Developing your essential oil brand is exciting, particularly now as the craze for aromatherapy has been steadily increasing. With this momentum, producing essential oils and starting your brand could be the right time. But before you take a leap to your new endeavor, there are several things you need to consider first. Getting these matters tackled right away during startup will help you quickly make predictions about your business’ growth.
Here are some of the things you have to consider when starting up your essential oil business. Let’s have them step-by-step.
Determining Your Target Market
The first thing you need to think about is identifying your target market. If you begin locally, you can talk to relatives and friends about your oils. Ask them for feedback from the samples you provided and request a recommendation from the people they know who are using or fascinated with essential oils.
What’s more, you can take samples to the public. Go to local farmer’s markets and grab consignment opportunities with the help of other retailers since they can introduce your products to potential customers. You can offer free samples in exchange for an assessment and information on how each customer incorporates oils into their lives. Apart from it, you can also get valuable information via the Internet to cultivate data on essential oil sales in your region.
Once you have a substantial understanding of how people use essential oils, you can start conceptualizing ideas on catering to their needs. Thanks to your collected data, you can now create essential oil products mainly designed to entice people’s interest in your products.
Planning the Brand’s Packaging
Your essential oil bottles need unique, compelling labels that create a visual personality for your business’ brand. Consider a custom logo to accentuate your bottles. It would be great to hire a professional graphic designer to develop your company’s visual assets. Although it will be costly to outsource graphic design, it can serve as an investment because it ensures a professional-looking print on your bottles.
Keep in mind that your logo and additional brand collateral will not only be used on your packaging labels. It will be used for your marketing and promotional materials. So take your sweet time to explore other essential oils brand packaging concepts to get inspiration for what you want your products to look like. Your goal here is to ensure that your logo designs and packaging are distinct from the others to pique customer’s attention.
Your main objective is to ensure your designs are different from other retailers but are striking enough to capture consumers’ attention.
Setting Up the Trend
Establishing your brand’s culture and setting up this trend starts personally with the physical encounters you have with prospective customers.
Note that leveraging the broad appeal of engagement through social media to build relationships with current customers and attract new buyers can establish a community. Also, pay attention to the feedback received online and factor that data to further improve your products and marketing strategy. Finally, remain responsive to online buyer requests and inquiries.
Pricing Competitively
You might think that setting the price for your products is easy-peasy, but it’s not. It is actually complicated, especially for new business owners. So to avoid confusion, here are several pricing determinants to consider:
- Essential oil bottles and caps
- Essential oil materials (oils and essences)
- Packaging (packaging and boxes)
- Shipping materials
- Labor hours
- Overhead costs (phone, electricity)
- Marketing fees (paper supplies, website hosting)
These expenses are required to be factored into the price of each bottle that you will sell. You can simply take the total cost and divide it by the overall number of bottles produced from the first batch to establish a baseline cost. This helps you know how much you need to charge to redeem your expenses.
Your Competition
Apart from figuring out the pricing per bottle, you should also know the competition’s pricing structure. Of course, you wouldn’t want your essential oil to be quoted as the most expensive brand. But that doesn’t mean you should be the cheapest because this can negatively reflect the product’s quality in the consumer’s mind.
Another thing to remember is that some ingredients can be more expensive than others, depending on their availability. Thus, you should carefully track and record pricing for your ingredients. Moreover, you need to regularly check the cost of essential oil bottles from suppliers for comparisons.
Spreading the Good News
Among other ways to get people buzzing about your brand is to spread the word locally. Your family, friends, and neighbors are the ideal test market before your business takes off internationally through Internet sales. So believe in the word of mouth advertising, as it is often the crucial building block to your company’s foundation.
In addition, you can seek help and support from retailers in showcasing your products on a consignment basis. Also, you can host private parties to present your product line or join trade shows to expand your business horizon.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, establishing an essential oil business can be overwhelming for business starters. But as long as you are well-guided with the factors you need to consider to achieve business growth, you will succeed in your own time.
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