Packaging Marketing Strategy — What Has to Change for Real Growth

Many packaging companies built their packaging marketing strategy in pieces over time, reacting to slow periods instead of designing for consistent sales growth. The website was refreshed. SEO was added later as a one-time process. Occasional social media posts are made. A CRM was added in hopes of getting the team organized. When leads slow, digital campaigns are layered on. It’s no wonder getting traction is challenging.

Each investment made sense on its own, but without a holistic approach that creates a marketing strategy around how business is won, companies like this will continue to struggle.

Company leadership isn’t measuring success on website traffic and clicks; they are interested in filling the sales pipeline with the right opportunities, keeping those moving through the pipeline, and having the sales team spend time on leads that can realistically close. Their measure of success is revenue. A packaging marketing strategy breaks down when marketing activity is measured by traffic and engagement instead of pipeline quality and revenue contribution.

Integrated Manufacturing Marketing: Discover how Athena’s proven manufacturing lead generation approach combines specialized industry knowledge with systematic processes.

Why a Packaging Marketing Strategy Must Start With The Sales Process

A packaging marketing strategy only drives growth when it is designed around how deals are qualified, evaluated, and closed.

Custom packaging sales can be complex with long sale cycles, engineering involvement, procurement cost pressure, and operational risk that shape buying decisions. While sales advance a deal through defined qualification steps, buyers move through a parallel decision process that follows the same checkpoints. Packaging buyers rarely reach out to sales reps first. They quietly research problems, compare suppliers, and narrow down options long before a sales conversation begins. Your marketing strategy must reflect this reality.

The strategy must consider the following:

• Who is our target customer?
• What questions might they ask at each stage of the process?
• What information do they need to provide enough confidence for them to move to a conversation?

This is where target market profiling, generative engine optimization (GEO), and search engine optimization (SEO) become relevant.

Understanding your target market is critical to prevent your sales and marketing teams from chasing leads that are not a fit. It creates a more efficient process. Company size, annual spend, and types of packaging and services used are examples of what may be included in your target market profile. Consider your best customers and emulate what makes them a good fit. It also helps to do this exercise while thinking of your worst customers — the ones that are not worth the hassle — so you can avoid adding more of those types.

Many of these customers are not only using search engines to find information but also are using AI-driven tools to synthesize answers, compare suppliers, and shortlist vendors. Both SEO and GEO favor explicit, structured content that is grounded in real operating experience and demonstrates authority. Vague positioning and broad marketing claims do not fare well. Building your packaging marketing strategy around how people research and evaluate risks will ensure your company shows up when it matters.

Effective SEO for Packaging Companies

SEO for packaging companies fails when content attracts traffic but does not address the operational problems buyers are trying to solve.

Your packaging marketing strategy must include SEO. SEO for packaging companies is often reduced to keywords and rankings, even though buyers search because something in their packaging operation is not working. Pages are created around materials, box styles, or equipment. Traffic may increase, making for positive reports. But the strategy isn’t working if sales aren’t seeing change. The issue here may lie with intent.

Most packaging buyers are not searching to understand what corrugated or flexible packaging is. They are searching because something isn’t working for them. It could be that damage rates are high, lead times are unreliable, or a retailer has changed its requirements. SEO for packaging companies works when the content reflects those pain points.

With GEO, this matters even more. Generative search tools prioritize content that clearly explains problems, trade-offs, and outcomes. Pages that list packaging capabilities without explaining problems, trade-offs, and outcomes are easy for generative AI systems to ignore.

Effective SEO and GEO support business development when they mirror real sales conversations, use language buyers recognize, and answer buyers’ questions clearly.

SEO requires that your site be stable and easy to crawl. Page speed, mobile usability, clean URLs, meta descriptions, and internal links all matter. Beyond this, SEO for packaging companies must be viewed as an ongoing process that requires regular attention. Search is constantly evolving, whether through Google updates or AI-driven shifts, but what has remained stable is content that consistently shows up and demonstrates experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Google refers to this as E-E-A-T. Content is prioritized by these systems when it is written to be helpful to people.

Turn Digital Marketing into a Predictable Engine

Digital marketing for packaging companies is most effective when it reinforces sales conversations rather than operating as a parallel activity.

SEO is only one component of a broader digital marketing strategy. SEO gives you visibility and attracts the right customers. Digital marketing for packaging companies turns that visibility into qualified conversations, RFQs, and measurable pipeline movement.

In some companies, digital marketing becomes a parallel effort for sales rather than a support system. Content is created, emails are sent, social posts go out, but sales teams do not reference or rely on any of it. It’s even worse when messaging isn’t aligned.

Digital marketing should reinforce sales activity at every stage. It should help educate prospects who are not yet ready, provide additional touches, and reinforce value after meetings. It should not be positioned as a replacement for outbound effort or relationship building.

For packaging companies with long cycles, digital marketing plays a critical role in staying relevant without being intrusive. In a GEO context, it also serves as a source of structured knowledge that AI systems can surface when buyers compare options.

When digital marketing is tied directly to the sales process, it becomes an asset that sales teams want to use rather than ignore.

Digital marketing for packaging companies may include:

• Website SEO and GEO
• Paid search
• Organic and paid social media
• Downloadable resources such as design guides, packaging audit checklists, or retail packaging launch roadmaps.
• Email campaigns that nurture prospects from initial interest to quoting.
• Webinars or short videos that explain how you solve specific packaging challenges.

