As a supplement brand, you can work tirelessly on manufacturing supplements that serve all of the needs of your target audience. The truth is, without an eye-catching supplement label design, your products may never make it off the shelf. Your supplement label design is absolutely crucial to selling your product.
Are you ready to design a label that resonates with your target audience and flies off the shelf? In this article, you’ll learn 13 effective tips and tricks to design a supplement label for your target audience.
Contents
1. Find inspiration in who your target audience wants to be
Every aspect of your supplement brand, including your supplement label design, should be inspired by your target audience. This concept may seem obvious enough, but here’s a special pointer:
If you want to see massive sales, you don’t want to design a label that resonates with who your target audience is. Rather, you want to design a label that resonates with who they want to be.
People don’t just buy supplements to improve their nutrition; they buy supplements to become better versions of themselves. If you can uncover who your target audience wants to be, you can design a label so that your customers feel like this person from the moment they purchase your product.
2. Find inspiration in other products your audience is buying
Another good idea is to check out other products (specifically, other brands) your target audience is buying and take notes on design elements of these products.
Say, for example, your target audience is upper-class men in their twenties who want to improve their physical appearance. You might take a look at the label design of the hair products or shaving products these men buy. What do you notice about these labels? Do they use dark colors or light colors? Capital or lowercase? Serif or san-serif font?
The best brands design their labels after researching their target market. You can get ahead of the game by researching your target market’s favorite brands instead.
Suggested reading: Supplement Packaging | Key Considerations | Pros and Cons
3. Take a look at your direct competition
You’re also going to want to research your direct competitions’ supplement label design. How are companies with similar supplement products and similar target markets designing their labels?
There are a couple of reasons why this is a good idea. First, you can use other brands as inspiration for your own (a similar concept to the one explained above). Secondly, even if you do use other brands as inspiration, you’re going to have to find a way to stand out.
Chances are, there are quite a few products out there already that are similar to the products you’re trying to sell and that also have a similar target market. That means, if someone from your target audience is looking for a product, they’ll have to decide between yours and other similar products out there.
That’s why, even if you do use other similar brands as inspiration for your own supplement label design, you still have to find a way to stand out. What will make consumers choose your product over the others they’re looking at?
4. Pay attention to color
Color is very important when it comes to supplement label design. First and foremost, colors are extremely powerful symbols of communication. Every color contains a hidden message and a hidden emotional charge. Secondly, most consumers will notice your color before noticing any other aspects of your design. That’s why it’s very important to choose your colors wisely.
Red is a color of power and action, but can also signify importance or danger. Light blue is representative of calmness and serenity, while dark blue is also a symbol of responsibility and trustworthiness. Purple signifies royalty, wealth, and luxury. Likewise, green can signify wealth but also symbolizes nature, new beginnings, luck, and abundance.
When choosing colors for your supplement label design, ask yourself, “What colors will resonate with my target market and who they want to be? What colors best communicate what my brand is all about, including the best features and benefits of my brand?” Those are the colors you want to use.
Suggested reading: Blister Packaging – Pros and Cons for Supplement Brands and Consumers
5. Choose the right typography
Typography, or font, is another highly effective method of symbolic communication. When it comes to supplement label design, consumers often notice the way letters look and the feelings the letters convey before actually noticing what the letters say.
Big, bold lettering, for example, symbolizes strength and power. This type of lettering could be a good choice if your brand specializes in building muscle. Thin, delicate lettering, on the other hand, represents sensitivity and care – a great option for skincare supplements. Rounded letters evoke a sense of juvenile comfort – perfect for kids’ vitamins. Italics represent movement, change, and speed – a good choice for athletes.
Font can be a great means of symbolic communication and a great way to make your brand stand out. Just be careful not to get too carried away with crazy fonts. At the end of the day, it has to be readable.
6. Play with a mood board
Your brand message and the emotions your brand evokes will, ultimately, result from the complete picture of your supplement label design. This includes your colors, typography, imagery, messaging, and so on. Once you think you know what kind of message you want to convey, what kind of emotions you want to evoke, and what colors, typography, and imagery you plan to use to do it, it’s a good idea to test this out using a mood board.
A mood board is a type of visual presentation (typically a collage consisting of images, texts, and other objects) that is used to convey a general idea or feeling about a particular topic (in this case, your brand). Here’s a more complete explanation.
Create your mood board using the colors, text, and imagery you were imagining for your brand, and then perform an experiment. Ask members of your target audience what they feel when they look at your mood board. Do they mention the emotions that you want your brand to evoke? Do they make your target audience feel like the person they want to be?
7. Focus on benefits, not features
Once you have a good idea of the design aspects of your supplement label design, it’s time to start thinking of your actual messaging. What will your box, bottle, or pouch say? How will you talk about what your supplement is and what it can actually do for your consumers?
At this point, there is one key rule to remember: Focus on benefits, not features. That is, don’t describe what your product is. Rather, describe what your product can do. This takes all of the guesswork out for consumers and makes it easier for them to jump to the conclusion to purchase. It also makes them feel more understood.
Here’s an easy example of what we mean: Say you decided to make extra small pills so they’re easier to swallow. The feature is that they’re extra small. The benefit is that they’re easy to swallow. You can even take it a step further and choose to describe the benefit of the benefit: “They never get stuck!” Include benefits or “benefits of benefits” in your supplement label design for powerful marketing messages.
