Should You Use Promotional Products?

Promotional products – branded clothing, gadgets, accessories… they can be a part of your marketing strategy, but have you ever wondered whether they are really worth it?
They are expensive to buy. Really expensive. So using them needs to be though through carefully. I see them working with small businesses that…

• do trade shows – can be a great traffic booster to your booth.
• sponsor events, community organizations in the local community.
• have a product that is beneficial to the masses, where general brand awareness would be a boon.
• send things out to customers. Whether the actual product you sell or educational information. A promo product can be a nice insert depending on what it is. Or it can be made part of a special promotion.
• have an in-person location where it’s easy to get your promo products out (versus having to mail them out).
• are interested in offering gifts to customers, whether through contests, a thank you for top customers or in exchange for completing a particular action, such as filling in a questionnaire.

My partner for example who does retaining walls and excavating, is thinking about getting his boys some branded t-shirts so that they look all professional and matchy matchy on the job site. That makes sense to me.

A few tips from my personal experience…

• the cheapest options sometimes can back-fire. Think about what a poor quality product says about your brand.
• be realistic about the numbers. You can get sucked into buying too much because the price is better. You don’t want boxes of the stuff lying around for years.
• As much as possible, make the connection between the promo product and your brand make sense. Too often promotional products are really random.
• Make the products useful. What would people actually want in their lives?
• Make the products enticing. Would people actual be excited about receiving them?

At a previous job at a local tofu manufacturer one of my responsibilities was preparing for trade shows and deciding on the types of promotional products to use. One of the most successful we used was all natural lip balm that matched the flavour of the dessert tofu. They went like hot cakes at the shows and people were really interested in them. And they made perfect sense in terms of awareness and connection to the business.
By Martina