Adding your logo to a product for the sake of adding a logo to an item is risky business. I totally get it – seeing your company’s name on a pen, notepad, calculator…anything is like seeing your name in lights! (At least it’s close enough to it!).
When you do this, you end up wasting marketing dollars because you wont maximize the impact they can have on your goals. On top of that, you will more than likely end up with boxes of products taking up space in a storage closet. If this is your process, you may want to consider being more strategic about “seeing your name in lights” by taking advantage of the benefits promotional products can offer.
If you have not incorporated promotional products in your marketing strategies before, you are missing out! If you are unsure where to start, the following tips will help you kick-start your next promotional campaign.
1. Decide what you want to accomplish with your promotional campaign
A few examples of what some companies want to accomplish are:
- Attracting more customers to visit a brick and mortar business, website or landing page
- Create more awareness of their company in the community
- Promote a new product or service to customers
- Increase followers on social media sites
- Re-engage previous clients
- Or even thank current customers
2. Set goals for your campaign
The goals for your campaign should be targeted numbers and figures for the examples above. You want to answer the questions “how many” or “how much”. For example, if you want more customers to come to your business, decide how many customers you want to have walk through your doors and how much revenue you want to generate.
3. Discover your target market’s needs and wants
In this step, think of who your target market is and what they need and want. If you are a chiropractor, for example, your target audience could be those who have chronic back pain or something similar. In this case, if you choose people with chronic back pain, these people will more than likely need and want back pain relief.
You can go deeper with this to find out their likes, dislikes and lifestyle activities they are likely to partake. This is helpful as we move into step four.
4.Choose your products
Once you have an idea of your target markets wants, needs, likes, dislikes and lifestyle activities you can now use this data to find a product that would be interesting to them. The key here is to think of a product they will use so they will keep it with them and be exposed to your brand, message, offer or whatever your goal is to accomplish what you decided to accomplish in step one.
5. Determine how to distribute the products
This is a very important step as this is key to whether or not you will have a box of logo products sitting in a closet. You can decide how to distribute the products by looking at your goals and what you are trying to accomplish.
For example, if you are trying to attract more customers, give a gift to first time customers and keep track of how many responded to this promotion. Or, if you’re trying to get customers to come back, give the gift to second time customers!
6. Track results
Like any other marketing campaign, you will need to track results and compare these results to your goals to see how well your promotion did.
Whether you have used promotional products strategically in the past before, or whether you are incorporating them into your marketing and advertising strategies for the first time, always remember to plan your promotional product campaigns accordingly. If you pick meaningless products to add your logo to and distribute them randomly (if they make it out of storage!), you will risk not getting the most out of your investment.
Creating Memorable Impressions For Your Brand 