Digital marketing for packaging companies should track directly to business priorities, such as:

• Growing share in a key segment like food and beverage, industrial, or e-commerce brands.
• Filling capacity on a specific line, such as a new high-speed folder gluer or digital press.
• Entering a new geography or channel.

Every campaign should answer a fundamental question: which part of the growth plan does this support, and how will we know if it is working?

When packaging marketing strategy, SEO, and digital activities connect to defined goals, it becomes easier to make decisions about budget, staffing, and focus.

Connecting Marketing To Revenue With A CRM In The Packaging Industry

A CRM in the packaging industry is the only reliable way to connect SEO, digital marketing, and outbound activity to pipeline and revenue.

A successful packaging marketing strategy requires a data repository that provides reports and insights into what is working and what isn’t. This is where a customer relationship management (CRM) tool in the packaging industry becomes indispensable for connecting marketing activity to revenue outcomes. Without a CRM, it is difficult for any packaging company to prove which efforts generate revenue and which are just activity.

Unfortunately, CRMs in the packaging industry are often implemented with good intentions and limited follow-through. Data is entered inconsistently. Fields are customized but not enforced. Reporting exists but is rarely used to guide decisions.

The result is a system that stores information but does not provide insight. A CRM tool’s data should answer practical questions, such as:

• Which marketing efforts produce opportunities that actually move forward?
• Where do deals stall and why?
• How long do quotes sit without resolution?
• How many touches does it take to convert a lead?
• How long does it take a web lead to convert?
• Which industries or applications convert best?
• Where do we lose deals, and why?

Once you learn those answers, you can make informed decisions about where to invest and where to adjust. Without reliable CRM data, marketing decisions are made in isolation, SEO priorities are guessed at, and digital campaigns are judged by engagement rather than pipeline contribution.

CRM in the packaging industry provides visibility and accountability across marketing and sales. It provides visibility into the sales process and offers a feedback loop for strategy adjustment.

The Dashboard of a High-Performing Packaging Marketing Strategy

A useful dashboard shows how a packaging marketing strategy contributes to pipeline health, capacity utilization, and revenue, not just activity levels.

Data is a fundamental part of any marketing strategy. However, data overload can be just as bad as not having enough data when paralysis by analysis prevents any decision-making. The KPIs you regularly view should provide a picture of how marketing and sales activity moves through the pipeline and supports capacity and margin goals.

Common elements on a useful dashboard include:

• Number of marketing-qualified and sales-qualified opportunities per month, broken out by source (outbound efforts, organic search, paid, referral, trade show, etc.).
• Pipeline value tied to SEO and digital marketing efforts.
• Quote volume and win rate by segment and source.
• Average sales cycle length from first digital touch to closed order.
• Contribution of new accounts to total sales and key equipment.

When your marketing strategy is cohesive, these numbers become predictable, allowing you to forecast with more confidence, plan capital investments, and set realistic targets for the sales team.

Action Checklist for Business Development Executives

This checklist helps business development leaders evaluate whether their packaging marketing strategy, SEO, digital marketing, and CRM are aligned with revenue goals.

Rebuilding a packaging marketing strategy all at once can seem daunting. A practical starting point is to audit your current approach with a few direct questions. Here are questions that can be asked and tackled systematically if not in place:

Packaging marketing strategy

• Do we have a documented packaging marketing strategy that connects directly to our growth targets, capacity plans, and priority markets?

Inbound Marketing

• Which digital marketing programs are running right now, and which specific business goals do they serve?
• When prospects search for terms related to our core services and industries, do we appear with pages that answer their questions?
• Have we reviewed our site structure and content in the last year with SEO for packaging companies in mind?
• Can we tie recent wins back to digital marketing, or are we guessing?

Outbound Marketing

• Do we have a process for outbound activity that includes how many prospects we must contact each month to reach our sales goals?
• Are our outbound marketing efforts targeting the right types of companies and the correct decision-makers in our priority industries?
• Are we regularly refining our outreach based on response data?

CRM and reporting

• Is every inquiry tracked in a CRM with source, segment, and stage data?
• Can we pull a report showing pipeline and revenue attributed to organic search and digital campaigns over the last 6 to 12 months?

Decision making

• If you had to increase or decrease your budget next quarter, do you know which parts of the program you would adjust and why?

If these questions are difficult to answer, that is your roadmap. Start with clarity, then align digital marketing and outbound activities with real revenue goals, and enforce consistent CRM use.

When all of those pieces connect, a packaging marketing strategy stops being a cost center and becomes one of your most reliable tools for filling the pipeline and growing your business.

Integrating Athena SWC: Elevating Your Marketing Strategy

We see many packaging companies struggle to execute a cohesive packaging marketing strategy because they lack the structure, time, or clean data to support consistent follow-through. Digital marketing, outbound activity, and CRM reporting often evolve in parallel, making it difficult to understand what is actually contributing to pipeline growth.

In our work with packaging manufacturers, we focus on aligning inbound and outbound activity with the sales process rather than running disconnected campaigns. The goal is to align activities with how packaging buyers research, evaluate risk, and move toward a purchasing decision, while giving sales teams visibility into what is working and what is not.

That work typically includes defining a realistic target market, supporting outbound prospecting with disciplined research and outreach, and developing SEO- and GEO-aligned content that answers buyer questions clearly. Just as important, every touchpoint and response is captured in the CRM, so marketing and sales decisions are based on evidence rather than assumptions.

If your current packaging marketing strategy feels fragmented or difficult to measure, a useful next step is to review where alignment or visibility breaks down and decide what needs to change. Contact us for a focused discussion on how your current approach compares to best practices observed across packaging manufacturers.