How to Make Your CBD Product Stand Out From the Competition

Discover several ways you can stay ahead of your competitors and grow your CBD sales.

CBD sales have exploded in the past five years, and that trend is expected to continue, bringing the value of the CBD industry from $2.8 billion in 2020 to $13.4 billion in 2028. This is great news for CBD manufacturers and startups, but with the increasing value of the market comes increased competition. 

The marketplace is becoming exponentially more crowded with each passing year, and the fight for retail space will continue to weed out the companies that aren’t able to stay competitive. If you’ve noticed your CBD company’s profits have started to plateau, it may be time to evaluate how you can regain your slice of the market pie and even get a second helping.

Product Research & User Feedback

Before you spend money overhauling your products, packaging, and packing line, get customer feedback and research trends in your industry. In other words, find out why your customers are migrating away from your products. 

Is there a change in market trends in regards to flavor profiles? Is your CBD labeling conveying the image you want customers to perceive? Perhaps the particular type of product you make is no longer popular, and you need to diversify or alter the product somehow. Or maybe your quality control has slipped. Perhaps you’ll find that you need to re-train employees, hire new staff, change equipment, or redo all your current branding. It could be that your output isn’t meeting current demand, so your product is perceived as hard to get, so consumers aren’t willing to hunt for your product anymore. 

Once you’ve identified the problem area(s), you can begin to right the ship and increase your profits.

CBD Product Branding

Your branding is the first handshake you have with a potential customer. If a consumer decides they don’t care for the appearance of your packaging, a process that only takes a few seconds, they may be gone for good. Here are some ways you can make sure your brand captures attention and keeps it:

1. Be Consistent: Even if you’re making multiple types of CBD products, such as lotions, cosmetics, gummies, and even beverages, you need to make sure the thread of your brand is on every item. If it’s a mystery to consumers that each of your products is coming from the same source, you’ll never be able to build brand trust. Color scheme, overall design, and your brand identity need to be evident on every package.
   
2. Be Transparent: Trust is paramount for any brand, but in regards to CBD, there’s still a stigma to be fought that CBD is just another word for marijuana. Not everyone is aware that THC and CBD are different things, and it’s your job to educate them. You can create videos for social media, blogs for your website, create specific messaging for your packaging, or however you can best reach your customer base.
3. Be Professional: That stigma mentioned above also means you face an uphill battle in how you’ll be perceived, too. Overcompensating with professionalism and avoiding traditional marijuana cliches (graphics reminiscent of marijuana leaves, the number 420, and pot puns) may be necessary, depending on your target demographics and sales region. Your website, marketing materials, photos, videos, blogs, everything must look slick and polished.
4. Be Focused: Whether your products are meant for recreational use or medicinal use, they need to reflect that. Your font choices, graphic design, and wording, all must point a customer towards the product’s purpose with no confusion. Bright colors and a handwritten font may be perfect for a CBD-infused beverage. Crisp, sans serif fonts, and traditional medical colors of white and blue would probably be more appropriate for a CBD topical or pain reliever.

Top-notch CBD & Ingredients

Once a shopper is curious enough to reach for your product on a shelf, they’ll probably turn it over to see the ingredients list. If your ingredients are subpar or hard to understand, customers may just put the package back on the shelf and not even give it a chance. Putting high-quality ingredients in your CBD products makes a huge difference in every way, from odor to flavor and shelf life to effectiveness. Consumers are savvy and will know if a key ingredient has been skimped on or left out entirely. 

As an example, coconut oil is believed to help with the absorption and metabolism of CBD. Specifically, it’s the MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) in the oil that do the job. Separating the effective MCTs from the less effective LCTs (long-chain triglycerides) is a time-consuming and costly process, however, which means you’ll have to invest capital in the more expensive ingredient. So, instead of cheapening out with low-quality fractionated coconut oil, going with the isolated MCTs may cost a little more, but it will make your product more effective, and your sales should overcome the money spent on the front end.

CBD Product Packaging

Even if your graphic design is on point and your products are top-notch, remember that the CBD packaging itself can make or break a sale. There are several fronts you’ll want to approach to make sure your packaging is up to snuff:

1. Quality: Poor quality packaging gives customers the impression that your product is cheap and ineffective. Boxes that are bent or torn, CBD labels that are peeling off and full of typos, droppers that don’t work properly, and glass that’s prone to breaking are just some of the problems that can keep people from buying your product more than once, if ever. Investing in high-quality packaging will keep your products safe and tell customers the CBD product inside is safe and pleasurable to use.
2. Accessibility: Depending on your specific CBD product, you want to make sure the container isn’t easily accessible to children. But for a lotion or other everyday usable product, you want to make sure the customer can actually open the package without destroying the product. Tearing open a bag with too much force only to watch the product spill to the ground is an irritating experience and one you don’t want your customers reliving whenever they buy your CBD products. If a package is supposed to be reusable, make sure it can be resealed with minimum effort.
3. Environmental Impact: Chances are that your CBD product customer base is environmentally conscious. Extra effort should be taken to use packaging that can be recycled or reused. Cardboard, paper, and glass are preferable alternatives to multiple kinds of plastics that are hard to separate in the recycling bin.

Packaging Line Optimization

Let’s say you’ve got the perfect graphic design, the ingredients are of the highest quality, and you’ve selected the best containers and materials. Now you have to make sure your packaging line is putting everything together correctly and consistently. The part customers don’t see, but they definitely see the results of, is the efficiency of your production. 

If you have equipment that’s applying labels crooked with inconsistent pressure causing poor adhesion or you have equipment that’s too slow to keep up with demand, then it’s time to upgrade. Pack Leader USA can help your product give the perfect first impression with one of our industry-leading labeling machines. 

To get advice on which one is right for you, check out our guide on choosing labeling equipment that fits your packaging line and meets your operational goals. CBD is a tough, competition-filled market — let Pack Leader USA give you the edge you’ve been looking for over your competitors.

More reading:

• CBD Manufacturer’s Guide to Cannabidiol Labeling Equipment
• Top 10 CBD Packaging and Labeling Trends
• CBD Roundup: Tips for Labeling CBD Oil, CBD Gummies, And More
• How to Take Your CBD Filling and Capping to the Next Level
• Labeling equipment for CBD manufacturers
• More CBD-related articles