Why Buy Promotional Items
Promotional items are tangible symbols.
They are imprinted or embroidered with a company's name,
logo or message, and include useful, that are utilized in
marketing and communication programs. They include ad
specialties, business gifts, other identification
applications, and recognition awards. When promotional
products are distributed free, they're referred to as
advertising specialties.
Promotional products are used for a
variety of purposes. Thanking customers for patronage;
introducing new products, services or facilities;
reinforcing established products or services.
There are more than 15,000 different types
of advertising ideas used as promotional products. Some of
the more conventional articles are pens
& pencils, calendars,
T-shirts, coffee mugs, portfolios, calculators, mesh caps,
magnets, key fobs, desk accessories and matchbooks.
For a lot of companies, mass media isn't an
efficient or economical way to promote their product,
company or message. An advertising alternative for these
companies are trade publications, direct mail and the use
of promotional products, especially ad specialties. The
non-advertising alternatives are direct personal sales
calls and trade shows -- both suited to be effectively
supplemented by the use of promotional products marketing.
Promotional products marketing can be their best form of
advertising. Using promotional items with corporate
branding can get the prospect to respond in some manner,
perhaps by requesting additional information or a visit by
a salesperson.
Unlike other media, personalized items
tends to stay around to be seen again and again. This
makes the cost-per-thousand figures used in evaluating
mass media misleading when applied to long-lasting
promotional items. There is simply no way to measure how
many exposures promotional merchandise receives over its
lifetime.
If such measurement were feasible, it's
likely that the lasting ability of promotional products
would make them the least expensive advertising medium
when figured on a cost-per-exposure basis. For example, a branded
leather coaster may stay on a
bar counter for years offering tens of thousands of
exposures for less than a dollar.
How Can Promotional Items Help Your
Business
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Because of their
utility value, most promotional items naturally create
involvement. When this involvement is combined with
effective targeting, well-considered timing, integration
into overall marketing objectives, creative copy and/or
creative imprint design, the impact is multiplied. Impact
can also be affected by the personalized promotional
item's size, value, shape, practicality, appropriateness,
humor, or artistic flair.
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With
so many item variations, creative possibilities are
endless. Consider receiving a party invitation on a mylar
helium advertising
balloon which rises out of a
gift box when opened. To stimulate other senses, what
about a scented pen which smells like the promoted
product, such as fine leather or flavor-burst candies, or
a chocolate award plaque which suggests the sweet taste of
success, or a promotional audio tape with music and a
message thanking you for your business? A tangible symbol
can usually help you say it with more creative impact.
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Promotional
products constitute the only advertising medium that has
ingratiation built in. People naturally like to receive
gifts. The word "free" is one of the most
powerful words in copywriting. Recent research supports
the notion that goodwill results in repeat purchases,
loyalty, and recommending the custom imprinted product to
others.
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Research
studies consistently report that adding custom-branded
merchandise to advertising, direct mail, client visits,
corporate meetings and trade shows significantly increases
performance. In a business-to-business environment, this
translates to more sales leads and profits. Customers who
receive a promotional giveaway, on average, return sooner
and more frequently, and spend more money than customers
who receive coupons.
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Awards
and incentive programs can improve performance and
motivate employees to increase sales, reduce accidents,
boost productivity and give customers better service.
Promotional items, when used in conjunction with a sales
letter or as incentive to respond, can make a significant
difference in direct mail response rates. The use of
promotional items can also significantly improve a
business' effectiveness in converting leads to sales
appointments.
Give Your Business A Boost
When times are tough, promotional items
can be an economical way to promote business and
merchandise and foster customer appreciation. To a large
degree, promotional products are very cost effective. Even
with a smaller budget, promotional products enable a
business to actually do promotion.
The concept of promotional products may
strike one as kitschy, but the industry is a huge one --
$16.5 billion in revenue in the most recent survey in 2001
-- an indication of just how widespread demand really is.
Indeed, all those logo printed
T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads
are part of some company's concerted effort to make you
remember its name.
Customers who received promotional
products expressed more goodwill toward the company and
its salespeople than those who did not. New customers who
received promotional products spent 139 percent more than
those who received only a welcome letter. This indicates
that augmenting an advertising campaign with promotional
products can positively impact both your company's image
and your sales.
