Try Before You Buy Promotional Products

Promotional products are a popular marketing tool for many businesses. I’m sure you have 1 or even 50 items lying around your desk, office, and home right now. From pens to mouse pads to notepads to drinkware to rulers to stress balls. So how many of these items do you deem to be of high quality? How many did you think were so flimsy and cheap that you threw them in the garbage?

Many business owners aren’t aware they can request samples of promotional products prior to purchasing them, but reputable promotional companies offer just that. And there’s a very good reason why you should be taking advantage of it.

If you plan to order personalized pens bearing your company’s message for a trade show, request samples of an assortment of pens in advance. You want to be able to see, touch and inspect them for quality. Determine which ones don’t write well, break easily or are just cheap looking.

Same goes for any promo product you have in mind. If you’re considering paying $4 for a leather bound notebook to give out to your event attendees don’t you want to make sure it isn’t a piece of crap before you order 4000 of them?

Clearly, not everyone requests samples because I’ve gotten a lot of junky stuff from various events in my day. And I’m not the only one. I’ve heard from many business owners who were quite unhappy with the promotional products they ordered, but there’s not much you can do when they didn’t request a sample before making that investment. If you think it’s a waste of time, consider how your giveaway fares when your audience receives a t-shirt where the printing faded almost completely off after one washing, or the magnet that doesn’t actually stick to anything. (true stories)

Marketing dollars for small businesses have to be wisely spent, and while promotional products are fun and can help establish your brand or support your current campaign, it can also give your company a negative impression if you didn’t do your research. And well…you don’t want to be known as the company that always gives away the crappiest stuff now do you?

Seriously if you’re going to spend hundreds or thousands or dollars on a giveaway item to promote your company, how would you feel if you knew that every single one of those items ended up in the trash because everyone thought it was crappy? What a waste of money that would be, not to mention the negativity you generated for your company.

How Cost-Effective Are Promotional Products?

Promotional products are used every day, often several times a day. They are looked at, written with, put on and involved in a whole list of other basic activities that allow for multiple direct or subliminal impressions of the imprinted ad messages.

By taking the general cost of a product (exact cost can vary because of quantity, intricacy of imprint and number of colors in imprint, and possibly other specifications) and dividing it by the number of exposures the imprint receives, you can get a general idea of your cost per impression (CPI). Here’s some examples:

Notepads

The recipient of a 50-sheet notepad will have a minimum of 50 exposures to the message, which is imprinted on each sheet. If any of the notes are passed on, or kept, the number of exposures can double and triple. The CPI for a $1 notepad works out to be .02 cents per sheet for 50 impressions. Read more

How Well Promotional Products Work

Commonly known as the number-one vehicle for carrying an advertising message, promotional products actually offer more of a response mechanism than other standard media. Not all companies track their results, but some do.

How Promotional Products Can Be Used

Motivation/Incentives

Imprinted products are often used to motivate sales teams toward more sales, production workers toward greater efficiency, credit departments toward more collections, etc. But they can also be used as incentives to get store managers to give you better shelf space for your products, dealers to load up on your product so they actually have to push it, consumers to purchase more of your product, delinquent library-card holders to return books and so on.
Recognition/Service Awards

Employees, customers and vendors are recognized for years of service, performance, volume or frequency of business, etc.

Traffic Building

Be it retail, business-to-business, associations … everyone has a need to draw customers. This may be to your store in general, for a specific promotion, to your tradeshow booth or to your special event. Read more

6 Steps To a Successful Promotional Campaign

Successful marketing and other communications campaigns that use promotional products don’t happen by chance. To realize goals, promotional products programs must be carefully planned, taking into consideration the audience, budget and, of course, the ultimate result to be gained.

Promotional Products Association International recommends the following guidelines for creating effective campaigns:

1. Define a specific objective.
Whether the goal is to increase traffic at a trade show exhibit or to boost sales with current clients, the first step in any campaign is to clarify the purpose of the program.

2. Determine a workable distribution plan to a targeted audience.
Distribution of a promotional product is as important as the item itself. Research shows that a carefully executed distribution plan significantly increases the effectiveness of promotional products. For example, a pre-show mailing to a select audience delivers more trade show traffic and qualified leads than simply distributing items to passerby at the show. Read more