How to use promotional products effectively

In this writing I will briefly discuss the problems I see with many promotional product campaigns. As a supplier representative for Imark Pen Company, www.Imark-Pen.com, I have the privilege of being part of many advertising campaigns
. It is amazing to me how much money is so ineffectively used by businesses when they buy their promotional products. I have created a small list of a few of the do's and dont's to consider for both the distributor and the corporate buyer as they design their promotions.

Does the product advertise the company?

Recently there was a promotion by a retail store that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a custom product to be used as a gift with purchase. This retail store designed the product themselves in their art and marketing departments. As I looked at the design I realized the product did not have the company name, logo or any other marking that would identify this product as coming from this retailer.

Throughout the years I have seen other companies make the same mistake in other ways. Such as putting their advertising on a piece of paper and inserting it into products or putting a sticker on the bottom of an item.

In all of these examples the end user who is the target of the entire advertising campaign has no reason to remember the company who is actually doing the advertising for any longer than the time it takes to throw away a piece of paper or pull off a sticker.

Does the product reflect well on the company?

I receive requests on a weekly basis for "the cheapest pen I have" or "products in the lowest price-point I can put together". I always know what the follow-up question is after this kind of question. "Can you give a discount off of those prices as well?"

The real answer to all the questions of this type is "Don't spend any money". It would be better to use your money in some other part of the business
than to waste your money.

Is your favorite pen a plastic stick pen? Or, do all the plastic stick pens that you receive along the way end up in the trash or the catch-all pen holder on the desk. Is giving away a cheap item that nobody will want really advertising at all? What was it's advertising purpose? Even worse, if somebody does take the time to look at the logo, does the company appear to be a quality company?

A well designed promotional campaign can be destroyed by a bad quality promotional item. The inverse is also true.

How long will the product last?

One of the main goals of promotional products is to keep the companies logo in front of their target audience. Throughout the years I have had people come into our booth at trade-shows and pull an Imark pen out of their pocket that they purchased over 10 years ago. Now that is what you call getting bang for the buck out of your advertising dollars.

Every year I see companies buy seasonal or Christmas related promotional products. Now how long do you suppose these items will stay in the target audiences possession?

The solution is to give a year round high quality gift and turn it into a temporary seasonal gift. An example would be a nice picture frame. The company logo would be engraved on the frame and a nice Christmas picture would be inserted into the frame. By designing the product in this fashion the target audience now has a nice picture frame that they will keep for the long haul, yet the initial presentation was holiday related.

In closing, I hope this article sparked some ideas for the promotional product professionals to better present products to the business community. I look forward to working with all of you on your many future projects.

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