Integrating Promotional Items in Your Marketing Strategy
The promotional item is an $18 billion industry that presents you thousands of customizable giveaways to promote your business. And even though the wide selection of marketing products represents a growing and dynamic industry, this can also be viewed negatively as this multitude of selection contributes to the confusion for many marketers.
Using marketing products to promote your business may seem to be a simple thing. And indeed it is as a promotional product strategy just requires you to choose any promo item to imprint with your logo and distribute to your target market. And this strategy will often work, but to fully maximize your ROI, there are a lot of factors to consider in your giveaway decision process, such as marketing budget, target market segment, and promotional event, just to name a few. And this is where the complexity of a promotional item strategy emerges intimidating new and old marketers alike from integrating such an effective strategy in their marketing mix.
In order to help marketers to fully optimize their promotional item strategy, a simple guide for using the top promo products are presented below. These condensed strategies can be used as a starting point for a customized marketing product plan that will fit your own business.
Promotional Apparel
The logo apparel category is the top marketing product in terms of sales, comprising more than a quarter of the total annual sales for the promotional product industry. This shows the clear preference of companies in using company shirts in their promotional item strategy. Though company shirt is very versatile since it is capable of targeting different market segments, the optimal use for this marketing product is for the development of your company's most important asset: your employees.
Distributing company apparel in your organization will improve employees' morale which is directly related to their productivity. It also builds the team spirit of your personnel as uniformity provides a sense of security and belongingness. Thus, the best strategy that will maximize the impact of logo apparel is the distribution of these giveaways during corporate activities (company outings, team building activities) and marketing events (trade shows, conventions).
Promotional Pens and Writing Instruments
The logo pens category have one of the widest price range for promotional items, from as low as the $0.16 affordable Bic click pens to the $200 premium Waterman ballpoints. This wide price bracket allows you to choose the promo pen that will maximize your marketing budget and, at the same time, satisfy your target market segment. And even though logo pens boast flexibility, these promotional items truly excel as corporate gifts for campaigns that involve gathering information from a large population. Some common examples are sales lead gathering and market research survey.
There are two reasons why logo pens shine in information gathering projects. First is that during these activities, your goal is to have your target market write down important information. Thus, the function of the pen satisfies the very purpose of your activity while, at the same time, serving as your "thank you" gift. The second reason is that compared to other promotional items, a logo pen is very compact. This characteristic allows you to bring and store a larger number of your marketing product relative to other giveaways. The importance of this becomes apparent when you are faced with a bulging number of target market coupled with a limited storage space, such as a constrained booth space in trade shows.
Promotional Mugs and Drinkware
Mugs and drinkware are the promotional items that appeal to everyone. Thus, if you are targeting a market that is just too difficult to segment, then you can always go for the classic logo imprinted coffee mug that is well appreciated by most people. Aside from the general appeal of this marketing giveaway, a promo mug is also one of the most common item you'll find on top of office desks. Hence, if you want your promotional item to be displayed at the place of work of your clients, which is also where most buying decision occurs, then personalized mugs and drinkware should be your number one choice for your promotional item strategy.
The promotional items presented above are the top marketing products based on annual sales. This goes to show that even the most widely used promo items still require a well designed strategy to achieve a successful marketing giveaway campaign. But the important thing to note is that the success of any promotional campaign is strongly rooted on a well understanding of your employees, products, and target market.
