Believe it or not, your corrugated or chipboard shipping containers can play a part in your marketing campaigns. What follows are ideas for putting your boxes to work over and above protecting your products during shipment.
We always encourage our customers to squeeze as much value as possible out of their custom product packaging — and marketing is an exceptional avenue for doing so because it transforms your packaging from a cost of doing business to a branding vehicle and even a revenue stream!
10 Examples of How Shipping Boxes Can Support Marketing
These ideas are intended to get your creative juices flowing — There are many other options.
- Print your logo and website address on the box or box sealing tape.
- Print symbols of your social media sites on the box or box sealing tape.
- Print a message touting the eco-friendliness of your packaging on the box.
- Print your phone number on the box or box sealing tape.
- Print a QR code and message on the box to drive customers to a particular landing page of your website. Highly effective landing pages include a “sale of the week” page, a questionnaire, or a page to sign up for a consultation or free trial.
- Insert a QR code and message inside the box with the same strategy as #5.
- Insert a coupon for “x” off the next order and/or a company brochure.
- Insert a message alerting customers to your social media sites or how to subscribe to your email newsletter.
- Insert a gift — Either as thanks for becoming a customer or as thanks for being a loyal customer.
- Add customer-friendly features to your custom shipping boxes: an easy-opening feature, a tamper-evident feature, more easily recyclable interior packaging, etc. Draw attention to your design improvement(s) with an inserted message, perhaps one asking for suggestions for other custom packaging design improvements.
Important note: Labels applied to the box are an excellent alternative when printing on the box or box sealing tape is not cost-effective or provide enough “pop.”
We Are Here to Help!
If you’d like some help brainstorming ideas for turning your boxes into marketing tools, please contact us now. We have a lot of experience in this area because so many of our customers are in DTC, where the goal is for every shred of packaging to perform some sort of marketing function.
One critical piece of advice: If you print on boxes, or add printed labels, keep the text to a minimum. Print must be big enough for your customers to read, and messages must be short enough 
to be read and remembered. Boxes are excellent for delivering marketing “quick hits,” but not for telling long or complicated stories.
In general, marketing is seldom leveraged fully or effectively in product packaging, which is unfortunate because often, the cost of adding marketing functionality is quite modest.
Let’s talk! We bet we can help you arrive at three or more ways to cost-effectively add marketing power to your packaging as early as today.
Related posts:
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/the-unboxing-experience-still-matters-in-2025/
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/how-to-allocate-limited-social-media-marketing-budget/
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/tips-for-text-on-kraft-corrugated-shipping-boxes/
https://www.salazarpackaging.com/packaging-that-communicates/
