How to Design the Perfect Custom Water Bottle

Custom water bottles are a popular way to get the word out about your business or event. They’re also a great choice for a wedding favor or other party favor.

But when you go to order your custom branded bottles, you might find yourself faced with an overwhelming range of choices. Glass, steel, aluminum, or plastic? Flip top, pull top, screw top, or straw? What about other features like insulation, infusers, and filters?

To design a custom water bottle that your recipients will enjoy, you have to consider what they like and how they’ll use the bottles. If your customer base is younger and more active, choose a bottle design made from a durable material and offering a lid type and features suited to an active lifestyle. If your customer base is older and less active, or just more interested in staying inside, you can choose a material like glass that isn’t as durable, but looks and feels nicer.  Whatever you do, make sure you choose the right material and features, and go with a bottle from a trusted brand that customers will covet.

Appeal to Your Target Audience

The first step in designing your perfect custom water bottles is to know what your target audience wants from a bottle. Most everyone who carries a reusable water bottle knows how important it is to drink plenty of fluids and maybe they even want to help the environment a bit by throwing out fewer single-use plastics.

But some customers may want a water bottle they can use to stay hydrated during sports and outdoor activities, while others want to keep a drink handy at work or out running errands. Some like to keep their drinks hot or cold, infuse their water with fruits and herbs, or simply filter out that cruddy tap water taste before they drink their water.

Consider where your recipients will be taking their bottles, what they’ll be doing with them, and whether the bottles will need to stand up to heavy abuse or whether they’ll be mostly parked on someone’s end table. Then you can choose the appropriate material — glass, plastic, aluminum, or stainless steel — as well as the lid type and features. Some lid types are best for hydration on the go — for example, a pull-out top is easy to drink from one-handed while you’re cycling or jogging. Other lid types are best for more sedentary activities — you wouldn’t want a cup-style lid with a reusable straw on the hiking trail, but you might bring it with you to the grocery store. And some lid types are most popular with certain demographics — for example, the dome-covered flip-top or pull-top lid is a common choice among health care workers and others who need to keep their water bottle lids safe from dirt, grime, and germs.

Consider Form as Well as Function

Customers often choose reusable water bottles based on their appearance just as much as the features they offer — although features are important, too. Glass bottles, like the ones made by KOR, are attractive and with a sleek, modern, high-end profile. Bottles from sports and outdoor brands, like the ones made by CamelBak, are simple, durable, and suitable for everyday use.

You’ll want to choose a bottle design that appeals to your customer base, but you’ll also want to make sure you’re including all the features your customers want. You can choose a carabiner clip for the water drinker on the go, bottles with infusers for those who want some flavor, and bottles with filters for those who want their water to taste like it’s right out of a cold, pure alpine stream. Make sure the bottle design you choose offers your customers everything they want in a water bottle. That’ll convince them to use your branded bottle wherever they go — spreading your messaging in the process. A really nice bottle could even leave customers prepared to move heaven and Earth to get their hands on your next promotional product.

Go with a Trusted Brand

Don’t spend the time and money on a custom water bottle marketing initiative if you’re just going to have your logo slapped on the cheapest bottles you can find. No one will actually want to drink from those bottles, and it’s not just a matter of being snobby about branding. Cheap bottles may be shoddily made and may contain toxic materials, like bisphenol-A, or BPA, which can cause cancer and other serious health problems.

Choose a base bottle from a reputable manufacturer of water bottles, so you can have your custom logo printed on a bottle that customers will actually want to use. The more customers use your bottles, the more brand messaging you’ll get to spread. You might even get some hashtag love from customers posting online about how much they love your branded bottles.

Custom water bottles are a great choice for promotional product marketing. Everyone drinks beverages, and water bottles fit most peoples’ busy modern lifestyles. Choose the right design elements to make your bottles a hit, and let your brand reap the benefits.