The best promotional products improve brand recall and increase sales. With the huge range of branded gifts available today, make sure that you choose the best promotional product – something that is useful, well-designed, relevant, and represents your company well. Choosing the perfect items for your company can be difficult.
Stay Relevant to Your Industry.
When you need to make a lasting impression that will keep your business top of mind, factors such as age, gender, family status, and occupation play a big role in how customers view the value of promotional products.
Staying relevant to what you do will help keep the communication between you and your audience clear. It is ideal to have an item that is relevant to your brand and represents what your company does. This helps your target market associate your brand with the item whenever they see or use it.
Take the example of the ever-popular pen. It is not a great gift to distribute if your company has nothing to do with writing or your customers would seldom have the need for it. Think of a gym or swimming pool for example, a pen wouldn’t be a great gift, although it is a great promotional item for a university. If your company sells earth moving equipment, a branded hard hat will give you way more mileage than a branded USB drive would. The best promotional items for small business and large are those that fit the industry as well as the image.
Keep the Season in Mind.
Marketing and promotion should be done year-round, but it is a good idea to take the season into consideration. Take advantage of the Festive Season to send something full of Christmas cheer to your customers, but don’t disappear for the rest of the year. Look at the calendar to find marketable dates that you could use to promote your brand. Official and unofficial holidays provide a great reason to reach out to your audience with a witty and appropriate gift.
In terms of seasons of the year, save the branded sunblock for summer and the bespoke coffee mugs with hot chocolate for the colder months. Giving away a promotional item that compliments the weather will make your audience want and appreciate the item even more. Showing this kind of awareness is important and lets your audience know that you are in tune with their needs and the world in which you operate.
Have Different Items for Different Types of Events.
Mix it up and have something unique for different events. Don’t use your trade show collection of pens as a gift for you guests at a gala dinner, or the caps you had made for your golf day at your Christmas event. Although these are popular promotional giveaways, you can do better.
You want to show the customer that a lot of thought has gone into every gift and not let them feel like you have dipped into the cupboard of leftover generic gifts. While it is important to have steady stock of gifts that would suit any occasion, there is so much available that you should be able to find the perfect item for your event and have your company stand out from the competition. A key characteristic of an effective promotional gift is that it is useful to its recipient. This means that the target market wants to take it home, use it, and keep it.
When these qualities are met, your awesome promotional product is more likely to be kept for a long time and elevate the impression of your brand, products, and services. Choosing the perfect promotional item is key to ensuring the longevity of your marketing investment. Selecting the wrong item is a waste of time and money. The target audience will either give or throw them away or simply ignore them. A well-chosen promotional product could be used and appreciated for many years as it grows your brand awareness and customer loyalty.
