The Marketing Side of Promotional Products You May Not Know About

When you think of promotional products, what do you think of?  Products with logos on them?  Giveaway products? Throwaway products?  Free Stuff? An added expense?

What if I told you there is more to promotional products than you might know?

In fact, some might not know that promotional products are effective advertising tools, that when used properly, can really make a positive impact on your company’s bottom line.

How is this possible, you ask?

With proper marketing strategy and promotion techniques, you will be able to make a great impact on your prospects.

The success you have marketing with promotional items all boils down to the strategy you have in place to be able to ensure successful campaign. You want your product to be more than a giveaway – you want to create a promotion!

The 4 P’s of Marketing can help us break it down.

Product

The point of advertising with promotional products is to give your target audience something they can use at least once in a while, if not frequently.  You don’t want to give them something you like – that’s your ego talking – you want to give them something that is useful to them.

This way, they will use it more, they will repeatedly see your message and remember your company. Not only that, it will be in the back of their minds that you gave them such a useful item, which in turn, promotes your brand.

Which product to choose?  Let’s say you own a produce market and you saw a carrot shaped stress reliever one time and you thought might be perfect because it is relevant to your company.

Yes, the shape of the product is relevant to your company, but is that your ego talking?  Would your customer use that carrot shaped stress reliever?

Since you want to choose products your target audience can use, think of where they would be when they are in need of your products and services the most and choose your product based on that assumption.

Place

Place is all about where you will distribute your product.  Will you distribute it at a grand opening? A trade show?  Will you give it as a free gift for purchasing “X” amount of goods at your store?

You need to figure out where to distribute it before you buy the products, so you don’t end up with a bunch of promotional products sitting around wasting your marketing dollars!

Promotion

The next thing to decide is the method in which you will use the promotional item – this is more important than the product itself.

In order to create an effective promotion, you will need to think of how you can tie the products into a promotion strategy that will allow you to effectively pass them along to your audience.

The things you will need to take into consideration are who you are targeting and at what step in your buyer’s journey are they stuck and need an incentive to get them to the next step?

Price

Every company has (and if they don’t they should) a marketing budget.  Find out how much of your budget you would allocate to the use of promotional products.

This is best to have a number range in mind when browsing through options of products you could use.

For example, you could order 1000 inexpensive and cheap pens but these might not work as effectively as 250 higher quality, higher priced items.

Next time you think of marketing with promotional items, it is always best to think of a promotional plan that is targeted and strategic enough to give you the results you are looking to achieve.

For more information on how to use promotional products effectively and strategically, download our free strategy guide that will show you how promotional products can be utilized to drive results in your favor by entering your name and email in the box below.