Promotional items also can be effective in
generating customer referrals, increasing traffic at trade
shows, publicizing new products or services and rewarding
employees. One of the major benefits of promotional
products is that they are items people use repeatedly
like: headwear,
umbrellas, travel mugs and patch handle bags, so they
continue to have an effect every time someone picks them
up.
Advertising Specialty For Your Promotional
Needs
· Uses for promotional products are
numerous. Whether you are going to a trade show or
introducing a new service, the kind of product you buy is
determined by what you want to accomplish with the
promotion.
· A distribution plan significantly
increases the effectiveness of promotional products.
Create a plan to ensure that the products reach the
desired audience. This will capture your promotion and
make it more effective in cost and in result.
· Create a theme and message to support
the theme, tying the campaign together with a common
color, logo and message that complement each other. The
logo should be simple, striking and recognizable. Also,
choose a product that ties to your theme and the nature of
your business to help solidify your message. If you're a piggy
bank, you can give away a piggy
bank. You can use something that gives an image and
carries a message.
· Find an advertising specialty qualified
distributor like L
& R Enterprise. There are
literally thousands of companies selling promotional
products on the Web, but a good promotional-products
distributor not only can sell you an item, but can advise
you on product ideas and the nature of your campaign, from
distribution to packaging.
Overall, promotional products are most
useful as business-building tools when they are
incorporated into a well-thought-out advertising plan that
is both creative and professional.
While stylish bags, toy cars, or watches
might light up the eyes of some meeting attendees, the
less-flashy meeting items from Get
a Bag also present organizations
with avenues to impress their image upon attendees.
Ideas For Promotional Giveaways
Convention badge holders, trade tokens,
lanyards, tote
bags, pens, paper - is an
opportunity to get your name or a sponsor's name out in
front of people. You can do things like pens for under a
dollar per person. They usually will take it with them,
and other people will see them write with it as well.
One of the meetings industry's ubiquitous, not-so-flashy
products, the lanyard, can actually have a lot of value if
the right one is chosen. Attendees will keep custom neck
lanyards that they find comfortable, user-friendly or
distinctive. They will get reused if they're very high
quality or made from a unique material like polyester,
leather, plastic, mesh or cotton.
Always searching out new attachment looks, and for things
no one else has done. Since 100,000 lanyards get thrown
away every year, we want to come up with creative ways to
make them so people will keep them. A lanyard that
converts into a sunglasses strap after the meeting,
increasing the likelihood that it will go home with the
attendee instead of getting left in a hotel room or trash
bin.
Have you ever snagged a
polar
plus insulator bearing a
company name, don't dismiss it as a dumb freebie. Treasure
it. The same goes for all those gratis coach jackets
emblazoned with corporate branding.
Freebies may end up moldering in a junk
drawer somewhere, but their power as a marketing tool is
clear. Even as the industry celebrates past glories such
as the squishy imprinted
coin and key zip purse, it plows
new ground with rain gauges.
The hall-of-fame handout roster is familiar to businesses
that buy them and the people who get them: Logo-bearing active wear shirts. The combination holder/insulator for
aluminum cans known as a "Koozie." Vinyl decals.
Today's automotive
& travel bumper stickers,
pens and coffee mugs are heirs to a marketing tradition
that dates to the 19th century. The first known product
used to promote a business: an imprinted burlap schoolbook
bag, back in the 1870s.
Calendars
are among the older promotional products, dating back to
the 1800s. The promotional products industry knighted a
somewhat contemporary version - the vinyl-backed magnetic
calendar - as one of the century's best creations. Easily
affixed to a fridge, filing cabinet or just about
anything, the little calendars carry an ad with 12
pull-off months. They're functional, cheap and frequently
seen - the triple-crown virtues of promotional products.
