Here is a question: how many promotional products do you have lying around in your home or stuffed away in the bottom of a drawer? Promotional items like pens, notepads, can cozies, etc. are common freebies given away by companies to promote their brand or to incentivize consumers to choose a particular product over another. Businesses of all sizes use these items from banks to car dealerships to coffee shops.
And while these small items may seem insignificant, they actually hold more power than you may realize, especially if these items are something useful or of value to the consumer. Some of the biggest benefits of promotional products are that they often fit into your marketing budget and can be effective tools in increasing your company’s brand recognition if you pick the right item to promote your brand.
Marketing Can Be Affordable and Effective
If you have ever used Facebook Ads or Google AdSense, you’ve likely experienced the feeling of your ad budget simply disappearing. Now imagine running a large-scale advertising campaign. Most small businesses cannot afford such a campaign on a regular basis. But, that does not mean that you give up on your marketing goals or that brand awareness is not within your reach. Promotional products are a happy medium that lets you exchange value with your customers. Your brand gets to find a place in their personal space, reminding them of your utility and your business.
When you order these products in bulk they can be cost-effective, while still being good quality. With today’s tech, you don’t have to rely on pens and notepads. There are a wide variety of useful promotional products your brand can give to your customers such as magnets, mousepads, reusable bags, steel water bottles and mugs, badges, power banks, USB drives, and more. With today’s current environment, promotional products could even include branded masks, face shields, or hand sanitizers.
Increase Brand Recognition
Many small and medium-sized businesses have small marketing budgets, but this does not negate their need to build brand recognition. The ultimate goal is to situate your brand within the primitive brain in each of your customers so they automatically think about your business when they have a related need. But achieving this with a small marketing budget can seem near impossible. However, using the right promotional products can help you achieve this goal and stay within budget.
The trick is to make sure the promotional item you choose is extremely meaningful, related to your industry, and more than anything else, meets some kind of need for your customer. No matter the kind of business you are in, you want your promotional product to be useful to your customer. This will help prevent your brand’s promotion from simply getting thrown into a drawer and forgotten.
Which Promotional Product Is Right for My Brand?
When it comes to choosing a promotional product, it’s important to consider the needs of your customers. You want your brand to be associated with something useful. Best is if that something useful is something that is used often, even daily by the customer.
Even with all the options out there, badges continue to be one of the top promotional items. Badges are a fun way to promote your brand without requiring the customer to make any changes to their normal routine. Seeing your brand each time they look at the badge makes your brand stick in their brain a little more, helping them recall it when they have a need your business can fulfill. Another helpful promotional item is a retractable badge holder. Companies are increasingly requiring badges to enter the office. A retractable badge holder helps employees keep track of their ID badge and keeps your brand at the forefront of their minds.
In the end, it is important to pick something that makes the lives of your customer easier. If they need to change their habits or the item is something extra for them to use, the chances of them actually using it is low. You want to make them eager to use the promotional product you give them. So much so that it becomes an integral part of their daily lives. Most promotional items are given away for free to customers and as mentioned before, as long as you buy in bulk these items can be quite affordable.
While you do have the option to sell promotional items (similar to Starbucks), your brand needs to have strong customer loyalty and products that are actually useful to the consumer. Regardless of what you choose, promotional products hold tremendous value for businesses of all sizes. Just be sure to pick something that reflects the usefulness of your brand and provides value to your customer.
