In the course of running a business, promoting your brand and generating brand awareness become critical components of your daily operations. After all, without a fresh group of customers regularly patronizing your establishment, your business might fail. Custom promotional items offer a fantastic method of generating Buzz about your business, getting the word out about it, and giving back to your customers all at the same time. These items can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. Since they serve as a tangible reminder of business after the initial interaction, they become a driving force for helping businesses succeed. In this article, we’ll dive into the world of promotional items and how to use them to help you succeed.
Custom Promo Have Great Benefits
One of the main reasons to use custom promotional items in a business is because of their many benefits. To begin with, they create a sense of community and rapport among customers. They also serve to advertise passively to potential customers. Wearing apparel or using items that are branded by your favorite company can make you feel a sort of connection to them. For small businesses, that can be a valuable asset—especially since these businesses are prone to needing more help sometimes. Giving customers free items they can use every day also helps build loyalty among the customer base. Finally, custom items are a cost-effective and unique way to advertise with a higher return on investment than many other mediums (such as TV and radio).
Choose The Right Items
A good marketing plan starts with choosing the right items. Start by defining your target audience and what you hope to achieve with your marketing plan. Once you’ve determined that, you can select appropriate items for your business. For example, if you run a restaurant, coffee mugs or drinkware might be a great promotional item for you. If you run a more generalized business, pens can be a phenomenal way to market or provide a gift for your customers. There are many types of Promotional items you can use, too. Here are a few of the most popular:
- Pens
- Tote bags
- Coffee mugs
- Tumblers
- Keychains
- Pen accessories
- Flashlights
- USB drives
- Bottle openers
- Water bottles
Ultimately, you want to ensure your promotional items are useful and will provide value to your customers. It’ll also save you money in the long-term and help you spend your allotted advertising dollars appropriately.
Aim For Quality
Quality is important when it comes to custom promotional items. Offering cheap or extremely low quality items won’t effectively advertise your brand. Oftentimes, these items end up in the garbage or simply tossed away. At that rate, there’s no point in offering them because you’re not going to have any return on investment or impressions. Instead, opt for a high quality item printed with your logo. That way, your dedication to quality gets put on display and your customers receive something they’ll use frequently. That way, your message reaches more people and builds some positive buzz around your brand while cementing your reputation for quality.
Put Your Brand On Display
The most important part about offering promotional items with a logo is ensuring your brand is prominently displayed. How else can you effectively reach a wide audience and tell people about your business? Always include your logo (or some variation of it) and contact info (a phone number or website URL works best). That way, potential customers can see the logo/brand name clearly. Design your items with your brand in mind. Make cups or pens the same color as the color of your logo. Put your tagline on stationary or other larger items. Your goal is to make it easy for customers to recognize your business and remember you. By prominently displaying your brand you not only increase brand awareness but eventually build a larger customer base over time.
Give Your Items Away
Perhaps the most integral part of the entire process is finding the distribution method that works best for your promotional items. There are a lot of different ways to do this. You can Target your audience through direct Mail campaigns or using a social media contest. You might direct people to your website to enter information for which they’ll receive a promotional item in exchange. Conferences and trade shows are fantastic routes for giveaways. You can even give away items right at your business. This could be as a reward for a loyalty program, as part of a buy one get one promotion, or for any reason you choose. There are a considerably large number of methods that can help you get your promotional items into the hands of your customers. It’s up to you to determine what works best for your company now and into the future.
