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Should Your Business Invest In Promotional Product Marketing in 2023?

Posted on by Kari

Promotional Product Marketing

What is the hardest part of running a business? The answer depends on what you are good at. Maybe you are bad at math, so accounting gives you nightmares. Perhaps you are not very creative, so marketing to sell your product or service to consumers is intimidating. No matter what specific aspects of the business you struggle with, most owners and executives would agree that finding people to buy their stuff is one of the most difficult and important tasks for a company.

Informing audiences about who you are and what you do is called building brand awareness. If no one knows you exist, then you cannot make money. For this reason, your marketing strategy is crucial for success. There are plenty of channels that could become an effective marketing tool for your brand, including social media platforms, an email campaign, your website, a billboard, paid advertising, or even influencer marketing.

If you’re looking for a unique marketing campaign to increase brand awareness, then you should consider investing in promotional products.

What are Promotional Products and Why Invest in this Strategy?

Promotional products are physical items that can be given to consumers, employees, or the general public to increase the visibility of a brand. How is this accomplished? Branded merchandise. The promotional products industry allows companies to print a custom logo, design, and/or the company name on a product so that every time the item is used, exposure for the brand increases.

Broad Exposure for the Business

Custom promotional products are a form of advertising that uses other people as brand ambassadors. Usually, internal teams come up with a marketing message and distribute it via the channels mentioned before like social media or paid advertising. Promotional products leave the messaging efforts to the individual who uses the item. Whenever they wear or use the product in public, others can see the brand name and logo. Eventually, more people will start to recognize the business’s image, leading to more sales.

Cost-Effective

The beauty of the promotional products industry is that it can have significant returns for a low, one-time purchase. Let’s say you order some branded products like t-shirts in bulk. Every shirt that you give away could be worn over and over again. Every time it is worn, other people could be seeing the business that may never have heard of it before. That one t-shirt ends up making the most impressions on potential customers. Not bad for a one-time expense.

Perfect for Local Businesses

If you are a geography-based company, then your visibility in the local community matters. A promo product that can be used or worn around town will help increase brand awareness with the people that matter most; your neighbors.

How to Run an Effective Promotional Marketing Strategy

This method is not as simple as ordering some items that you think are cool and giving them away for free to whoever walks by. You need to be strategic about what promo products you use and where you distribute them.

Your Ideal Audience is the Target

If an archery target represents all available audiences, then the bullseye is the ideal customer. these are the people that your product or service is made for and will be most likely to purchase what you sell. Understanding the habits, lifestyles, and places where they might interact with promotional products the most is the key to a successful campaign.

When you think about what items to order and how to distribute them, keep your target audience in mind and always aim for them.

A Distribution Plan

There are several ways to go about distributing your promotional items. You could attend trade shows and have them available at the booth for free.

You could post some social media contests where the winners get personalized bags or promotional outerwear. Team up with local charity events as a sponsor to create a favorable impression of the business locally and do some promotional giveaways at the event. Partner with another local business with a more favorable opinion and create a mutually beneficial relationship and give branded items to their customers.

Buying hundreds of promo products will be useless if nobody wants them. Instead, conduct some research into your target audience to discover what products or topics are popular.

What are the latest trends for environmentally-friendly practices, and what branded products would line up with them? Are small businesses in your service area thriving by giving away custom personalized drinkware? What organizations are growing their social media following and what content ideas and branding products could connect your business to that topic? When you understand what the consumer likes, you can harness the power of promotional products.

Once you have an idea of the why and how, it is time to consider the what. Which items in the promotional product industry could increase awareness in your target audience and help you reach your marketing goals?

Writing Instruments

A useful and cheap promotional item is sometimes the most effective. Pens, styluses, notepads, sticky notes, and other similar instruments are useful for workers, teachers, students, and other groups. Many brands use promotional items like these because you can get a lot of reach and a lot of use out of each item.

Promotional Bags

Promotional Tote bags, drawstring bags with your logo, and other similar products are a bigger investment, but they are much more visible to the public. Slap a good-sized logo or custom design on it and you could make an impression on tons of people who may interact with the owner of the bag.

Quality Clothing

One of the first things that people notice in another is the outfit they are wearing. If you invest in slightly more expensive giveaways that are more likely to attract attention, you could see the benefit in your sales numbers. T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, and other articles of clothing help companies reach broader audiences and can turn loyal fans into effective ambassadors for your business.

Promotional Products Fit with the Rest of Your Messaging Efforts

Promotional products do not have to operate in a vacuum, and in fact, they shouldn’t. Incorporate this method with your other messaging channels to get more bang for your buck. Send out emails with some discount offers. Share a sweepstake for great prizes via social media. Print a huge banner for a local event to bring consumers to your booth to find out about your business and have a chance to win a promotional item.

You can integrate promotional products into your other campaigns to unite the messaging between channels and increase the number of touchpoints with each customer. All types of companies, from mom-and-pop brands to large corporations, have used promotional products to great effect in growing their sales numbers, so find out how they can do the same for your business.