For walking billboards, it's difficult to
beat activewear shirts with a corporate emblem, industry
experts said. Classier than T-shirts, they're more likely
to be worn in public than while cleaning an attic. Such
qualities put them among the five "Products of the
Century." Listed are more products:
card holder
desktop calendars
wooden nickels
sport water bottle
golf balls
baseball cap
pharmacy bag
flaming racing cap
bag clips
document case
indoor/outdoor
thermometer
pencils
fanny pack
yardstick
jackets
Take a look in your home or office and you
are bound to find several promotional products around-a
tote bag you got from a trade show, a entertainer mug you
took home as a favor from a party, or a mouse pad
that a company sent you as part of its advertising
campaign. The uses of promotional items and types of
products available are countless. In the events industry,
promotional products can play a role in advertising your
business, recognizing your employees and customers, or as
a memento of a wonderful event. Such items are kept, used
and cherished as a reminder of a profitable business
relationship or an unforgettable event.
Three most important characteristics that
recipients look for in promotional products are
usefulness, quality and attractiveness. Studies also show
that recipients place a high perceived value on
promotional products such as wine bottle openers.
Healthcare
and financial industries were the top buyers of
promotional items for use as marketing tools, which
purchase medicine droppers, spoons, pill boxes, document
case and portfolios. Non-profit organizations were ranked
third and trade and professional associations were fifth
on the list of buyers of promotional products. Hotels,
entertainment and sporting events and restaurants and bars
were also recognized as top buyers. In addition, this
study found that the principal uses of promotional
products were to create goodwill, to build awareness of
new products and services, trade show promotion,
motivation, customer and employee appreciation and
generating sales leads.
Promotional items have so many benefits, they stimulate
company pride, boost morale, call attention to the company
and promote customer goodwill. They make people stand out
with a custom tailored, uniform look at large events like golf
tournaments using divot fixers, caddy covers and ball
markers. They also have testimonial advertising value.
Research shows that promotional products
work and experts concur. As part of a strategic marketing
plan, the right product, custom imprinted with the right
message and distributed to your target audience will
result in greater response, more business, increased trade
show traffic, loyal employees and customers and productive
sales people. You may contact
us to learn more.
Business Cards
In the early days of doing business in
North America, most people thought that business cards
were designed to tell people your name, address, and
telephone number. In the age of the guerrilla this is no
longer so.
Consider some factors:
1. Your business card is now a marketing piece or, at
least, it should be.
2. Your company slogan and your important customer
benefits should also be listed. If customers need to find
you, maybe a simple site map should be there. Do you have
a FAX, an email address, or a web site? Are they listed?
3. Do you have an 800 number? Customers, even those living
in your county, are six to seven times more likely to call
you if you have a toll-free telephone number. Get it on
your card!
4. Have you considered a fold-over card? The front is more
like a traditional card, but the inside is like a
personalized mini-brochure. Customer response to these
cards is very positive. We appreciate having a complete
description in one easy place.
5. Make sure that we, including us mid-life plus-ers, can
read your card. Keep the print large enough.
6. Make your card a "keeper." That is, give some
important information on the back that your customers will
want to keep with them.
7. Make sure there's some room to write an imprinted
message if you need to. You should always write some kind
of personal identification message even if it's only
"Best Wishes!" and your first name.
Take your guerrilla business cards to the big game. When
we score a home run or a touchdown throw about twenty of
them into the air as you shout "hurrah!" Big
dividends will follow.
Give them to well-dressed strangers with your compliment
on their appearance.
Put your lavish 20% tip on top of your business card
whenever and wherever you tip. You can even pin on a
message board.
Pass them out in the elevators where everyone's a bit too
close and uncomfortable.
Staple them to a dollar and pay for that car behind you on
the bridge, the turnpike, or the parking lot. The response
will be terrific.
A great organizer uses their cards. Put a quarter in the
meter for that BMW over there about to get a ticket.
Write, "U O Me" on the back. Watch what happens.
Reserve a lot of time in your daily planner for your
business card. Make it a guerrilla business card. Now,
pass them out to everyone. They should be in your shirt
pocket, in your purse, in your wallet, even in your duffel
bag. Refill daily. Pass them out
on every greeting, every introduction, every service,
every meeting to everyone.
Give them out with purpose and intent. You have a serious
business. It is important and it is designed to really
support your customers. Don't pass them out casually like
you would a swiss army knife, except at sport's events.
Give your cards to others with two hands or attach them to
a key ring. Yes, hand them to others with both hands.
Notice the difference it makes.
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