging type (jar, spray, propper) or printing (water resistant, embossing, foil-stamping) are all going to make a difference to your visual identity too.
Make sure these aspects are not being overlooked and make sure they align with your brand.
You don’t want to be an ecological bath salt brand that uses plastic wrap packaging do you?
It’s also important not to go overboard with your design and stick to something that clearly expresses your brand without making it too messy.
Your customer is going to judge your product based on your brand and your packaging, what they see, before they use it.
So maybe choose a focal point to your packaging and tone down everything else.
Whether that is the logo, a bold pattern or a unique font.
Branding and packaging for your bath product is essential in this sector, and in the industry as a whole.
We’re in a market where people are basing their judgements and perceptions of your product and brand based on what they see and what they feel.
If you want to see your product go the distance and your brand to take roots, having a consistent and well thought out brand with a brand identity that reflects you well is going to make all of the difference.