Suggested reading: How to choose a supplement manufacturer in 10 easy steps
8. Make it emotional
According to multiple studies, people rely on emotions, rather than information, to make decisions. That is emotional responses to marketing actually influence a person’s decision to buy a product more than the actual content of its ads or marketing materials. (This is another reason why it makes more sense to focus on benefits rather than features.)
There are a couple of reasons why emotional marketing works. Humans are emotional beings and relate better to emotional brand messages. As a result, we also remember how brands, marketing, and ads make us feel better than we remember what the product actually is or does. We’re also more likely to share content which makes us feel something, which translates to more brand awareness and more sales.
At this point, you might be wondering how to add emotion to your supplement label design. Color, typography, and imagery can help you evoke an emotion (see above sections) but so can other marketing techniques. “Inspiring the impossible” is one of the best techniques to include in supplement label design in order to evoke emotion. The Red Bull Gives You Wings campaign is a great example of inspirational messaging that evokes a feeling – “I can do the impossible.”
9. Write for a third-grader
This is a copywriting trick that just about any brand could benefit from: Keep your language so simple that even a third-grader could understand. The technical term is plain English. It’s easy to assume that big words and complicated jargon could help your brand establish authority and demonstrate expertise, but the reality is big words and complex sentences will only confuse, frustrate, and offend your audience.
If you’re a supplement brand, for example, it’s safe to assume that most of your target audience doesn’t know many of the technical terms you would use to describe why your products work. So, in your supplement label design, skip the complicated jargon and get straight to the point.
If you do feel the need to explain more about how your products work, add a little booklet in your product box or send a description via email. Even via email or in the booklet, try to make these descriptions are simple as possible. Use small words, short sentences, few conjunctions, and a lot of transitions. Your audience will appreciate it.
10. Don’t go overboard
So far, we’ve talked a lot about creating a supplement label design that helps your brand stand out. While standing out is important, it’s also important not to go overboard on your design. You don’t want to include too much color, too many benefits, too much bold print, etc.
There are a couple of reasons why overdesigning is bad. First of all, too much talk diminishes the legitimacy of your product. If you add too many claims or benefits, consumers will start to wonder how many of them are actually true.
Secondly, too much design sends mixed brand messages. If you use all of the colors of the rainbow, for example, consumers won’t know what to feel.
And lastly, consumers don’t take the sum of benefits. Rather, they take the average. So, if one of your benefits is extremely powerful (let’s say a 10/10) and another one of your benefits is rather dull (a 2/10), consumers won’t rate your total benefits as a 12/10. Rather, they’ll rate you as a 6/10.
Bottom line? When it comes to supplement label design, less is often more.
11. Make it FDA compliant
This one is rather important. You must make sure your supplement labels are FDA compliant. The FDA has a long list of rules when it comes to supplement label design, including these five statements that must be included on your label:
- The statement of identity (name of the dietary supplement)
- The net quantity of contents statement (amount of the dietary supplement)
- The nutrition labeling
- The ingredient list
- The name and place of business of the manufacturer, packer, or distributor
Please don’t mistake these five rules for the only rules. There are also rules regarding where to place each statement, font sizes, proper accepted wording, and more.
If you’re worried about facing penalties from the FDA, your best bet is to hire a supplement label designer or a supplement manufacturer that has also designed and produced successful labels. Professionals that work in the industry, especially supplement manufacturers, have experience with the FDA and know exactly what needs to go on your supplement label.
Suggested reading: How to choose a supplement manufacturer in 10 easy steps
12. Keep your brand unified
Last but not least is the question of your brand identity and unity. As a supplement brand, you may have many different kinds of products that appeal to slightly different target audiences. Maybe you focus on a wider variety of supplements like fitness supplements, beauty supplements, and brain health.
If so, you may be tempted to design each label differently to appeal to your various audiences. Don’t. It’s much more important for you to build brand awareness as a cohesive brand than to create supplement label designs for each of your target audiences. Instead, try to focus on what these different audiences might have in common and come up with one, unified idea about your audience. Not only will this help solidify your brand identity, but it will also lead to more sales per customer. At the end of the day, you want each member of your audience to buy multiple supplements from you, right?
That being said, you can modify the labels of different products slightly. The benefits you want to highlight for one product, for example, will likely be quite different than the benefits you want to highlight for another.
13. Work with a supplement manufacturer that also designs labels
In the competitive industry of dietary supplements, your supplement label design is extremely important. A great design can make your brand stand out from the rest. More importantly, the right design can help you appeal to your specific niche customer, ultimately leading to increased brand loyalty and sales. A poor design or a design that’s not FDA compliant, on the other hand, can mean serious trouble for your brand.
That’s why it’s a good idea to work with supplement manufacturers who have experience designing supplement labels. They know the industry, they understand the FDA regulations, and most importantly, they know you, your products, and your target market.
Generation Nutra has more than just experience designing labels for supplement brands. They also have an impressive track record of designing top-quality labels for some seriously successful companies.
Are you looking for a supplement manufacturer?
Here are some additional benefits of building your supplement brand with Generation Nutra:
- Thousands of raw materials to choose from so you can create unique and personalized formulas.
- Advice in terms of formulation.
- Various packaging formats to choose from so you can customize your product.
- A team of in-house graphic designers to help you design custom labels for your brand.
- Advice and guidance to help you market and sell your product.
Ask Generation Nutra what they can do for you!
Contact us